> Secobarbital (marketed by Eli Lilly and Company for the treatment of insomnia under the brand name Seconal) is a short-acting barbiturate derivative drug that was patented in 1934 in the United States. It is the most frequently used drug in physician-assisted suicide within the United States. Secobarbital is considered to be an obsolete sedative-hypnotic (sleeping pill), and as a result, it has largely been replaced by the benzodiazepine family. Seconal was widely abused, known on the street as "red devils" or "reds".