Benzodiazepines and Post-War America

Advertisement for Centrax (prazepam): Psychiatric News, October 17, 1980, p. 20.

Minor tranquilisers are a class of medication known for their anti-anxiety effects. Miltown, the first of these prescription anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) drugs, quickly became a commercial success upon its debut in 1955. 

In an attempt to replicate Miltown’s success, Hoffman La-Roche developed the benzodiazepines; a class of compounds invented by chemist Leo Sternbach in the 1950s. Within a decade, the pharmaceutical giant brought the first two benzodiazepines – Librium (chlordiazepoxide) and Valium (diazepam) – to the market. 

Previously reserved for the insane asylums of yesteryear, the invention of minor tranquillisers brought psychiatric treatment from specialist psychiatry clinics into general practice. Two decades after Hollywood embraced the “don’t-give-a-darn pills”, Valium became the single most prescribed medication in the United States. 

Though pharmaceutical companies and physicians alike were initially blind-sighted by the minor tranquilliser craze, the public’s warm embrace of prescription anxiolytics marked a paradigm shift in psychiatry. 

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