Sorry if we seem wary / cynical - information has been taken out of context from this forum before and most pharmacists end up being highly suspicious - i suppose it comes with the territory! It is made clear in the forum rules and read me first areas that any info given is the opinion of the poster only.
What exactly is your 'angle'? You may find a more understanding forum if you give us some more background information on what you are doing.


i was under the impression that my previous post answered point 5 for you. we don't have direct access to the recommended safe dosages for most drugs in the us - their dose regimens can vary vastly compared to the british ones and so to give out info from our formularies may be misleading. from what i can tell the lorazepam dosage is fine but that would be in a dosage on its own - not if the patient was already recieving another benzo. However as i stated tolerance to the benzos was likely to have been involved, necessitating larger doses, possibly outside recommended guidelines. So to summarize (from my point of view anyway)

1. One would expect the patient to be at least partially sedated. However this may not always be the case as different people can react in different ways to a drug.

2. See answer to 1. Really, 2 is just a paraphrase of 1. ie it depends on the patient.

3. The individual doses are not large, but the combination and frequency of administration is high. These drugs will act synergystically BUT again response is person specific.

4. The person could be tolerant to the effects of the drugs, having built that tolerance through regular uninterrupted use. They could also have some kind of inherent resistance to the effects (eg missing a key cell receptor due to genetic factors) or they may have a medical condition which directly interferes with the normal sleep processes. They also may be using a stimulant which would counteract the effects of a sedative.

5. Read my earlier post.


6. the majority of this info is available on google and on wikipedia - along with some highly useful references and linked pages - have a read around the subject to see if you can get a better handle on some of the finer points / concepts. remember that it was a complex case with many mitigating factors, and some poor decisions made not just by the healthcare professionals involved at the time.