When they had me locked up in the psych ward for alcoholic patients, I was there for ten weeks. We had a constant stream of new patients over that time, only one had really serious withdrawal, DTs, screaming and all that. Lasted a couple of days. He had medical supervision of course.
Our hospital boards (in NZ) have there research on which they base their provision of services. They work on 1% of alcoholics needing medically supervised detox. It a practical sense this means sometimes there are not enough beds, They only have 5 in our capital city, but a lot of the time all beds are empty.
They out me on Ativan, fro no good reason I could see and after 3 days, when I woke up straight and realised the effect this drug has on me, I refused to take anymore.
My greatest fear, based in the fact that I have seen it so often, is jumping on the medication bandwagon too early, merely to avoid discomfort, and ending up with another addiction.
A few months back I worked with an alcoholic who got hooked on Benzos. Alcohol withdrawal is realtively short, a few days. Benzos can take a long time, months to ween off, and it is incedibly tough going. It just horrifies me what she had to go through and in the end she didn't make it.
It all comes down to self honesty. In my belief if I am taking medication to treat a condition or specific symptoms/pain, I am ok, but if I get to medicating to avoid the possibility of pain, I could be in trouble.