Benzos Why are shorter-acting benzos said to be more dependence-causing / addictive?

[Swimmingdancer]

The title sums it up. I don't mean mentally addictive, I can understand that, but why do so many people say shorter-acting benzos cause physical dependence much faster than longer-acting benzos? Is it just if people take them more often? For example taking ~1mg lorazepam once a day should not be cause dependence more rapidly than taking ~0.5-1mg clonazepam once a day, should it? I don't understand. To me it seems like a longer-acting benzo would cause dependence faster because you would constantly have a benzo in your system and be affected by it more of the time than with a shorter-lasting benzo.

 

[laugh]

straight away i thought alpazolam/xanax. shit gives pretty fucking nasty phsical withdrawals like seizures and death. alpraz dependency can occur pretty bloody quickly too from my understanding and eperience. nasty shit when abused.

 

[plague66]

Generally, I think it really is that way. Maybe It is because Xanax and the likes have rapid onset and leave your system quickly, so you feel the need to take more after some time and hasn't it always been this way, that drugs that hit you the fastest and wear off quickly are the most addictive (3-methylfentanyl and Xanax in my case).

When I was taking Xanax, 3x1mg a day because the half life was 6 hours to cope with my anxiety and let's say I missed a morning dose. I could already feel it after 2 hours of the time I usually took it, the slight withdrawals/uneasy feeling creeping on and I had HELL coming off Xanax. Its meant for acute panic attacks but not for maintaining ur anxiety daily IMO.

Now I am on Clonazepam which many people regard much stronger than Xanax, it has a half life of 18-50 hours.
I take 2mg every morning (sometimes at night too, I am currently tapering Suboxone) and I can skip days without feeling any withdrawal, and coming off Clonazepam is basically a walk in the park for me. I have done it like 3 times after taking it for like a year every time and then having a few months pause.

When I am coming off Clonazepam I first start to skip days, take Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday... then second week I already reduced my dose to 1/2 (1mg), still taking every other day and next week or even earlier I take a quarter 1/4 every other day and then I just stop. And all these times I have never felt withdrawal, maybe just a little bit higher blood pressure and some anxiety and thats it. I have even done it not even reducing dose after a week, but cutting it half every 3 days and results are the same. Walk in the park really.

 

[aussie101]

Because they hit you hard and then get out of your system. I developed a nasty xanax panic/sweat last year every time i woke up. Thank fuck im off that shit... Stuff actually did more harm than good for me, im much more suited to longer acting benzos currently, but my aim is to be benzo free soon as possible.

I'm on valium twice a day now and don't feel nearly as dependent on that, its not like i wake up sweating until i have it.

 

[brutus]

I've always wondered this same exact way and I have yet to hear a reasonable explanation because I always found longer acting drugs to be more addicting IME.

 

[pasha]

Even though this doesn't fully answer your questions it's an interesting read nonetheless:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&...&sig=AHIEtbR1uKkrvzZO5HIZ6DegsN6Gul2aAw&pli=1

I think it's mostly that shorter acting benzodiazepines have a much faster onset than the longer acting ones and are usually more potent, if something provides you with faster and more potent effects, the likely hood of repeating it are much higher, in turn causing dependence faster. Also, where as 1 milligram of alprazolam can last you a short period of time, clonazepam can last you a much longer period of time, at equipotent doses. So the probable scenario is people using shorter acting benzodiazepines will take multiple doses per day, where as those taking longer acting benzodiazepines will take one or maybe two doses per day.

I think kindling may play a huge part as well, the constant neuroadaptations from continuous activation/deactivation of GABA can create a malfunction in this system.

 

[LonE1]

Simple, because xanax and ativan half short half lifes, and you hit you harder, and give me alot more incentive to keep popping. Also when i have high anxiety and panic and pop a xanax, ill feel fine, but when it wears off, at for me, my anxiety is WORSE so i keep popping. I cant stop myself with xanax and ativan. Klonopin will last almost all day and os very stready and i dont or feel the need to keep popping.

 

[Crashing]

Maybe other than psychological reasons, it's because you wear out your receptors faster when you increase the rate of administration of something. The same way any physical key and lock can wear out or become overbored with overuse, like a vagina. Same with cannabis vs synthetic cannabinoids.

 

[ferinox]

I think people on long acting benzos are prob more dependent on them but it doesn't necessarily feel like they are bc the WD from short acting benzos hits fast and hard. I used to abuse benzos and I can take a short acting benzo once in a rare while and get away with. If I take a 3 mg clonazepam dose, I do feel rebound about a week after that single dose which last a week after it starts. A week of very mild benzo rebound def isn't worth a single day of anxiety relief. During my first benzo experience before I started taking large doses, I took .25 mg of xanax daily for a week and I felt WD from that. If I had taken diazepam for a week I most likely wouldn't have felt anything since levels decline far more gently. I just think people are more likely to notice the WD from shorter acting benzos faster than if they were taking longer acting ones. People could notice inter-dose wd from a short acting benzo within a couple weeks where they wouldn't have those inter-dose WDs from a long acting benzo.

Another illusion might be tolerance building slower to longer acting benzos when in reality it's just bc long acting benzos levels build and build and build in your blood stream where a steady state is achieved much faster with short acting benzos.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

Thanks for all your input everyone

So the conclusion I'm coming to is that it's likely that the reasons people say shorter-acting benzos are more dependence-causing or create dependence faster are psychological factors such as being more mentally addicting, taking the shorter-acting ones more often, withdrawals once one is dependent setting in more rapidly with shorter-acting benzos compared to more gradually with longer-acting benzos, and longer-acting ones being easier to taper with, etc. Not that taking an equivalent dose of a shorter-acting benzo once a day would actually be any more physically dependence-causing than taking a longer-acting one once a day (in fact my assumption would be that it would be less so, for example with opioids taking IR morphine once a day would cause less dependence than taking methadone once a day).

 

[RobotRipping]

etizolam is similar to xanax but does not cause near the rebound effects that xanax causes (something to do with high affinity for one of the subtypes on the gaba-a receptor), so it's not necessarily the case that shorter acting benzos/gabaergics create more of a dependency which leads to addiction, i think it has to do with the way they (benzos/gabaergics) bind to the gaba-a receptor and its subtypes. I'm not a pharmacologist by any means but this is what i gathered from reading about etizolam the other day.

it's hard to separate the psychological from the physical, they are both working at the same time. I agree that it's easier to get dependent on long acting benzos than short acting if you take them once a day. IE. phenazepam once a day for a 2 weeks will give you a dependence, whereas something like alprazolam once a day will not do this, though you will experience rebound symptoms.

lorazepam has a medium half life at 8-16 hours or something, so it's in the middle and the withdrawals from lorazepam feel like that as well. My worst withdrawal was from phenazepam, etizolam wasn't nearly as bad and lorazepam was easier as well, then diazepam is also not a terrible withdrawal, so i think it's more to do with receptor affinity than anything else. but that's just anecdotal evidence there, basically, i have no idea.

 

[Swimmingdancer]

etizolam is similar to xanax but does not cause near the rebound effects that xanax causes (something to do with high affinity for one of the subtypes on the gaba-a receptor), so it's not necessarily the case that shorter acting benzos/gabaergics create more of a dependency which leads to addiction, i think it has to do with the way they (benzos/gabaergics) bind to the gaba-a receptor and its subtypes. I'm not a pharmacologist by any means but this is what i gathered from reading about etizolam the other day.

Yes, that's a factor to consider to, that it may depend on the specific benzo and it's unique mechanism of action (receptor subtypes and what-not) as opposed to just a generalization based on how long it's effects last and half-life is.