For a drug that's supposed to mellow you out, America's favorite chill pill certainly hit some highs and lows since bursting onto the market in 1963. This wonder drug became our No 1 prescription. At peak consumption in 1978 Americans downed 2.3 billion Valiums as popular culture quickly dubbed it Executive Excedrin. Elvis Presley mixing dangerous amounts of Valium and other prescriptions was found dead in his bathroom at Graceland. Others mixed Valium with Jack Daniels. After a few celebrity crash-and-burn stories a Senate subcommittee looked into long-term tranquilizer addiction, raising public awareness of potential dangers.Sternbach, retired and occasionally popping a V, still keeps an office at Hoffman-La Roche in Nutley NJ where he works mornings on his autobiography and acts as a father figure for younger chemists. Sternbach stumbled across the chemical compound he later fashioned into Mother's Little Helper before World War II while developing dyes in Krakow, Poland. In the early 1960s he tested some tranquilizers on himself. That ended after 2 bedridden days of wicked hallucinations. Perhaps that's why he smiles. "I gave my wife a scare," he said. "I did things differently after that." Such testing, once typical among overenthusiastic chemists, is forbidden. You're addicted if you take more Valium than your doctor. Valium has no self-reinforcing effects. You could be addicted to Valium nasal spray.