First synthesized in 1955, in India, by M.L. Gujral, and long before Jenner had his tiger epiphany, methaqualone was introduced as a safe barbiturate alternative. Ten years later it was the most commonly prescribed sedative in Britain, while quickly becoming a popular recreational drug. And by 1972 methaqualone became a top-selling sedative in the United States. Another no real surprise was its wide recreational use once it hopped across the pond.

Quaaludes. The love drug millions of baby boomers deny doing, feeling their sheepish admission "experimenting" with pot while in youthful pursuits conjures up enough of a picture. Having crazy "lude" sex with the lights on in a room of others similarly engaged is the Polaroid missing from many a family album. Which is a good thing, because we’d recognize a lot of faces.

Quaalude use transcended the hippie/straight divisions. Folks who wouldn’t be caught dead smoking a joint would eat a Quaalude or two without batting an eye. Granted, we may not have been at the same party but we were pretty much doing the same thing: screwing our brains out. It was the love drug. And it seemed there was an awful lot of love going around, at least in the 70s and early 80s.

It was the Rorer 714 Quaalude that most personifies that time. Developed in the 60s by William H. Rorer, Inc., then best known for the antacid Maalox, it contained 300 milligrams of methaqualone and was sold as a sedative. Choosing the trademark Quaalude was a clever bit of marketing: inserting the familiar aa of Maalox into a contraction of quite interlude produced a subliminally seductive word. Not that the drug needed the help, mind you.

But for real aficionados, the earlier days of the Sopor are those most wistfully remembered. Sopor was the trade name given to the Arnor Stone Co. product containing the same 300 milligrams of methaqualone as the Rorer 714. But for anyone who has taken both, Sopors get the pun intended nod. Maybe it was because they came first, or the fact they were orange. Or maybe its cult status was created by a 60 Minutes segment devoted to the anomaly of a drug phenomenon originating not on either of the hipper coasts, but in the Midwest heartland.

And boy, did we take that drug to heart.

The orange Sopor craze hit the Ohio State University campus like a freight train, as railroad workers played a significant role in creating the market. Back pain was a common malady among railroad hands, resulting in many a sleepless night. Given a Sopor prescription, one sufferer raved about the results to his fellow rail workers, and piqued the interest of an OSU student working there part-time.

The story goes that the student wrangled a couple of Sopors from his overjoyed co-worker. An enterprising fellow, he quickly realized the recreational potential. Hooking up with a friend working as a summer intern at a major drug chain’s warehouse in another Ohio city, many 55-gallon drums of Sopors were diverted to the black market. And another star, at least according to 60 Minutes, was born.