Alexis Fernandez-Preiksa

But in like broad terms, it's got similar effects to alcohol, barbiturates and benzodiazepines as well.

So to break it down, GABA is the brain's major inhibitory neurotransmitter.

It basically is telling the neurons to stop firing or fire less or to calm down.

Methylqualone is amplifying that signaling, this inhibitory signaling of GABA.

And then that creates sedation, muscle relaxation.

It lowers anxiety.

It reduces inhibition.

And then it also increases sleepiness.

So you want to look at it as it's kind of turning down the excitability in your neurons.

We've got relaxation, euphoria, slowed reaction time, also impaired memory, but also reduced anxiety.

And at much higher doses, you've got respiratory depression as well, which is not a good thing.

Now, if you guys ever watched The Wolf of Wall Street, you see when he takes all the quaaludes and gets really fucked up.

And what's not funny or it's not anything, but at the time where quaaludes were such a big recreational drug and when this movie is set and when he was taking all those quaaludes, it had already been pulled off the market.

So it already was just kind of a recreational illegal substance to be taking and it wasn't something that you were just –

casually be taking for medical purposes even at the time.

But initially doctors loved Quaaludes so much or methoqualone because they were really, really desperate to find an alternative to barbiturates because barbiturates had this really small therapeutic window and they were used to treat insomnia, anxiety, seizures to also induce anesthesia by acting as sedatives and hypnotics.

But also they were dangerous due to like a really high risk of addiction, fatal overdoses and also really, really bad withdrawals.

Now, when we talk about a small therapeutic window, it means that the dose that's required for sedation is really dangerously close to the same that that dose that could stop you from breathing so that the window where it works for its intended purpose is small, therefore making it dangerous.

Methaquiline was introduced as like a supposedly safer pharmaceutical option.

And because of that, it exploded in popularity.