The 1950s were a turning point in pharmaceutical history, with drugs entering everyday life on a scale never seen before. Barbiturates dominated medicine cabinets for sleep and anxiety, amphetamines were handed out freely for everything from depression to weight loss, and a new class of psychiatric drugs began emptying mental institutions. A 1951 federal law, the Durham-Humphrey Amendment, even redefined how Americans got their drugs by creating the modern distinction between prescription and over-the-counter medications.
Barbiturates for Sleep and Sedation
From the 1920s through the mid-1950s, barbiturates were practically the only drugs used for sedation and sleep. They were the go-to remedy for insomnia, anxiety, and pre-surgical sedation, and doctors prescribed them in enormous quantities. The most common barbiturates of the era included phenobarbital (sold as Luminal), amobarbital (Amytal), secobarbital (Seconal), and pentobarbital (Nembutal). Each varied in how quickly it took effect and how long it lasted. Seconal and Nembutal acted fast and wore off in hours, making them popular sleeping pills. Phenobarbital worked more slowly and lasted longer, so it doubled as a daytime sedative and anticonvulsant.
The widespread availability of barbiturates came with serious risks. These drugs were highly addictive, and the gap between an effective dose and a lethal one was dangerously narrow. Overdose deaths, both accidental and intentional, became a growing public health concern throughout the decade. Despite the risks, barbiturates remained a cornerstone of 1950s medicine because safer alternatives simply did not exist yet.
Amphetamines for Weight Loss, Depression, and Fatigue
Amphetamines were among the most widely prescribed drugs of the 1950s, used for an astonishing range of complaints. By 1949, the American Medical Association had approved amphetamine advertising for weight loss, and annual sales had already climbed to $7.3 million. Competing products flooded the market, including Benzedrine (racemic amphetamine), Dexedrine (dextroamphetamine), Desoxyn (methamphetamine), and Methedrine (also methamphetamine). These were not fringe products. They were mainstream medicines prescribed by family doctors.
About one third of amphetamine prescriptions in the 1950s were for weight loss, one third for psychiatric conditions like depression and anxiety, and the remaining third for vague complaints such as chronic tiredness and nonspecific pain. Amphetamines became first-line treatments for emotional distress and psychosomatic complaints during the decade, fueled by pharmaceutical marketing that encouraged doctors to see everyday unhappiness as something a pill could fix.
In late 1950, one of the decade’s most popular drugs appeared: Dexamyl, a blend of dextroamphetamine and the barbiturate amobarbital. The idea was to deliver the mood lift and energy of an amphetamine while the barbiturate component smoothed out the jitteriness. It was marketed for “mental and emotional distress” and also as a weight-loss remedy that targeted “the emotional causes of overeating.” Competitors quickly launched similar combination products, like Desbutal (methamphetamine plus pentobarbital) and Ambar (methamphetamine plus phenobarbital). Creative amphetamine combinations proliferated throughout the entire decade.
Miltown: America’s First Blockbuster Tranquilizer
In 1955, a new kind of drug captured the public imagination. Meprobamate, sold under the brand name Miltown, was marketed as a “minor tranquilizer” for anxiety. It relieved symptoms of anxiety safely over long durations in most patients, and it felt like a revelation compared to the heavy sedation of barbiturates. Sales hit more than $2 million by the end of 1955, and a competing brand called Equanil outsold Miltown by a substantial margin on top of that.
Miltown became a cultural phenomenon. Celebrities talked openly about taking it, and pharmacies in New York and Hollywood reportedly put up signs reading “Out of Miltown” when supplies ran short. It was the first psychoactive drug to achieve genuine pop-culture status, paving the way for the tranquilizer culture that would expand in the 1960s with drugs like Valium.
Chlorpromazine and the Psychiatric Revolution
No drug changed the 1950s medical landscape more dramatically than chlorpromazine, sold as Thorazine. Before its arrival, treating severe mental illness meant physical restraints, ice baths, lobotomies, and long-term institutionalization. Chlorpromazine was more effective than any of the older drugs, including morphine and scopolamine combinations, for controlling agitation and excitement. Critically, it could also relieve psychotic symptoms like delusions and hallucinations, something no previous medication could reliably do.
The first psychiatric patient to receive chlorpromazine was a 24-year-old severely agitated man experiencing a manic episode. Early reports of its effectiveness came from hospitals across Europe in 1952, from Padua to Vienna to southern France, where one team described the successful treatment of an aggressive patient with paranoid delusions. By the mid-1950s, chlorpromazine had transformed disturbed wards in psychiatric hospitals and began the slow process of deinstitutionalization, as patients who would have spent their lives locked away could now manage their symptoms well enough to live outside hospital walls. The drug also drew psychiatry closer to mainstream medicine by suggesting that mental illness had a biological basis that responded to chemical treatment.
Cortisone for Arthritis
Cortisone arrived at the very start of the decade as a near-miraculous treatment for rheumatoid arthritis. Philip Hench and his colleagues at the Mayo Clinic had introduced it in 1948, and patients experienced dramatic improvement in inflammation, joint function, and overall well-being. When cortisone became broadly available in 1950, practicing physicians began prescribing it without guidance from government agencies or professional organizations. There were no standardized dosing recommendations or treatment protocols.
The initial excitement was enormous. Cortisone seemed to reverse crippling joint disease almost overnight. But as doctors prescribed it more freely, the serious side effects of long-term steroid use became apparent: weight gain, bone thinning, high blood sugar, and immune suppression. The 1950s became both the golden age of cortisone enthusiasm and the beginning of a more cautious understanding of steroid therapy.
The Polio Vaccine
While not a “drug” in the traditional sense, no medical product defined the 1950s more than the Salk polio vaccine, licensed in 1955. Polio had terrorized American families for decades, paralyzing tens of thousands of children each year during peak epidemic seasons. Jonas Salk’s inactivated vaccine, tested in one of the largest clinical trials in history involving nearly two million children, was declared “safe, effective, and potent” in April 1955. Mass vaccination campaigns followed immediately, and polio cases plummeted over the next several years.
Early Steps Toward the Birth Control Pill
The 1950s laid the groundwork for one of the most socially transformative drugs in history: the oral contraceptive pill. In 1953, researchers Gregory Pincus and John Rock began clinical trials at the Free Hospital for Women in Boston, starting with just 27 patients on a three-month regimen of high-dose progesterone pills (250 to 300 mg, far higher than later formulations). The study grew to 60 patients within a year, but half eventually dropped out because of the study’s demanding requirements or unpleasant side effects, which included women taking their own temperatures, vaginal smears, and urine samples.
In 1954, trials expanded to Worcester State Hospital, enrolling both men and women, though the male arm of the study was dropped due to inconsistent results. That same year, researchers began testing artificially created progestins that were much stronger than natural progesterone. By 1955, Rock confirmed that progestin delayed ovulation. Larger trials followed in Puerto Rico starting in 1956. The drug that emerged from this work, Enovid, would eventually win FDA approval in 1957 for menstrual disorders and in 1960 as a contraceptive, but the critical science all happened during the 1950s.
A Decade of Casual Prescribing
What stands out most about 1950s drug use is how freely and informally powerful medications were dispensed. Amphetamines were handed to housewives for mild sadness. Barbiturates were a routine answer for anyone who had trouble sleeping. The Durham-Humphrey Amendment of 1951 created the legal framework requiring prescriptions for drugs that “cannot be used safely without medical supervision,” but in practice, the culture around prescribing was remarkably permissive. Doctors had wide latitude, pharmaceutical advertising targeted physicians aggressively, and the concept of addiction as a medical condition was still poorly understood. Many of the drugs that defined the decade would eventually be reclassified as controlled substances in the 1970s, but in the 1950s they sat on pharmacy shelves as ordinary medicine.