Phenegon ..in the 1970s

[Pugsrus]

Did you have a child in the 1970s ,would it of been common practice to regularly give it your child/ baby to make them sleep .

I miss medised, it was brilliant when they were too full of cold to sleep.

In the late 80's my younger cousin was a terrible sleeper. My Aunt and Uncle solved it by giving him 'sleeping' tablets which were haliborange put in a big pill box marked Special Sleeping Pills for Children. When we stayed at theirs DSIS and I used to have to take them too and pretend to fall asleep within minutes of having them

Just given dd 25mg of phenergan. She isn’t well and has a disrupted sleep pattern. She’s 23, mind!

I haven't thought about this stuff since the 1980's. I used to have really bad nightmares and was too scared to sleep some nights. I'd beg mum for some "sleep mixture" to knock me out. Mum, to her credit, was always very reluctant to give me it but would cave sometimes. Now I know why!! Wow.

It is 100% still available, but we've had warning messages recently that under no circumstances are we to just sell it to anyone anymore due to abuse! It needs to be on prescription. Wow, good old medised, Kaolin and morphine, J Collis Browne mixture! Liquid gold these days.

Mmm, antipsychotics for children. Yum.

I gave some to my ds on a longhaul flight about 2008

It was still being recommended in the noughties for flying.

My SIL gave it to her kids on flights (they fly a lot!) and this was only 10 years ago! She lived in America so maybe it was still commonly used there?

I had it in hospital when I was in for hyperemesis. It knocked me out.
When dd was born she had allergies and eczema and never slept.
When she was a toddler the doctor prescribed Phenergan for her. It did precisely nothing. It certainly didn tf make her sleep.

I gave it mine (born 77 and 78) on rare occasions. No good giving it every night it lost it's potency.

Occasionally when there was a need for a good nights sleep then it was a godsend.

I also used to take it in tablet form myself on the odd occasion I couldn't sleep. Not like a sleeping tablet as I could wake up easily still it just allowed me to relax and stopped the constant mind swirling.

Yes - I remember my mum giving it to my younger brothers! My Ds has it sometimes now as he suffers really badly with sleeping with jet lag/time differences and it works well for him

My mum apparently used to give us phenergan on long journeys in the 80s. I have a much younger sibling, and my mum was upset to discover it was no longer available over the counter in the late 90s when we had to drive for a couple of days.

@JoyFreeCake would you suggest my dd never travels more than 30mins anywhere? It is a very effective medicine for travel sickness.

My mum gave it to me for a long journey and apparently I was high as a kite! Had the complete opposite desired effect on me. I also bought it a few years back to try to sleep and again, I was just up all night. I gave it to my very, very travel sick dd once and she obviously takes after me because she was like a crack riddled toddler until it wore off...about 12 hours of constant singing and performing in between talking about random things and zooming about all over the place like sonic. Never again!

We tried to get it on prescription when my daughter was younger (she's now 5) as she was horrifically car sick. I mean exorcist style within minutes of the car starting. No GP would prescribe it though and none of the things they did prescribe made any difference whatsoever.

Thank the lord she stopped being sick as soon as we turned her front facing which I did very reluctantly but the alternative was to never ever travel.

I don't remember being given it as a child in the 80s but I do remember kaolin and morphine.

No, @BreathlessCommotion — would you suggest I run down Park Lane dressed as a squid and singing Beowulf in Old English?

We're doing irrelevant questions, right?

I just always find it amusing how we classify drugs. Phenothiazine drugs are mainly described as antipsychotics, but also as antihistamines and occasionally other things. But when people use it for sedation they almost always prefer to refer to its antihistamine action, even though the whole "major tranquilliser" effect is what they're actually after. I just think it's fun that people have these innocuous-seeming antihistamine tablets in their cupboards to give to their kids that are essentially the same drugs as the ones that used to produce that classic drooling, shuffling, twisting mental-patient look, usually without knowing it.

It's not a particularly harmful drug, I'm just tickled by the links.

It is an antihistamine
www.nhs.uk/medicines/promethazine/

However, unlike the other drugs in this class,promethazineis not used as an anti-psychotic. It used as an anti-histamine, sedative, and antiemetic (anti-nausea).

I gave it to my non sleeper around 2004.

Understand how utterly utterly desperate I was, I was the walking dead, surviving on 3-4 hours sleep a night, sometimes zero sleep for 48 hours.

He eventually slept a full night through aged 5 and at school full time.

I had no respite, no help, no end in sight, some days I actually wanted to die, lie down and never ever wake up.
Constant feeling nausea, dizzy, unable to think straight, blurred vision, numb hands and feet.
I gave a few doses to see if it helped, it did extend the day time nap from 20 minutes (on the days he would have a day time nap) to an hour.
Not worth much so never bothered with it after that.
When awake, day and night, the kid didn’t stop. My house was wrecked, he had zero sense of danger, couldn’t be left in a room alone because it would either end up completely destroyed or he would harm himself.
Stair gates, car seats, high chairs, shopping trolleys couldn’t hold him for more than a few seconds.
Life was absolute hell.

I still, to this day do not know how I survived those dark dark days. It was a living torture.
I literally would have done anything for even half an hour of quiet back then.

My mum gave it to my brother when he was a baby in 1995... Her friend recommended it because she'd used it on both of hers in 1979 and 1985

I gave this to my dd a few ys ago when she had a skin condition. Dr suggested it before bed, to help with itching and sleep.

It had the opposite effect. That wasn't fun.

Apparently it isn't an unusual side effect either, one he forgot to warn me about, mind.

You can still buy it OTC, but my GP prescribed it for my son back in 2011/12 when he wouldn’t sleep for more than a hour at a time and up for good by 5am every day. I was on my knees with sleep deprivation. As it was it only worked for a couple of nights in a row (gp suggested a few nights/ a bit longer in a row) and then he’s be back to up every hour.

We actually give it now for travel sickness and it does the job - no epic naps though!

My mother dosed me (and my 5 siblings) on the stuff in the 70s to get us to sleep when it suited her! I’m sure that wouldn’t be allowed now.

I am sure my mum gave it me. She also gave me brandy in my milk apparently.

Lots of people in my expat mothers group used phenergan to get their children to sleep on long flights home - there was one doctor known to be happy to prescribe it as it was not available OTC where we were. I never tried it, though. I think when I was little my mother sometimes used Benylin (old formulation, with similar antihistamine in it) to get my sister and me to sleep.

I can understand parents occasionally using it while being driven crazy by non-sleeping offspring or in particular situations, but it sounds like the OP's mother may have used it regularly in a way that could be seen as abusive/neglectful. But the general attitude to pharmaceuticals in the 1970s was rather laxer than it is now, eg women being prescribed diet pills (basically speed) or sedatives in a way that would never happen now, or teething medicines for babies containing alcohol.

I’m a child of the 70’s and I remember being given this quite a bit.
Ironically I’m now taking it again, but this time it’s been prescribed to help my long standing insomnia. It certainly helps!
I’m pretty sure it got linked to cot death didn’t it?