Pharmer.org

 Kirby's absolutely right.  Remember, antipsychotics & ACE inhibitors can be dangerous.  As for diphenhydramine, if you don't know, is just the generic antihistamine term that is used in common brands such as Benadryl.  Although, 25mg will probably make you sleepy.

Dr. Walker M.D., Ph.D.

i guess it's safe to assume that the other Parke-Davis pill (with the blue stripe) that hasn't been identified is just another cold remedy type of thing?

One of my academic interests is the drugs prescribed pre-1960 (Librium) for anxiety and panic syndrome. My father was a great believer in meprobamate, which 400mg pills he continued to use in some patients right up until the 1980s. He used carisoprodol for those whose anxiety was related to some kind of pain as well. Apparently it metabolises into about 200mg meprobamate in the liver and has a similar effect when taken in 700mg dosage. Nowadays you are more likely to be prescribed phenotoin or something similar, but the option of carisoprodol (Carisoma) is there, though meprobamate is deleted. He also used methaqualone (Mandrax) even through the controversy of abuse potential in the 1960s and 70s. An old=fashioned doctor, he took early retirement on the grounds that his prescribing practices were being called into question by the decimation of the Formulary in the 80s and the money used instead for 'administrators' or the 'grey suits' as he called them. Many of his most-prescribed medicines and dosages were deleted at that time.

He was also a great believer in Xanax; I have a keyring given to him by an Upjohn rep in the 1980s which I use all the time. He saw diazepam as a greater evil because in our area it was openly abused and he suffered many 'Valium-seekers', even though he did prescribe it sparingly, but preferred alprazolam, bromazepam and lorazepam, usually 2,5mg Wyeth Ativan, which he would endorse 'do not substitute' when writing 'lorazepam' prescriptions. He would ALWAYS write 'ATIVAN 2,5mg' instead of the generic name.

But he was most definitely a meprobamate and methaqualone fan. For hypnotics, he would use barbiturates in preference to nitrazepam, flunitrazepam (which he thought useful for those on anxiolytics, its long life negating the requirement for a morning anxiolytic) or temazepam. His particular favourites which were always in his bag, were sodium amytal, Tuinal, and Nembutal, with 100mg phenobarbital for those he considered needed less sleeping medicine, being by far the weakest of all the barbiturates and the safest. I am not even sure what 'Tuinal' was; I think it was a combination barbiturate containing seco- and some other barb. Rarely he would have Seconal. Latterly he took to prescribing zopiclone to certain patients who were not barbiturate-tolerant. We never discussed why he favoured that particular new drug.

These things I know from many talks, careful study of the contents of his bag, (and some early, age 11 or 12, experimentation with things like dipipanone and sodium amytal) which would also have diamorphine powder for reconstitution and two or three types of morphine, IV Cyclimorph and i/r capsules and MST Continus tablets of 30, 60 and 100mg strengths. He carried very few benzodiazepines even through their most popular period, and then only diazepam, alprazolam and oxazepam (Serenid-D) or lorazepam. Bromazepam was carried for its extremely fast action on panic patients.

Question: WHY is the UK the only country where you must prescribe clonazepam 'off-label' for anxiety and panic? It, along with Frisium, must be pescribed for seizures and status epilepticus only unless a doctor sees fit to prescribe as everywhere else. Rivotril is one of the most effective 2mg anxiolytics made yet is still not indicated here for that, even though a 6mg/ day dosage is just as effective as such, with MUCH less sedation than alprazolam or a high-dose diazepam script.

I hope these memories have been interesting for the reader.

Gauchoamigo   

"NEVER ingest anything unless you are 100% sure what it is."

New york I could not agree with you more about the seroquel.  I was prescribed it when I told the doctor that I coldnt sleep and they made me feel like I was going insane.  Honestly I was supposed to take 300mg and the first night I took 200 mg and I could not move and I felt like I was going crazy. It is really scary stuff I mean it made me sweat and nauseaus.  Ambien is so much better in my opinion.

Frk that is exactly how I felt.  You described the feeling very well.  I remember flailing my arms also and like rolling around in my bed as if I were in a straight jacket.  Ambien has a much different effect on me.  It gives me a feeling of self awareness or improved conscionsness sp for about 20 minutes until it makes me tired?  That is a hard word to spell.  Seroquel feels more like an anti psycotic in my opinion.  Im going to go off subject here and ask a question.  Does percocet keep anyone else out there awake at night.  I have been taking 10mg at around 10pm and cannot get to sleep until like 3 am.  Luckily my classes dont start until 4pm but I dont like staying up that late.  Does oxycodone have that effect on anyone else and is it a side effect of the drug.

I am on an oxycodone m/r (OxyContin) script and must say I have never suffered any problems like you describe. However you mention Percocet, which is a combination med, having I believe 10mg oxycodone and 325mg paracetamol. Perhaps it is this combination drug which causes the sleep problem. Certainly oxycodone on its own doesn't have this effect on me; quite the opposite in fact. I find that if I take my tablet #2 within two hours or so of bedtime, I become slightly sleepy even before I think about my hypnotics. Only pure oxycodone, no combinations, is available for prescription in my location.

And while I'm on about sleep, Ambien (known everywhere else in the world as 'Stilnoct', zolpidem, appears to be used in the USA in an extremely odd manner. I mean, the stuff loses its hypnotic effects after only four or five nights' use in a row, yet I hear of people who have ben using it regularly, even nightly, for literally years! It also has some of the worst side effects of any hypnotic available. (I have listed these in another thread; the manufacturers, Rhone-Poulenc-Rorer, do NOT advertise them for obvious reasons and you have to really look hard at the rather long patient information leaflet which comes in the box to notice that they do in fact acknowledge them!) I use it once in a blue moon; my hypnotic regime is currently a rotation of flunitrazepam 2mg, nitrazepam 10mg, midazolam 15mg, and lormetazepam 2mg, with the non-benzo zopiclone 7.5mg (Zimovane, a much better and more effective drug than zolpidem) which makes tolerance a lot less of an issue. You may think that these are cross-tolerant medicines, but in fact they do not have that effect on me and my chronic insomnia is controlled well by this rotational type of regime. I suspect that, past a week or so of use, zolpidem's effects are purely psychosomatic. Another good hypnotic to put into the list is clomethiazole 192mg caps (Heminevrin), more usually used for the control of alcohol withdrawal, but is an extremely effective sleeping aid at a dosage of two capsules at night. I would add triazolam 250mcg (Halcion), brotizolam 250mcg (Lendormin) and temazepam 30mg (Normison - certainly not the awful Restoril brand or, even worse, the white tablets by UK Generics!) if my doctor would prescribe them or if I had an alternative source. Triazolam in particular is extremely useful for my main problem of actually getting to sleep, but has a half-life of only two hours so thank the Lord it's such a fast-acting and VERY reliable sleeping tablet. I just can't find either that or any decent temazepam, even from online pharmacies.

"NEVER ingest anything unless you are 100% sure what it is."

(edited)