CRIM 3250 Lecture Notes - Lecture 18: Sleep Disorder, Barbiturate, Alprazolam
10 Nov 2020
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Central nervous system depressants - a type of drug that slows down brain activity, which causes the muscles to relax and calms and soothes a person. For people who have a hard time shutting down their brain (e. g. anxious people, people who have a hard time sleeping, people with emotional problems) Doesn"t get at the root cause of the issue, but helps. Allows them to obtain state of normalcy. Side effect - potential to form dependence. Slows brain activity + slows the cns = slows the body"s functioning. Sometimes referred to as tranquilizers or sedative-hypnotics. Barbiturates - small margin of safety (meaning they are relatively dangerous) Benzodiazepines - (e. g. valium, xanax), moved towards this because they have a safer margin of safety. Not a good grasp on the long-term consequences. Alcohol - which we will cover next lecture! Alcohol (a depressant) is the most commonly abused drug (historically and today)
