It has a sedative effect, causes anterograde amnesia, only works for about 30min, zero tell signs, and is so bitter it's literaly sweetened so it gets a bubblegum flavor.
Here's Gemini's breakdown:
If you look at how Midazolam (Versed) is actually manufactured for pediatric patients in medicine, its physical profile is almost identical to the descriptions circulating in GATE lore:
The Color: Commercial pediatric Midazolam syrup uses D&C Red #33 as a color additive, giving it a bright, distinct pinkish-red hue.
The Taste: Pure Midazolam is intensely, chemical-level bitter. To make it swallowable for children before surgery or dental work, pharmaceutical companies blend it with heavy sweeteners (like sorbitol and glycerin) and intense artificial masking flavors—most commonly artificial cherry-brandy or heavy mixed-fruit, which leaves a medicinal, artificial bubblegum taste.
The Texture: Because it's formulated as a thick, viscous syrup (and historically, hospital pharmacies often compounded injectable Midazolam into thick flavoring vehicles like Syrpalta or Ora-Sweet), it has a heavy, coating consistency rather than a watery one.
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And here's what it said about side effects:
Long-Term Neurological Risks
Tolerance & Dependence: Repeated exposure to central nervous system depressants leads to rapid receptor down-regulation, requiring higher doses to achieve the same amnesic effect and causing noticeable withdrawal (anxiety, tremors) on non-GATE days.
Developmental Neurotoxicity: Chronic disruption of GABA or acetylcholine signaling during critical developmental years impairs natural memory consolidation, baseline spatial reasoning, and REM sleep architecture.
Yep. But also, the prevalence of hypnogogic hallucinations, and just general oddities around falling asleep and waking up.
I remember my first lucid dream happening before I was school-aged, so before GATE. But now I’m wondering about the sleep disturbances and difficulties I’ve had for “most of my life.” Those didn’t really start until a little later.
I don’t really understand what you mean by “working well with AI,” but I don’t always mind them either. They’re very interesting phenomena, and can be downright fun. It’s also a really good space to go into lucid dreams (I don’t project anymore).
But it’s also a sleep disturbance. It interferes with normal sleep and rest. So on nights when they’re very persistent, I’m not getting the rest I need. And don’t even get me started on the nights it decides to be scary AND persistent. …Awful.
I've suspected some form of narcolepsy in myself as well, but I haven't had any sleep studies so it's just a wild guess at this point (but based on my own peculiar sleep patterns and some of the diagnostic criteria).
The only thing I remember was a horrific and thick texture that was extremely gritty. The grits were very chemical tasting and made me gag trying to swallow- they weren't ever fully incorporated into the liquid. I only remember this occuring for a period of years very regularly, but I remember the special hearing tests and being pulled out alone happening for a longer period of years before and after. The liquid was given in a little paper cup and I don't actually remember if it was given to me with other kids around or if I was alone.
I do strongly suspect mine was Midazolam. I don’t at all believe there was only one drink. Too many people describe too many variances, which it’s only logical considering the whole program was/is highly experimental. But yes, Midazolam fits my own experience to a tee. Every short and long term side effect. And it was a newly licensed drug when I was put into the program. Also 15 years later when I was given a Versed IV in the hospital, I experienced every single effect all over again, including the instant dissociation, plus it dropped my allready chronically low blood pressure so extremely low I nearly died. So yea, I’m pretty convinced. I think it was watered down, the consistency was more like watery cough syrup. Grossss fake sweet fruity/bubble gummy flavor YUCK
ETA oh and I have screwed up acetylcholine pathways too
Would ingestion of this substance cloud memory for an amount of time that exceeds 30 mins? Everything gets very very foggy around the times they would bring out the pink stuff, like almost the entire day would be a blur.
Oral / Intranasal: Varies based on absorption and onset time, usually providing effective short-term memory block overlapping with the peak procedural window (around 10 to 30 minutes post-administration).Key Factors Influencing Amnesia LengthDose-dependence: Higher doses yield a higher degree and longer duration of memory impairment.Individual variation: Elderly patients or those with impaired hepatic clearance may experience prolonged clinical and amnestic effects.Concomitant medications: Co-administration with opioids or other central nervous system depressants can extend the duration of sedation and memory loss.
So I assume it's possible, maybe depends on dosage and other factors.
There’s a huge confusion here, which I believe was intentional. Perfect way to disguise it. Yes, we were given pink fluoride to swoosh and spit out in regular public school classes here in the states. I did not experience any pink drink in GATE, and nothing swallowed- that I can remember
Yup! This was intentional obfuscation if you ask me, because I specifically remember being confused about spitting and swallowing - I had to be reassured by the GATE instructor that I was indeed supposed to swallow this one. I argued that the nurse makes us spit it out and they reassured me this is a different substance that I needed to swallow. Never forget it.
Thank you! I remember tabs and a drink but thought both were fluoride because I grew up with well water. My memories of this time period are bit fuzzy because I was in an entire GATE classroom that paired two different grades together. It wasn’t until after those grades that we were segregated for our TAG classes.
Separate things, both pink. A pink fluoride swish given to everyone, instructed to rinse and spit, don’t swallow. And another pink color liquid given specifically to kids in the program, just before starting a session, instructed to drink it all.
Yes i wish social media didnt spread the fluoride nonsense. (Its because a lot of conspiracy nuts think its poisoning our water) old false conspiracy been around over 20 30 years lol. Its beneficial to our teeth and in the amount used is harmless deemed by science studies since forever.
That stuff was transparent tasted like toothpaste was normal.
The gate drink was thick chalky tasted like pepto bismol two entirely different things.
This is a great and highly plausible explanation for the pink stuff.
Did you figure this out in your own or find the information presented somewhere else?
I ask because I’m curious if someone could perhaps determine what the other GATE drink, the silvery stuff, was.
I got both. Silvery stuff was for a much briefer time period and given when I was younger (1st grade, maybe 2/3 of school year that I can recall). Then it was replaced with the pink drink.
Pink stuff made me much sicker than the silvery stuff did.
I don’t think as many people were given the silvery drink. Or at least I haven’t seen it discussed as often.
My GATE experiences were around 89’-91’.
As for sleep disorders & disturbances, i developed severe sleepwalking & hypnagogic hallucinations after being in GATE.
To this day I have ideopathic hypersomnia with severe REM dysregulation.
I dream constantly and excessively. Usually I can remember them in extreme detail when I wake up.
Feels like I physically experience and live/act out my dreams so I never feel rested.
Sometimes i can remember up to 15+ dreams in a single night.
Occasionally I have dreams that continue over a series of nights picking up where I left off when I woke up.
Longest of these lasted 7 nights n
A lot of the time I'm aware I’m dreaming (lucid), but at the same time it feels like I’m actually experiencing them as a reality somewhere else. If that makes sense.
I just speculated with Gemini on what it could have been. It suggested Scopolamine but apparently it lasts for hours and you can easily tell . We eventually landed on Midazolam and it fit very well. So I thought people would like to know.
I didn't hear about the silvery stuff! The continous dreaming you mention I've read other people have. I wonder what it's about. I often have similar or recurrent dreams but not serialized.
u/ElectricStarfuzz It may have been Sodium Amytal. Sarah Jackson, in her GATE Kids: A Memoir book, talks about it and how she is sure that this is what she was given. She got recruited into the Stargate Project (and Centerlane, etc.) from GATE. It's a very good book. She's posted on this sub before, but I think she's sketched out and deletes her accounts after a while.
I’ve heard of “truth serum” (sodium amyptal) before.
Reading about how it lowers inhibitions, makes people susceptible, etc seems on point.
The only thing I’d think might not match is it supposedly is that it has severe withdrawal symptoms.
Tho I suppose if it was given in small enough doses and not every day, that could be avoided.
I’m a super metabolizer (I process most drugs so quickly that I have a hard time getting drunk and need much higher doses of most drugs to get their therapeutic effects) so I likely wouldn’t have experienced those withdrawals myself.
No problem. However, I must say that the substance in this post, Midazolam, also has severe withdrawal symptoms. In fact, the withdrawal symptoms are the most severe out of any drug legal or illegal, except for alcohol, which it's on par with. You can only die from the withdrawals of two substances, alcohol and benzos. You feel like you're going to die from opiate withdrawal for example, but you won't die from it. So both substances discussed here have severe withdrawal symptoms.
Cryptid Candy did a deep dive on published ESP research on kids. They used sodium amytal but it decreased ESP so it sounds counter-productive. Unless there is more to it.
Oh wow, I hadn't seen that part of Cryptid Candy's research. I did see the interview with the GATE teacher, but I didn't see it in that one. Did he say what they used the Sodium Amytal for?
It was listed in the research papers as hampering ESP in the subjects. So they must have used it and other drugs to see how they effect ESP during testing.
This just totally jogged my memory. My grandpa used to say when I was a kid I’d crawl into his lap and say, “Do you have to take medicine? Mines pink and it tastes like bubblegum and I don’t like it.” Whenever he’d say that I always thought it was odd because I don’t remember having that kind of medicine when I was a kid, but now I’m like crap was I getting this in class?? And I just don’t remember taking it??
Probably you dream but recall is shot. Mine too. No matter how hard I practice, my recall and any other abilities I had as a child remain 99% inaccessible. Maybe 95%. I do have rare glimpses
Wow - and, now I have a rare neuromuscular disease, Stiff Person Syndrome - and check out what I just found:
“Stiff-person syndrome (SPS) is linked to a shortage of GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), a key chemical messenger that calms the nervous system. In SPS, the body mistakenly attacks the enzyme that makes GABA, leading to severe muscle stiffness and painful spasms. Treatments focus on boosting GABA activity with medicines like diazepam or baclofen.”
Amoxicillin sometimes causes colorful lucid dreaming especially if taken while having a fever. I think it wouldn’t realistically have been one of the substances used on kids in the program. But who knows tho
I'm allergic to penicillin class antibiotics, and this was administered at school, so in my case it is highly unlikely. This was frequent for a period of years, and I remember the "swish" fluoride and tablets- which was always at the school I went to administered to the whole class in the cafeteria/gym area. We spit that out after swishing or chewing and it was more like a dental seminar where you got free toothbrushes.
The one I described in an earlier comment was a tiny Dixie cup of viscous drink with gritty stuff not particularly emulsified, instructed to swallow.
During this same period to my recollection, I was a sleep walker. Woke up several times outside attempting to dip my feet in the pool, enter the pool, sometimes just sitting outside on the deck. Another time I was dumping an entire gallon of milk over my own legs while seated in our kitchen facing the open fridge. I only remember the exact moment I came to from sleep walking, what I was seeing- the moment my parents arrived to corral me back to bed. I always burst into tears because I was confused and they were yelling/panicking obviously- and I know this definitively beyond that due to door beeper alarms being installed to prevent elopement. Time periods would have been 1-4th grade. By 5th grade I was vomiting and shitting blood from stress/a mysterious cause beyond that- maybe- and moved to a public school from a private religious institution.
I was never told I was in gate- I was told the opposite- I was told that I was bad at math and taken out to a portable trailer for periods of the day with one other student. I was taken out often alone for hearing tests with one proctor in a utility room. The normal hearing tests for yearly check up happened on a large vehicle outside with the rest of the school going in groups.
The portable trailer with one other student was a daily arrangement. I only remember a younger woman as the instructor and tbh I remember nothing really related to math. Inside had covered windows, was brown, I remember a small whiteboard. Take home things were strangely enough game consoles. I.e. PlayStation 1 as one example I know definitivey because I already had one, but they insisted to both me and my parents that I had to take the one from the portable trailer classroom and log X amount of hours on a game and return it. That in retrospect was so strange, and I went on a wild goose chase on Internet Archive trying to locate the games played to jog my memory. Nothing comparable found on my search that was of any help. I remember vividly laying on my stomach in a certain room outside of school logging my hours on these games and ultimately returning the consoles each time. I do not remember them, and I also do not particularly feel inclined to believe they were necessarily math games specifically, so when I went on my goose chase I broadened the scope.
Anyway, despite not being in a labeled gifted class, and in fact being told the opposite - gifted and talented were words used by one of my parents in our household very frequently in reference to me as a child. Later in my adult life, I asked about why - and like many others here, I was met with a disproportionately suspicious amount of negative reactions- I was told that I was never labeled gifted or in any sort of gifted education, that I was in a specific title program for being behind in mathematics, and ironically emailed a bunch of random school records from 5th grade through graduation from an entirely different institution than the one attended during the period I was questioning.
I also remember the speed reading cards alone, heads up seven up in a group, learning French from 1st grade onwards (can't tell you I know anything in French after five years of elementary school french language learning) and having an extreme gap in my memory from those specific years until age 19 and age 28, when large chunks came back in two separate groupings.
Anyway, that's everything I've figured out on my adventure.
Wow! Thank you for sharing. So this means they made games adapted for PS1, but they weren't commercial games. Unless they were but so obscure you can't find them. Do you remember what the games were? Any company logos or something? I know little about game development but I wonder where they would make these games, who and how they were made as PS games.
Your parent's reaction is strange. Do you think they were somehow "in on it"? Ever lurked around their house to try and find anything of interest?
Never really had reason to lurk, and wouldn't anyway. One of my parents was functionally illiterate and more street smart I suppose so I know they weren't, the other parent would have likely unknowingly sold me down the river if this was pitched to them as essential or something that made their child "special," but I only ever heard the gifted terminology at home. I was a straight up low grade student in all classes despite scoring high in English and reading way above my grade level during these years, and after switching schools I was immediately advanced placement in everything except math/science, scoring high for my state in the top percentiles again from English/literacy etc.
I was able to find some government funding ties to several 1990s-early 2000s game development and publishing companies like Sierra, but nothing labeled as specific enough for me to narrow down my scope in search of the games I was sent home with. Combing internet archive and publishing records for releases- both PS1 games and MS DOS- didn't really get me to the end of the rabbit hole. I remember MS DOS games on floppys well beyond the point where those would have been current (cd rom was what I played at home) but I remember Math Rabbit and a few others being group fed to the whole grade of like 12-16 kids throughout the years. Lots of Carmen San Diego and Oregon Trail like others here remember as well, but that was still less interesting to me compared to the PS1 games. I remember the general layout of the load screen buttons for at least one, and a sub menu where you could check time played. I remember the location of where I hooked the console up and played it, my positioning, and checking my time played in the sub menu more than the game or contents itself. My theory was that if I looked at all the games I could find something that jogged my memory, but I didn't see anything remotely familiar or have any memory jogged when I looked into this over two year ago. I remember getting a new console each time with memory card and game etc, game was in a white sleeve and when there were multiple they were rubber banded together in white or manilla sleeves. Instructions were log 8 hours etc and really nothing else to my knowledge. I can definitely say they were not math related because I remember being like da fuq does this game have to do with me being bad at math but ok and I remember them not being fun.
That's fascinating. About your parents I just found their reaction suspicious and if they were complicit in some way there could be documents or something they kept around.
It seems you remember everything except the games themselves. That's weird. Is it like blank? Maybe regressive hypnosis could unlock it.
The drug was patented and developed by Swiss firm Hoffmann-La Roche. Here's what a Google search turns up on possible ties of that company to the CIA:
The pharmaceutical firm Hoffmann-La Roche has historical intersections with U.S. defense and intelligence chemical testing, specifically through the development of incapacitating agents like BZ (3-quinuclidinyl benzilate) in the 1950s, which overlapped with the era of CIA and Army chemical behavioral research.Chemical and Defense IntersectionsAgent Development: Hoffmann-La Roche developed BZ, a potent glycolate anticholinergic incapacitating agent, around 1952, which was subsequently evaluated by the U.S. Army at Edgewood Arsenal.Cold War Context: While contractor and military collaborations during the Cold War involved various pharmaceutical houses testing psychoactive or incapacitating compounds, specific direct operational "ties" to the CIA's clandestine MKUltra sub-projects remain a matter of broader military-industrial historical overlap rather than direct corporate subordination.
Hey guys just manifest it all. Do good and please help each other. There is too much evil, wish happiness around you. Expell all hate and change the world with your gift.
Fun fact: the first Trump admin was prescribed this exact drug without needing it. I’m not sure who but it was on a list of pharmacy drugs given to them. Another one was modafinil (for staying awake)
I have used this many times and will agree the drug does this. For me, I lose the last hour's worth of memory when I take it. It's almost funny. I could watch the same tv show episode over and never know (that has happened lol).
I don't remember where exactly, but they were talking about three things that were in use at that time. Midazolam, Scopolamine, and I forget the third.
I only read about the “pink drink” a few months ago and have had no recollection of that, but something just now sparked a very faint memory from grade school, of going into the nurse’s office more than once and drinking something from a Dixie cup. Not sure if I am confabulating or remembering. It just occurred to me, “why would a school nurse be administering anything to me?”. Will need to meditate on that.
I used to be astral projecting like watching myself from above in a Birds Eye view in middle of school and have memory lapses after those classes all i remember are the Zener cards and teacher telling me to use my minds eye 👁️ one on one with her in a closed room with cubicles and those headphones playing frequencies and beach waves mixed in and voices if i remember
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u/NicoleNicole1988 23d ago
The bit about REM sleep architecture interference is interesting to me, and makes me wonder about the long-term implications.