Does a drug like this exist?

[amitywall]

My current project is set in a slightly advanced Victorian era with steampunk technology. One of the main characters was a drug addict who had recently escaped from an asylum, and for that I needed a new drug. So I created lethe

Comments

[lilacsigil]

Laudanum fits many of your criteria except for the hallucinations and withdrawal issues.

A more modern drug, flunitrazepam aka Rohypnol fits most of your criteria though I wouldn't expect a steampunk world to be able to manufacture it. It is not an anaesthetic as such, but can be used for twilight sedation. I don't think you'll find anything that is used at low doses for an anaesthetic and higher doses for a sedative - it's usually the other way around. It's also taken orally under most circumstances, but people do inject and snort it (even though it's a very very bad idea to inject it!)

[cheshire23]

You may find Scopolamine, which was combined with morphine to create the "Twilight sleep" effect for women in labor, to be a useful starting point. I don't think it's exactly what you're looking for but the description may make a good springboard?

[tabaqui]

My mother was a nurse and in her rotation to the maternity ward in school, she said the scopolamine was horrible. It made a lot of the women just go out of their heads and they would scream and cry and babble all kinds of things.

She hated the maternity rotation.

[charlycrash]

Scopolamine is an evil, evil drug and rarely abused due to its effects being generally seen as pretty unpleasant. On top of that, it's hard to judge a toxic dose and often kills people.

In Columbia, where it's most used, it's almost always used as a mickey for other people to get them to become more compliant and forgetful and thus be able to rob/rape/etc. them more easily, not something done for kicks.

[charlycrash]

Here's a pretty fascinating documentary about it (note the title):

[silentg_canada]

I agree about Rohypnol, and I'd also suggest Ketamine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketamine

[mimerki]

My first thought was morphine; based on lilacsigil's suggestion of laudanum, you might want to look at opioid drugs in general to see if there's one that's a precise fit.

[spriggina]

The barbituate class of drugs fits almost all your criteria. I think the technology needed to make many of them would have existed at the time (though they weren't commonly made until the early 20th century.) It's original use was often to combat anxiety, but lots of people ended up abusing it for recreation and/or became addicted. When barbituates are used for a long enough time, dependence develops, and I guess seizures are a pretty common occurrence in cold turkey withdrawal. Injectable or ingestable. So it fits most of your needs.