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Placidyl (Rehnquist relaxant)

By moleculeoftheday on January 9, 2007.

Last week it was revealed that for just about the entire 1970's, former SCOTUS chief justice Rehnquist was taking Placidyl. This is too long by any measure - it's been unavailable in the States for almost a decade (due to better alternative supplanting it), and even when it was available, it was thought to be less-than-prudent to prescribe it for more than a week. Further, he was taking about triple the recommended dose. He went through some ugly withdrawal symptoms, in one case insisting that the CIA was plotting against him.

# InChI: InChI=1/C7H9ClO/c1-3-7(9,4-2)5-6-8/h1,5-6,9H,4H2,2H3/b6-5+

It is hard to overstate the importance of the benzodiazepines in modern medicine. Xanax, Valium, Rohypnol, Klonopin - they are all benzodiazepines, and they are the "minor tranquilizers" you see all the time now. Not to say they're completely safe, but they have side effect profiles we're a bit better at predicting than some of the stuff we were taking as recently as 20 or 30 years ago.

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It's hard to beleive that he wasn't being poisoned by an actual plot -- a consipiracy of one (his doctor). Even then long term usage of the drug was contraindicated.