The belief that overdosing on sleeping pills is fatal comes from barbiturate medications, while modern pills contain benzodiazepines such as diazepam. Modern sleeping pills are pretty easy to get exactly because even if someone downs the whole bottle, they don’t die, only go to deep unconsciousness, i.e. “knockout sleep” (physical stimuli, such as shaking the patient, don’t wake them up) that possibly lasts several days. Thus if James Randi took a fatal-by-barbiturate-standards dose of benzodiazepine sleeping pills, then (after he woke up) he would conclude that the pills didn’t work because he didn’t die.
This is not to say that benzodiazepine pills are completely safe. (This is to be expected from anything that messes with the central nervous system and basic regulation.) Of most practical relevance is the crossreaction with alcohol; combining drunkenness with benzodiazepine overdose is very much fatal. Unfortunately, mild alcohol consumption plus a standard dose can fairly reliably trigger “knockout sleep”, making the combination an easily-used party/rape drug. (If this is a floating belief, keep it as such; a.k.a. do not try this at home.)
The belief that overdosing on sleeping pills is fatal comes from barbiturate medications, while modern pills contain benzodiazepines such as diazepam. Modern sleeping pills are pretty easy to get exactly because even if someone downs the whole bottle, they don’t die, only go to deep unconsciousness, i.e. “knockout sleep” (physical stimuli, such as shaking the patient, don’t wake them up) that possibly lasts several days. Thus if James Randi took a fatal-by-barbiturate-standards dose of benzodiazepine sleeping pills, then (after he woke up) he would conclude that the pills didn’t work because he didn’t die.
This is not to say that benzodiazepine pills are completely safe. (This is to be expected from anything that messes with the central nervous system and basic regulation.) Of most practical relevance is the crossreaction with alcohol; combining drunkenness with benzodiazepine overdose is very much fatal. Unfortunately, mild alcohol consumption plus a standard dose can fairly reliably trigger “knockout sleep”, making the combination an easily-used party/rape drug. (If this is a floating belief, keep it as such; a.k.a. do not try this at home.)