Past alcohol abuse; how does this affect healing during benzo withdrawal?

Hi, guys.

As the title suggests, I have some questions and worry about how past alcohol abuse relates to healing during benzo withdrawal.

I started drinking heavily and regularly (to the point of blacking out) when I was 16, until approx. age 27. I'm 29, now. I've also previously used other substances, from time to time, nowhere near as constant or aggressively as with the alcohol but always combined with it (weed, cocaine, Adderall, Oxycodone, kratom, etc.) For example, I was really into taking high doses of Percocet (i.e. Oxycodone) for two week's time, while drinking as usual... and then I was really into kratom for about a month, while drinking as usual... spent some weekends snorting Adderall, while drinking as usual, etc... but, for the most part it's just been alcohol (and TONS of strong black coffee, all day, every day, which I no longer drink at all.) I did use Xanax and Ativan for a couple of weekends, along with alcohol, prior to the regular benzo use which precipitated my taper... but, I thought nothing of it until I experienced how damaging the effects were during the later use and then withdrawal. 

I started using benzos regularly (Ativan, then Klonopin, then Valium) right after I stopped drinking (there may have been some overlap; my memory is fuzzy...) so, there really wasn't any time for healing between the abuse of alcohol and then the beginning of my "sober" benzo use. I'm left wondering how the damage sustained from these two substances (the alcohol, and then the benzos) might affect the healing specific to each... or, whether the healing process for both is similar enough that it's all one and the same.

I know that we, here, recognize the length of time needed to heal via benzo withdrawal - even once the drugs have fully left our system. Is the same true for alcohol? All the information I can find suggests that healing from alcohol abuse is acute vs. longterm, and that the major struggle is the mental addiction, vs. the physical damage sustained to the brain and body. How can that be? Surely, the body has a longterm need to heal after prolonged abuse of alcohol, especially beginning at a young age.

And what about the sporadic use of other drugs alonside constant, heavy drinking?

It sounds counterintuitive, but I'd like to find out that this is the case; that damage due to alcohol abuse can take quite some time to heal, because that would mean I might see improvements in physical and mental health beyond what was damaged due to benzo use, now that I'm cleaning myself up. Basically, I felt horrible - both physically and mentally - due to alcohol abuse - before I even began abusing benzos, but never gave myself time to heal before the benzo abuse began. So, it's just been one thing after the other - with no time to heal, until now as I near the end of this Valium taper.

Does anyone else have experience regarding a similar pattern (healing from alcohol AND benzos?)

And, does anyone have any information about what actually happens in the brain following prolonged alcohol abuse and how it differs or relates to what happens in the brain during benzo withdrawal? Is there healing from alcohol that may be achieved protractedly, as there is with benzos?

(I'm sorry if I didn't explain myself well, or if I did so repetitively.)

Thanks for reading. I hope whoever's reading this is doing well.

EDIT:

Current Dose (May 2018): 1mg Diazepam every night.

Began Taper: January 25th, 2017 (Began taper while using Clonazepam; crossed over to Diazepam during taper.)

This is a question I have put to myself common one and honestly don't have the answer. 

Wish there were an alcoholic, benzo taking, coffee drinking, illicit dug using neurologist out there who became well and wrote the definitive thesis. 

It's a really good question.

Dee

This is a question I ask myself too...from all the years of abuse with al him & other stuff...scares me stupid how much damage I have done....& I think the benzo was the finale straw as I had got clean from that life style years ago!

I was only given a benzo to mask the other 2 CTs up

The life I left behind & then rebuilt all lost

Back to square one but a billion times worse!!

At least the party days were fun (what I can recall)