Like heroin, sodium pentothal is a brand name. The drug was manufactured and trademarked by Abbott Laboratories, and its free-for-all name is sodium thiopental. It's a barbiturate, a drug that acts on the central nervous system, which it depresses to calm anxiety, induce drowsiness, eliminate pain, and sometimes entirely knock someone out.
That is not why it's become world famous. Sodium pentothal made its name in detective, spy, and pulp novels, where it was famously used as a 'truth serum. Psychiatrists and police officers both swore by it in the first half of the twentieth century - but which of its powers were fact and which were fiction is still debated. The maddening thing about Truth Serum, and the damage its wrought over the years, is that its conceptual originator, Dr Robert House, meant it to exonerate prisoners.
During his time in obstetric wards around , he noticed the drug administered to women during childbirth, scopolamine, had a strange effect on his patients. They spoke automatically and unthinkingly, responding to any question.
His mind went to prisoners who, under interrogation, maintained claims of innocence. That's easy enough to do when jail would be uppermost in their mind, but if a barbituate could make women forget that they were having a baby, it could certainly wipe ulterior motives from a person's mind. So if asked where they were the night before, if they answered automatically, 'at home,' then they couldn't have been out robbing a bank.
The process by which sodium pentothal came to be used to obtain confessions of guilt was a circuitous one. The particular compound was invented in by Ernest H. Volwiler and Donalee L. Tabern, both of whom were trying to invent another pain killer.
Although it did relax a patient, and enough of it knocked a person out, sodium pentothal didn't kill pain as much as they had hoped. There was a risk that I might say something that I really didn't want the world to know, but, confident in my ability to keep on lying, I told Dr Leach to go ahead. I was given another slightly larger dose of sodium thiopental and this time I actually felt more sober, more in control. So what happened next was a complete surprise.
Again Dr Leech asked me my name and my profession. This time there was no hesitation. Well, executive producer, well, presenter, some, mix of the three of them. I'm still confused about what happened because one effect of the drug is to distort short-term memory. But I think the reason that I spoke the truth on this occasion is because the thought of lying never occurred to me. So does it work? Well my conclusion after trying it out and speaking to experts is that it will certainly make you more inclined to talk, but that when you are under the influence you are also in an extremely suggestible state.
The reason you become more suggestible is probably because the drug is interfering with your higher centres, like your cortex, where a lot of decision making goes on. There is a serious risk you will say what your interrogator wants to hear rather than the truth. The truth is we don't have a reliable truth drug yet. This state of complete relaxation would enable the soldiers to calmly speak of their experiences in order to lessen their trauma.
Consequently, observing the advantages that could be obtained from using truth-inducing drugs, the Nazis experimented with mescaline in the Dachau concentration camp while the CIA and the U.
Army explored alternatives such as LSD and cannabis. Their effectiveness made them an essential component in interrogations. Rumours speak of the most effective truth drug code-named SP, used by the KGB in interrogations and to periodically confirm their agents' loyalty. SP was extremely effective due its lack of scent and taste when added surreptitiously to a target's beverage. Additionally, SP had the ability to loosen tongues and to erase all of the victim's memories during the time of the interrogation.
That being said, there's no way to really know if someone is telling the truth , ever. Numerous accounts and scientific reports suggest that you're more prone to tell the truth under the effects of truth serum drugs, but the drugs have other side affects that might make you say something to please someone else that is not necessarily true.
Furthermore, not only are truth serum drugs not all that useful, they are illegal under certain circumstances including interrogation. The term "truth serum" came onto the scene in the s, but humans have known since the time of the Roman Empire that we're more readily truthful while under the influence.
Although many of the first drugs that the CIA, police, and Nazi interrogators used throughout the '20s, '30s, and '40s are still around today, they have other uses such as ingredients in medicines that prevent motion sickness and for lethal injection. The drug comes from the seeds of a tree, which locals call the " get-you-drunk " tree. While some Nazis used it in interrogation, today it's in many medicines to help prevent motion sickness and tremors of Parkinson's disease.
It's also used as a date-rape drug. Scopolamine can be ingested orally through a pill or in one bizarre case as a rub. Reports recount three young women in the Colombian capital, Bogota, who smeared the drug on their breasts luring men to lick it off.
Once the men were incapacitated, the women would drain their bank accounts. Sodium pentothal is a type of barbiturate, which is a series of drugs that are central nervous system depressants, colloquially known as "downers". Downers slow your body's process to transmit information to your brain and are common prescription medicines for pain relief, sedation, muscle relaxation, and lowering blood pressure.
An overdose of barbiturates can be lethal and has led to a number of celebrity deaths including Marylin Monroe, Judy Garland, and Jimi Hendrix. The drug was also one of the first used in lethal injections in the US and is most often administered intravenously.
Until , it was sometimes used as an anesthetic because patients usually pass out within seconds after taking the drug. But the US stopped using the drug completely a few years ago. This is because on January 21, the Italian company that produced the drug announced they were ceasing production. The company was worried that Italian authorities would use it in executions and as a result the US lost their only viable supplier. There are still accounts of this drug's use as a truth serum.
In , police in New Delhi, India administered sodium pentothal to wealthy businessman, Moninder Singh Pandher, and his servant, Surender Koli who were suspects in the infamous Noida serial murders. While under the influence, they confessed to luring children to their home , raping, and then killing them.
The servant, Koli, was given the death sentence and is in jail.
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