Secobarbital

Rare card · No. 53295

Secobarbital, sold under the brand name Seconal among others, is a short-acting barbiturate drug originally used for the treatment of insomnia. It was patented by Eli Lilly and Company in 1934 in the United States. It possesses anesthetic, anticonvulsant, anxiolytic, sedative, and hypnotic properties. In the United Kingdom, it was known as quinalbarbitone. Secobarbital is considered to be an obsolete sedative–hypnotic (sleeping pill) and has largely been replaced by the benzodiazepine family. It was widely abused, known on the street as "red devils" or "reds". Among barbiturates, secobarbital carries a particularly high risk of abuse and addiction, largely responsible for its deprecation and disuse by the 1970s.

Read on Wikipedia · Image Public domain