Signs and Symptoms of Barbiturate Abuse

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Barbiturates are drugs used to help a person sleep. They have long been recognized to have serious dangers, the greatest being that the dosage to create a desirable effect—the ability to sleep when a person is suffering from insomnia—is not far from the lethal dose of the drug. In other words, it does not take much of an overdose to kill a person.

The other major danger is that they are addictive. In the United Kingdom, doctors have spoken out against the use of barbiturates, resulting in fewer prescriptions and fewer people abusing the drug. (The more a drug is prescribed, the more that drug is diverted to the illicit market.) Tens of thousands of people died of barbiturate-related deaths in the UK before the situation was brought under control.

In the United States, the use of barbiturates was to some degree replaced by benzodiazepines. But benzos are also addictive and can cause overdose deaths, especially when they are combined with opiates, alcohol or muscle relaxants. Barbiturate overdoses most frequently involve multiple drug use, especially barbiturates plus alcohol or opiates including heroin, hydrocodone or oxycodone. This is a potentially lethal combination, as all these drugs tend to suppress breathing.

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Signs and Symptoms of Barbiturate Abuse and Overdose

This drug is normally abused to give a person a relaxed, sleepy feeling. They will lose their inhibitions and may walk unevenly and slur their speech as though drunk. Their blood pressure will drop and they will breathe more slowly. They will experience a lowering of anxiety.

If a person takes TOO much of this drug, the signs are striking.

Signs and Symptoms of Barbiturate Abuse:

• Difficulty thinking
• Poor judgment
• Slow and shallow breathing
• Talking slow
• Lethargy
• Extreme sleepiness or even coma
• Poor coordination
• Inability to walk properly, staggering or stumbling

If a person uses too much of this drug for too long, they can simply cease to function at an expected or efficient level. They can be irritable and have little memory. They will lack awareness of their surroundings, their problems, and dangers.

Some young people who have been abusing stimulant drugs may seek barbiturates to help them come down from the high of the stimulant. Today’s young drug abusers will not have experienced the heavier periods of barbiturate use and abuse that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s and so may abuse these dangerous drugs without realizing the problems that can occur, including overdose deaths. In the 1960s, Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe abused barbiturates. An overdose of Nembutal killed Marilyn Monroe. Jimi Hendrix died of a barbiturate overdose in 1970.

Miscarriages and birth defects are also signs of barbiturate abuse.

Effects of Barbiturates Abuse

The primary desirable effect of barbiturates - from a doctor’s viewpoint - is that they tend to induce sleep. For a person who is sleepless and anxious, these drugs offer a solution. But as long as doctors have prescribed barbiturates like Nembutal, Seconal, Amytal and others, there have been people abusing these drugs and becoming addicted to them. And just as long, there have been people who have been overdosing on these drugs and losing their lives.

One of the reasons that people lose their lives on barbiturates is that the dose that will kill a person is not that much more than the dose that will help them sleep.

When someone is using this drug recreationally, they are looking for the “drunkenness,” the lowered inhibitions, the euphoria that accompanies use of the drug, or they may just be seeking the sedated feeling they get.

There are other effects that also can tip off a person who is trying to understand changes in a person who has secretly started abusing these drugs:

• Dulled, slow thinking
• Emotional instability, swinging from laughter to tears easily
• Irritation, antagonism
• Slurring, stumbling speech
• Lack of motor control that can cause a person to drop items
• Poor physical coordination
• Confusion

While a person in normal condition might be concerned with these changes, the sense of well-being and tranquility a person experiences because of the drug use may disable them from feeling this concern.

Unfortunately, if someone gets confused about how many pills they have taken, he (or she) may take more and unintentionally wind up with an overdose that kills him. Also, a person who is abusing barbiturates is also at greater risk of pneumonia or bronchitis as the drug affects the body’s normal ability to breathe.

Who Seeks the Effects of Abusing Barbiturates?

There are four different types of people seeking the effects of barbiturate abuse and they have different reasons for doing so.

• Youth may abuse barbiturates so they can experience the drunken feelings that result. They are not very likely to understand that this can be a deadly drug.
• An adult who abuses stimulants may look for a barbiturate to help them come down so they can rest or appear “normal” to others.
• A person who is addicted to heroin or prescription opiates may seek barbiturates to give their dose of heroin more kick, or if they can’t get their hands on opiates at the moment.

And a person who has been taking these drugs as prescribed may find that they have to increase their dosage to get the desired effects. They may get their doctor to increase their dosage as they build up a tolerance and so need more of the drug to get the same effect. Or if there is any problem with their doctor giving them the drug, they may seek other doctors to get the drugs they feel they now need. This puts them into a category of prescription fraud through “doctor-shopping,” going from doctor to doctor, getting multiple prescriptions.

Coming off Barbiturates

It’s not the easiest thing to come off this drug so a person can get sober. Many people will need the support of close physician supervision, medical detox, or if he (or she) has really come to rely on the drug to get through the day, a complete rehabilitation program.

A person trying to get clean will start to hit withdrawal within 24 hours of the last dose. The effects of withdrawal include anxiety, insomnia, tremors, even delirium and seizures among heavy users. Some people will need to taper off this drug.

When the drug has finally been discontinued, the best thing the addicted person can do is to get the help of a thorough rehabilitation program that enables him to once again get control of his life. This is the role of the Narconon drug and alcohol rehab program for thousands of people each year.

People come to Narconon for help with all kinds of drugs, from inhalants to alcohol to prescription drugs to club drugs and more. This is a thorough, eight to twelve-week program that never uses substitute drugs as part of treatment. It has been found that a person must learn to live a completely sober life for recovery to be lasting. Reliance on drugs like methadone, buprenorphine, suboxone or anti-drinking drugs do not really teach a person how to build a sober life. Nor do they allow him to learn what it feels like to be completely sober again.

The Narconon drug recovery program takes the idea of being drug-free a step further. Each person on this program will go through a deep detoxification phase called the Narconon New Life Detoxification. This is a process that involves time in a sauna, nutritional supplements, and moderate daily exercise. This combination enables the body to start flushing out old drug toxins. Instead of each person carrying a burden of old drug residues, they can be flushed out on this program. The effect of this detox is clearer, brighter thinking, a better outlook on life and a greater ability to learn sober living skills.

At the end of this program, each graduate is much better prepared to create a new drug-free life to replace the one that was destroyed by addiction.

Find out more about this program that can help you bring someone back after barbiturate addiction or addiction to any drug.

We're here. We're ready to help you.
Call us at +44 80 0808 5704 to get help now. or learn more about the Narconon Drug Rehabilitation Programme

Leaving Barbiturate Addiction Behind

Like many other drugs, barbiturates dissolve easily in fatty solutions. In the body, this means that these drugs are attracted to and will tend to bond to fat deposits. The character of fat in the body means that these deposits may store drug residues. A person who has abused barbiturates may carry the effects of these drugs around with them for years, which can cloud thinking, dim perceptions and contribute to the triggering of cravings for more drugs.

There is a way that these lasting symptoms of barbiturate abuse can be cleared away. On the Narconon drug and alcohol rehab program, one phase of that program addresses these drug residues.

This phase utilizes a low-heat sauna, moderate daily exercise and a strict regimen of nutritional supplements. This combination engages the body’s ability to start flushing out these stored residues. As the residues trickle out through the sweat or other channels of elimination, a person’s outlook brightens. Thinking gets clearer. Life gets brighter—all according to the reports of those completing this step. They also report lowered or eliminated cravings. As cravings are a huge stumbling block for a person seeking to stop abusing drugs and alcohol, elimination of cravings is a major milestone on the way to being drug-free and sober.

Next on the Narconon program are life skills courses where the student learns vital skills needed to maintain a drug-free life.

The program’s goal is a drug-free individual.