page_title: Club drug
section_title: Depressants/sedatives
hierarchical_section_title: Club drug / Types / Depressants/sedatives
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Quaalude-/Mandrax-Pillen
context_page_description: Club drugs, also called rave drugs, or party drugs are a loosely defined category of recreational drugs which are associated with discothèques in the 1970s and nightclubs, dance clubs, electronic dance music parties, and raves in the 1980s to today. Unlike many other categories, such as opiates and benzodiazepines, which are established according to pharmaceutical or chemical properties, club drugs are a "category of convenience", in which drugs are included due to the locations they are consumed and/or where the user goes while under the influence of the drugs. Club drugs are generally used by teens and young adults. This group of drugs are also called "designer drugs", as most are synthesized in a chemical lab rather than being sourced from plants or opiates.
  Club drugs range from entactogens such as MDMA, 2C-B and inhalants to stimulants, depressants/sedatives and psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs. Dancers at all-night parties and dance events have used some of these drugs for their stimulating properties since the 1960s Mod subculture in U.K., whose members took amphetamine to stay up all night.
context_section_description: Methaqualone (Quaaludes) became increasingly popular as a recreational drug in the late 1960s and 1970s, known variously as "ludes" or "sopers" (also "soaps") in the U.S. and "mandrakes" and "mandies" in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. The drug was often used by hippies and by people who went dancing at glam rock clubs in the 1970s and at discos (one slang term for Quaaludes in the disco era was "disco biscuits").  In the mid-1970s, there were bars in Manhattan called "juice bars" that only served non-alcoholic drinks that catered to people who liked to dance on methaqualone. Purported methaqualone is in a significant minority of cases found to be inert, or contain diphenhydramine or benzodiazepines. Methaqualone is one of the most commonly used recreational drugs in South Africa. It is also popular elsewhere in Africa and in India. Commonly known as Mandrax, M-pills, buttons, or smarties, a mixture of crushed mandrax and cannabis is smoked, usually through a smoking pipe made from the neck of a broken bottle.
  The depressant GHB (also used by assailants as a date rape drug, in which case they slip it into a victim's drink) is intentionally taken by some users as a party drug and club drug.
  Rohypnol (also used as a date rape drug) is a sedative/hypnotic that causes intoxication and impairs cognitive functions. This may appear as lack of concentration, confusion and anterograde amnesia. It can be described as a hangover-like effect which can persist to the next day. It also impairs psychomotor functions similar to other benzodiazepines and nonbenzodiazepine hypnotic drugs.
  The previously mentioned selection of drugs are generally categorized as club drugs by the media and the United States government, this distinction probably does not have an accurate correlation to real usage patterns. For example, alcoholic beverages (beer, wine, hard liquor) is generally not included under the category of club drugs, even though it is probably used more than any other drug at clubs, particularly those that are liquor-licensed nightclubs or bars.
caption: A variety of Quaalude pills and capsules.
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