You are invited to be a speaker  at a meeting of the local Women’s Organisation. The group consists mainly of middle-aged to elderly ladies. Your topic is: “Is it dangerous to use sedatives and sleeping drugs?"

Good day ladies, today I am going to speak to you about sedative sleeping drugs and if it is dangerous to be using these drugs.

Sedative and sleeping medication are both of the same medication classification, sedative hypnotics. They both work on the central nervous system and have the same effects on the central nervous system, only the potency of the effects differs.

These medications causes a decrease in inhibitions and anxiety, they also have a calming effect on the patient. These effects are what causes repeated use of these drugs, which then in turn increases the addiction potential of these drugs. It is also important to remember that, especially with previously mentioned effects in mind, most of these drugs are extremely addictive.

Just a quick note, there are two drugs that form part of this group that are used as date rape drugs. Firstly it is Flunitrazepam, Rohypnol, that is used due to it’s fast and potent onset of amnesia. The other drug is Gamma-hydroxybutyrate or GHB as well as chloralhydrate that is found in eye drops that, if mixed with alcohol, also causes a very severe sedation effect that is used during the date rape.

Sedative-hypnotics also creates a general central nervous system inhibition, which gets even worse when combined with other central nervous system suppressants. Due to this central nervous system suppression, acute overdose of these medications are very easy as well as very dangerous. Acute overdose of these drugs causes respiratory and central nervous system suppression which then leads to death.

To ensure that these medications are safely used, it is very important that these drugs are only taken as prescribed by the doctor and that these drugs are only used for short periods at a time and not long-term chronic use.