Drug info - Benzodiazepines Cross Tolerant?

[faren1]

SWIM has a great tolerance to diazepam (was once affected by 15mg now barely notices 70mg) and clonezepam which he is currently prescribed (she started taking large doses of clonezepam when it was first prescribed to her and now also require quite large doses but recently she has begun to trade her clonezepam for alprozolam which she has heard is a favorite of many of her ferret friends. SWIM received 5 2mg bars and usually took them in combination with coming down from DXM or amphetamines or various other drugs but had 2 bars left today and consumed one on an empty stomach (2mg) and barely felt any enjoyable effects just a little sleepyness. SWIM was wondering if her tolerance to other benzos could be affected her tolerance to xanax.

[Solinari]

Definitely, a tolerance for one benzodiazepine will give you tolerance for another, in fact i have heard (can't say if it's 100% true or not) that it will even cause tolerance for barbiturates as well.

[faren1]

SWIM thinks that's pretty lame. Does tolerance go down over time significantly? SWIM is thinking of taking a break from benzos for a few months, will SWIM get the effects she once felt back from smaller doses?

[Solinari]

Yea it goes down after time but i imagine there will still be some tolerance. Depends how long the break is, the longer the better obviously but if some one is taking them daily for a while (few weeks is enough) then there will be the issue of dependence so withdrawal will have to be managed.

[Laudaphun]

Benzo cross tolerance is indeed a confusing matter as some can give you a tolerance very quickly while others cause it to happen more gradually. SWIM can illustrate a good example of this. The only benzo SWIM had taken for almost 2 years was 30mg temazepam capsules. SWIM only very rarely exceeded 60mg (2 pills) and never took them for longer periods of time than say 10 days straight... or perhaps 2-3 days with a day or two off. The reason being is that temazepam causes tolerance by far faster than any other benzo SWIM has consumed.

So anyways, SWIM was at a max of 60mg temazepam dosage per day... keeping in mind that this was NOT everyday over the course of these 2 years, in fact SWIM was not dependent on them. So, swim gets a bottle of 2mg alprazolam pills (bars). To SWIM's surprise, they had no effect... Even 2 pills (4mg alprazolam) had no euphoric effect. SWIM was at this point just trying them out, not actually using them for therapeutic issues as of yet. This really confused SWIM as 4mg alprazolam should be a much stronger dose than the max dose of 60mg temazepam to which he normally felt quite nice from. SWIM ended up with 8mg and no (alprazolam-feeling). 8mg is a dose that got her friend kicked out of school in the 9th grade and taken to the hospitol for an overdose. SWIM's conclusion was that somehow these must be counterfeit pills as it should not be possible for him to take that high of a dose with no feeling. Almost ready to call the pharmacy and tell them something was wrong with their pills, SWIM broke one of the pills in half (1mg alprazolam) and gave it to a friend who was not accustomed to taking benzos very often. This friend verified that it was indeed alprazolam and all of 1mg.

SWIM, now convinced that it was her own body chemistry that was just messed up stopped taking the temazepam and began taking a single 2mg alprazolam pill each night. After a few days, he started to feel the old familiar (alprazolam-feeling). None of this made any sense to SWIM, but the temazepam must have created much higher tolerance to certain aspects of benzo effects than others. Even now, taking temazpam in place of alprazolam for a single night or two will cause alprazolam to lose it's kick for the next day or two. SWIM finds it best to try and limit temazepam use... well actually she tries to limit use of all bezons, trying to not use a stronger one in situations where a milder one would suffice.

On another strange note, and while SWIM now understands why moreso than she once did, chlordiazepoxide which seemed very weak especially in comparison to temazepam would render a normal dose of temazepam unnoticeable if taken in any significant amount or duration prior to temazepam dosing. Now that SWIM's chlordiazepoxide has been replaced with clonazepam, this is not an issue. Chlordiazepoxide with no less than 5 active metabolites turned out to be effective with regular dosing, but unpredictable.

I will save my preaching on the unpleasant nature of the withdrawl from these drugs as that's the first thing that most think of when you say the word benzo.