Cross Tolerance

If you are tolerant to one benzo, does that mean you will be tolerant to all of the others?

Since they all share a similar mechanism of action I would imagine the answer is yes.  It might take a little while after switching to another benzo to fully realize the previous tolerance but I feel you'd likely end up in the same place.  I believe the same would apply to non-benzodiazepines as well.

 

I'm interested to hear what others had to say on this subject.

Probably to some degree.  When my sleep doctor switched me from klonopin to ativan, he said the drugs interact with the receptor a bit differently.  That may be true, but if there's GABAA down-regulation, it probably doesn't matter.

This is interesting because I know of many people who became tolerant to one benzo and successfully switched to a different one. It probably depends on the person, and other factors. Kind of like SSRI's, one stops working and you move to the next. I don't take SSRI's myself but that's what people who I know do, they just keep switching.

 

I was just asking because that is a rumor that is going around on various benzo forums/sites, but nobody really knows for sure and I think it's kind of dangerous when someone says it's true with absolute certainty because for some people they really need another benzo to work in order to more comfortably taper and they  might lose hope by being given this false information.