I got the sense that the poster meant actually synthesizing the psychoactives personally.
And yeah alprazolam is used a lot in the US, although in the UK it can't be prescribed on the NHS as its blacklisted, although can be by private practice.
Not common here other than bars pressed for dark net markets, although its very common for fake xanax bars to be made using etizolam, a thienodiazepine with benzo-like chemistry and effects to be present instead of alprazolam)
Never had it myself, but I'm quite happy with either my prescription nitrazepam or loprazolam instead. I seem amongst benzos to have a 'thing' for nitrobenzodiazepines as those working best for me)
Had a dose of nitrazepam the other day actually, a few, spaced over the day, when I was feeling really overloaded physically, along with some clonidine and tizanidine, which both block release of noradrenaline, helped kill off that nasty overloading and get me some sleep.
I have to say I prefer the non-benzodiazepine drug chlormethiazole a lot, to benzos of all kinds though, its fast acting as hell, its strong, very effective hypnotic-sedative and anticonvulsant, acting much more like barbiturates rather than benzos when it comes to how it interacts with the chloride channel gating kinetics of GABAa receptors.
Unlike the barbs it didn't get shitcanned, probably due to some specific qualities that give it an advantage in treating alcoholism, despite huge recreational potential and also a very unforgiving dose-response curve and being lethal in OD unlike benzos.
I've got a script for both, though, the chlormethiazole for antiseizure prophylaxis, and also a nitrazepam script that the doctors mutated into a repeated automatically issued thing rather than the temporary script I asked for and docs should use when dispensing benzo or other GABAergic scripts.
I only use it occasionally though (the nitrazepam), so as not to come close to tolerance or dependency.
And if I wanted them, I could pick up valium, either 2mg whites, 5mg yellows or 10mg blues cheap on the street, as well as mogadon (nitrazepam) and temazepam. This script I had was meant only ever to be temporary but they seem to have gotten impatient or bored or both, and to save me making repeat appointments for refills, they just chucked it into 'print these every week folks' basket and I've had it ever since which is handy for when its just 'one of those days' that shouldn't exist.
I've never actually done a benzodiazepine synthesis myself though. I don't use them recreationally other than a couple of moggies with a few beers now and then. Never done it, but its within the realms of my abilities if I chose to.
For my go-to DIY sedative-hypnotic, its got to be chlormethiazole. Easy to make, although the precursor prepared from vitamin B1 requires careful cleaning and removal of water soluble byproducts, in particular, a nasty little bugger called toxopyrimidine, a potent antagonist of vitamin B6 which prevents biosynthesis of GABA, making it a potent convulsant and excitotoxin.
Otherwise its just cleavage with bisulfite then chlorination of the alcohol either with thionyl chloride (preferable to me) or phosphorus trichloride to afford chlormethiazole. A LOT simpler than a benzo synth, and the product is preferable to me too.
The pros and cons being mainly that the cleanup is far easier using SOCl2, although thionyl chloride is hard to buy and very difficult and unpleasant to make. PCl3 would be easier to make at home, at least as long as one can obtain large amounts of red phosphorus, thankfully not a problem for me, having 2 kg of red P spare for general phosphorus-containing reagent preparations, or when red or white P needs to be used directly.
SOCl2 breaks down into HCl and SO2 and like phosphorus trichloride is hydrolyzed, potentially quite violently in either case, and either reagent needs to be handled in anhydrous conditions. But its also fast, and the byproducts are both gaseous and so leave the reaction easily, whereas the phosphorus based byproducts of using PCl3 would need removal in an extra step of workup, while with SOCl2, in chlormethiazole synthesis they can be removed during the vacuum distillation of the freebase product.
So all in all, I'll take the SOCl2 route, nice quick and clean. I CBF preparing the phosphorus trichloride, freeing it from phosphorus pentachloride, using up my red phosphorus, unless I NEED PCl3 or PCl5, POCl3 etc., it'd be a pain generally speaking to have to do in advance.
