Older adults and pregnant women should consider the risks associated with barbiturate use. When a person ages, the body becomes less able to rid itself of barbiturates. As a result, people over the age of sixty-five are at higher risk of experiencing the harmful effects of barbiturates, including drug dependence and accidental overdose. When barbiturates are taken during pregnancy, the drug passes through the mother's bloodstream to her fetus. After the baby is born, it may experience withdrawal symptoms and have trouble breathing. In addition, nursing mothers who take barbiturates may transmit the drug to their babies through breast milk.
Tolerance and dependence
With regular use tolerance to the effects of barbiturates develops. This in turn may lead to a need for increasing doses of the drug to get the original desired pharmacological or therapeutic effect. Barbiturate use can lead to both psychological and physical dependence and the drugs have a high abuse liability. Psychological addiction to barbiturates can develop quickly. The GABAA receptor, one of barbiturates' main sites of action, is thought to play a pivotal role in the development of tolerance to and dependence on barbiturates, as well as the euphoric "high" that results from their abuse. The management of a physical dependence on barbiturates is stabilisation on the long-acting barbiturate phenobarbitol followed by a gradual titration down of dose. The slowly eliminated phenobarbitol lessens the severity of the withdrawal syndrome and reduces the chances of serious barbiturate withdrawal effects such as seizures. Antipsychotics are not recommended for barbiturate withdrawal (or other CNS depressant withdrawal states) especially clozapine, olanzapine or low potency phenothiazines eg chlorpromazine as they lower the seizure threshold and can worsen withdrawal effects; if used extreme caution is required.
Overdose
An overdose results when a person takes a larger-than-prescribed dose of a drug. Symptoms of an overdose typically include sluggishness, incoordination, difficulty in thinking, slowness of speech, faulty judgment, drowsiness or coma, shallow breathing, staggering, and in severe cases coma and death. The lethal dosage of barbiturates varies greatly with tolerance and from one individual to another. Even in inpatient settings, however, the development of tolerance is still a problem, as dangerous and unpleasant withdrawal symptoms can result when the drug is stopped after dependence has developed.
Further Reading
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