So . . . anybody got some?
I kid.
Real GQ: Do people still take them? I remember hearing a lot about them years ago. But I have not heard them mentioned at all in recent years.
Still popular in the druggie culture? If not, why, and what has supplanted them?
And . . . what was their basic selling point?
As a kid I found them to be most effective when combined with alcohol. If memory serves correct, they are no longer made. Shame, that.
I can’t find any reference to them being no longer made. They are still apparently a problem in South Africa.
In my younger days, we called them Quinlans. Never cared for them myself - too much like swimming in molasses.
Methaqualone (Quaalude) was made a Schedule I drug in the U.S. in 1984 and is no longer prescribed. I don’t think there’s any trade for them from neighboring countries - I’ve never seen a defendant busted for Methaqualone.
I remember all the anti drug stuff we had handed out to us in school mentioned “Ludes” and I always wondered what they were, because I had never heard of them before. As usual the anti drug folks hadn’t updated their information in two decades or so and therefore there were references to all sorts of street drugs that didn’t exist anymore like “reds” and “black beauties”.
Without doubt the single best drug EVER. Especially combined with cocaine, which would take away the one thing that sucked: the desire to go to sleep.
They haven’t been made for almost thirty years. Fakes, yes. The real deal? Nope.
The selling point is this: if you like the high from alcohol but dislike everything else about it (the smell, taste, nausea, the “warm” sensation throughout the body, I hate all of that, but love the buzz), Quaaludes would be for you.
Loved 'em. They are the only drug I genuinely miss and would indulge in today if they were available.
There was a period in my life when I couldn’t get to sleep. My mom had a real drug doctor who was okay with prescribing them to an older teen, so I got everything, and nothing worked. Well…some of the stuff would put me to sleep, all right, but one of the problems I had with not being able to go to sleep was, when I did get to sleep, I tended to sleep through any number of alarms. So most of the pills I took made me wake up groggy–and late. I do remember my first encounter with a sleeping pill. I took it, brushed my teeth, and just barely made it to bed before I zoned out. (This was one from my mother’s prescription, before she sent me to her very obliging drug dr.)
Quaaludes, which I got toward the end of all this (before I just gave up and started staying up until I felt sleepy), were different. They knocked me right out, but I woke up alert (well, for me).
Unfortunately, they worked even better as barter. My roommate would clean her half of the place and mine too for a 'lude. My friends would do all sorts of errands for me. It was amazing to me that what they did was take the pill and stay up. How could anyone stay up? What was fun about that? I tried it once, and my conclusion was that I might as well get drunk, I had more fun.
One of my friends got seriously addicted to the things. He’d take one in the morning (!), another one at noon, and a couple more when he got off work. He would do anything for them. We were old friends who were drifting apart when I got my prescription, and suddenly the friendship got recharged, in fact, did I want to get married? He thought it was a total waste that what I wanted to do was take the pill, go to sleep, and wake up refreshed like a normal person.
I believe that the current recreational equivalent to quaaludes are the family of anti-anxiety pills that include xanax and percocets.
Keith Moon ate them all.
When he died the market disappeared overnight.
Seconded.
Ummmm…Percocet isn’t an anti-anxiety med; it’s a pain pill.
In the UK they were marketed as Mandrax and were absolutely essential for a good Saturday night out in the late 60s/early 70s. As I recall, they were relatively safe too in relation to fatal overdoses. , at least in comparison to the barbiturate drugs.
So what replaced them in the legal and illegal worlds of drug.
I recall reading Karen and Richard Carpenter used them, as well as David Cassidy
I didn’t get a high from the one lude that I tried many years ago. I just went to sleep. One of the problems with ludes was that you had to increase the dosage to continue to get the same effect.
That is not the case with xanax. I’ve had a prescription for four xanax every night at bedtime for nineteen years now. I take three. I use the fourth one only if it is needed later. That amount is still sufficient.
If I were to stop taking xanax, I would have to withdraw a half tablet at a time. Even that is not pleasant.
But I don’t get any sensation of being “high” from xanax.