Mandrax (Methaqualone) / Buttons, Double Guns, Germans, Cream
Methaqualone is a sedative drug which is similar in effect to barbiturates, a general CNS depressant. It was used in the 1960s and 1970s as an anxiolytic, sedative, muscle relaxant, and for the treatment of insomnia. It was particularly used in the 1970s in Northern America as an illicit recreational drug, commonly known as Quaaludes. In the 2000s it is widely used as a recreational drug in South Africa.
Effects
Usual effects include euphoria, relaxation and drowsiness, as well as reducing heart rate and respiration. Larger doses can bring about depression, muscular miscoordination and slurred speech.
An overdose can cause delirium, convulsions, hypertonia, hyperreflexia, vomiting, renal insufficiency, coma, and death through cardiac or respiratory arrest. It resembles barbiturate poisoning but with increased motor difficulties and a lower incidence of cardiac or respiratory depression. Toxicity is treated with diazepam or by other an anticonvulsant.
Illegal use as a recreational drug
Methaqualone became increasingly popular as a recreational drug during the 1960s, and during the 1970’s disco club scenes. The drug was more tightly regulated in Britain, though, under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, and in the U.S.A. from 1973. With its obvious addictive nature, it was withdrawn from many developed markets in the 1980s, and made a Schedule 1 drug in the U.S.A. in 1984.
Smoking methaqualone - either alone or as an adulterant added to various legal and illegal smoking mixtures – gained popularity in the United States during the mid-1970s. When smoked, methaqualone gives the user an immediate trance-like euphoria that quickly wears off. Because the various binders and inert ingredients that were contained in the pill form were toxic when smoked, this practice was roundly decried by the medical community as a serious health risk. Smoking methaqualone pills leads to emphysema and other chronic lung disorders.
South Africa
Commonly known as Mandrax, it is not taken orally but is crushed and mixed in a pipe (or the neck of a broken bottle) with marijuana. Mandrax has become a major problem in South Africa and is still today one of the most commonly abused hard drugs. The low price (R30.00 average) of methaqualone together with the readily available cheap, low-grade marijuana means (in addition to crystal meth) is the preferred drug of the hard lower-income sector of South African society.
Since methaqualone is no longer legally produced, illicit manufacture either in India, other African countries, as well as South Africa itself produces methaqualone for the South African market.
References
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