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Benzos Benzodiazepines vs. Alcohol - which is more damaging to your health?

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Two different discussions going on here..

Physiologically, alcohol is much worse on your system (assuming abusing both). Taken as prescribed or in moderation, most will have few ill effects. Alcohol is very hard on your body and organs.

Dependency, much easier to achieve with benzos. That is probably the only negative I can think to this discussion.

Societal implications: Which drug causes more deaths? Which drug is associated with the most violent crime? Which drug is associated with the most incarceration? Which drug is associated with the most rape? If you answered A for Alcohol you are correct!

Benzos are a bitch to come off of, as is alcohol if you become addicted. But for physiological problems alcohol harms not only your brain in significant ways, but also your liver. As others pointed out, the mg dose of a pure chemical will have ill effect on body and brain function (unless we are talking years of chronic dependency/abuse).
 
I'd say alcohol is more dangerous to be addicted to.

Benzos, without knowledge, are easier to OD on if you have no tolerance. Plenty of people die to alprozolam. Especially kids.

I call alcohol the "ugly" drug.

Why?
Number One Reason: It's a macronutrient by itself. Roughly 7kcal/g. MOST alcoholic drinks are going to be combined with some form of carbohydrate to mask the horrible alcohol taste. After a night of drinking, a person could easily consume anywhere from 700-1,800+ useless kCALs. This isn't including your drunk-munchies.

2) People who overdose normally puke, piss, and wallow in their own filth.

3) It is both an afrodisiac and a dissociative. People will screw people and things they normally would not.

4) It's also said to prevent the regrowth of muscle tissue during the duration in which your body is pushing itself to filter it through your system. While your body will still rebuild itself later, it does have minor effects on muscular growth. Alcoholic addiction will eventually lead to muscular deterioration, however this is in ADDICTION cases. Not recreational binge drinking.


Alcohol is a great drug, a hard drug and an ugly drug.

However I do consider it to be in the top 3 best social drugs. The other two are stimulants ;)
 
Whether your drunk or just high on xanax... your still a sloppy mess. I'm fairly young so I haven't been able to see damaging effects of alcohol in me or my friends. However I can say I've seen Xanax screw up a handful of people's lives. That being said I'm sure xanax doesn't stand for all benzodiazepines but I believe it's a far more addicting drug than ethol Alcohol.
 
^^benzos aren't easy to OD on, if you mean by OD, dying from the effects of the drug. Sure kids may take too much black out and kill themselves accidentally, but it's not the same. It's hard to OD on benzos. Far more people die from alcohol each year. Both are terrible for you in different ways, no point in comparing them.
 
Not sure i can really answer the "which is more damaging to your health as it would depend on usage.

What i can say it that it took me 5-6 years of alcohol use to get a really nasty habit worked up, last year I had to finally face up to the stupid amount if Whiskey I was drinking every night and have relapsed couple of times since.

This year I started on the benzos and in combination with the alcohol things very quickly got out of hand, 100mgs + of Diaz a day plus the booze within just a few weeks.

The shear quantity of alcohol going through your system (of you have a problem) must be causing more harm than the Benzos but in the longer term the Benzos have a much,much greater addiction potential that is so much more difficult to control....IME
 
burn out said:
The people who say alcohol is worse are simply ignorant of the effects of benzodiazepines. Benzos are much more harmful. Just visit some benzo forums, countless examples of people who have not taken benzos for years and are still suffering immensely from their ill effects. This is not the case with alcohol. Any damage done to the brain or body by alcohol can heal up much more quickly than the damage done by benzos. If you visit alcohol forums, you find many people struggling with cravings for it and struggling to stay sober but you don't find anyone who only drank for a few months and is suffering major withdrawal after a year of being sober.
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I am clearly being ignorant of the effects of benzodiazepines. More than couple of mine friends or family have damaged or even killed their self with alcohol. I have been visiting more than few mental hospitals and I have never seen anyone there because of using few months of benzodiazepines. You can kill yourself with booze in one sitting. I have seen several alcohol induced seizures, never from trams or xanax (am by no means underestimating anything). Don’t compare someone abusing benzodiazepines and someone sipping wine few glasses a day as directed by our society.
 
Alcohol is more harmful than benzos, but ultimately they are harmful in different ways.

Firstly, alcohol is toxic - it is physiologically destructive and causes actual degeneration in the brain and liver. People get lesions and suffer brain damage from alcohol consumption. Benzos are not toxic and are in fact very safe physiologically - it is very hard to OD on benzos.

Secondly, alcohol is harmful in itself at high enough doses. The harm that comes with benzos usually results from their discontinuation. So it misses the point of the argument to point at someone who's just kicked benzos and say "look at him, he's so anxious and depressed he can barely function", because these symptoms are not caused by the benzo but by its discontinuation.
 
So we HAVE to talk about which is WORSE for your health - not which is BETTER for your fun-tickler??

I say booze because it can be fun on its own, whereas benzos are really only occasionally fun by themselves. Exceptions to this are xanax, rohypnol and temazepam. Xanax is not really fun but strangely and horribly addictive, very easily leading to overdose. The other two are hypnotics which feel great, but their fun factor wears off after a week max. Booze can stay fun for ever [apparently]. HOWEVER, mixing benzos OR booze with pot is veeery fun, especially benzos IMO - leads to an almost opiate-like mix of sedation and euphoria.
 
these ppl saying benzos are worse. thats BS
id rather the w/d from taking 40mg of valium a day for a week than one night out drinking 1/2 a case of beer
drinking a 6 pack of beer a day for a month would give u worse w/d tha taking 20mg of valium every day for a month

valium is so much cleaner & no no hangover.


benzos should be allowed to be precribed. an average of 10mg a day of valium isnt gunna be harmful. & ya can always taper.
valium legal to buy otc in china but not xanax & only 2mg tans. i also heard dhc is sold over the couner too just by itself. unbeleivable. i rekon a high dose of that would be as euphoric or even more so than oxy.
 
Generally, ethanol is way more damaging than benzodiazepines but it doesn't make benzodiazepines healthy. It's long story very very short.
 
Thank you for all the replies! I plan on showing this thread to some people I've met who look down on me for taking alprazolam....while they are getting "trashed" every other night or drinking a shit load twice a weAk.
 
Skelu said:
I am clearly being ignorant of the effects of benzodiazepines. More than couple of mine friends or family have damaged or even killed their self with alcohol. I have been visiting more than few mental hospitals and I have never seen anyone there because of using few months of benzodiazepines. You can kill yourself with booze in one sitting. I have seen several alcohol induced seizures, never from trams or xanax (am by no means underestimating anything). Don’t compare someone abusing benzodiazepines and someone sipping wine few glasses a day as directed by our society.
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I am comparing prescribed daily doses of benzos to similar amounts of alcohol (such as perhaps 3-6 beers a day). In cases like this, the benzos are going to be much more difficult to recover from if taken for any length of time. I know that alcohol is an extremely dangerous drug, especially when abused at high levels. I used to be an alcoholic. But the reason that benzos take the cake is that they cause brain damage even when taken at what seem like reasonable levels, such as one nightly dose for sleep.

Alcohol is more toxic to your organs but as long as you don't drink to the point where you have one or more organs near failure, most if not all the damage done can heal if you simply stop drinking. Benzo damage on the other hand, doesn't heal nearly as quickly or as easily.
 
etnies said:
Thank you for all the replies! I plan on showing this thread to some people I've met who look down on me for taking alprazolam....while they are getting "trashed" every other night or drinking a shit load twice a weAk.
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I don't use either anymore but as a former addict of both, I will tell you that taking alrazolam is much more harmful to your brain than getting trashed even every single night. I still deal with serious cognitive and emotional issues now two years clean after an alpraz addiction. When I came off my alcohol addiction, I had no cognitive problems at all.

I didn't want to believe the truth about benzos either. It seemed so absurd to me that a drug so commonly prescribed could be so harmful (far more harmful to the brain than any street drug) and yet all the bad things you read about benzos and benzo withdrawal are true.
 
ControlDenied said:
ruin your pathetic drop-out serial-killing existence ;) trust me I KNOW!
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No, you don't know....YDKS. if you knew, you'd know that this is from a song by "Eminem" and it says:

smoke weed, take pills, drop out of school, kill people and drink. Notice how I left out "and drink"

fucking crumb'
 
I think a lot of bluelighters are bias, because Alcohol is legal and benzos are not 100% legal. Seems a common tendency to side with illegal drugs.

I've been physically addicted to benzos. The addiction is definitely much faster and easier to slip into than alcohol addiction. I've gone a month or longer of heavy drinking constantly (4-5 times a week), and had no cravings to drink afterward.

But after 2 months of Klonopin I felt horrible stress and anxiety the moment I came off the medication. It took a good week before the symptoms subsided and I was back to normal.
 
Alcohol is more dangerous by far.

Benzos are relatively safe if they are not abused too much (the addiction can be fatal) as they are much safer than their older counterparts, the barbiturates, and very difficult to overdose on by themselves.

Combining benzos with alcohol or other depressants though could lead to blackouts and other problems. I almost always have retrograde amnesia to some extents when combining the two.

Nevertheless, comparing apples to oranges, benzos are safer than alcohol for comparable mental effects though the synchronicity between the two states is not exact and depends on dosage, body state, type of benzo, and other extenuating factors.
 
I think it's time to close this. There's a lot of speculation for what is scientifically known. Alcohol is more dangerous in addiction and withdrawal. Benzos are potentially addicting in a much shorter period of time and have a serious withdrawal as well. Which of these is worse? That depends on your definition of worse.
 
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