Opinions - Barbiturates vs. Benzodiazepines

[Yukio Mishima]

SWIM recently acquired a large quantity of phenobarbs at no cost to himself and was wondering how they compare to benzos. SWIM has no experience with barbs, but does with benzos, though he does not find them particularly enjoyable.

[drugsrbad]

Swim has tried benzos numerous times and barbs only once(butalbital). butalbital isn't supposed to be as good of a reacrational barb becuase it is a medium length barb and not a short acting one like pheno( may be wrong on this). Barbs don't have the euphoria that benzo's have. They feel more like opiates- complete apathy(probably even more so with pheno). swim likes opiates so that is why he also likes barb over benzo's plus barbs are so rare in the US nowadays it was kind of a treat for swim. Swiy should try them out then tell us how they are.

[DrMuffy]

SWIdr has tried various benzos ALOT, and only phenobarbital a couple of times, so he might be a little biased in his judgement. Barbs seem to make SWIdr sleepy and pretty out of it in a not so fun way. Certain benzos taken in the right doses can alleviate anxiety, tension, tense muscles, and alot of other stuff. So SWIdr ould have to go wit benzos on this, but he does plan on experimenting with barbies more in the near future!

[Psych0naut]

Phenobarbital is a long acting barbiturate, according to wikipedia, phenobarbital has a half life of 53 to 118 hours.
That's between 2 to 5 days, and that's where most barbiturates carry some extra risk, if you take one, and take another the next day, there's still much left in your system, so the plasma level will rise even higher and can cause stronger effects than expected.
Most of the barbiturates have a relatively long half life, while most benzodiazepines are exctreted a lot faster.
Barbiturates seem to have a sedating effect which seems to be comparable to that of alcohol, according to most users.
The sedating effect of benzodiazepines is much different, and really a class of it's own, mainly because it binds to another receptor.
Barbiturates bind to the GABA-alfa receptor, like alcohol, and benzodiazepines bind to the GABA-benzodiazepines receptor.

[Nagognog2]

Phenobarbital lasts about 12 hours, and is classed as a long-acting barbituate. The more common recreational barbituates, and hence schedule II, include seconal (Reds) and nembubarbital, nembutal (Yellows, Yellow Jackets) - which last about 2 hours and are classed as short-acting. Then there are medium-acting, such as amobarbital (Blues - component of Tuinal with seconal). These last @5 hours.

These are highly addictive - with withdrawl possibly fatal without medical care. Mixed with alcohol or other CNS depressants, overdose deaths are common. Be EXTREMELY careful should SWIM play with these. They can easily kill a SWIM.

[drugsrbad]

oops i was wrong about the pheno being short acting i guess i read wrong. SWIM took pheno last week it basically made him fall asleep for 6 hours. Not very fun in swim's opinion.

[Nicaine]

Barbs are a bit outdated, & from SWIM's limited experience (+ hearsay) aren't too different from alcohol, minus some nausea. SWIM enjoys smaller quantities of sleep meds like Ambien or Zopiclone these days rather than barbs as a mild euphoric/recreational buzz.

[soma]

One of my kitten's favorite snacks used to be butalbital with codeine. He likens two of these tablets (50mg/30mg + some caffiene and acetominophen) to 20mg diazepam and an equal amount of codiene. He found butalbital to be very similar to diazepam (a sedate, monged out type of buzz), but very dissimilar to, say, alprazolam or lorazepam (shorter acting, more euphoric benzos).

[Henfer]

SWIH also tried barbs once in his life, can't really remember which one (pheno or pento or something like that), but he wouldn't agree that it's more like opiates, as opiates definately provide euphoria.
barbs felt like a switch off to SWIH. benzo's sedate and help to sleep but do not force you to sleep, the barb thing forced SWIH to sleep. but he was very relaxed, though, on the other side, the sleep did absolutely NOT feel refreshing.

[Orchid_Suspiria]

Swim has done barbiturates in the form of fiorcet(butalbital and acetaminophen)really nothing special and NOTHING like opiates.Swim might have enjoyed it had he taken more but was not going to risk that due to the acetaminophen.

Reputation Comments on this post:

=)

[dirtyp]

anyone expierienced some barbiturates, are the any good compared to benzo's ?

[Jatelka]

Threads merged

[allyourbase]

barbiturates are much more like being in a hole under a blanket. theyre good sleeping pills, but wretched recreationally. seconal, nembutal, fiorcet, their effects compare more with a good six pack of ale than say a bar of xanax.

Reputation Comments on this post:

good description

[bol]

[quote=Henfer;284704]SWIH also tried barbs once in his life, can't really remember which one (pheno or pento or something like that), but he wouldn't.. [quote]

Do you mean "Pentobromital" ?

[Panthers007]

Stay away from barbituates, folks. Used recreationaly, they become quickly addictive. Problem: The lethal dose remains the same - but the addiction requires one to up the dose past the lethal dose. Guess what? You're dead!

[soma]

SWIM fails to see how this prevents barbituates from being recreational. Easy- don't up your dose, and don't get addicted. Experienced and mature psychonauts should be able to imbibe in whichever substance they so please. Just because its very addictive and fatal in overdose, doesn't mean that its not abusable. Way over generalization, IMO. The same can be said for any drug: cocaine, heroin, benzodiazepines, methamphetamine, etc....

[Laudaphun]

SWIM has lots of experience with benzos however very limited experience with barbiturates. SWIM has tried what he knew for sure was butalbital and 2 pills (don't remember exact dose of pills... but thinking they had maybe 50mg each if that sounds right) SWIM remembers feeling a mild relaxation, similar to a very mild intoxication that felt something like in between alcohol and benzos. It was a long time ago and SWIM is drawing on memeory for that description. There was caffeine in the preparation, along with acetaminophen(paracetemol)... Edit: SWIM just remembered it was Esgic brand or something similar.

A good while later SWIM had some house guests, who were touring around to go to shows. One of SWIM's guests had a bottle of pills which he claimed to be phenobarbital, he claimed he got them from his friend whose father was a veterinarian. He gave SWIM one pill, which SWIM took that night... but SWIM was under the influence of other things (don't remember) so SWIM cannot accurately recount the effects. SWIM's roomates had also obtained a pill each from the kid but did not like downers so some time later (weeks? months?) SWIM obtained a 2nd supposed phenobarbital. SWIM took it while completely sober and while SWIM was less experienced with benzos at the time, the effects were to SWIM indistinguishable from that of maybe 1mg of clonazepam. SWIM still doesn't know if it was really phenobarbital as he didn't have access to a computer to verify what it really was.

[Handle]

Hey look SWIM's not just making this up...he had a friend working in a chemist and since barbs are so outmoded his friend had phenobarbitONE [I don't remember the difference between 'tone' and 'tal' at the end -they the same thing or what?] only for epilepsy, not for sleep or whatever. Anyway, they were alright, very similar to alky-hol, more so than valium. Very clouding and dumbing. But the dose increase became very very steep, and SWIM became an embarrassment. He was so fucked he would take barbs, benzo's, alky-hol, zolpidem and and antihistamine sleeper all on top of the opiate he's always on. That was probably the worst time in his life. Just so unhappy and a real mess. Seriously, it got to the point where twenty of those tiny little featureless pills was just barely enough. The tolerance is unspeakable. Lucky swim didn't live in the same area as his chemist friend, so the supply was only intermittent, otherwise he would have turned up dead. Too much money drugs spare time and depression is an ugly mix. The phenobarbitone also seriously caused swim to wake in fright erratically at night for over six months after he quit! He would be fast asleep then bang it was like seriously like being hit in the head with a sledge hammer, an awful thing. SWim just found out he had given himself seizures induced by withdrawal. If you take an anti epileptic for no good reason for a year in stupid disgusting doses, well, when you stop, what do you know you bring about a semi epileptic condition that will continue and you will be doomed to suffer until the brain restores its old equilibrium without the constant dumb down. True story.

[soma]

SWIM has chronic pain (migraines, cluster headaches, and chronic daily headache) and finds great relief from consistant Butalbital ingestion. He takes around 6 tablets daily, and yes, he is mindful of his acetominophen intake. He actually has regular liver enzyme tests for this very reason. Anyway, he takes Butalbital for a month, and then switches to Tramadol and Hydrocodone for breakthrough pain for a month. This way, SWIM has found that he has not developed an addiction to any of the substances listed, including the 'heinously addictive' barbituate, butalbital. He suspects short-acting barbs such as pentobarbital would be much much more addictive, but finds no issues from this medium-acting barbituate. Not even the slightest ill effects upon cessation.

[JaWill88]

swim in under the influenence of a few hundered milligrams of phenobarbital right now. swim used to be prescribed 18mg of clonazepam a day and now has switched over. he must say he likes this much more. it is much more intoxicating/relaxing/inpairing than benzodiazepines.

[Panthers007]

If SWIM is awake and writing on "...a few hundered milligrams" of phenobarbital - SWIM has a very serious tolerance and will require hospitalization for withdrawl. 100mg of phenobarbital is quite enough to knock someone cold for upwards of 12 hours.

One of the terrors of barbituates is that while they produce tolerance, requiring a higher and higher dose to stave off withdrawl symptoms - the LD50 does not rise at the same level. Read: Eventually one has to take a lethal dose to keep withdrawl symptoms at bay.

This is why you never meet any long-term barbituate addicts. If you are serious about SWIM - get him/her to a hospital stat.

[Orchid_Suspiria]

I've has only heard of phenobarbitol being prescribed in veterinary medicine.Why would they prescribe barbiturates over benzodiazepines in modern times?

[Panthers007]

Tiny amounts (8 - 16mg) are prescribed in a medicine called Donnatol for severe gastroenteritis. Which also contains atropine. Other then that it is used to detox people who are so severely alcoholic that benzodiazepines don't make a dent in their withdrawl. Other than this, I haven't heard of it being prescribed for years in human medicine.

[crackcityrocker]

swim tried butalbital on a couple of different occasions, judging from these experiences (limited as they were) he definitely prefers benzos. to him it felt alot more like a low recreational dose of diphenhydramine than alcohol or benzos, just oddly sedated and out of it.

[Jatelka]

Originally Posted by Orchid_Suspiria

Why would they prescribe barbiturates over benzodiazepines in modern times?

Very occasionally they get prescribed in refractory epilepsy, or you will come across people who've been on them since the fifties and can't get off them