Valium and Xanax are brand names for two types of anxiety medications. The generic name for Valium is diazepam. The generic name for Xanax is alprazolam.
Many anxiety symptoms are caused to some degree by chemical imbalances in the brain. Medications can help change this imbalance.
Sedatives slow down certain functions in the body. This may help a person fall asleep or calm them down.
The best choice of medications, as well as the dosage and duration of treatment, will be different for each patient.
Valium and Xanax are different drugs. The doctor should help the person choose the most appropriate option.
People can take medications in pill or liquid form, but adults usually only get a prescription for the pills.
A person tends to take Valium or Xanax one to four times a day, but the dosage depends on the person's needs and the medication, due to the different duration of action.
Below are some key facts about each:
XanaxValium is used to treat severe anxiety and panic disorders, used to treat less severe anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug withdrawal, muscle spasms and seizures intermediate onset (15-30 minutes) rapid onset (within 15 minutes) may cause dependence may cause withdrawal symptoms causes withdrawal symptoms does not last long if the person takes the drug for a long period does not last if the person takes the drug for a long time
Indications for use
The drug is prescribed to patients with anxiety, obsessiveness, senesto-hypochondriacal and phobic disorders, progressive chronic polyarthritis, vertebral syndrome, epilepsy, angina pectoris, somatovegetative disorders, eczema and arterial hypertension.
Valium Roche is used to facilitate labor, for tetanus, bursitis, myositis, rheumatic spondylitis, paranoid-hallucinatory states, as well as for premedication before an endoscopic procedure or surgery.
Interaction with other medications
Diazepam, which is part of Valium, has pronounced anxiolytic activity. The drug eliminates feelings of anxiety and fear, has a muscle relaxant and hypnotic effect.
The main effect of the drug is aimed at inhibiting polysynaptic reflexes of the spinal cord. The medication lowers blood pressure, has a dilating effect on the coronary vessels, increases the pain threshold and increases the resistance of brain tissue to hypoxia.
It is effective in the treatment of withdrawal symptoms, as it helps the patient relieve nervous tension, weaken tremors of the limbs, and prevents the development and intensification of delirium and hallucinations.
Due to the ability to increase the pain threshold and reduce emotional tension in stressful situations, diazepam and drugs based on it are often used in anesthesiological practice. It is prescribed to patients before operations and surgical procedures.
The active substance included in the drug enhances the inhibitory effect of ethyl alcohol on the body. It also enhances the effect of analgesics, antipsychotic drugs, antidepressants and antihistamines.
Some psychostimulants and analeptics reduce the activity of Valium.
Erythromycin helps slow down the breakdown of Diazepam in the liver, and Rifampicin significantly reduces the concentration of the substance in the blood plasma.
The drug "Valium" causes potentiation of the effects of alcohol, hypnotics, anticonvulsants, hypotensive and antihistamines, as well as neuroleptics, general anesthetics, tricyclic antidepressants, muscle relaxants and analgesics.
Psychostimulants and analeptics can significantly reduce the activity of the drug "Diazepam".
Antacids reduce the rate, but not the level, of absorption of this drug.
Microsomal oxidation inhibitors such as Cimetidine, Omeprazole, Ketoconazole, Fluoxetine and Fluvoxamine change the pharmacokinetics of the drug in question and also increase the duration of its clinical effects.
"Rifampicin" reduces con in the blood, and "Erythromycin" slows down its metabolism in the liver.
Contraindications
The use of Valium Roche is contraindicated during the first trimester of pregnancy, in children under 1 month of age, in cases of drug and alcohol addiction, acute kidney and liver diseases, suicidal tendencies, myasthenia gravis, angle-closure glaucoma and severe hypercapnia.
The drug is not used for spinal and cerebral ataxia, during lactation, as well as in cases of hypersensitivity to the components included in the drug.
Cost of the drug
As mentioned above, you can’t buy Valium Roche in Russia in every pharmacy. The cost of this medicine is approximately a thousand rubles (per package).
The price of this product in the UK and other European countries is usually about two hundred and fifty pounds sterling per thousand tablets (10 milligrams).
To purchase a drug in your city that will meet all safety and quality requirements, experts recommend contacting the help desk, where you will be provided with complete information about its availability in pharmacies and the best prices.
Side effects
Based on the instructions, Valium Roche can cause impaired salivation, headache, bradycardia, constipation, nausea and side effects from certain body systems, namely:
- Increased fatigue, drowsiness, ataxia and lethargy, dizziness, disorientation, anterograde amnesia and poor coordination of movements, dullness of emotions, depression, paradoxical reactions and tremor, catalepsy, euphoria, dysarthria and confusion (cardiovascular system);
- Agranulocytosis, thrombocytopenia, leukopenia, anemia and neutropenia (hematopoietic organs);
- Heartburn, dry mouth, hiccups, hypersalivation, loss of appetite, jaundice, gastralgia and vomiting (digestive system);
- Dysmenorrhea, urinary retention and incontinence, decreased or increased libido (genitourinary system).
Valium Roche also causes such adverse reactions as:
- Itching and skin rash (allergic reactions);
- Venous thrombosis and phlebitis at the site of injection of the solution (local reactions);
- Drug dependence, diplopia, weight loss, respiratory depression, bulimia and withdrawal syndrome (other reactions).
Symptoms of an overdose of Valium Roche are areflexia, paradoxical arousal and deep sleep, shortness of breath, decreased reflexes and reactions to painful stimuli, stupor, tremor, nystagmus and collapse, confusion, decreased blood pressure and depression of cardiac activity, apnea, dysarthria, bradycardia and coma.
In such cases, urgent gastric lavage, forced diuresis, activated charcoal and symptomatic treatment are required.
Dosage for dogs
Valium is taken as prescribed by a veterinarian.
Valium can be used to treat many different conditions. For the treatment of anxiety, dosage ranges from 0.26 mg/kg. up to 2.2 mg/kg, taken orally once daily as needed.
Recommended doses for use in the treatment of other conditions:
| Is used for | Method of administration | Dosage |
| Seizure cluster/status epilepticus | rectal (a method of administering medications into the rectum) | 0.51 – 1.9 mg/kg. |
| Sedation | oral | 0.24 mg/kg. every 8 hours |
| White Shaker syndrome (causes whole-body trembling in small dog breeds) | oral | 0.24 mg/kg. every 6-8 hours |
| Scotty Crump (muscle cramps) | oral | 0.51-1.9 mg/kg. every 8 hours |
| IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) | oral | 0.15 mg/kg. every 8 hours |
| Functional urethral inflammation | oral | 1.9 – 9.9 mg/kg. every 8 hours |
The response to sedation varies greatly from dog to dog, and for this reason Valium is not considered a consistent sedative for use.
special instructions
It is unacceptable to prescribe the drug to patients with anxiety and depression, since against the background of these conditions, suicidal thoughts may arise when using Valium Roche.
During drug therapy, you should not drink alcoholic beverages. The drug is not used to treat anxiety and tension, since such conditions are in most cases associated with stress and therefore do not require treatment with anxiolytics.
Since the Valium Roche solution settles, you cannot mix the product with other drugs in the same syringe.
During intravenous administration of the drug, it is recommended to monitor the patient's breathing. The drug affects the ability to drive complex machinery and vehicles, which patients should be warned about in advance.
The use of Valium Roche in children under 14 years of age is permissible only in clearly justified cases and for the shortest possible time.
Related materials
00:05 — August 4, 2017
American drug plague
Doctors have doomed the United States to an epidemic of deaths from hard drugs.
Medical encyclopedias explain: Xanax, thanks to the active ingredient alprazolam, allows you to almost instantly relax, relieve tension, and suppress feelings of fear, anxiety and restlessness. You can quickly pop a small tablet under your tongue at the end of the working day and instantly forget about your strict boss and endless reports.
It would seem that the miraculous properties provided alprazolam, invented in the 1960s, with explosive popularity: today more than five percent of the adult population of the United States takes relaxation pills; it is on the list of the most frequently prescribed drugs in the country.
The tablets really work, but they have a number of unpleasant features. Firstly, tolerance to Xanax develops very quickly - to achieve the same relaxing effect, the body needs more and more alprazolam. Secondly, with uncontrolled use, addiction develops over time. Third, it lowers your breathing and heart rate—and if taken with opioid drugs (such as heroin or the equally popular fentanyl), the likelihood of death increases dramatically. Up to a third of all Xanax-related deaths occurred due to co-administration with opioids.
In addition, unlike many other substances that simply “knock out” the body when overdosed, benzodiazepines act differently: they erase memory, leaving the ability to act. Those who have taken too much Xanax can wander the streets for hours, attack people, rob and steal, get behind the wheel and cause accidents. Someone in such a helpless state himself becomes a victim of scammers and rapists.
Benzodiazepines help people cope with the relentless pace of life
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Xanax is also known for its terrible withdrawal symptoms after a long-term overdose. Reddit users share: “I had visual hallucinations, I felt crazy, this is a constant bad trip (slang expression for a psychedelic crisis - approx. “Lenta.ru”
). It was as if there were blows in my head; I almost had an attack twice. I heard a loud bang in my head, saw a bright flash, my body jerked sharply, but nothing happened. It was like a flashbang grenade had exploded in my head. It's fucking scary."
“Dude, that sounds tough. Sometimes I have flashes in my head in my sleep, my body twitches so much that I either bite my tongue or kick the cat so that he flies out of bed... And this is four years later. This is not a joke,” another user responded, admitting that now, due to an addiction from the past, he cannot sleep without sleeping pills.
In a thread on a drug users forum where the problem of quitting certain substances is discussed, benzodiazepines (the generic name for drugs like Xanax) won by a huge margin: 244 votes for them versus 91 for methadone and 88 for heroin. Then, however, there is a similar severity of “withdrawal”: refusal of alcohol in those suffering from long-term severe alcoholism.
“I’m giving up because I don’t care about life; I hear voices in my head, they say stop it, but I found some Xanax in the bed, drank that shit and went back to sleep,” rapper Lil Peep wrote openly about his fascination with the drug. When he died in November 2017, traces of Xanax and fentanyl would be found in his blood. Substances with a similar structure to alprazolam - benzodiazepines - were found in the bodies of Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger and Whitney Houston.
Even the image of a Xanax tablet has entered popular culture - a tablet divided into four parts with the letters XANAX. A pill-shaped cake was ceremoniously cut by rapper Lil Pump after he reached a million followers on Instagram.
A XAN cake for celebration Last year this time I was a nobody now I'm rich bitch ESSKEETIT Btw I put 500 xanz in my cake
Photo published by @lilpump
The seemingly “clean” rapper Drake also spoke about his love for benzodiazepines: while visiting iLoveMakonnen, he boasted that he “takes zanami.” Then, however, he made an excuse that he had only embellished the truth: “I don’t drink this shit, but you do.”
Kinetics
The medication "Valium", analogues of which are listed below, is absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract (when taken orally). In this case, absorption occurs by 75%, and the maximum concentration is reached after 1.5 hours.
The biological transformation of this medicine occurs in the liver. In this case, active metabolites with a half-life are formed. When prescribing the medication to infants, the effect is achieved after 30 hours, and for elderly and adults – after 100 and 48 hours, respectively. In case of liver pathologies, this indicator is extended to 4 days.
The drug in question is excreted from the human body mainly by the kidneys (90%) in the form of conjugates, as well as unchanged (2%) and together with feces (8%).
Consumer reviews about the medicine
What is so special about a drug like Valium? The action (central muscle relaxant) of this drug is associated with a slowdown of polysynaptic reflexes in the spinal cord. Taking this drug leads to a decrease in blood pressure, dilation of the coronary vessels, as well as an increase in the brain's resistance to hypoxia and an increase in the pain threshold of sensitivity.
Valium is a fairly popular drug among patients, which is used as an anxiolytic, muscle relaxant, sedative, hypnotic and anticonvulsant. According to reviews from most consumers, the medication in question turns out to be highly effective for various diseases, including epilepsy, sleep disorders, anxiety conditions, and so on. Also, taking it helps to reduce manifestations in the form of agitation, tremor and eliminate hallucinations.
However, there is no such remedy that would suit everyone. Some people who have used this drug have been unhappy. They note that the medicine begins to act only after a week. In addition, with prolonged use, the medication causes a large number of adverse reactions and leads to addiction.
