What are the toxicity risks of benzodiazepines?
Taken alone, you can get drowsiness, you can change your heart rate, your speech will get slurred, you’ll vomit, you’ll get confused, you can hallucinate. You can get agitated and your heart rate goes up. Occasionally, with a very big dose, you can go into a coma. If you go into poisoning, you can get respiratory depression and CNS [central nervous system] depression. But usually people don’t die. The big problem comes when you mix these with other drugs. If you look at the Drug Abuse Warning Network, DAWN, for drug-related deaths and emergency room visits, most incidents of toxicity related to benzodiazepines occur when they’re mixed with alcohol or with opiates. Drugs such as morphine, codeine, oxycodone and hydrocodone are opiates. Q: Is toxicity expected when they’re mixed with antidepressants or anti-anxiety meds? A: It depends. Some medications for mood disorders are also benzodiazepines, and these types of drugs are not particularly addictive. It’s usually the other two classes
