Benzos Benzos overdose and potential brain damage.

[GM valed]

So first of all i am an amateur in regards of benzos and i overdosed on 16mg flunitrazepam and 10mg alprazolam.Since then i have noticed a decline in my focus and brain efficiency.Is it possible to cause permanent brain damage that way?

 

[white55]

How long ago was that? If it was just a few days you still have some benzos and their active metabolites in your blood which can easily explain your problems since you are still a bit under the influence (even if you don't feel high anymore)..... if it was a long time ago that shouldn't be an issue...

Acute benzo ods aren't supposed to cause lasting damage (unless you stopped breathing and your brain was deprived from oxygen for more than a few minutes in which case there probably is some lasting damage.... but that shouldn't happen from benzos alone (again there's a huge variability here so it's not impossible that some people) so you should be back to normal eventually, but there's a huge amount of variability from person to person in this with some people can take a very long time and some are back to normal in a few days (both are outliers especially when talking about one time use and the debate about lasting damage from long term benzo use isn't really settled with some saying it's completely reversible given enough time (which can be years) and others saying that some of the damage is permanent (and I bet there's a lot of variability here too)).

tl;dr without knowing how long ago did this happened and if you actually stopped breathing the question is impossible to answer and if you never stopped breathing you should be back to normal eventually but how long will it take is hard to say + there's the whole issue of with cognitive deficits being hard to measure on your own since you might not notice them even if you have them and you might feel like you have them even if you don't (and the more you think about having them the more you'll believe you have them so it's kind of a self reinforcing loop). The fact that you were never tested for them before so your baseline is unknown doesn't help either since even if tests now say you are normal the definition of normal is very wide so a small drop could still leave you in the normal zone

 

[crisler]

If you did not stop breathing and wake up in the back of an ambulance or in an ER then chances are you were nowhere near having brain damage. You may be experiencing some sort of weird hangover, residual effects, i dont know about benzos tbh. But I do know, if you had brain damage you would know for a fact, and you would know how exactly it happened. I.e. you overdosed on a CNS depressant, stopped breathing turned blue, your brain being starved of oxygen, and the amount of time your brain suffered is related to the lasting damage that would have happened (the first stage of death is brain death and unless you were shot or stabbed it wont be seconds, in the case of not breathing it'd actually be a minutes).

 

[morphine-dreams]

Benzos will fog you up mentally, especially after high doses like that. Like crisler said, if you didn't stop breathing, permanent damage is extremely unlikely if not impossible. Give it a few days a you should feel yourself getting back to normal. It took me over 2 weeks after quitting benzos (I used 2-4x a week before stopping altogether but in lower doses) to feel back to normal. A good diet, exercise, and 7+ hours of restful sleep every night will help accelerate the process. "Brain games" like lumosity can be found for free online and never hurt if you want to sharpen up in the meantime. You could look into nootropics too. But mainly you just have to give it some time.

 

[XANAX XR]

I won't make the mistake by saying "THIS IS FOR SURE" but you're fine man, everyone's brain chemistry is different, yes but I've taken over 10x that dose (probably even more) and I'm fine.

Everyone is different though, definitely worth looking into - Try abstaining from any drugs for a month or so and try to be as healthy as possible - Perhaps, then you will recover fully. Best of luck!

 

[Fizicks]

I'm not recommending it but technically the LD50 of benzos is generally so high that you would never take hundreds of pills, amounts you would never conceive of taking at once to even have a 50% chance of respiratory failure. However if you have taken the benzos with any potentates such as opiates (as weak as codeine) or even pure grapefruit juice may alter that LD50. I wouldn't worry about it. Granted I got a tolerance but I once took 20 1mg kpins and was fine - plus I'm a little guy. Never recommend doing large amounts of pill mixing though.

 

[GM valed]

Thanks a lot for your input guys,i appreciate it.However what also worries me is the glutamate excitoxicity that may have resulted and killed some of my brain cells.Is that probable?

 

[morphine-dreams]

I would think it's very unlikely, from what I understand, that only applies to benzo withdrawal anyway, CT withdrawal to be more specific. I would assume that overdose would actually have the opposite effect. Benzos can temporarily affect your cognition more than you'd think, I've played piano for years and literally could not even manage basic songs while using benzos regularly, a big part of why I stopped. I also felt like I'd dropped 20 iq points and destroyed my memory. I was taking some stupidly high doses at one point, but I'm 100% back to normal now.

 

[Man in the Dark]

You are over thinking this!! You didn't have a stroke and won't develop any degenerative brain diseases after a one time benzo binge. You learned your lesson, leave them alone kid. Take it as a sign

 

[stompin_tom]

you sure you didn't already have brain damage sometime prior to doing this?

 

[GM valed]

Thanks for your help guys.STAY SAFE YO!

 

[manboychef]

I took benzos for many years at high doses. I have noticed that my memory and cognition are much worse than when I started. I have also had three or four benzo overdoses that led to hospital stays which may have impacted this.