Most psychiatrists, PCPs, functional medicine doctors, naturopaths, neurologists, internists, etc., are ignorant about benzo withdrawal. They haven’t been taught the dangers of benzodiazepines or the damage they can cause. If you seek medical help for benzo withdrawal, your doctor may tell you that there is no such thing as benzo withdrawal or that benzo withdrawal only lasts a few days or weeks. They may diagnose you with a new psychiatric disorder or a worsening of your pre-existing condition and prescribe pills or treatments that can harm you.
Before you see a doctor, educate yourself about benzo withdrawal. A few of the critical basic facts:
- Benzo withdrawal is real. You are not making it up. You are not psychosomatic.
- Benzo withdrawal has a laundry list of possible symptoms that have been well-documented for decades.
- Withdrawal symptoms can wax and wane for months or years. The drug is out of the body, but the body takes time to recover from the damage the drug caused.
- Tapering should be done slowly, with no more than 10% of the current dose. An opioid tapering schedule is usually too fast for benzo withdrawal.
- Rehabs and detox centers taper people far too quickly and often prescribe more harmful drugs.
- Benzo withdrawal symptoms are not a worsening of a pre-existing condition or new illnesses or disorders.
- Drugs to treat insomnia, pain, and intrusive thoughts. etc., may cause harm
- No treatment has been shown to cure benzo withdrawal, including IV flumazenil.
- Traditional talk therapy and exposure therapy can make symptoms worse.
- CBT may not help benzo withdrawal symptoms
- Supplements and vitamins can rev up withdrawal symptoms.
- The only way out of benzo withdrawal is through.
- The four cornerstones of well-being, eat right (WFPB), move enough, stress less, love well can stack the cards in your favor to heal more quickly.
Here are some suggestions to avoid doctor bullying:
- Neutrally explain your symptoms. Don’t insist that they are caused by benzo withdrawal.
- If your doctor is ignorant about benzo withdrawal, ignore their harmful opinions or advice. Please don’t argue with them.
- Don’t rev up your nervous system by trying to educate a doctor who isn’t open to the truth.
- Only visit a doctor when it is essential.
You need a doctor to prescribe your benzo while you are tapering. Since there are no treatments to cure withdrawal, you only need to see a doctor to rule out any other causes of your symptoms. Remember, there is no way out of benzo withdrawal except through. No drug or treatment cures withdrawal, and most can rev up symptoms or have their own withdrawal syndrome. A doctor who isn’t benzo-wise may bully you and try to make you feel that you are attention-seeking, crazy, or stupid. (I wish this weren’t the case; however, I’ve been in the benzo community almost twelve years, and the stories I’ve heard about doctors are heartbreaking.) Avoid treatments or medications known in the benzo community to cause more harm than good.
If you’d like education and support as you navigate benzo withdrawal, please feel free to book a coaching session with me or join my live support group, Mornings With Jenn. We meet at 9 a.m Pacific every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. If you can’t join us live, you can watch the recorded video. There are hundreds of archived videos to give you tools, comfort, and hope.
This is great Dr. Jenn thank you! I have definitely experienced Dr ignorance including my neurologist who told me to go back on my “regular benzo dose” if I wasn’t “feeling well” after I had already been tapering for months. This experience has definitely challenged my long held belief that doctors know it all, they surely do not. Hope you are well!
Mirtazapine really helped with my withdrawal symptoms, It enabled me to have a life, instead of being stuck indoors bed bound for months. Also i, and many others, find ‘talking therapy’ as you call it very helpful. Your approach implies we’re all pretty helpless and have to just sit and accept our symptoms. Yes acceptance helps but as my response shows some prescription drugs and self-analysis can be invaluable. Please do not delete this as it may help people.
Lori
I’ve never said that we have to just sit and accept our symptoms. I’ve never advocated for taking a helpless victim stance. I always encourage the things that we can do to stack the cards in or favor to heal quickly. If Remeron worked for everyone, I’d be shouting it from the rooftops. I want people to heal and to get on with their lives. But I’ve been in this community almost 12 years now. I’ve talked to so many people that I’ve lost count. A very large number of people struggle to come off of Remeron (mirtazapine). Some have been benzo free for years, but still stuck on Remeron. I’m glad it helped you, but it has harmed a lot of people that I’ve worked with.
That’s the whole point of the blog. Educate yourself. Don’t take a doctor’s word for it. Find out what the evidence is in the community and make a decision from there. None of the doctors shared that Remeron could be an issue down the road. Same with Gabapentin, Seroquel, antidepressants, etc. As for traditional talk therapy, it revs up many. Talk therapy isn’t good for trauma work as it can cause reenactment without any resolution. When one is more healed, therapy is a viable tool for healing. But if it revs up symptoms and causes more fear, it’s counterproductive. I’m not anti-meds, but I am anti-ignorance. Everyone should do their research on any drug, treatment, or therapy a medical practitioner suggests. Most are not educated about benzo withdrawal and therefor their suggestions may be hurtful to someone in benzo withdrawal. Most of us are in benzo withdrawal because we trusted our doctor and did what we were told to do: we swallowed a pill. I hope people will educate themselves and not let a doctor bully them, which they do, sadly. I hear it frequently. And, I lived through it myself.
Hello Dr. Jenn,
Thank you for another beneficial blog post. It is wonderfully succinct, and I wish everyone would find it and you early in withdrawal. Having found you and this information early in my withdrawal, no doubt saved me from further harm which I could not have withstood. Three years off of Klonopin (15 year/ 1 mg at night only), and with your expert and sound advice, I am finally able to live my days rather than only survive them. Knowledge is the only power against Benzo harm . Beyond grateful to you!
Happy Valentines Day Dr. Jenn
Thanks for getting back Jennifer. On talk therapy a good therapist will enable clients to deal effectively with the trauma. In my view, from the user group websites, those that don’t deal with their personal issues don’t heal. There is never a good time to deal with these issues but we can only heal by doing the work, and getting through it. Yes it’s painful but a good therapist will support the client through it. An uncomfortable truth is that people who are on these drugs are on them for a a reason relating to unresolved stress, anxiety etc. Only by getting to the core of why these symptoms started can people fully heal. I am a great supporter of yours,and think you do brilliant work, and discussion on all these issues is good.
Lori
I don’t want to get into a pissing contest with you. But I can’t let your comment go without a reply as I want people to know the facts about therapy. Talk therapy doesn’t usually get to the root of trauma. There are modalities that do help heal trauma. I trained under Dr. Peter Levine and Dr. Bessel van Der Kolk, two of the top traumatologists in the world, in my opinion. I also trained in EMDR, EFT, and somatic work when I was in grad school earning my doctorate in psychology. In benzo withdrawal, there are not enough working GABA receptors, so dredging up past trauma is more traumatizing as the body has no means to calm itself and to process it. People heal ALL THE TIME without going to therapy for trauma. I am one of them. I embraced the four cornerstones of well-being and I don’t carry around my past. To say we don’t heal if we don’t go to therapy is incorrect. We can heal on our own, if we choose to. A good talk therapist is a wonderful tool for some people, but not for all people. I worked with and excellent one for almost 15 years before I was put on a benzo. Talking doesn’t always equate healing. The body keeps the score. It needs to be brought into the healing journey as well. I am glad that medication and therapy helped you. But it hasn’t helped everyone. I was bedridden for many months even after trying some meds and going to therapy. What heals us is time. Our bodies know what to do. 🙂 And the four cornerstones are EVERYTHING! I live them every day and I am now sober, benzo free for over a decade, happy, healthy and thriving in ways I never knew a person could thrive, all without drugs or therapy.
Thank you so much! happy Valentines Day to you as well!
Just what I needed! Thank you for your infinite wisdom and continued help for those of us so damaged. Very thankful I found you as a resource.
Thank you so much for posting this; it’s exactly what I need to hear, especially after recently venturing back into the medical world, unhealed at 4.5 years off a 9 year benzo RX and sharing my story with my new PCP. The only “help” she offered was more pills. I can help myself heal so much better than traditional Western medicine.
I’ve spent a lot of time, energy and money on CBT over the years with minimal results. I’ve found so many other more helpful types of therapies along the way!
I appreciate you including holistic practitioners in your list of people who can harm us. I encountered many of these practitioners in my quest to heal. They caused me harm due their ignorance and insistence that their “system” of healing would work. I am grateful I had one acupuncturist who was willing to learn and she helped me during the taper of two meds, Mirtazapine and Lamictal. However, it was too much for benzo wd and that was good to find out.
I also agree that talk therapy can be traumatizing during withdrawal. I’m a body-mind therapist and know that we process emotions in the body as well as the mind. I’m a year off of benzos and have been experiencing a lot of emotions come up as I start to move my body more. I’ve had a few sessions with a therapist but it actually makes me feel worse. Your insight that I dont have enough gaba to help process past experiences is very helpful.
By the way, I was pollydrugged and on benzos twice. I actually have been doing pretty well this past year post stepping off.. I work, laugh and am more than functional. I mention this to offer hope. Even though my emotions are all over the place and I know there is more healing to happen. I am recovering.
Yes, You are recovering! You’ll get there. Keep going. It’s so worth it. Thank you for sharing your experience with us. I appreciate it.
I say this with respect, and I do not mean for it to be inflammatory. If you are experiencing improvement from taking mirtazapine (or other psych meds) and from engaging in traditional psychotherapy, then it is not benzo withdrawal you are suffering from.
At the start of a cold-turkey withdrawal from benzos (not my idea – didn’t even know what was happening to me – I see now I was in tolerance withdrawal). I was in one of the best hospitals in the country and the doc there put me on effexor (an AD) and remeron because remeron could be for some people – sleep-inducing, and effexor can be stimulating. So they prescribe drugs and then more drugs to deal with the possible side effects of other drugs. I’m five years and counting now trying to function in the world again. Cold-turkey withdrawal made everything worse. I took over a year myself to get off the remeron – not three weeks! I wonder if I will ever heal because I trusted my doctor and swallowed every benzo, AD and even more stuff for decades and I am 75 years old. I remember asking a highly esteemed doctor before I left the hospital if I could take a benzo again and all he said was “I wouldn’t recommend it – get with people”. How helpful it would have been if he told me at least how hard it would be to recover from an addiction because I was definitely addicted. When I discovered Jennifer Leigh’s blog only then did I discover the truth about my suffering. I am so sick about hearing that doctors are uneducated about these powerful drugs they so casually prescribe. Give me a break docs – get educated and stop breaking your oath to do no harm. When I finally knew cold-turkey made everything worse, I went to my son’s doc and asked him to help me take some benzos and try to withdraw from them slowly this time. He blatantly refused to help me and would not validate my suffering. Just sharing a little bit of my experience with these so-called uneducated doctors…
Dr Jenn,
Thank you for this post and for all that you do.
Even though the FDA prescribing info for benzos is still quite flawed, it was updated Sept 2020 and is now “better”. Needs more work, but it’s getting there.
It says these drugs can cause symptoms for years after the drug is stopped right in the prescribing info. It is the doctors responsibility to keep up with this information, and as hard as it is to do that it is STILL PART OF THEIR JOB.
If they are not aware of this then they are not doing their job and should be told as such. One would be doing them a favor. You can always walk out and find another physician.
They certainly should not have a chip on the their shoulder when a patient brings it to their attention, something that actually is in writing from the FDA.
At this point in time if a physician is not aware that benzos are just as bad if not worse than opioids then they are living under a rock. This isn’t a secret. The information is EVERYWHERE about this. At this point any physician looks like a fool if they are not current on the dangers of this drug.
As time passes, especially with the huge uptick that the pandemic caused in prescribing benzos, it will be more and more well known how benzos cause injury.
Would a physician ever say: “Opioids are safe.” Heck no! Some day they will sound just as foolish saying that benzos are safe. The awareness is growing.
Dealing with physicians in withdrawal is serious business. Just like dealing with any other stress during withdrawal, seeing a non benzowise physician who refuses to believe the patient, can cause a flare up in withdrawal symptoms.
Be selective with who you choose to care for you, and when you bump into a bully get away from them, and give yourself plenty of guilt free, self care.
We’ll get through. We are healing every day.
I’m 4 years off and still having horrible waves. I was recently referred to a neurologist and I’m reeling from the shock of being gaslighted, patronised and invalidated. She diagnosed me with Functional Neurological Disorder and that I needed to see a psychiatrist and take ADs. When i refused she said if I did not do this I would very soon develop pseudo dementia. (My benzo was originally given for muscle spasm rather than anxiety).
I foolishly tried to educate her using Ashton and BIC but she carried on her tirade of how benzos leave the body in 3 weeks and long withdrawal symptoms are not possible and that I need to see a Drug and Alcohol specialist to “be educated “in “recent knowledge” about benzos.
Her report to my referring dr has almost brought me undone. I feel beyond broken.
Thankyou dr Jenn for this very timely article. It has pulled me back from the brink.
Oh, love, I am sooooo sorry to hear. Sadly, it’s not at all uncommon. I watched Hulu’s Dopesick and was heartsick learning the sinister behind the scenes of the pharma/medical communities. Ignorance is rampant with regard to so many drugs. YOU know what has happened to you. Hope you can let go of her negativity. Come join my support group. We’ve moved to Discord! We now have a benzo withdrawal community, unlike anything before it. Lots of support. You’ll feel heard and seen.
Word!
Wish I could reach through the screen and hug you! Keep healing.
Dr Jenn,
Are there licensed practitioners on the “Benzodiazepine Information Coalition” website that can reach out to, and work directly with a physician on a patient’s behalf ? Meaning if someone is seeing a doctor that is not educated on benzos and how to taper, can’t a physician on that website reach out and contact that doctor directly to educate them and give them the proper way to taper and how to switch over to Valium?
I do not need this for myself. I just came upon this idea and I was wondering. I guess we cannot educate the masses of physicians overnight, but can’t this be a way to help people who need it right now?
I worked for doctors many moons ago. They got phone calls all of the time from other specialists and such, and probably counselors too updating them and giving treatment information on patients.
Just wondering how that could work.
-Shelly
It’s worth trying. I am working on a course to teach the medical community about benzos. I hope to have it finished within a month or so. They need education!