To the Bar Bitch You Rate

[ruudsaurins at aol.com]

Barbiturates....
     ....including the reputed "truth serum" Sodium Amytal, were first discovered by Adolph von Baeyer, whose research lab eventually morphed into Bayer Corporation.  He was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work with discovery of the chemical nature of what would eventually evolve into many commercial and industrial dyes.  This may be where wanna-be nascent chemical engineering student TRP first heard of them (whilst also getting the information he needed to conjure up his Imipolex and disappearing ink narratives).  The legend has it that they were so named for their discovery date (St. Barbara's Day) as well as for one of their constituents (urea).  They play an impressive role in the evolution of modern anesthesia.  
      As an anesthesiologist, I was asked to administer barbiturates to a psychiatric patient for an "interview" several years ago.  Evidently, the extent and veracity of his delusions were suspect, and this was of some significance with regard to some kind of legal issues.  For this reason, legal authorities were asking psychiatric "authorities" (if such an authority has ever existed) to try anything possible to get more information from the patient.  In preparation for the interview, I performed a literature review on the use of barbiturates as a form of "truth serum".
      The conventional use of barbiturates in anesthesia is to rapidly induce an unconscious state that lasts long enough for inhalational volatile anesthetics to "take over" (so to speak) the maintainance of the unconscious state.  Experience revealed that smaller, titrated dosing would progressively obtund the sensorium of the individual receiving it.  The hope was that sufficient obtundation would place an individual in a mental state where that individual would be incapable of exercising the "will" to decieve.  The problem with putting this into practice is that the "titration" was nearly impossible to achieve.  Many patients would simply lose consciousness and not be able to respond to questions.  Some patients would seem to "enjoy" the progressive obtundation and seem to not wish to participate with the interview.  Some patients would stubbornly retain their deceptive responses even as the drug was titrated to the point of unresponsiveness.  
      One huge problem was/is that one cannot administer the "serum" without the recipient noticing his changing mental status and realizing that "something" is going on  Undoubtedly, the practice must have been judged as being occasionally successful, but it is now largely discredited.   A more familiar form of the same strategy involves the use of liquor, such as the opening scene in the film _Kelly's Heroes_ where Clint Eastwood gets a captured german officer drunk in order to find out where a cache of gold is stored.
      I am fascinated by the skill and ingenuity with which TRP transforms (after all, that's all there is) his knowledge of chemical engineering history into this wonderfully creative narrative craft.  This makes sense given his background education in chemical engineering.  I am curious, however, where he received his background in psychology.  His lampooning of Sodium Amytal interviews, along with Dr. Watson/Little Albert with Dr. Jamf/Baby Tyrone goes beyond the delicious and becomes positively nutritious.   Mmmmmmm.....good!
                                                                      truly,
                                                                      ruud
      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20050902/080b1066/attachment.html>