1997-03-28 04:00:00 PST RANCHO SANTA FE, SAN DIEGO COUNTY --
The powerful drugs called barbiturates have improved life for hundreds of
thousands of people by calming nerves, easing pain and inducing sleep. Used
at the right time, for the right reasons, they are safe and effective. But
as seen in the mass suicide at Rancho Santa Fe, they also are deadly.
Barbiturates mixed with alcohol are what caused rock star Jimi Hendrix to
pass out, choke and die. They also claimed the lives of actress Marilyn
Monroe, radical guru Abbie Hoffman, American Conservatory Theater founder
William Ball and Jeanine Deckers, the "Singing Nun," who killed herself with
150 pills and a shot of cognac.
The recipe for death among the cult members living in Rancho Santa Fe,
according to Dr. Brian Blackbourne, San Diego County coroner, was this:
"Take a little package of pudding or applesauce and eat a couple of
teaspoons. Pour the medicine in and stir it up. Eat it fairly quickly and
then drink the vodka beverage. Then lay back and rest quietly."
The type of barbiturate used, called Phenobarbital, is not particularly
potent when taken alone. It takes at least 4.5 grams - or 150 30-mg. tablets
- to be lethal, according to "Final Exit," the 1991 guidebook to assisted
suicide by Hemlock Society founder Derek Humphry.
But its toxicity is multiplied 50 percent when taken with alcohol, according
to Humphry.
By interfering with chemical messengers in the brain, called
neurotransmitters, it slows the activity of nerves that control breathing
and heart action, creating effects ranging from relaxation to coma - and
death.
Often barbiturates are used in the execution of prisoners by lethal
injection. They also are commonly employed by Dutch physicians in performing
euthanasia for the terminally ill.
Each year more than 15,000 deaths caused by barbiturate poisoning, often
combined with alcohol, are reported in the United States. Almost certainly a
high percentage are suicides, but exact figures are impossible to obtain.
So-called "long-acting" barbiturates - including phenobarbital - typically
take one to two hours to reach the brain and are used medically to induce
sleep, provide day-long relief for anxiety problems and treat epilepsy.
It is the short-acting barbiturates that are the choice for most suicides.
These drugs - pentobarbital (Nembutal), amobarbital (Amytal), secobarbital
(Seconal) and a secobarbital-amobarbital mixture known as Tuinal - are the
type commonly known as "sleeping pills," taking 20 to 45 minutes to work.
The intoxicating effect lasts 4 to 5 hours.
But Jamison said the quick-acting pills are so difficult to obtain legally that the victims in Rancho Santa Fe may have decided instead to use very large doses of the more easily obtained phenobarbital.<
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