Help with halflife of diazepam?

[crumble]

Hi folks,

I've just been prescribed a short course of diazepam to help with some bad anxiety I'd recently been experiencing - mainly down to the possibility of starting a new job.

I read on the net that diazepam has a halflife of 200 hours... which is 8.3 days.

So... say I took a 1mg tablet, does that mean that after 8 days I'll still have the full 1mg in my system? Or does it reduce gradually?

The reason I'm asking is because I'm visiting family this weekend to celebrate my birthday, and I want a few drinkies .... I've read that taking both alcohol & diazepam could be fatal...

I've only had 1.5mg so far, and that was on Sat afternoon. I've not had any more since.

Hope someone can help

[Geoff2301]

I think you'll find the half-life is more like about 50 hours......... I've always assumed that this means that if you took a 1 mg tablet, you will still have .5mg in your system after a couple of days and this will have reduced gradually, to that level. I don't honestly think that drinking a bit of alcohol with a 1.5mg dose will prove fatal...... this is an extremely low dose. When I was admitted to a psychiatric unit recently, therre were people on 40mg a time!! The injustice was they refused point blank to increase my dose above 2mg!! In reality, I've found that any beneficial effects of diazepam seem to only last about 12 hours max if you're lucky....... perhaps other people may get a longer benefit.

[southey]

The drinking/Diazepam combo being fatal information alarmed me somewhat

I'm in no way endorsing what I do but I have drunk heavily quite a few times on Diazepam.

If there is a chance this is true I will have to modify my behaviour?

Steve

[sean1960]

The reason it's said not to drink on diazepam is because you can become very sedated.

That said it's not a good idea - but won't kill you.

[Jamesk]

The drinking/Diazepam combo being fatal information alarmed me somewhat

I'm in no way endorsing what I do but I have drunk heavily quite a few times on Diazepam.

If there is a chance this is true I will have to modify my behaviour?

Steve

Likewise I am not endorsing it, and I know it is not big or clever, but I have also had a few glasses of wine and a Diazepam and am not noticably dead yet.

As I say I am not reccomending this, but by the weekend I cannot imagine any possible problem with you have a few drinkies with your folks (provided you are not driving obviously! )

[Tufty]

Hi,

Not blowing my own trumpet or anything but I have studied pharmacology at Uni and would recommend anyone looking for details of drugs to type SPC followed by the drug name into the search engine, that will lead you to medicines.org which is the trusted and official site used by clinicians. It gives the pharamcokinetic properties of the medicine which talks about bioavailability and half lifes etc.

Diazepam has a half life of 2-5 days. This means the maximum amount of drug left in you will be half the taken dose after 5 days - that's if your kidneys and liver are functioning normally. For example if you took 2mg on Monday by Saturday you could have 1mg.

The half life is worth knowing when looking at when you will reach a therapeutic, steady state in drug terms or when the drug will be completely removed from your system. To work both of these out you multiply the half life of the drug by 5. So using Diazepam as an example, if you took 2mg once it could take 25 days to be completely removed from your system (5 x 5 days half life) but remember this is in miniscule, ineffective amounts, the minimum therapeutic amount is 2mg. Prozac has a half life of up to 16 days - taking up to 80 days to be completely removed when stopping or the same amount of time to reach a steady therapeutic state hence the 2-3 months it takes to work in some people. Always remember that everyone is different - no one knows an individuals metabolism and some people 'use' drugs really quickly whilst others take the maximum amount of time - medicine is not an exact science.

Diazepam and alcohol - increases the sedative affect of both so go slowly, you may feel the affects of the alcohol more.

Sorry if that's too much info but it helps me to understand why drugs don't work as well/quickly as I think they should do

Sam

[PaulNI]

Diazepam has a half life of 2-5 days. This means the maximum amount of drug left in you will be half the taken dose after 5 days - that's if your kidneys and liver are functioning normally. For example if you took 2mg on Monday by Saturday you could have 1mg.

Hi Sam, is that why people can build up a tolerance to Diazepam so quickly?

If you only took a small amount, say 1mg once or twice a week would that be a good way to avoid building up a tolerance to the drug?

Thanks for the explanation, it's much appreciated BTW!