During an investigation of the effect of ryanodine on contractions in cardiac muscle, it was found that long rest periods removed all or most of the drug's effect. Therefore, we studied the kinetics of block development and recovery from block produced by low concentrations of ryanodine (1-100 pM) on the postrest contractions of ferret papillary muscle. At 100 pM, ryanodine depressed steady-state contraction amplitude slightly (4.2 ± 1.1% mean ± SEM,n= 10) but strongly inhibited (40–80%) the first contraction (postrest contraction) elicited on restimulation of the preparation after rest periods of 1 second to 5 minutes. Under control conditions, the nearly maximal potentiation of the twitch occurring after a standard test rest period (30 seconds of rest) was not affected by a preceding conditioning rest of up to 20 minutes. In the presence of 100 pM ryanodine, a conditioning rest increased the amplitude of the twitch elicited after a test rest, and the test rest contraction recovered toward control (drug-free) amplitude monoexponentially (time constant, 582 ± 105 seconds). Block of postrest contraction could be reinduced by stimulation and occurred faster when higher rates were used (time constants, 758 seconds at 1 Hz and 107 ± 26 seconds at 3 Hz). Since rest potentiation of twitch tension is believed to be mostly dependent on extra calcium released from the sarcoplasmic reticulum, the results suggest that the ryanodine-induced blockade of calcium release from the sarcoplasmic reticulum is use-dependent and recovers during diastole. Such use-dependence might be mediated by modulation of the drug-receptor interaction by intracellular calcium, transsarcolemmal or transsar-coplasmic reticulum membrane potential, or the state of a sarcoplasmic reticulum membrane calcium channel.