Posted by joe schmoe on February 22, 2013, at 16:50:34
In reply to Alcohol and benzo cross tolerance, posted by joe schmoe on February 18, 2013, at 16:48:37
I wrote a long post which unfortunately got deleted in a purge of some posts by someone else (and all replies to them). I will try to remember what I said. Something along these lines:
I now suspect strongly that the reason clonazepam pooped out for me is because I developed a daily drinking habit after discovering craft beer. I think this caused me to have "tolerance withdrawals" to clonazepam as my tolerance to it grew, since I can remember having unpleasant anxiety attacks in bed late at night, after drinking, when I was subject to no social pressure (I take clonazepam for social anxiety).
No one, neither a psychiatrist nor a medicine insert, ever said anything to me about alcohol being able to lower the efficacy of my clonazepam. A lot of medicines have generic-sounding "don't drink alcohol while taking this medication" warnings, but they seldom say the reason, other than the equally generic "the two can have a synergistic effect, leading to respiratory depression or automobile accidents." Well I drink at home, so drunk driving is not an issue, and experimentation showed that if anything, alcohol affected me less while on benzos than it did before. So I tend to ignore such warnings, unless my research reveals a real danger (like liver damage).
I really wish someone had warned me that alcohol use could make a benzo poop out.
Generic warnings about alcohol are a disservice, I think, since it is the only legal intoxicant available to most of us. Saying "no alcohol" to someone on psych meds for life is essentially a life sentence of "no intoxication." I consider this quite a serious thing to say, given that intoxication has been called "the fourth drive" (along with self-preservation, food, and sex) and a lifetime without it is a serious loss in and of itself. In addition alcohol, a relaxant, has significant stress reduction functions in our society - some doctors think that is the mechanism behind moderate drinking's ability to lower heart disease risk - and its relaxing properties make it especially valuable to people who suffer with anxiety. Don't tell me not to drink and not give me a specific reason why. I wonder how many other anxiety patients are drinking and not realizing it is lowering the effectiveness of their benzo meds?
Another valuable function of alcohol is to facilitate meeting romantic or sexual partners. I find meeting people to be extraordinarily stressful as it is - at least booze is available to lower people's inhibitions and break the ice in a public setting (and hopefully later in a private setting). Again it is quite serious to me to tell an anxious person they shouldn't drink alcohol - with all the social, romantic and sexual problems such a loss will cause - without telling them why.
At this point I am down to 1/8 of my previous clonazepam dosage and I want to see what life is like off the stuff, since I think it is affecting my memory and cognition. So I will finish the taper and try life off of it for awhile to see how bad it is. After being on it over a decade, I think I need a breather, especially since it isn't doing its job anymore and I can't afford to be cognitively impaired since my job depends on my mind.
In the course of researching this subject I also came across references to "acute tolerance" or tolerance to alcohol which one develops in the course of a single drinking session. This concept was also an eye-opener, as it seemed to me that often the first few beers were the best ones and further drinking was a futile attempt to chase the feelings of relaxation caused by the initial drinks. Now I know there is some basis to this idea, and in fact it causes some people to drink too much as they try to "recapture the feeling" of that initial relaxation and euphoria of the first few drinks.
poster:joe schmoe
thread:1038353
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20130222/msgs/1038680.html