Immediate effects
The effects of benzodiazepines may last from a few hours to a few days, depending on the dose and type of benzodiazepines you take. The immediate effects can include that you:

• feel relaxed
• feel drowsy, sleepy or tired
• have no energy
• become confused or dizzy
• feel really good
• have mood swings
• slur your words or stutter
• can’t judge distances or movement properly
• have blurred or double vision
• can’t remember things from just a short time ago.

If you take a very high dose of benzodiazepines with other drugs you can go into a coma or die.

Long term effects
If you use benzodiazepines often and for a long time, you may:

• have no energy or interest in doing normal things
• be cranky
• feel sick in the stomach
• have headaches
• have dreams that make you feel bad
• lose interest in sex, or your body won’t work properly during sex
• get skin rashes
• be more hungry and put on weight
• have menstrual problems if you are a woman
• be depressed.

The way a person uses benzodiazepines can also cause problems:

• Injecting benzodiazepines that are intended to be swallowed in tablet/capsule form can also cause severe damage to veins, leading to loss of limbs from poor circulation, organ damage or stroke.
• Using benzodiazepines at the same time as other central nervous system depressants– such as alcohol, heroin, methadone, or some prescribed drugs – is very dangerous. It can cause you to become unconscious, stop your breathing, put you into a coma or cause you to die.
• Injecting benzodiazepines with used or dirty injecting equipment makes you more likely to get infected with HIV, hepatitis B or C, get blood poisoning (septicaemia) and skin abscesses. So that you don’t get these problems, DO NOT SHARE fits (needles and syringes), spoons, water, filters, alcohol swabs or tourniquets.
• When you are getting benzodiazepines from a doctor, tell them about any other drugs you are taking so they can give you the right dose. This will help to prevent the risk of different drugs affecting each other in your body.

Tolerance and dependence
Anyone can develop a ‘tolerance’ to benzodiazepines or other drugs. Tolerance means that you must take more of the drug to feel the same effects you used to have with smaller amounts or lower doses.

This may happen very quickly with benzodiazepines ‘Dependence’ on benzodiazepines means that it takes up a lot of your thoughts, emotions and activities. You spend a lot of time thinking about using benzodiazepines, looking for them, using them and getting over the effects of using them. You also find it difficult to stop using or control how much you use.

Dependence can lead to a variety of health, money, legal, work and relationship problems.
Not all people who ever use benzodiazepines become dependent. But it is very easy to become dependent on benzodiazepines and it can happen within four weeks.