Types of Substances and Their Treatments

Information on Barbiturates Addiction

Barbiturates are a class of drugs that decrease the action of central nervous system and thus induce sleep and reduce anxiety

Effective Barbiturates Addiction Recovery Programs

Barbiturates are derived from barbituric acid. These are a class of drugs that decrease the action of central nervous system and thus induce sleep and reduce anxiety. Barbiturates were first introduced in medicine at the beginning of 19th century and became popular during 1970 for the treatment of insomnia, anxiety and seizure disorders.

Therapeutic uses

Phenobarbital is used as an anxyolitics, hypnotics and as an anticonvulsant for patients with seizure disorders. This drug is also prescribed to treat insomnia during bedtime and tension and anxiety during daytime due to its sedative effect. Barbiturates are still used as surgical anesthesia.

Ultra short barbiturates like thiopental is used to prepare patients for surgery as it produce unconsciousness only with in some minutes of intravenous injection.

Tolerance and overdose

Frequent use may cause tolerance to the effect of barbiturate, which results a need for increasing the dose of the drug to get the required therapeutic effect. Barbiturate use can result both physical and psychological effect and thus causing addiction to the drug.

Even a slight overdose of the drug can results the symptoms like drowsiness, impaired coordination, slowness of speech, difficulty in thinking, decreased heart rate and respiration rate, coma and even death.

The higher dose of the drug can be remover from stomach by introducing charcoal. Hence it is important to use the drug with proper prescription.

Barbiturate abuse

Although currently barbiturate abuse in not popular due to discover other drugs with same effect, it is popularly used by teenagers. Stimulant drugs like cocaine users to counteract the excessive effect of stimulants also use barbiturates. These are also commonly used to commit suicide.

Symptoms after abuse

A small dose of barbiturate causes the user to feel drowsy, and intoxicated. In higher dose the person behaves like a drunkard and develops uncontrolled speech and is confused. On further higher dose the person the person may develop coma and even death. Symptoms of abstinence from the drug include difficulty in sleeping, agitation and tremors, which forces the person to reuse the drug.

Treatment

Consultation by a doctor and medical checkup is a must for persons abusing barbiturate and taking overdose of the drug as a smaller amount of higher dose can cause serious complications. The treatment also depends on the symptoms of the person who abuse the drug and can be treated by watching the person closely.