Drugs for knocking someone out

So let's talk about drugs that can render someone helpless. What would you use? GHB? Good old-fashioned alcohol? What are the range of options for unconscious vs. conscious but immobile, and for amnesiac vs. not?

Anyone been under such sedatives (hopefully under better circumstances) and care to describe the experience?

Between this and the torture thread, here's to hoping I'm not on any watch lists. It's for a Book!

Isn't there that C stuff that people put on handkercheifs?

If you want quick incapacitation with injection, various paralytics injected into the muscle can give you almost the classic immediate-falling-over movie sedative treatment. "Almost" because, being paralytics instead of sedatives, 1. the victim cannot breathe while under the effect, so either give them the antidote pretty darned quick or have someone give them mouth-to-mouth if you want them to survive, and 2. the victim is conscious and aware throughout. The advantages being very quick action.

For ingested things...I have no idea.

Mr. AHR is thinking of chloroform; if you're going for realism though, the stuff is supposed to be quite risky and inconvenient at doing its job.

Sodium Pentathol, also used as truth serum, is probably the best known intravenous drug for anesthesia; fast acting in low quantities, though it wears off quickly. Xenon is supposed to be one of the best gaseous anesthetics in terms of not suffocating the one being anesthetized.

edited 5th Oct '11 7:21:42 PM by DoctorDiabolical

From what I've learned inhalants are the fastest acting.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Pentothal what they used to use to execute criminals?

@Merlo: I've heard it's the first of three drugs used in a lethal injection, its purpose being to induce unconsciousness so the effects of the other two aren't deemed unnecessarily painful. I'm no expert though, I don't even have a source for that.

edited 5th Oct '11 7:31:26 PM by DoctorDiabolical

One thing that gave me a kick when I learned about it is that one of the drugs used in the lethal-injection combo (to stop the heart) is potassium chloride, which unbalanced the sodium-potassium ion cycle that lets the heart beat. And as far as I know, you can unbalance that cycle in either direction. So if you injected sufficiently high-concentration salt water, it would stop someone's heart.

...Yes, I think about these things.

Paralytics have potential; suxamethonium chloride might be suitable for my purposes, although you'd have to stick someone with it rather than, say, drugging their drink. Or you could do both.

According to the other wiki, it's often used for tracheal intubation. Could you intubate the victim to assist breathing?

For ingested drinks, if you have time and the person is drinking alcohol, then you could use various date-rape drugs like rohypnol. Crush some benzodiazpines (valium, etc) into a wet martini and that would probably do the trick as well.

As far as injected is concerned, I was given a general when I had my wisdom teeth out. I counted back from 100 and only got as far as 97 before I was gone. Of course, you need a intravenous injection for it to work properly. I suppose you could just taser the target and then that would buy you some time to inject them.

There was that freaky stuff that Gerard Butler used in Law Abiding Citizen: it was a paralytic but apparently didn't affect the cardiovascular system.

IIRC Chloroform vapour, KO-s people,Chloroform liquid burns the skin. Standr Police Procedural there are burn marks on the victim's mouth and the villains hand.

Doctors used an apparatus so the patient only got the vapour.

I don't know much about anaesthesiology, but I think they usually use a cocktail of different drugs to knock you out. I don't know if they ever use just the one drug - all the reports I've read had about three.

But I think part of that is due to differing effect durations. You might use one drug to knock someone out initially, and then another two or three to keep them under while you operate. But if the thing you want to do only takes a little while, you only need the first?

Surgery often involves at least two drugs because one drug immobilizes the patient and one drug renders him or her unconscious. You need the former because an unconscious patient might move around in his or her sleep, and the latter because operating on a conscious patient would be cruel. In non-surgical circumstances, these criteria won't necessarily both apply.