Sedative-Hypnotic Medications

Barbiturates drugs for sale are capable of producing all levels of CNS mood alteration from excitation to mild sedation, to hypnosis, and deep coma. Over dosage can produce death. In high enough therapeutic doses, barbiturates induce anesthesia. Barbiturates depress the sensory cortex, decrease motor activity, alter cerebellar function, and produce drowsiness, sedation, and hypnosis.

Barbiturate-induced sleep differs from physiological sleep. Sleep laboratory researches have confirmed that barbiturates reduce the amount of time spent in the rapid eye movement (REM) phase of sleep or dreaming stage, stages III and IV sleep are also decreased. Following a sudden end of barbiturates used frequently, patients may experience notably increased dreaming, nightmares, and insomnia. Hence, withdrawal of a single therapeutic dose over 5 or 6 days has been recommended to lessen the REM rebound and disturbed sleep which contributes to drug withdrawal syndrome (for example, decrease the dose from 3 to 2 doses a day for 1 week). Barbiturates people also search for are usually pentobarbital sodium over the counter.

In studies, secobarbital sodium and pentobarbital sodium have been found to lose most of their effectiveness in inducing and maintaining sleep within 2 weeks of continued drug administration at fixed doses. The short-, intermediate-, and, to a lesser degree, long-acting barbiturates have been widely prescribed for treating insomnia. Although the clinical literature abounds with claims that the short-acting barbiturates are superior for inducing sleep while the intermediate-acting compounds are more effective in maintaining sleep, controlled studies have failed to demonstrate these differential effects. Therefore, as sleep medications, the barbiturates are of limited value beyond short-term use.

Barbiturates have little analgesic action at subanesthetic doses. Rather, in subanesthetic doses, these drugs may increase the reaction to painful stimuli. All barbiturates manifest anticonvulsant activity in anesthetic doses. Still, of the drugs in this class, only phenobarbital, mephobarbital, and metharbital have been clinically proven to be effective as oral anticonvulsants in sub hypnotic doses.

Barbiturates are respiratory depressants. The degree of respiratory depression is dependent upon dose. With hypnotic doses, respiratory depression produced by barbiturates is similar to that which occurs during physiologic sleep with a slight drop in blood pressure and heart rate.

Laboratory studios on animals revealed that barbiturates cause a reduction in the tone and contractility of the uterus, ureters, and urinary bladder. Still, concentrations of the drugs required to produce this effect in humans are not reached with sedative-hypnotic doses.

Barbiturates do not impair normal hepatic function but have been shown to induce liver microsomal enzymes, thus increasing and/or altering the metabolism of barbiturates and other drugs.