Posted by Kon on May 11, 2004, at 23:32:54
In reply to Losing tolerance to benzos, posted by jms600 on May 11, 2004, at 16:48:56
> My question is, is it possible to lose this tolerance so that I can take a relatively low dose of Valium, or other benzo, and get the same anti-anxiety effects as when I first started taking them seven or eight months ago?? If it is possible how long should I lay off the benzos until my tolerance to the drugs has diminished??
I use benzos as-needed. Apparently, the longer the half-life, the longer you need to go off the drug to return to where you used to be. Valium has a pretty long half-life so you might have to go off it for a few weeks-not sure? From my limited experience (about 2 years of benzo use)about 2 weeks of drug-free holiday, makes ativan feel about the same as when I first took it. For clonazepam...a bit harder to tell since I really haven't noticed any tolerance developing in two years of use. There are times when it seems to require a lower dose to get same effect but it doesn't appear to be related too much to consistency of use.
Apparently, there's cross-tolerance so you can't substitute one benzo for another hoping to jump back and forth between benzos and avoid tolerance. Not sure about diazepam but best bet to avoid tolerance among the so-called "high-potency benzos"...seems to be klonopin (clonazepam). But if you do develop tolerance to klonopin, you will probably need to go off it for a bit longer than say xanax to get back to original lower effective dose.
poster:Kon
thread:345846
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040510/msgs/346002.html