Nils Kessel, "'
Doriden von Ciba': Sleeping Pills, Pharmaceutical Marketing, and Thalidomide, 1955-1963".
(13) Kusama almost surely suffered from anxiety neurosis, and to calm herself down, on September 29, eleven days after Oldenburg's opening, she mentions in her diary (for the first time) that she took
Doriden (a prescription "minor tranquilizer").
For the last ten years of his life he took Oreton-M, a synthetic testosterone that stimulates the development of male sexual characteristics, in combination with Serpasil,
Doriden, Ritalin, Eucanel, Seconal and massive doses of vitamin A and B.
The medication: a combination of norpramin, valium, thorazine, and
doriden. Lithium, already proven effective in Europe for manic-depressive illness, was not available as a prescription drug in the United States until the late 1970s.
In 1988, HQ finally threw caution to the winds and published a straight-forward Drug Dosage Table listing the lethal dosages of eighteen common prescription drugs: Amytal, Butisol, Valium, Dalmane,
Doriden, Noctec, Dilaudid, Miltown, Noludar, Demerol, Dolophine, Norflex, Seconal, Nembutal, Darvon, codeine, morphine, and phenobarbital.
