shockencock t1_jegehos wrote
Reply to comment by Prinzka in ELI5: If benzodiazepines are CNS depressants, why is it so hard to die from a overdose of them alone? by psychrolute
Impossible. You would be dead
Prinzka t1_jegfo73 wrote
Lol
Lorazepam has an ld50 of nearly 2g/kg.
That's the whole reason OP made this post, they were wondering why you can take high doses of benzos without dying even though it's a cns depressant.
shockencock t1_jegfze2 wrote
I guess you are right. Most people that try to kill themselves with it drink alcohol too. I stand corrected. I couldn’t imagine taking 50 mg of it.
Prinzka t1_jeggj2d wrote
> Most people that try to kill themselves with it drink alcohol too.
Yeah and then you need a lot less, that's the danger.
>I couldn’t imagine taking 50 mg of it.
Tbf, I can only imagine it.
About an hour after I took the first 4mg I don't recall anything for the next day or so.
I took the rest of the bottle I had I'm assuming because I forgot that I'd already taken some.
There was never an intent to take the whole bottle, just the first ones made me not form any new memories....
wighty t1_jegvuav wrote
IIRC the pharmacist that did our benzo lecture called it a "ceiling effect", benzos will only cause so much respiratory depression but not enough to stop you breathing. Add alcohol to the mix, though, and you absolutely can overdose yourself and stop breathing.
effrightscorp t1_jegevz4 wrote
50 mg lorazepam won't even kill a rat
shockencock t1_jegf1ja wrote
You have it confused with another benzo. 50 mg of lorazepam will kill you in about an hour
effrightscorp t1_jegfzyj wrote
LD50 is 1850 mg/kg in mice, so it takes around 40 mg to kill an average one. Here's a case study where one guy took 100 mg, one woman took 120 mg and both were out of the hospital within a few days and didn't really need any treatment
You can take stupid big overdoses of benzos and survive because they all have pretty good therapeutic indices. The bigger issue is that, if you don't pass out, you'll probably run out blacked out and can do enough stupid shit to end up in jail etc
shockencock t1_jegfcqz wrote
My brother is a psychiatric nurse in a hospital. He would inject 2 mg of lorazepam into patients then put them into seclusion to sleep it off. The starting dose for lorazepam is like .5 mg
effrightscorp t1_jeggc1l wrote
That says nothing about the lethal dose, which is much higher than 50 mg in humans
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