Does Truth Serum Work? Here's How These Mind-Altering Drugs Manipulate Your Brain

Truth serum is a group of drugs that many use to extract truthful statements, and they are real. But whether they work or not, keep reading.

What Is Truth Serum?

Truth serum refers to several mind-altering drugs that are supposed to make one incapable of lying. Among the drugs considered truth serum are sodium thiopental, sodium pentothal, scopolamine, and sodium amytal or amobarbital, according to Business Insider.

Truth serum reportedly slows down the speed when your body sends messages from your spinal cord to your brain, making it more difficult to perform high-functioning tasks, including concentrating on a single activity like walking a straight line or lying. The serum works by making it hard for you to concentrate and come up with a lie. Lying becomes difficult but not impossible.

Mark Twain's Notebook, published posthumously in 1935, included a quote that read, "If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything."

While there is no way to know if someone is telling the truth, several reports suggest that one is more prone to telling the truth when influenced by certain drugs.

According to McGill, wine was the basic method for truth extraction in ancient times. The first documented use of truth serum occurred in New York in 1903, which prompted a confession from a police officer who killed his wife.

The first approved truth serum was scopolamine, by Dr. Robert House discovered, an obstetrician. According to him, it puts patients into a "twilight sleep" state where they automatically deliver information.

Dr. House concluded that the drug helped him force his patients to tell the truth.

They tested the hypotheses in 1922, with two convicts from Dallas volunteering to be test subjects. One said that when he regained consciousness, his mind would center on the actual facts, and he could not manufacture lies.

Dr. House said that individuals under scopolamine could not lie because the drug reportedly destroys the brain's power of reasoning temporarily.

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Does Truth Serum Really Work?

TV journalist Michael Mosley experimented with testing the effectiveness of truth serum 2013. For the experiment, he used sodium thiopental, one of the more popular truth serum drugs.

After the first dose, through fits of giggles, he could lie when asked about his profession. He said he was a world-famous heart surgeon.

In less than a minute after administering the drug, Mosley was all laughing and feeling tipsy. He likened the feeling to drinking a glass of champagne.

After the second dose, Mosley experienced something he didn't expect. When asked about the same question - what he does for a living - Mosley said he was a television producer, executive producer, presenter, or some mix of the three. He later explained that, at the time, it didn't occur to him to lie.

The truth serum gives one a friend and warm feeling toward the interrogator, which can lead the subject to tell the interrogator what they think the latter wants to hear, whether true or not.

As for its effectiveness, according to Washington Post reporter David Brown in 2006, no pharmaceutical compound is proven to consistently enhance truth-telling.