Just wanted to offer my thoughts... (not necessarily anything new here)
Original text :
However, there is a small group (<1%) who may exhibit a prolongued comatose phase before death (sometimes up to 24 hours). Outright 'failures' remain extremely rare. Indeed, all of the reported failures investigated were associated with discovery and medical intervention. This emphasises the need for careful selection of the place chosen to take the drugs. In some of the analysed cases, the long comatose phase is associated with the
prolonged use of anti-psychotic medication, prior to taking the barbiturate. It is presumed the induction of liver enzymes by these drugs causes some degradation of the Nembutal before it reaches the brain. In this situation, increasing the quantity of drug taken (eg. to 2 bottles, 12gm) may not
necessarily hasten the death.
Summary of main points :
> A small group (<1%) may exhibit a prolongued comatose phase before death. This can occur for users of anti-psychotic meds, but also for non users.
> The known outright failures were due to discovery and intervention.
> For the non anti-psychotic meds users, the prolongued comatose phase might be avoided by increasing the dose, but that applies to <1%
Conclusions (based on above plus info from elsewhere) :
> Most people can still feel fairly safe using 6g
> If you can use a higher dose then that's a bonus, and it may allow a faster process.
> In some rare cases (<1%), a higher dose might avoid the prolongued comatose phase ( but this may not work for users of anti-psychotic meds ).
> If using 6g, you might want to allow up to 24 hours before being found, just to be sure, although that should only apply to <1% of cases. For 99% (or more) of people, 3 to 6 hours would probably be fine (haven't verified the 3 to 6 hours, but I believe it's a reasonable reflection, may modify later)
> The more limited the amount of time before being found, the more you might want to consider a higher dose ( but this may not work for users of anti-psychotic meds ).
However :
To increase confidence in the statement from exit, we would want to know more about the number of cases studied, the range of body weights, physical health, etc. A document detailing this, with some easy-to-read summary conclusions would go a long way.
Personally, I can understand people of a higher weight feeling that they might need more than 6g.
There are websites (eg Derek Humphry blog) claiming that 12g is recommended, however, it is not known how unbiased such sources are, and whether they are motivated by financial incentive.
More data would help to bring a clearer perspective.