Maybe its alcohol+benzo cross tolerance
I don't know too much about that tbh, but I think it's unlikley. Although both substances act on GABA, and benzos can be used for acute alcohol w/ds for severe alcoholics, so they must at least partially hit the same receptors in the same way.
I've never really seen any accounts of cross tolerance that I can recall though. My personal experience is that during 3-4 months of furlough I cut down my benzo use massively and reset my tolerance in the process.
I was drinking heavily in the evenings during that period though, but that did not raise my benzo tolerance. Quite the opposite as I mentioned, I virtually reset my benzo tolerance back to zero, IIRC. Although the drink may have acted as as a subsitute and made it easier to reduce the benzos during that period..
When furlough ended I was able to go back to work feeling comfortable on a much lower dose of bzs. And the heavy drinking stopped or reduced then too.
It seems to me that it's probably quite a complicated relationship between the 2 things and how they cross over and affect GABA in the brain.
And not something that I have the motivation or energy to try to look into understand further, at this stage tbh. I rarely drink these days so it's not going to be an issue for me any time soon.
