Neuroscience Short acting vs long acting benzos - what are the comparative dangers?

[fairnymph]

A shit ton, I've experimented with it. Actually I agree with you - the sedation isn't the same level of sedation as, I dunno... one of the RC knockouts, or some others I just can't think the name of right now. I guess I was moreso comparing to the other 2 I mentioned - it's cognitively impairing though, acutely, in a way that exceeds either of the other 2. And actually yes - I get you on that "next day glow" thing. Although actually having said I've experimented, diazepam really just used to be my go-to for ending binges on other drugs, so I'd mostly just sleep after the cocaine binge and wake up feeling blissed as fuck and order pizza and sit around all day. I have not actually done anything to test the cognitive impairment of the metabolites once the acutely sedating phase has passed... I'm probably not going to though, it's just too long acting, I just don't think long duration drugs have been good for me. Well, long duration benzos. If clonazepam is cognitively dulling long-term (thanks @Deru / GPT-o1 for confirming that suspicion) then diazepam probably is too. Sadly.

As far as your last sentence - healthy lifestyle, etc - yeah. Certainly that is true. There's probably no magic pill here like I'm relentlessly searching for. I just need to embrace the suffering for a while.

Thanks for the reply! Let’s hope I’m not cognitively impaired - I could always get IQ tested again I suppose - but I’m pretty hopeful because my brain chemistry is so weird and I’m a super metaboliser. And my memory is still extremely accurate and vivid. Exactly what cognitive changes have you noticed in yourself?

 

[Vastness]

Exactly what cognitive changes have you noticed in yourself?

Heh well admittedly I've very much muddied the waters with concurrent stimulant use and dissociative (ab)use although I've used a fairly tiny amount of dissociatives the last 2 years now so maybe I can kinda stop thinking about that. With diazepam primarily though I notice just a high abundance of small errors, lil typos and misspelled words and shit if I read over anything I've written the next day or maybe a few days later. Also although all benzos have the potential to make me a little bit manic I think there's a kinda hard-to-quantify impairment of memory and planning, in that I seem to start a lot of projects and have a whole bunch of ideas and then abandon perhaps all of them and when I try to return to them not have much memory of what I was doing or trying to do or motivation to work on them. This happens with clonazepam too I think in a perhaps more subtle way in that it does make me manic but I can sometimes implement that mania productively enough to make progress in some areas... I dunno though, honestly I do wonder how much of that impairment is actually drug induced and how much of it is a kinda drug-guilt and constant yoyoing between medicating and self-forced-abstinence. Definitely though the dexamphetamine usage I think has been extremely muddying of those waters. Actually that's probably the primary impairing factor right now, moreso than any benzo.

But the aforementioned benzo-impairment I think is certainly at least somewhat real, although I wouldn't be certain it's necessarily true for everyone. I do think though that given the known sobriety-delusion-inducing properties of most benzos though, there is probably also a competence-delusion which is present in a far larger percentage of users than those who believe themselves to be affected in this way - for a whole bunch of reasons which I'm sure most people who've used benzos more than a few times can appreciate independently of whether or not they consider themselves to be affected. How much it actually matters to anything might be pretty difficult to quantify, as is to the extent it is actually happening - if at all.

 

[fairnymph]

Heh well admittedly I've very much muddied the waters with concurrent stimulant use and dissociative (ab)use although I've used a fairly tiny amount of dissociatives the last 2 years now so maybe I can kinda stop thinking about that. With diazepam primarily though I notice just a high abundance of small errors, lil typos and misspelled words and shit if I read over anything I've written the next day or maybe a few days later. Also although all benzos have the potential to make me a little bit manic I think there's a kinda hard-to-quantify impairment of memory and planning, in that I seem to start a lot of projects and have a whole bunch of ideas and then abandon perhaps all of them and when I try to return to them not have much memory of what I was doing or trying to do or motivation to work on them. This happens with clonazepam too I think in a perhaps more subtle way in that it does make me manic but I can sometimes implement that mania productively enough to make progress in some areas... I dunno though, honestly I do wonder how much of that impairment is actually drug induced and how much of it is a kinda drug-guilt and constant yoyoing between medicating and self-forced-abstinence. Definitely though the dexamphetamine usage I think has been extremely muddying of those waters. Actually that's probably the primary impairing factor right now, moreso than any benzo.

But the aforementioned benzo-impairment I think is certainly at least somewhat real, although I wouldn't be certain it's necessarily true for everyone. I do think though that given the known sobriety-delusion-inducing properties of most benzos though, there is probably also a competence-delusion which is present in a far larger percentage of users than those who believe themselves to be affected in this way - for a whole bunch of reasons which I'm sure most people who've used benzos more than a few times can appreciate independently of whether or not they consider themselves to be affected. How much it actually matters to anything might be pretty difficult to quantify, as is to the extent it is actually happening - if at all.

My bet is that the dex is responsible for most of the impairment since we know amphetamines can be neurotoxic. But of course every brain reacts differently. I’ve never gotten any type of mania on benzos except for maybe alprazolam which I’ve only tried once because it almost gave me a panic attack. But a panic attack is not exactly mania. I don’t seem to experience mania.

I definitely have noticed short term cognitive impairment from clonazepam but I’ve never used it regularly enough to observe anything more. When I take regular breaks from diazepam to keep my tolerance down I don’t notice any difference - BUT my pain and sleep are so much worse off diazepam and those could obviously explain why I don’t see a difference. But I should be off diazepam for many months if not longer soon, without pain, so we’ll see what happens then.