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Gabapentinoids Retro Sedatives  Megathread

@Gridlink, I just realized you also tried barbital—the first barbiturate, and probably the rarest of the ones mentioned in this thread. I've never seen a comment about its effect. I'm also curious to know how you got your hands on barbital and secobarbital, since they've been so rare for so long.
 
@Gridlink, I just realized you also tried barbital—the first barbiturate, and probably the rarest of the ones mentioned in this thread. I've never seen a comment about its effect. I'm also curious to know how you got your hands on barbital and secobarbital, since they've been so rare for so long.
Secobarbital...well, oddly enough my dad got it prescribed for back surgery, and I ended up finding the bottle when cleaning some of his things out. There were a few left so I figured I'd take them as a cleaning fee.

Sodium barbital...I used to work in a laboratory when in college and they had these old glass bottles of the powder just sitting around with the other reagents. So I prepared some premeasured doses in lab vials and took them to go. The effects were honestly kind of interesting for a sedative. Euphoric after about 20 min post ingestion. I had music playing in my head. Like a whole symphony orchestra, and I could direct the music as I walked along. The music kind of matched the beat of my steps. However when I laid down maybe 90 min post ingestion I couldn't feel my pulse, which caused me to become quite concerned as I kept thinking my heart had stopped (keep in mind this was one of my first drug experiences) so I forced myself to stay awake for a while, fearing that if I fell asleep I'd die lol. But of course I was fine and slept around 9 hours, woke up feeling fine..
 
if only you could get them in the uk!
Outside of clomethiazole and glutethimide, I haven't found evidence of any of these existing in clandestine spaces which sucks. I get why ethchlorvynol, meprobamate, carisoprodol, methyprylon and ethinimate aren't made on the street though, the synthetic routes are pretty menacing compared to other sedatives of similar pharmacokinetic profiles.
 
Secobarbital was a lot stronger than butalbital, but felt on par with soma in terms of strength. Somas I would say are the most addictive of the 3 by far though. I have gone through a 90 count bottle in 3 days. With secobarbital and butalbital I was at least able to control my use.
Soma is an odd ball and you can find much discussion and theories about what does and doesn't kick it in from heavy abusers of it in the 1990s. Sometimes you take 12 and feel almost nothing. Sometimes you take 3 and it puts you on your ass. That's always been my experience with it as well. When it did work it was really nice when stacked with other CNS depressants (opioid, benzos, alcohol etc.).

Over the past few days I've been listening to a lot of interviews from people that were abusing pharma drugs in the early-late 90s because their jobs didn't allow them to smoke pot. One drug that keeps getting mentioned over and over again is ethchlorvynol (placidyl). Something I only got to try once and don't remember much about. But people speak very highly of it that were taking it to get smashed back in the day. It's almost as fondly remembered by some as the old Lemons were in the 70s and 80s.

I might actually have a bottle of it laying around somewhere. I'll see if it's still any good sometime in the next month or two. By the time I came of age most of this stuff had been phased out and benzos were being touted as the new "safe sedative". We all see how that worked out.
 
Outside of clomethiazole and glutethimide, I haven't found evidence of any of these existing in clandestine spaces which sucks. I get why ethchlorvynol, meprobamate, carisoprodol, methyprylon and ethinimate aren't made on the street though, the synthetic routes are pretty menacing compared to other sedatives of similar pharmacokinetic profiles.
Is there also an issue of obtaining precursors for local production?

I get the chemistry might be harder for DIY labs, but I would have thought the indian and chinese produces wouldn't have any issue making these at all, wonder why the drug barons don't bother making other barbs, the odd lude analogue is about the closest that ever seems to pop up and they're not actually barbs.

bit strange

Soma is an odd ball and you can find much discussion and theories about what does and doesn't kick it in from heavy abusers of it in the 1990s. Sometimes you take 12 and feel almost nothing. Sometimes you take 3 and it puts you on your ass.
had this issue a lot, at first I thought it was lack of consistency in indian generics manufacturing causing hot spots in the pills.

but since swapping to taking them sublingually I've gotten a much more consistent experience - I think this helps it hit harder and faster.

from what I've read food shouldn't have an effect but it certainly works better/faster for me on an empty stomach.


"Food Effect - Co-administration of a high-fat meal with SOMA (350 mg tablet) had no effect on the pharmacokinetics of carisoprodol. Therefore, SOMA may be administered with or without food."

1 thing that AI returns (so take with a pinch of salt but it makes sense to me), your hydration level makes a difference, if you are dehydrated then blood plasma levels of carisoprodol will be higher making it hit harder.

and then anything you are taking that messes with CYP2C19 will have an effect as well e.g. grapefruit.

The last thing is time between doses, Meprobamate halflife is ~10 hours, but will be around longer (think it's detectable in blood up to 48 hours), so you may be stacking dosing to create an extra effect without realising it.
 
had this issue a lot, at first I thought it was lack of consistency in indian generics manufacturing causing hot spots in the pills.

but since swapping to taking them sublingually I've gotten a much more consistent experience - I think this helps it hit harder and faster.

from what I've read food shouldn't have an effect but it certainly works better/faster for me on an empty stomach.


"Food Effect - Co-administration of a high-fat meal with SOMA (350 mg tablet) had no effect on the pharmacokinetics of carisoprodol. Therefore, SOMA may be administered with or without food."

1 thing that AI returns (so take with a pinch of salt but it makes sense to me), your hydration level makes a difference, if you are dehydrated then blood plasma levels of carisoprodol will be higher making it hit harder.

and then anything you are taking that messes with CYP2C19 will have an effect as well e.g. grapefruit.

The last thing is time between doses, Meprobamate halflife is ~10 hours, but will be around longer (think it's detectable in blood up to 48 hours), so you may be stacking dosing to create an extra effect without realising it.

A lot of the interviews I've been watching hint at the same things. They said they were getting "Mexican Somas" which were hit and miss. Sometimes they'd rock your world and sometimes it was like taking a sugar pill. But they said the same thing was happening with the legit ones they were getting through American doctors. These people had doctors all over the country writing them scripts for pretty much anything they desired. So access to legit pharma pills wasn't an issue for them.

They said they had all sorts of theories about what would kick them in. One of the big ones was eating pizza or something heavy in carbs after taking them. Another was of course combining them with alcohol. These people were partying and drinking every night for 350+ days a year because pharma/poly-drug abuse was rampant in their industry at the time. They couldn't just drink beer because they had to maintain a certain look and stay in shape. Didn't want to get beer belly and be bloated all of the time. So they were turning to pills so they could drink 5 beers a night instead of 20+liquor.

If you're interested in interviews with people that were abusing these older pharma medications you should check out interviews with professional wrestlers from the 70s-90s era. Since they had free access to most everything and were partying hard after shows every night for years on end. After the steroid scandal in the late 80s/early 90s the company introduced a drug testing policy. But all it really tested for was roids and THC. So they could basically take anything else they wanted and they had doctors in every town (and one traveling with them) who would freely write them prescriptions for anything they wanted. Most of them were also mixing them with copious amounts of hard liquor and beer. Since they were going to the bars after shows and buying each other shots and drinking beers while traveling everywhere by car/airplane.

They all seem to talk more openly about the abuse of barbs, opioids, muscle relaxers and the other usual suspects more freely than any other group of workers from that era. Once the rule of "kayfabe" (don't talk about the business with people outside the business) died around the early 2000s they were all giving interviews to anyone that would listen about all their road stories and the drug abuse going on behind the scenes. Many thousands of hours of it exists on youtube if you're interested in hearing first hand accounts of how these discontinued pharma substances felt and mixed with each other.

There are probably more "trip reports" within those interviews than exist on erowid or BL.
 
Soma is an odd ball and you can find much discussion and theories about what does and doesn't kick it in from heavy abusers of it in the 1990s. Sometimes you take 12 and feel almost nothing. Sometimes you take 3 and it puts you on your ass. That's always been my experience with it as well. When it did work it was really nice when stacked with other CNS depressants (opioid, benzos, alcohol etc.).

Over the past few days I've been listening to a lot of interviews from people that were abusing pharma drugs in the early-late 90s because their jobs didn't allow them to smoke pot. One drug that keeps getting mentioned over and over again is ethchlorvynol (placidyl). Something I only got to try once and don't remember much about. But people speak very highly of it that were taking it to get smashed back in the day. It's almost as fondly remembered by some as the old Lemons were in the 70s and 80s.

I might actually have a bottle of it laying around somewhere. I'll see if it's still any good sometime in the next month or two. By the time I came of age most of this stuff had been phased out and benzos were being touted as the new "safe sedative". We all see how that worked out.
Yeah, placidyl was a fave for me. I can't honestly say I ever enjoyed downers as much as I hoped ( ludes and barbs), but placidyl, yes. Not sure why I felt differently about them
 
Similar to secobarbital?
Secobarbital I felt was on the whole more sedating but also more boring than sodium barbital. There was some reduction in social anxiety, it had more of a social lubricant feel than butalbital or sodium barbital, but I didn't feel like it made me particularly clever or anything. But one similarity with sodium barbital I did find was that when I laid down, once again I couldn't feel my pulse.
 
Many thousands of hours of it exists on youtube if you're interested in hearing first hand accounts of how these discontinued pharma substances felt and mixed with each other.
great source and tip thanks, might have to go and look down this rabbit hole a bit, sounds interesting!
 
A lot of the interviews I've been watching hint at the same things. They said they were getting "Mexican Somas" which were hit and miss. Sometimes they'd rock your world and sometimes it was like taking a sugar pill. But they said the same thing was happening with the legit ones they were getting through American doctors. These people had doctors all over the country writing them scripts for pretty much anything they desired. So access to legit pharma pills wasn't an issue for them.
I've used Mexican, Indian, and American produced Soma and all are the same from my perspective, and the perspectives of the countless people I've had try them as well.
They said they had all sorts of theories about what would kick them in. One of the big ones was eating pizza or something heavy in carbs after taking them. Another was of course combining them with alcohol. These people were partying and drinking every night for 350+ days a year because pharma/poly-drug abuse was rampant in their industry at the time. They couldn't just drink beer because they had to maintain a certain look and stay in shape. Didn't want to get beer belly and be bloated all of the time. So they were turning to pills so they could drink 5 beers a night instead of 20+liquor.
I've used a lot of Soma in my life. I'm actively prescribed it, total amount of tablets easily in the thousands at this point. I was terminally ill until 16 y/o, 27 y/o right now and just got out of surgery #19 about 10 weeks ago. I'm doing alright for now, but I bring those things up to explain why I'm currently prescribed: bupropion, cyclobenzaprine, carisoprodol, buspirone, aripiprazole, gabapentin and promethazine, to treat an exceptionally nuanced and complicated series of damages from medical malpractice from surgeons on 7 separate occasions out of those 19 surgeries (never get operations in Maine I'm begging you). Ok, preface done, my hunch as to why people think Somas are weak from here or from there is because of how rapidly and intensely tolerance forms. I would guess that tolerance can triple within 10 days of consistent use, as when I begin using Soma 2.5g is the point where I get the classic Soma shakes, however after dose escalating for 10 days I can eat 6-7 full grams in a day without any issue. There are tons of dumbasses on Instagram and Reddit who say "I take my Adderall every single day, exactly like my doctor tells me to, but it stopped working!" and now they're ranging from antisemitic conspiracists to legal nuisances filing class action lawsuits when, the reality of the situation is that they formed a tolerance yet did not alter the dose. It bothers me how much folks will listen to the American medical system's advice to take every medicine they're prescribed every day, when the reality of the situation is that tolerance formation plays a significant role in how you need to time things.
Once the rule of "kayfabe" (don't talk about the business with people outside the business) died
In a way, I feel like there was a sort of society-wide, tacit "kayfabe" going on that has faded very recently. I got out of high school in 2017 and college in 2021, when I was in high school no pro athletes talked about their PED use, by time I was in college though everybody including myself and professionals. Now it's gone to the point of where people will use rather suspicious peptide stacks and the sort without any real exercise, diet, or biometric monitoring and that's what scares me about things in this current moment.
 
Ok, preface done, my hunch as to why people think Somas are weak from here or from there is because of how rapidly and intensely tolerance forms. I would guess that tolerance can triple within 10 days of consistent use, as when I begin using Soma 2.5g is the point where I get the classic Soma shakes, however after dose escalating for 10 days I can eat 6-7 full grams in a day without any issue.
Glad you're heading in the right direction after that journey and surgeries!

Agree that tolerance can be a factor, but I've experienced the same variation when using it recreationally for a year every 3 days or so while still not getting any reduction in effects generally week to week.

personally my guess is that peak blood plasma level is a key element, improving how quickly you get as much carisoprodol into your liver as possible so it can be metabolised into Meprobamate helps, as does hydration levels.

For a while I tried breaking up strips of Soma and mixing them up to create a blend from many pills to see if it was a hot spot issue, but that didn't seem to make any difference for me. it's only since taking them subligually have I got more stability, now I can notice when tolerance builds as well, every 3-4 days seems like that maximum without tolerance changes for me.

Also 1 thing we never talk about generally, there is a big difference in gender and race here as well to take into account - I think this might contribute to why you get mixed views on Soma with some people saying it doesn't work for them. Everyone is different as well so the ranges here might be much wider than it seems.


"
Absorption
The pharmacokinetics of carisoprodol was determined in a small in vivo biostudy of 5
men and 5 women. When the dose was normalized to 350 mg, the mean peak plasma
concentration (Cmax) achieved was 2.29 ± 0.68 ug/mL. Women tended to reach peak
plasma concentrations earlier than men (1.45 vs. 2.5 hours) and had a faster apparent oral
clearance (0.772 vs. 0.38 L/hour/kg). The clinical significance of these findings is
unknown and they may in part be due to the small number of subjects present in the trial.
Metabolism
Carisoprodol is metabolized in the liver via cytochrome P450 enzyme, CYP2C19. This
enzyme exhibits genetic polymorphism. For example, 15-20% of Asian populations may
be expected to be poor metabolizers. For Caucasians and Blacks, the prevalence of poor
metabolizers is 3-5%. Following a single 350 mg dose of carisoprodol, the
corresponding normalized peak concentration of meprobamate, which is a metabolite of
carisoprodol, was 2.08 ± 0.48 ug/mL. These levels are approximately ¼ of those seen
following a single 400 mg dose of meprobamate."
 
great source and tip thanks, might have to go and look down this rabbit hole a bit, sounds interesting!
Once you get down the rabbit hole it's really interesting because most of them regularly traveled together as a large group on airplanes or in groups of 3-6 on the road. So you'll get the perspective of multiple people that witnessed the same incident. There is the famous "plane ride from hell" that got the WWF sued by multiple flight attendants and I think the airliner itself. There were actually multiple "plane rides from hell" over the years. But the famous one is a story about them flying the entire group that went on a tour of the UK/EU back to America. They went through three or four fully stocked liquor carts on the way home. Which they drank on top of all the pharma pills they were taking. Several people got dosed without knowing it because those guys would do that to each other as a joke all of the time.

It would take all day to go over all the crap that happened on that plane ride. But what ended up getting them sued was Ric Flair pulling his cock out and waving it around in front of a flight attendant in the rear of the airplane where she was more or less trapped and couldn't get away from him. Everyone said this wasn't unusual behavior from him while sober and he didn't mean anything by it. He was just so used to having women fall over themselves for him and liked to walk around in his robe with his cock hanging out. Apparently, his cock is massive and he loved showing other people how he could spin it around like a helicopter. The British women on the plane weren't amused by this and ended up suing the WWF which is how the story originally got out.

There are a lot of stories like that in what's called "shoot interviews" on youtube. I watched one the other day about a bunch of them taking a bunch of Soma, placidyl, alcohol and some other stuff. They figured the soma wasn't going to work and they didn't feel drunk so they went into a restaurant to eat which was full of cops. By the time their food was brought to them they started getting the soma shakes one after another because they'd just downed a 5th of liquor together before stepping inside in an attempt to kick them in. By the time they had to help the third person back to the van the police eating inside had enough and decided to arrest them. They ended up avoiding arrest by claiming the 3rd guy had epilepsy. Then they got stuck in the ER for several hours waiting for his pills the wear off and the doctors got angry they were taking the situation so casually. After that they went on to the hotel and the next town like nothing happened.

The guy they were interviewing said that was a pretty normal night and they kept that up for 4-5 years as a group until their group got split up when some of them went to work for another company. He said the drug abuse was even worse at the other company because they paid a higher salary and turned more of a blind eye to it.

The older workers said that before the roid scandal in the late 1980s things weren't as bad with the drug abuse because most of them just smoked pot and drank beer. Well that and they all loved their cocaine of course. But once the "Wellness policy" started getting enforced they couldn't smoke pot anymore and the cocaine use had to get toned down to. But they could take all the pharma drugs they wanted. So naturally everyone turned to that since you wouldn't get in trouble and could take all you wanted.

Their industry got hit hard by the liberal use of opioids by the mid-late 90s of course. Lots of guys that strung out on opioids since the doctors were willing to hand them all they wanted and most of them developed chronic pain issues due to the nature of their work.

There has been more than one incident with a main event worker showing up absolutely plastered for a major PPV show and the result being broadcast on national television. Here is a famous one:



That's one time where they didn't catch a guy in time before he went out in front of the crowd. Another time a bunch of them went out high on LSD in front of a live crowd.



There are several other instances of people going in front of a crowd absolutely out of it. I'd probably break your web browser if I tried to embed videos of them all. Those were just the ones people saw. Tons of guys showed up to messed up to work over the years but management caught them in time so they never made it in front of a live crowd.

Another sport where a lot of drug use was happening back in the day is MLB baseball. Less people openly talk about it but you can still find many hours of interviews with people that did stuff like pitch a perfect game while on LSD or the guys doing a ton of cocaine in the dug outs and locker rooms. They had the same issue with their "wellness policy". The moment the league tried to cut down on use of pot/cocaine/other stuff drugs with regular drug testing everyone got on pharma pills instead. They had the same access to doctors willing to prescribe anything they wanted. Which is what led to the steroid era of the game in the 1990s (arguably the best era of the sport).

NASCAR went through something similar in the mid-1980s and later in the late 1990s. Before the mid-80s they didn't drug test drivers at all. But then one of their more famous drivers got HIV/AIDS and it turned into a big scandal that they tried to slide off as being him abusing drugs. So they brought in drug testing. Which made drivers turn to pharma drugs. Then in the late 90s they got even more strict to the point where the drivers were terrified to take anything even OTC. One driver popped positive for adderall which the company claimed was meth. Then the company used their connections with the North Carolina police forces to ruin the guy's life when he counter-sued the company in an attempt to get his license back. Really really shady shit.

I don't follow the NFL/NHL/other sporting leagues as closely as the above but I imagine they all had the same types of thing going on with pharma drug abuse in the 80s-90s when all these sports starting introducing regular drug testing policies. We see a rampant increase in ab(use) of pharma drugs in wider society when drug testing for jobs got introduced nationwide in the 70s-80s. These people that were working for these leagues and companies that were generating millions/billions in profits were getting away with so much back then. They had better access to doctors, the drugs doctors could prescribe and they were celebrities so they could get away with murder. A lot of the guys that wrestled for major organizations in the 70s-90s say the same type of things in interviews about people just giving them 8-balls of coke for free when they'd go into local bars after shows. Everyone loved them and wanted to be friends with them. So access to even illegal drugs was easy for them no matter where they went in the country.

A lot of the guys that started working the the mid-late 80s said you were basically expected to partake in stuff like cocaine if you ever wanted to move up in the company. Since the top guys wouldn't trust you if you didn't party with them. The top guys could ruin your career if they wanted because they were close with management/ownership and were the main draw. So if you weren't liked by them you never got to work with them in the ring. Which meant you couldn't move up the cards and become a big draw yourself. So you had to snort the coke, take the pills and go to the bar to drink the liquor even if you didn't want to partake. Otherwise, you'd never get anywhere in the industry.
 
"I was prescribed Seconal in the early 2000s. At the time, I was in the process of becoming an opioid addict, and had already had many overdose near-misses, with more to follow. But as dangerous as the opioids were, I don't think I was ever as close to dying as I was during the several massive Seconal ODs. I'm still amazed I made it out of all that."

@Faithless0415  2026-06-21  h‍ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuMb5S1Xryk

Follow-up:

"I had migraines at the time, and the doc I was going to for some reason felt more comfortable prescribing a CII barbiturate than hydrocodone, which was CIII at the time. The idea was to make me sleep the migraine off. Don't ask me to explain the reasoning there. My problem was that after Seconal stopped immediately knocking me out, I'd tend to forget I took it and immediately take more. Frightening stuff."
 
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