No, it's not. It's a completely different animal. Seizures from alcohol withdrawal only occur in people drinking large amounts and the PAWS from alcohol is not even in the same ballpark as serious benzo withdrawal, unless again you are talking about people consuming ungodly amounts (and even then Ive never heard of alcoholic suffering severe protracted withdrawal 5 years sober the way some benzo users do).
The comparison I was making was between moderate alcohol use (usually defined as one or two drinks per day) but up to a few beers let's say and daily therapeutic benzo usage levels like 1.5 miligrams of klonopin per day. The harms of benzos are vastly greater than the harms of alcohol in this case.
With alcohol, the toxic effects are extremely dose related. I regard alcohol as a relatively safe and benign substance at low doses, but the dangers rise exponentially as the dose rises and so large amounts are extremely harmful. Benzos on the other hand, are relatively safe and benign when used sporadically or for a very short time (often even in large doses), but the dangers rise exponentionally when they are taken daily for any extended period.
So with benzos, it's the length of usage that is the biggest determining factor whereas with alcohol it's the dose.
If you doubt what I am telling you is true just do some research on benzo withdrawal. You will entire websites like benzobuddies filled with people trying to recover from these drugs. They often have to taper for months or years and then spend months or years recovering after that and some never fully recover. I withdrew from benzos 10 years ago and it was horrendous, I won't even go into what those drugs did to me.
You just don't see this with alcohol. I challenge you to find me even one person who became ill for years because they stopped drinking their nightly glass of wine. Remember alcohol is one of the most commonly used substances on the planet, there are far more alcohol users than benzo users. If alcohol was causing effects like this the internet should be full of people complaining about how their brain is ruined because they stopped having a couple beers after work. You never see it.
I guess the takeaway is if you want to avoid the harms of benzos, only use them sporadically and if you want to avoid the harms of alcohol only use low doses, though it can be safely used more frequently than benzos as long as you stick to low to moderate doses.
The bolded is NOT true.
I've been told by doctors at a hospital that length of usage of benzos is irrelevant and only the dosage, so long as it is regularly, is what makes the danger.
You are right that the risk of WD is worse with regular low dose benzo use than regular low dose alcohol use, but other than that, in pretty much all other ways alcohol is more dangerous and I don't see how you can argue otherwise.
Again, overdose from alcohol whereas overdose from benzos doesn't happen without mixing in other drugs, liver damage from alcohol and not benzos, cancers relating to alcohol and not benzos, and still alcohol also being bad for the brain as well.
There are more negatives to alcohol use in equal proportion than to benzo use in equal proportion, other than the necessity of a taper for benzo use that may not be necessary for alcohol use.
I also know I was lucky, VERY lucky, but I withdrew from benzos after 10 years of use with no signs of WD. It might have been a fluke, but it was the case.
Overall, alcohol is just more dangerous in more ways.
While the internet is not full of people getting so much horrendous WD from alcohol as they do benzos, I am sure you can find statistics on yearly deaths related to alcohol as MASSIVELY exceeded yearly deaths due to alcohol use.
Alcohol is one of the biggest killers worldwide. You will never see the numbers of actual deaths attributed to benzo use as the number of deaths attributed to alcohol use.
I'll take even the worse WD over death, so if benzos = worse WD and too much booze = death, then for me.... benzos + worse WD >>> Alcohol + liver disease and death