[4] Additional effects are delirium, convulsions, hypertonia, hyperreflexia, vomiting, kidney failure, and death through cardiac or respiratory arrest.

Methaqualone overdose resembles barbiturate poisoning, but with increased motor difficulties and a lower incidence of cardiac or respiratory depression.

Methaqualone was first synthesized in India in 1951 by Indra Kishore Kacker and Syed Husain Zaheer, who were conducting research on finding new antimalarial medications.

Quaalude in the United States was originally manufactured in 1965 by the pharmaceutical firm William H. Rorer, Inc., based in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania.

Lemmon, well aware of Quaalude's public image problems, used advertisements in medical journals to urge physicians "not to permit the abuses of illegal users to deprive a legitimate patient of the drug".

[5] The rights to Quaalude were held by the JB Roerig & Company division of Pfizer, before the drug was discontinued in the United States in 1985, mainly due to its psychological addictiveness, widespread abuse, and illegal recreational use.

It asserts that a Hungarian state-owned company utilized connections to Colombian drug cartels to facilitate the sale of extraordinary amounts to the United States.

It was sold under the brand name Quaalude (sometimes stylized "Quāālude" in the United States and Canada),[16] and Mandrax in the UK, South Africa, and Australia.

[17] In Canada, methaqualone is listed in Schedule III of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act and requires a prescription, but it is no longer manufactured.

[19] Methaqualone became increasingly popular as a recreational drug in the late 1960s and 1970s, known variously as "ludes" or "sopers" and "soaps" (sopor is a Latin word for sleep) in the United States and "mandrakes" and "mandies" in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

Actor Bill Cosby admitted in a 2015 civil deposition to giving methaqualone to women before allegedly sexually assaulting them.

The little white pills, referred to as "ludes," get a cameo along with several other illicit drugs in the 1983 Baby Boomer drama, The Big Chill.

[30] Parody glam rocker "Quay Lewd", one of the costumed performance personae used by Tubes singer Fee Waybill, was named after the drug.

)"); "Straight Edge" by Minor Threat ("Laugh at the thought of eating ludes"); and "Kind of Girl" by French Montana ("That high got me feelin' like the Quaaludes from Wolf of Wall Street").

Season 18 of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit addresses Quaalude administration as a date rape drug in episode 9, "Decline and Fall", which aired January 18, 2017.