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Comment by aeonik

7 hours ago

But the "Active dose" to "lethal dose" ratio, aka "therapeutic index" of alcohol is pretty bad.

Don't you mean that it's quite good? It's easily more than an order of magnitude for many people (not sure about chronic alcoholics with high tolerance). How many medications can you 5x your dose and not have some risk of ending up in the hospital?

  • Heroin (IV) ~6x

    GHB ~8x

    Ethanol ~10x

    Methamphetamine ~10x

    DXM ~10x

    Cocaine ~15x

    MDMA ~16x

    Codeine ~20x

    Methadone ~20x

    Mescaline ~24x

    Flunitrazepam ~30x

    Ketamine ~40x

    Phenobarbital ~50x

    Nitrous oxide ~150x

    LSD ~1000x

    Cannabis/THC ~1000x or greater

    Citation: Gable RS. Comparison of acute lethal toxicity of commonly abused psychoactive substances. Addiction. 2004;99(6):686–696. doi:10.1111/j.1360-0443.2004.00744.x

    • Well given "therapeutic index" I had said "medication" as opposed to "commonly abused substances". I think your list skews heavily due to psychedelics tending not to be acutely toxic to the same extent as other chemical species.

      Statins for example are probably 10x to 20x (quick napkin math based on an animal study I found). Tylenol is 10x and is OTC.

      Personally I consider alcohol to be much safer than many other substances given the form it typically takes. Utterly irresponsible binge drinking aside, most people will suffer serious adverse effects long before they're in danger. Compare that with pills or injections where an OD can be entirely inadvertent even when observing basic common sense.