system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do doctors put you into an induced coma?
gpt
Well, it would be simpler to talk about a coma first. Being in a coma means you are comatose, meaning you don't respond to other stimuli (Being poked, bright lights, smells, dropping your hand on your face, etc). Now to achieve this comatose state is difficult. Our bodies have so much internal "hard" wiring that functions 24/7. For example, if you were sleeping, and someone picked up your hand and tried to drop it on your face, you would either wake up or subconsciously move your hand so it would not hit your face. Being in a coma just means that your body is so close to death, and is moving so slowly, that even such things as that example don't work.

To put someone into a medically induced coma, doctors inject a barbiturate into your body. Barbiturates are drugs that depress your central nervous system (Not make it sad, depress as in calming it down, and making the system not do everything it can). Barbiturates come in different types, but the two that are most commonly used are pentobarbital and thiopental. Doctors account for your body mass and give you a dose of these drugs that could nearly kill you. Instead, it just slows your body down so slow that only the most basic functions (heart beat, breathing) still function properly.

Td;dr: They give you drugs that bring you within an inch of your life. The drugs slow your body down to the point where higher bodily functions cannot work, so you're put into a comatose state.