Pentazocine: uses, dosing, side effects & brands
Pentazocine is a medicine sold in the U.S. under 2 brand and generic names. Below: what the FDA label says, every product that contains it, what the pills look like, and its recall record.
Key facts
- Available as
- Tablet · Injectable
- Sold as
- 2 products — Talwin 50 and Talwin
- Prescription?
- Prescription only
- Generic available?
- Not in our catalog
Every pentazocine product we track (2)
Same active ingredient — different manufacturer, form, price and FDA recall record. That last one is what our independent score measures.
| # | Drug | Rating | Type | Form | Generic? | Pharmacy pays | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 70/100 | Prescription | Tablet | No data | — | View → | |
| 2 | 60/100 | Prescription | Injectable | No data | — | View → |
Combination products containing pentazocine
A combination is a different drug — different dosing, different warnings. It is listed here so you can find it, not so you can substitute it.
Pentazocine and breastfeeding
From LactMed, the US National Library of Medicine’s Drugs and Lactation Database — quoted, not rewritten.
Full LactMed record for pentazocine: levels in milk, effects in breastfed infants, and the drugs it would consider insteadNo information is available on the use of pentazocine during breastfeeding. Maternal use of oral opioids during breastfeeding can cause infant drowsiness, which may progress to rare but severe central nervous system depression. Newborn infants seem to be particularly sensitive to the effects of even small dosages of narcotic analgesics. If pentazocine is required by the mother of a newborn, it is not a reason to discontinue breastfeeding; however, once the mother's milk comes in, it is best to provide pain control with a nonnarcotic analgesic and limit maternal intake of pentazocine to 2 to 3 days at a low dosage with close infant monitoring. If the baby shows signs of increased sleepiness (more than usual), difficulty breastfeeding, breathing difficulties, or limpness, a physician should be contacted immediately. Combination products with naloxone carry the same considerations. Withdrawal symptoms can occur in breastfed infants when maternal administration of an opioid analgesic is stopped, or when breastfeeding is stopped. Other agents are preferred over pentazocine during breastfeeding.
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, record revised March 15, 2026. LactMed states its information is not a substitute for professional judgement.
What people report to the FDA about pentazocine
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) collects reports from patients and clinicians. It holds 143 reports naming pentazocine, and the FDA flagged 94% of those reports as serious. The effects reported most often — leaving out reports about overdose, misuse or the condition being treated, which dominate the raw list for common medicines:
- arthralgia26 reports
- dizziness26 reports
- fall25 reports
- pyrexia25 reports
- dyspnoea24 reports
- headache24 reports
- asthenia23 reports
- nausea23 reports
Read these as a signal, not a rate. A report does not mean pentazocine caused the effect — anyone can file one, and many describe people taking several medicines for several conditions. Crucially there is no denominator: FAERS does not record how many people took the drug, so these counts cannot be turned into “X% of patients” — a bigger number often just means a more widely used or more talked-about drug. Duplicates exist, and publicity drives reporting. For what is actually established, read the FDA label section above.
Source: openFDA drug/event (FAERS), retrieved July 25, 2026.
Related calculators
Frequently asked questions
Can you take pentazocine with other medicines?
It depends on the medicine. We check it against the FDA labels rather than guessing: our interaction checker searches each drug's own label for the other and quotes what it says, naming the section it came from. Run pentazocine against whatever else you take — and remember that a label not naming a drug is not the same as that combination being safe.
What brand names is pentazocine sold under?
We track 2 pentazocine-containing products in the U.S.: Talwin 50 and Talwin. They are the same active ingredient; they differ in form, manufacturer, price and FDA recall record.
What forms does pentazocine come in?
Across the brands we track, pentazocine is currently marketed as tablet and injectable, per the FDA's National Drug Code Directory. Each form is dosed differently — follow the label for the exact product you were prescribed.
Is there a generic pentazocine?
We do not currently list a generic-labelled pentazocine product. That does not always mean none exists — it means none appears under a generic name in the FDA data we track. Ask your pharmacist.
Cite this page
- APA
- pharmaranks. (2026, July 24). Pentazocine: uses, dosing, side effects & brands. https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/pentazocine
- MLA
- “Pentazocine: uses, dosing, side effects & brands.” pharmaranks, 24 July 2026, https://pharmaranks.com/drugs/pentazocine.
We summarise public FDA and NIH sources — for a clinical claim, cite the primary source we link to as well.
Sources: FDA openFDA drug label, National Drug Code Directory, and Enforcement (recall) database. This page reproduces public FDA data and is not medical advice. Dosing is set by your prescriber.
Read the full FDA label for pentazocine on DailyMed (NIH) ↗.