Mixing alcohol with benzos to increase the effect

[LethalDeinonychus]

Hi, rookie here.

I'm basically going through some issues right now and I'm trying my hardest to survive. Ironically, while trying I'm actually putting myself in danger, I am aware of that but it is what it is.

I would say I have high tolerance for most benzos; at one point I took 20mg of alprazolam and felt nothing special, although that probably isn't all that much to begin with. Maybe I'm just ignorant and lucky. In fact, I'd say I simply felt even more irritated than before I took all those. I did fall asleep at the end but no "blackouts" or anything dramatic.

Right now I'm taking 2mg of clonazepam (prescribed), I'll admit I don't at all use it as I'm supposed to because I'll down around 6 pills at once to try to knock myself out whenever something rough comes up. And it hasn't really been working so I'm guessing my body's kinda okay with me taking them at this point.

Today I took 6mg of clonazepam (because that's the only amount I had left at the moment) along with 5 beers and it partially worked - I did fall asleep but nothing too drastic happened. In fact, I got a phone call a couple of hours later and that was enough to wake me up.

Frustrated, I went and bought another 2l bottle of beer, drank it all within half an hour and took some fluphenazine I had leftover from when I was taking it daily - I think it was 4 milligrams. I know it's a totally different type of drug but I'm trying my best here.

I'm feeling drowsy, I experience some weird sensations I can't fully describe - my question is basically how far am I allowed to go given all this info to avoid not waking up? And, more importantly, how much mixing and dosing is enough to kill me? I realize it highly depends on the individual but I'm just looking for general input here. Because I want to just sleep, I don't want to deal with the world right now, but I realize killing myself would cause problems for others so I'll set it aside for now.

There's nobody around me to notice something going wrong, that's why I'm asking strangers.

Thanks in advance to anyone that answers.

 

[falsifiedhypothesi]

20mg of xanax is absolutely a lot, i don't mean to sound judgemental but you have to put this kind of use into perspective. Where do you have to go from this point if keep escalating your use? Alcohol and benzos isn't a solution to benzos alone not working anymore.

Like you said there's no hard rules for how much benzos and alcohol someone can handle before the OD. I'd like to give you some helpful advice regarding your limits but honestly anything i say is going to be widely speculative and i don't think other people's responses are going to be much better.

I don't usually like to take the stance of "just don't do it." I know that i can't stop people from doing what they want to do but when you are dealing with a mixture of downers known to kill people, and want to know how far you can push it, it really only leaves us with one reasonable answer.

I really hope you can find another way besides suicide or accidental OD, I wish you the best.

 

[LethalDeinonychus]

This is very true (speaking of both answers) and I realize my question is basically pointless, I'm just trying to set some boundaries. I'm not your typical drug abuser that will take anything offered to them just to feel a high and I refuse to be. I'm just literally at a point where I'll either end this altogether or try to somehow go through the situation, it's just that what I'm doing right now isn't helping - my options seem to be to keep taking more and more in hopes of achieving the results I'm hoping for and/or overdoing it and permanently solving the problem, if you know what I mean. I'd like to avoid the latter.

So what am I supposed to do when I start losing control if I can't even get a relief from your typical anxiety relieving drugs? I would like to know if combining benzos and alcohol will inevitably kill me, regardless of tolerance.

 

[falsifiedhypothesi]

Yes benzos and alcohol will eventually kill you. You might be able to keep it up for a while but eventually you'll hit a point where you are taking very toxic amounts of alcohol and still not getting anything out of it. Then there are the possible withdrawals of benzos and alcohol, if you were to withdrawal from both at the same time it would be a living nightmare if you managed to survive the experience.

I'd say you'd be better off just taking a higher dose of benzos because at least benzos won't kill you in overdose, at least not on their own.

I think alcohol is just going to add a new aspect to your suffering, not remedy it. I have no idea what you are going through but you seem to be a very kind person, thinking of the effect your death will cause on others.

There is always a chance for your situation to improve, for you to find new meaning in life. When i was suicidal it never felt like things could get better but i knew there was a chance that they could, that and the effect it would have on my friends/family kept me from acting. I didn't keep going for myself but for others, i'm sorry if this sounds like cheesy insight but i hope you can find something to live for that allows you to live without completely numbing yourself.

 

[aihfl]

Benzos and alcohol is bad bad news. Every time I've been arrested it's been on that combination. The best HR advice I personally can give is stick to whichever one you have the higher tolerance for. Combining the two only ever gave me mad blackouts where I woke up in jail. Both have their pros and cons. Benzodiazepine withdrawal is marginally worse than alcohol withdrawal but then alcohol poisoning is risker. But wds from both are as about equally shitty and coming off both simultaneously is beyond and I really mean beyond unpleasant. Only bad things have ever happened from me mixing this combination.

 

[LethalDeinonychus]

Sorry for replying after such a long time;

Basically, my "problem" is that I've never truly experienced any kind of severe withdrawal symptoms when dropping benzos or alcohol cold turkey. There were times when I was taking clonazepam or alprazolam - even mixed them - for months and months with other prescribed drugs, then for one reason or another stopped overnight in a literal sense and nothing special happened.
Okay, I did feel some weird sensations and I am prone to having full blown panic attacks that reappear randomly after stopping but, then again, that's one of the reasons I got prescribed in the first place so all in all.. Not that surprising.
After some time and experimenting, of course, I figured out it really was just my body craving the drug, but I was perfectly capable of ignoring it and within a day or two, the minor things would go away completely.
In fact, sometimes I deliberately stop taking any kind of benzos and alcohol for weeks or months at times JUST to decrease the tolerance a little bit so I could feel nice once again when I do restart. It's dumb because one must stay true to the therapy to feel relief but it doesn't actually do anything for me so it's whatever at this point. Naturally, within days I'm back to not feeling anything when taking huge doses.

As I'm writing this I'm drinking quickly and taking around 20mg of clonazepam, all at once. I know I'll get a little drunk, maybe I'll trip and lose my balance a bit when I try to stand up, eventually I'll fall asleep (my goal), wake up within 5-6 hours (although hopefully not) and that's it. I put my body through hell but it gets me through rough days. Like I said, I've never completely blacked out, woken up having no idea what I have done while I was "out" or anything like that.

I just don't know what to do anymore because I'm under too much pressure, I need some kind of vent, just a slight release and break from everything, but I feel like I'm forced to actually try taking a full bottle and double the amount of alcohol just to see what would happen. I mean, whatever does cannot possibly be worse than what I'm feeling right now; sometimes I feel like getting in trouble would even ease the pain a little and distract me for a while paradoxically.

Am I just a freak of nature or am I not really taking all that much to experience such severe blackouts and withdrawal syndromes?

 

[Chronicpain54]

Well, yes, you are a freak of nature lol. That dosage could OD 2 people with high tolerances. I'm not sure why it's not working for you other than oftentimes the higher your dose of benzos the more panic attacks you can have, and much worse attacks at that. That's one thought...

I would first check the obvious..do you know for a fact that your benzos are real? Years ago I got some valium that was not valium, and some xanax that didn't seem to have anything but fillers in it. They both had the proper markings. I took 9mgs of the xanax and threw them away- my tolerance was 1 mg of REAL xanax. I knew I had nothing or something toxic/not what it was supposed to be.

I believe if you drop your alcohol some first, then lower your benzos or take a break you might be better off.

Look, huge doses of both are not helping at all, so why keep doing it? No matter how much you think you can take, you will OD. Your body is only going to let you do this until it's toxic and then it will kill you. I'm scared to think of what your liver looks like. Both of my parents were alcoholics and they died young from complications. They didn't smoke pot or do any other drug. My dad was dead at my age and my children are just old enough to get married and have kids. My dad missed 17 grandchildren. Complications of alcohol are many, painful and not reversible after a point.

Maybe it isn't benzos that your body needs? They aren't working at any dose. Have you thought about asking a professional? You aren't feeling better taking these huge amounts so why do it? You could need another drug or no drug at all.

 

[LethalDeinonychus]

I know (at least I think) they work because after a period of abstinence they knock me out, even smaller doses (4-6mg). By that I mean put me to somewhat decent sleep. Could be placebo, I really don't know.
Plus to make things clearer, I get them all perfectly legally, so I hope they sell the real thing and not just sugar pills.

And look at now - I took freaking 20mg of clonazepam with alcohol a few hours ago, and I'm still awake. I'm drowsy but perfectly sane and rational. It's driving me crazy.

I went to numerous professionals. The thing that keeps happening is that they all have their own opinion and every time they look at my previous therapy they immediately start with "no, no, no.." and prescribe something else - I guess whichever pharmaceutical company pays them more to sell their drugs or something. I don't really ask for second opinions often but when I do I always, always get something else.

I'm tired of it, honestly. And the thing is I do feel slightly better after taking huge amounts but the way I use it (wrongly in reality) is, when I can't deal with life, I take more and more until finally I fall asleep. Although, long term - yeah, they don't do anything to make my life better. It's pointless but what advice would you give to someone that spends hours thinking "I can't do this anymore, this is it, death is the only way out o this"? It feels pretty helpless, I need at least something.

As for liver and all, I did some blood tests maybe a year ago and they came out fine - AST, ALT, bilirubin all fine. I'm aware that inevitably I will destroy it if I keep up with this, though.

It's just that it comes down to this or suicide, that's the burning issue. I don't know what will kill me first at this point.

 

[Coolwhip]

There comes a point where benzo tolerance reaches a point that higher doses barely do anything extra, you end up taking 500% the dose to get 25% more effects; probably has something to do with their action as PAMs. The only thing you accomplish by taking higher doses is making sure you can't use benzo's therapeutically in the future. I imagine your issues keep arising because you keep escalating the dose until you can "feel" the benzo working. There's a window where you can still get therapeutic effects out of benzos without really feeling them but its a struggle to keep that window open and the moment your start chasing a buzz or a guaranteed KO it slams shut.

Honestly, I think you should probably taper off benzos and seek other means of treatment, as one day with your dosage pattern, you will end up having a seizure; if anything I think the fact that you have yet to experience WD means this is more likely to happen rather than less, as you are going to be cavalier about taking large doses then stopping abruptly; you should never do this no matter how confident you are that it will go well.

With that said, if you are going to continue to use them, perhaps taking a tolerance break and then begin with again strictly regimented use. Don't mix with alcohol, don't redose, don't use 24 hours a day, and absolutely keep the dose as low as possible. You may have to just say goodbye to the warmth of a benzo buzz, but perhaps this way you can actually still get some value out of them if used alongside strict sleep hygiene.

And besides dangerous, mixing benzos with alcohol will increase your tolerance exponentially rendering benzos alone completely ineffective.