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Region UK Benzo Use Question

Jabberwocky

Jabberwocky

Frumious Bandersnatch
Joined
Nov 3, 1999
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Why did hypnotic benzos like temazepam get so popular for a time in the UK? It seems like Americans by and large prefer other benzos, but you folks dig the more hypnotic stuff. Personally my favorite is temazepam, so I can relate.

Just curious. Is the temazepam thing way over by this point in history?

Or am I just curious and totally confused and just like temazepam (first and third part of that statement I already know is correct :))?
 
Temazepam has a particular potential for abuse compared to other benzodiazepines - despite it's relatively low equipotency (it is only as half as potent by weight as diazepam) - it particular effect profile is particularly desirable to those who enjoy the effects of benzodiazepines due to the pronounced sedation and overwhelming muscle relaxation the drug produces - it is as close to a 'recreational' effect as is probably possible in a benzodiazepine. This also makes the drug subjectively stronger at equivalent doses - 10mg of diazepam will cover 20mg of temazepam for a conversion but due to the subjective effects of the drug the temazepam will feel much more overpowering.

As it's only real clinical use is as a hypnotic, the drug has always been widely prescribed in the UK compared to other benzos, which tend to be underused as a whole. This is largely due to the mass class action lawsuit taken out by those patients who found themselves dependant on them after many General Practitioners prescribed them in the 70's and 80's without providing warning of their potential for abuse and addiction.

The drug also has a strong connotation with the 80's UK heroin scene due to the widespread availability of a particular product - gelatine filled capsules - which allowed IV users to easily extract the temazepam for injection. For obvious reasons these types of temazepam products, the notorious 'jellies', are no longer available. They're still arguably the most abusable benzodazpine widely available in the UK as our National Health Service does not use alprazolam, but due to the low equipotency they do not work very well for those with moderate to large tolerances without resorting to ludicrous doses.
 
As far as triazolobenzos prescribable on the NHS, there is one, I've had it before, loprazolam, an short-intermediate acting triazolo-nitrobenzodiazepine. Takes a little time to peak but it is, as far as benzo recreational potential goes, one with a fair bit of potential.

Always did like nitro-benzodiazepines though. At least, the ones I've tried, and yeah, have tried diazepam (don't like it much at all), temazepam (could give less of a fuck about it recreationally, personally although would choose it over diazepam for the reasons stated by posters above comparing weight potency vs impact). I'd have to try it again and explore it a bit more, to compare it with the nitrazepam I currently have scripted but availability isn't really likely to improve on a temporary 'hey, doc, I want to see which of these can get me more fucked up' basis for the purpose of comparison. And I like the damn long duration of effect coupled with the heavy-hitting hypnotic effect of nitrazepam, at least, if I'm going to resort to a benzo, instead of my preferred GABAergic of choice, the more barbiturate-like chlormethiazole, which is always, always going to come up smelling of roses in any heminevrin-vs-any benzo competition, what with being, whilst chemically unique, as far as rx sedatives go of the GABAergic type (its a derivative of thiamine/vitamin B1, synthesis from the former being a two-step synthesis that is pretty easy, if one can handle at least a somewhat nasty, water-sensitive volatile reagent

[thionyl chloride is used in one of the steps in making chlormethiazole, the second of the two steps before working up/extracting the finished product, which is, as said, a volatile liquid which on contact with atmospheric moisture fumes off copious sulfur dioxide and hydrogen chloride, and which would not be healthy to inhale in the slightest, unfortunately I've seen what it does to tissue too on contact, after opening a battery of the lithium-thionyl chloride cell and getting some on a leather glove, which it proceeded to rot like a piece of iron would rust, if the rusting were to be held in suspense and accumulated in a debit-account, on loan, for 200 years, and then suddenly let loose all at once, and indeed rusting the steel spikes on the gloves, before disintegrating them and carrying on to burn down to the muscle of one of my hands. Still got the scars from that particular moment of childhood curiosity and reagent-hunting. Although thankfully I did manage to reclaim the SOCl2 from all the other batteries I'd looted from the security system of what was once a building.

(no, I wasn't breaking and entering anywhere, the place was a demolished building, and but for a few un-smashed bits was just a flat field of bricks, aside from a security system power reserve no longer connected to anything but an a bit over waist-high (to a preteen me) aggregation of still-mortared bricks. The valubles to be taken, being the batteries for, at least at first, their lithium content, before I discovered, very painfully, that they were a goldmine of thionyl chloride, something at the time otherwise completely unobtainable at the age I found them at, didn't know of the existence of that type of Li battery until I found out during the dissection, although from that point on the Li metal recovery was of tertiary importance, and bleeding them dry of SOCl2 with minimum waste the paramount objective, recovering from my badly burnt palm and waiting for my skin to grow back being fairly high on the list, after getting the goodness out of my wonderful chance gift from out of the blue. The one that got me burnt, though ending up straight in a load of water, which was to say the least, somewhat of a violent event, accompanied by a satanic acidic fuming belch of mostly SO2 welling up from below as if it were a Theresa May speech clawing its way out of hell to be vomited forth upon the face of the earth in a similarly acrid, stinking, cloud of hot air, freely laden with corrosive poison fumes))]

So it is something to be careful with, although by no means impossible or impractical for a home chemist to make use of. But spilling it on you is going to make a train-wreck of any flesh it contacts as it burns through. The 3rd-degree burns I got as a kid from that stuff touching my hand when I couldn't get my gloves off in time left scars that haven't healed in over 21-22 years, maybe a bit longer than that, and by now I am fairly certain they never will.

The drug itself (although I have a script for it) though, is, IMO, the best GABAa-ergic the UK NHS has to offer. Electrophysiologically it potentiates GABAa chloride channel ion currents in the way the barbs do, although unlike barbs, its got no antiglutamatergic AMPA receptor blocking/negatively allosterically modulating (not sure which), and it is of an effect duration of about 5-6 hours, and having tried one decent barbiturate, although a longer acting one, barbital, the first of the lot of them to be developed, it packs a similarly hefty GABAergic punch, whilst being quite devoid of memory-scrambling, mentally dulling effects. Not, for some reason, much of a muscle relaxer compared to many benzos, but what it does, it does with a ten-pound sledgehammer in hand. A real arse-kicker and one with an extremely rapid onset after taking it by mouth, but nice and clean. I use it for seizure prevention and get a prescribed additional 'rescue pack' for rapidly stamping out any threatening/beginning seizure before it can turn into anything worse than a load of sparks starting the beginnings of some dry grass, rather than become an AUS-scale full blown firestorm of a wildfire). A wall-banger oldschool downer that made it to the present day instead of being culled like the barbs, 'ludes etc. that is clear-headed in therapeutic doses, works as fast as a shot of spirit would once the gelcaps release their contents, and comes on as hard as it does fast if one takes enough...whats not to like?=D)
 
BTW Stee, what do you mean, underused? IMO a lot of doctors are just against benzos, full stop, unless somebody happens to be having a seizure or something and they stick 'em with diaz, or stick the stuff up somebody's ass (there is a product made for administration of diazepam that way, presumably to avoid needles breaking off in a patient)

I've found it to be generally speaking, hard to get benzos at all, regardless of the type, but when they were given out, they have been pretty open as far as type goes, when they find that I specifically dislike diazepam, the usual first resort, both because it, and other benzos that metabolize to oxazepam can cause a delayed-onset paradoxical reaction if the weight dosage of the benzo is large enough to make the oxazepam around at an active level, and in any case I find it far, far too weak. I don't like their typical second choice, either, temazepam. So usually, if a benzo is going to get used at all, the docs usually realize that I know what I'm talking about when telling them I know how specific benzos affect me, and leave the type to me.

And another good thing is, chlormethiazole, despite its in actuality, being highly dangerous in the case of a pharmacologically hazardous overdosage, with its barb-like dose-response curve, it is, being fairly old, not so notorious as benzos are by reputation, as with say, Z-drugs. So docs are often willing to give it a try, as 'it isn't a benzo, thats got to be a good thing, it being in a class of its own' when something for sleep, anxiety etc. is needed. Just a hunch, mind you, but some GPs I've encountered really do seem to BE that stupid. (although in fairness, its the logic postulated which would be stupid, the drug itself has excellent tolerance characteristics), as to ignore the fact they are both GABAa positive allosteric modulators, and that chlormethiazole is a barb binding site ligand, and of course the barbs mostly got shitcanned. But; its lack of infamy works advantageously.
 
I wouldn't mind trying nimetazepam. But it IS a benzo, so it'll be right down there on my to-do list. I CBF synthesizing just another fucking benzo. Even if it IS a neat one that I'll never see outside of having quite literally preparing it myself. Now bung a fluorine atom in the right place, and I might just... but if I'm to make sedatives, I'm going for stuff like methaqualone, glutethimide (yes, nobody need warn me, I am aware of its antiglucocorticoid effects in all but on and off occasional dosing), halogenated multiple-bonded vinylic alcohols like ethchlorvynol (yes, I know that ethchlorvynol cannot be injected, also, since it is used thus to induce experimental lung damage in lab animal. NOT, I should specify in MY lab, since I test nothing, ever, on any organism which possesses more than a single cell, or colonies of many cells if they are the likes of slime-mold protozoa type aggregations, and even then as yet, never have needed to do so. Transfected cell lines I would, but an amoeba is just about at the limit of what I would be prepared to test anything on, layers of cells in plates without the capacity to suffer, barbiturates and more exotic stuff like say, sulfonmethanes (sulfonal, trional, tetronal, that appeared last afaik in some ancient medical tomes of mine dating from the late 1700s, or at least the first of them, sulfonal was invented around then, back in the days when they were still dosing babies with grey mass, blue mass, blue pill, various other mercury deruvatives, as well as Fowler's solution *arsenical, one amongst many), Goulard's lotion, and other lead based 'medicines', antimony, white phosphorus), and all those odd wallbanger downers from eras past.

If there is THAT kind of work to be done, it sure as shit stinks isn't going to be a benzo.
 
I like diazepam. I dont use it to get high...i have never really thought of benzos as recreational more post recreational to smooth out the landing from stims and psychs. Lorazepam was shite. Temaz is good for sleeping but diaz for me is superior as you are less likely to get into trouble with it with its long half life. If any benzo was recreational it has to be xanax but that stuff is way too addictive.
 
Limpet.... Make some fucking Nimetazepam: They weren't (yes, they are being phased out even in the far east) called "Happy 5's" for the fuck of it ;)

5mg had me in a blissful state of telling movement to fuck off =D
That was back in the day, but still...

My kingdom for Nimetazepam :|
 
H'm, I've never done a benzo synth. Might be an interesting thing to try. And who knows what manner of 1,4-benzodiazepines (there are others, like 2,3-benzodiazepines which are IIRC AMPA or KAr blockers, sadly no NMDA antagonists seen yet here not for want of looking)

So you've had it, noodle ? interesting. Do describe it if it is not too much trouble, a comparison with nitrazepam especially, and with the standards such as diazepam, temazepam and lorazepam, loprazolam etc. would be too if possible.

Even the chinks are phasing them out? damn, thats something (something cuntish mind you), considering they use dihydroetorphine like we do methadone (now THAT I'd be interested in trying, but only the commercial pharma made stuff, no fucking way in HELL I'd be caught dead handling what is in effect, an invisible, potentially submicroscopic suitcase-nuke in the lab. Shit, you get a little bit of mist in the air and the outside of your NBC suit might do someone ELSE in too.) How would you say nimetazepam fares on an equal weight basis to nitrazepam (the dosing weight seems the same, is it not?) I.e, would I likely, get one dose or a dose and a little pick me up off of 70mg nimetazepam like I would from the same of nitraz? I use benzos maybe once or twice a week at proper doses *from my point of view* with maybe a pill once or twice on occasion some weeks other times, save it usually for the last day of when I run low on pain meds and neck the entire pack, either a couple in the morning and the rest with a few chlormethiazole caps for the last night with a few DHC 32 packs in a CWE.

Because even using at rates low enough not to get a tolerance, I seem to have a bit of a hard head when it comes to downers and bugger me diagonally with a broken bottle stuffed with a pair of underpants full of rabit stoats if its not all people make it up to be. It ain't a good thing its a royal fucking pain in the chocolate fucking starfish when you need to dose the pharmacological equivalent of a cruise missile to get relaxed)

Seriously, its like needing to fill a pair of 10-ga shotshells with chlormethiazole base distilled under vacuum and loaded in there, suck on the barrel and fire a 3-round burst right to the brain to actually feel the damn GABAergics (although the stuff is weird for tolerance. It affects me properly, unlike most other GABAergics, and continues to do so despite having to take it at least TDS, daily, as my antiseizure med, yet I can cold turkey off it if I have to without being bothered, maybe I might snort a couple oxy 10s extra but not essential, just preferable. And I've been on it for years as monotherapy and as rescue pack therapy. NO physical dependence from a GABAa barbiturate-binding site agonist just minus the antiglutamatergic AMPAr blockade that is the trademark lesserknown add-on downloadable content for barbs (yeah, had 'em, although limited exp. Pheno, crappy, and the long acting, original barb, barbital itself, which is rather cozy shit. That'll put any benzo to shame, just wanting to curl up on the sofa and go fire up fallout-tactics, save the game and play nasty little games involving civillians and antitank mines, ripper chainblades and cattleprods. laughing as they go up, but don't come down, unless you count a human jigsaw puzzle being launched ten feet into the air with a 'boomSPLOORRSHKKHHSSNNNGGHNNhhHHhhhNGHNnnhHsPlaTTTER! sortof noise of scattered person-chum and bits of limbs on one, before eyesocket-fucking another unarmed civilian with a laser pistol shot through an eye socket, a kneecap blown to shreddy bits like human marmalade with a double-barrel shotgun round to the legs and blast away bodyparts like taking prime cuts of beef whilst smoking a stogie and laughing as those shotguns are all loaded with flechette shell load to shred'em and dice 'em. With a nice satisfying splatter after one of my troops walks up to the kneecapped guy or girl, straps on a glove with an impact-trigger on the knuckles and a shotgun shell of choice right in the eyes, Splat! funny as shit when your melting into the sofa, just pulling that laser pistol trigger until that critical hit that ashes the cunt. Fry 'em, stick a chainblade shortsword 'ripper' up through their torso, or even the old fashioned 9mm round fired by one of my guys (Well girl's actually) antique 9mm mauser, walking around hunting civilians to pickpocket of shotgun shells, and the brotherhood of steel to pickpocket heavy weapon rounds from, smokin' a stogie....and dissolving into the duvet on me sofa. Nicely puffing away on that ol' stogie and blowin' off bollocks with .44 reolvers. Plenty fuckin fun =D The odd SMG hollowpoint burst in the odd torso, a couple in the eyes....chopping tails off mutated gigantic scorpions..

Hehehehe. Ever seen what happens when a near starved civillian steps on an antitank mine? looting THOSE corpses..its more like a jigsaw puzzle than a body. If jars of marmalade came in people flavor with person-shreddy bits with a spoon carved from a thigh bone to serve it on fried random bypasser-bits served with....err lets just say it was lobster, to the health inspection people=D Radioactive lobster with stingers that are about the size of a two-headed radiation-mutated cow.

(I can't fucking believe it..I actually paid for software. Only a few quid, and two free games with it, but damn. Long time since I'e done THAT. I musta been bollocksed as a scrotum-factory hit with an airstrike.

Still, what fun CAN'T be had with a molotov cocktail or three? Just picture them civillians as NTs and oh fuckin 'ell its funny watching those heads explode. The meat-cleavers in heads, minigun bursts tearing torsos apart and leaving legs with spines (or most of what was the spine) and ribcage bits go flying like a baby run through a woodchippper....lol

(ok, I admit it, I've got a sick sense of humor when it comes to videogames, especially the fallout series with their already messed up humor)

And lol...fuckin hell, anyone catching freeview channel 70 right now? some mad scientist guy just intended to bring his dead ex gf back to life, and instead created a frankenprostitute after using a cut-off whore's head. LMAO. And now she's on the rampage. Or about to be. Fuckin funny. Guy has a pet brain with a moving eyeball in it in a fishtank full of some biocompatible fluid. Lol that would be great atmosphere for the lab, a couple of brains in jars.
 
Love clonazepam, very nice intense feeling. Never got much out of lorazepam for some reason.
 
Last edited:
toothpastedog said:
Why did hypnotic benzos like temazepam get so popular for a time in the UK? It seems like Americans by and large prefer other benzos, but you folks dig the more hypnotic stuff. Personally my favorite is temazepam, so I can relate.

Just curious. Is the temazepam thing way over by this point in history?

Or am I just curious and totally confused and just like temazepam (first and third part of that statement I already know is correct :))?
Click to expand...

I think most people would be game for other benzos - it's just that we aren't allowed them on script, and our black market scene is very much dictated by what people know is available. However this is all changing; I've absolutely loved xanax for years now, and I'm really starting to hear of it being stocked on the street level from people who aren't my direct friends due to the dark web. See Anxious teenagers ‘buy Xanax on the dark web’ - a guardian article from yesterday.

The benzos I've acquired from the street in the uk are: diazepam, clonazepam, nitrazepam and lorazepam. The first is absolutely widespread, the second is about but pretty rare, the third I only ever acquired from some lads I knew from Leeds, and the fourth I acquired once from some guy that I used to work with who was kind of involved in the heroin scene, and knew a lot of people with scripts of various kinds.
 
Diazepam metabolizes into temazepam and oxazepam. Temazepam is used in the US for insomnia, famously in armed forces like the air force
 
Isn't it the other way round? temazepam metabolizing into diazepam, then nordiazepam (desmethyldiazepam) then oxazepam as final active metabolite?

And they also use diazepam in the military in autoinjectors, as part of the nerve agent kit, containing atropine, an oxime like pralidoxime, or one of the newer ones and diazepam. The anticholinergic keeps the victim alive just long enough for the oxime to reactivate the poisoned acetylcholinesterase enzyme, and stop them drowning in their own bronchial secretions etc., whilst the oxime acts as a true antidote, assuming the victim wasn't poisoned with a dose not instantly lethal or fatal in a minute or two, but also poisoned long enough ago that the nerve agent-cholinesterase complex hasn't 'aged' (varies quite wildly and not in a linear manner corresponding with lethal dose, E.g it can take 24 hours or more for VX, but for soman, it happens within ten minutes, beyond which, there is a rearrangement of the nerve agent/AChE complex which renders it no longer possible to be reactivated by the oxime, and the only thing that can be done is aggressive therapy in intensive care in a symptomatic way, controlling seizures, secretions etc. and mechanical ventilation of the victim), and the diazepam is to help control convulsions, both bodily and neurological, caused by the nerve agent, IIRC sometimes the diazepam is built into a second pen, whilst the atropine and oxime class drug are in a twin autoinjector pen that has to be used just once to inject both drugs simultaneously, given that the soldier might have to use the autoinjector themselves (like an epi-pen basically, only a combi-pen version with multiple barrels and drugs contained within these, and multiple needles), and with nerve agents rapid reaction is vital, since nerve agent type chemical warfare agents could easily kill a soldier before he could run several tens of feet to seek help, or render him completely paralyzed potentially faster than that and stop them using the pen themselves, let alone get some other trooper to use one on the casualty, and as such, speed is vital to survival.

Even non-fatal doses of nonmilitary anticholinesterases unrelated to organophosphates, and either ocurring in plants or used in medicine (or of course in the case of at least galantamine and huperzine-A, both of these, in excess, are also fucking awful. Its like a mixture of feeling as if you are in opiate withdrawal, and have just been run over repeatedly by a ten ton truck whilst having the shite kicked out of you for about 2-3 days afterwards by a pack of thugs armed with baseball bats who hates you like anybody who isn't a nonce, hates paedophiles. With the added nasty effect that you are physically so stiff that you can barely hobble a few feet to the bog, even when you are desparate to piss, which you will be for sure, again and again and again. You'll feel like a little old man/woman who's just been skullfucked with a brick for her last fifty pence of her pension by a pack of drunken chav louts, whilst you sweat bullets, roast alive (or feel like it), alternating with freezing, all the time, stiff as a guy on coke watching autistic chicks in porn, including that one with the teen and the peanut butter, only not your dick, but every last little muscle you never even knew existed, let alone that you possessed, your stomach turning, puking your guts out, muscles twitching here and there in isolated groups or sections (fasciculations) with a monstrous case of the shits, and barely able to get to the shitter in time....quite possibly just deciding to spend the entire time on the bog, or lying down on the bathroom floor on a towel so as to be sure to get there in time every time, and if possible pumping yourself full to the fucking eyeteeth with as much opiate and muscle relaxers you think you can physically survive, with a few added in on top just to be sure, along with some antimuscarinics in non-delirient but strong doses.

It isn't entirely unlike being bitten by a widow spider, either, for those who have had that experience. Similar end effects, although alpha-latrotoxin from widow spiders' venoms causes a massive release of acetylcholine, without afaik, affecting cholinesterases. And it hurts to fuck several days afterwards, just like anticholinesterase (I.e nerve agent, military or otherwise. Although I am glad to say I've never had anything to do with military nerve agents like tabun, G-series agents like sarin, V-series agents like VX, VR and co, or that hybrid, GV, or worse of all, the oxime-proof novichok agents or at best (for the victim) highly oxime resistant, since they already contain an oxime functional group, and whilst solids, the novichok agents, russian for 'newcomer' or 'new guy', and pronounced 'no-wee-shok', given certain physical chemical characteristics, they may well be corrosive and able to deliver themselves by burning through intact skin, and some of them are between 5-6 and perhaps as many as 10x as toxic by weight as VX (which has a lethal dose of around 10mg, IIRC via skin contact).

While there is a lot less likelihood of actually dying from a bite from any of the widow spiders, (Latrodectus species, I'm not counting the Steatoda spp. false widows, which are even less likely to do so), and in severe envenomation, antivenin exists for the venom, although is not without its own risks, such as serum sickness, as its derived, like most antivenins, from animal serum when they are dosed with gradually increasing, initially minute quantities of the venoms to be targeted, be it spider, scorpion or snake until usable antibodies against the animal venom/s can be extracted from the animal's (often a horse) blood plasma, and processed) there really isn't much to choose from by way of symptoms if poisoned/envenomated by a nerve agent or widow spider bite respectively.

(unfortunately, I've had the experience of both. Damn pet brown widow, Latrodectus geometricus, female, and unusually pissy as hell, since she'd just laid two egg sacks, managed to run up and nip me one whilst I was cleaning her habitat out and tossing in a couple of crickets by way of spider-chow...and fuck me did that ever hurt. Not so much initially, widows have tiny, tiny little fangs, but once the venom takes effect..jesus H christ on a bike with a red hot stick up his anal sphincter does it ever hurt like a cunt for days, even when the acute phase is over, you feel like you're half dead and then another few halves on top of that, and wish you WERE dead already if it'd just bloody stop)

Not fun.
 
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