Pronunciation: lor-A-ze-pam
Chemical Abstracts Service Registry Number: 846-49-1
Formal Names: Ativan, Temesta
Type: Depressant (benzodiazepine class).
Federal Schedule Listing: Schedule IV (DEA no. 2885)
USA Availability: Prescription
Pregnancy Category: D

Lorazepam [Ativan, Temesta] Uses. This antianxiety drug is also known for its sedative properties and is used to promote sleep and to fight convulsions. The substance is given to treat status epilepticus, a dangerous condition in which people have one epileptic seizure after another, back-to-back. It can reduce and sometimes even eliminate vomiting from cancer chemotherapy.  Lorazepam has been used to treat LSD and methamphetamine overdose and has been a standard medicine to help alcoholics through the alcohol withdrawal syndrome. Recreational sedative users report euphoria from lorazepam. When given experimentally in combination with other drugs, it has helped reduce depression. In contrast, experimentation using motion picture excerpts to evoke particular emotions found that lorazepam may reduce happy feelings and increase unhappy ones. One study found that lorazepam worked as well as alprazolam for treating panic attacks, and a case report tells of success in treating mania. Lorazepam has been used to cure both catatonia (in which people are frozen in place) and akathisia (compulsive moving around). Patients being prepared for surgery receive the drug to calm them and to cloud their memory of the event. Read the rest of this entry »

Pronunciation: KOH-deen
Chemical Abstracts Service Registry Number: 76-57-3. (Phosphate hemihydrate form 41444-62-6)
Formal Names: BRON, Methylmorphine, Tylenol №3
Informal Names: AC/DC, Barr, C, Captain Cody, Co-Dine, Cody, Coties, Cough Syrup, Down, Homebake, Karo, Lean, Lean & Dean, Nods, Schoolboy, Syrup, T-3s. With glutethimide: Doors & 4, 4 Doors, Hits, Loads, Packets, Pancakes & Syrup, Sets, 3s & 8s
Type: Depressant (opiate class).
Federal Schedule Listing: Schedule II, III, V controlled substance, depending on product formulation (DEA no. 9050)
USA Availability: Prescription and nonprescription
Pregnancy Category: C

Codeine Phosphate [Tylenol №3] Uses. Codeine was discovered in 1832 by French chemist Pierre-Jean Robiquet. Typically it is derived from the more potent drug morphine, which, depending on dosage route (oral, injection), is considered about 3 to 12 times stronger than codeine. After codeine is administered, body chemistry transforms it back into morphine; thus employer drug screens on someone who used a codeine cough remedy can be positive for morphine. Basically codeine is a prodrug, a substance having little medicinal effect itself but that the body transforms into a useful drug—in this case, morphine. Although scientists have long believed that codeine’s therapeutic effects come from morphine, as the twenty-first century began, one group of researchers reported that persons whose bodies cannot properly convert codeine into morphine can nonetheless experience medical benefit from codeine itself. Read the rest of this entry »

Pronunciation: kloh-NA-zuh-pam
Chemical Abstracts Service Registry Number: 1622-61-3
Formal Names: Iktorivil, Klonopin, Lansden, Rivotril
Type: Depressant (benzodiazepine class). See page 21
Federal Schedule Listing: Schedule IV (DEA no. 2737)
USA Availability: Prescription
Pregnancy Category: D

Clonazepam [Klonopin/Rivotril] Uses. Clonazepam is considered one of the more powerful benzodiazepine class drugs. Primary medical uses are against some kinds of convulsions, particularly in certain kinds of epilepsy, and against panic attacks. For persons suffering from panic attacks, measurements indicate the drug improves both quality of life and work productivity. The drug is also used as an antidepressant and to treat anxiety, catatonia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, the manic phase of manic-depressive behavior, and social phobia in general. A two-year follow-up study of persons receiving brief clonazepam treatment for social phobia found their improvement to be sustained after dosage stopped, and at the two-year mark they were doing better than a control group that had received a placebo. Clonazepam is sometimes preferred over alprazolam in treating anxiety because that condition seems less likely to reappear between doses of clonazepam than between doses of alprazolam. Read the rest of this entry »