More from Jennifer Leigh

Benzo withdrawal

Dr. Jennifer Leigh, Psy.D.

Published: July 7, 2015

What your doctors won’t tell you about benzo withdrawal

 

 

The Huffington Post recently published one view about benzos. But it’s missing the patient experience. Here’s another view, with a section at the end for your comments, questions, and general feedback. (If you write us, we’ll try to respond to you personally!)

Benzo awareness is coming of age

 

Alexander Zaitchik shoved the dangers of benzodiazepine into the spotlight with his edgy article “Is It Bedtime For Benzos?” re-published by the Huffington Post, June 25, 2015.  I’m over the moon that benzo awareness is coming of age. But the whole benzo story needs to be told, not just the bullet points and interviews from doctors who have absolutely no idea what surviving benzo withdrawal feels like every second of every day.

 

Trying to learn about benzodiazepine addiction and withdrawal from a doctor’s perspective is like asking a German soldier what the concentration camps were like for the Jews who had the misfortune of ending up in one. We need to hear from the benzo victims themselves. They know the truth. Let’s take a look at the benzo problem from their perspective.

The “Benzos Are Like Cocaine” argument

 

Zaitchik’s article rests on the argument that benzodiazepines are addictive in the traditional sense of the word. Citing a study done by Dr. Christian Luscher and colleagues at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and published in 2012, he posits that benzo users crave the dopamine surge that benzodiazepines, like other addictive drugsm cause. Luscher also claims, “Now that we know that it’s the alpha-1-containing GABAA receptor that is responsible for benzodiazepine addiction, we can design benzodiazepines that do not touch those particular receptors.”

 

He’s moved into fiction here, because he doesn’t know this to be true (for many reasons, and he’s clearly stumping for more drug manufacturing. Let’s not forget that Switzerland is the home of the Valium manufacturer Roche). Luscher doesn’t touch on the problem of what causes the debilitating symptoms that arrive upon tolerance to the drug, dose reduction or cessation. That’s the real story of the dangers of benzos.

The real dangers of benzos

 

Talk to most benzo users who take the drug as prescribed by their doctor and you’ll hear a much different story than chasing a surge of dopamine. They are trying to stave off what feels like (and could actually be) death and insanity.

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Benzo users don’t crave the drug the way one would crave, say, cocaine. They are addicted because the drug causes changes in the GABA receptors (and who knows what else) that cause he following when you reduce the dose:

 

    extreme anxiety

    terror

    fear

    paranoia depersonalization

    derealization

    panic

 

If those nightmare symptoms aren’t enough to make you think twice about getting on a benzo then think on this: Going through withdrawal from benzos can cause pain throughout the body: bones, joints, muscles and nerve endings scream in protest. Still not convinced that benzos are the devils doing? On top of the emotional and physical anguish, benzos cause debilitating problems with:

 

    vision

    hearing

    taste smelling

    skin

    digestion

    balance

    walking

    memory, and cognition

 

Wait. There’s more. The bladder, bowel, heart, stomach, esophagus, uterus, and other organs, and systems can be prey to benzos havoc. Oh, and not to mention auditory, olfactory and visual hallucinations.

 

Reduce the dose or remove the drug to provoke detox from benzos, and you enter a Faustian world where you will do anything to feel normal. But normal is a long ways away, and there is nothing no pill or potion – that can reverse the damage the drug has caused. The only cure is time. A lot of time. Sometimes years. Benzo withdrawal makes craving heroin look like child’s play. Seriously.

Let’s get the timeline straight, and other truths

 

TRUTH #1. Benzo withdrawal can take years.

 

Recovering from the damage that benzodiazepines cause takes longer than the few months cited by Zaitchik’s source, Rev. Jack Abel, a rehab therapist who runs the sleep program for Caron Clinics. Recovery from benzo use can take years. Many, many years.

 

TRUTH #2. Benzos damage the brain BEFORE withdrawal even begins.

 

Zaitchik shares integrative medicine physician, Dr. Peter Madill’s, sentiment that if one removes the drug too quickly the brain, “thinks it is being injured” I’ll go out on a limb and say that the benzo damaged the brain long before the drug was reduced or removed.

 

TRUTH #3. Stop prescribing benzodiazepines for more than a few days and there is no withdrawal.

 

Madill wants more research into drugs that can augment the withdrawal process. That seems backwards to me. I’d rather see the time and energy devoted to banning the use of benzos for more than a few days. Stop the benzos and you won’t have a population of people suffering in benzo withdrawal. There won’t be a need for time and energy researching ways to alleviate their suffering.

 

TRUTH #4. Benzo withdrawal unravels your life.

 

Madill argues that benzo users don’t destroy their lives in dramatic fashion, say, like heroin or methamphetamine users are prone to do. Benzo users function just fine, usually. We go to work and raise families. But when tolerance to the drug hits and our brains and bodies need more to stave off the horrific withdrawal symptoms, our lives begin to fray around the edges. Reduce or remove the drug and they unravel, sometimes completely. We are often unable to take care of even the most basic of survival needs in benzo withdrawal. Suddenly heroin or meth addicts seem high functioning in comparison. (I know. I lived it. For years.)

 

TRUTH #5. Benzos don’t just disempower you; they can kill you.

 

Dr. Jason Eric Schiffman, the director of UCLA’s Dual Diagnosis Program balks at benzos because he believes they create a sense of disempowerment. Feel anxiety, take a pill. You don’t learn to cope with anxiety. I agree that learning to stand up to the bully called anxiety is a grand idea. Schiffman misses the point though. The danger isn’t that the pill will disempower you. No, the very real danger is that the pill may kill you. And if it doesn’t kill you, you’ll wish it had when you start the long and arduous battle of fighting for your life and your sanity when you try to divorce yourself from it.

We’re barking up the wrong trees

 

Not to sound ungrateful. I’m pleased Zaitchik wrote a gripping piece to bring more light to the benzo problem. I just want the deeper, darker truth to stand in the spotlight along with his arguments.

 

Benzodiazepines kill people. They can totally obliterate people’s lives when they try to stop taking them. Granted, not every benzo user will experience extreme benzo withdrawal, but a good proportion will. Benzos are dangerous at any dose and even when used for a few days (not two years, as Rev. Abel believes). Poll a group of benzo survivors and you’ll hear horror stories from people who took them for a handful of days, and then took years to heal.

 

Benzodiazepines destroy lives. That’s the bottom line. For those of us in the trenches healing from their damage, we are busy trying to put our lives back together again from the debilitating emotional and physical symptoms benzo withdrawal causes. Add in the bankruptcy, abandonment, divorce, and homelessness that withdrawal can cause, and you understand our grumbling when the media doesn’t portray the real reasons why benzos are dangerous.

Bedtime for benzos

 

Zaitchik writes that it’s remarkable that it’s taken so much time for the conversation about benzos to take place in the U.S. I agree. The conversation has been ongoing for decades in the U.K. Dr. Heather Ashton, who for years, ran a benzodiazepine withdrawal clinic, is the leading expert in benzo withdrawal. She is often scorned here in the United States as a “kook.” It’s hard to have a conversation with doctors who don’t even want to acknowledge one of their own. I’m regularly copied on emails that are part of an ongoing legal battle in England with regards to these drugs. The powers that be continue to turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to the problem.

The benzo problem is hiding in plain sight

 

Take a look at the people who are suffering through benzodiazepine withdrawal and you’ll see the truth. You’ll see shattered lives. You’ll see people who can’t go on another day and end their lives because the suffering in benzo withdrawal is too much for any human being to bear. You’ll rethink what addiction means. You’ll rethink what the Hippocratic oath means. Doctors are maiming and killing people with the stroke of a pen, and very little is being done to stop them.

 

We need the truth to be told. Mainstream media needs to listen to another perspective of the dangers of benzodiazepines. Perhaps then more doctors will listen. Perhaps then it will finally be bedtime for benzos.

 

 

 

THIS IS EXCELLENT, Bets!!! Thanks so much for this!!

 

How can I get access to the original article? Just go on Jennifer's website? I thought she was no longer writing.

 

"Citing a study done by Dr. Christian Luscher and colleagues at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and published in 2012, he posits that benzo users crave the dopamine surge that benzodiazepines, like other addictive drugs cause. Luscher also claims, 'Now that we know that it’s the alpha-1-containing GABAA receptor that is responsible for benzodiazepine addiction, we can design benzodiazepines that do not touch those particular receptors.'"

 

It's a complete and utter fallacy that patients on benzos "crave the dopamine surge." That's a bunch of crap. By far, those in benzo w/d are not craving the drug for any dopamine surge. They're in physical and mental torment. When will doctors ever get a clue about the real facts?

 

I like the term "Faustian world." That sums it up right there.

 

And the world doesn't need any newer benzo pills. The current ones NEED TO BE BANNED except for extremely short term, as Jennifer says.

 

This article really lays it out in terms of the problems benzos cause, and it's great that it took apart what so-called experts write about benzos - which, as we all know, turns out to be filled with ignorance/naivete that needs to be thrown into the trash bin instead of circulated for others to read.

 

 

 

Great post Bets....thank you.

That was excellent, thank you for sharing that!

Thanks for the post.

 

Sweet pea

Sometimes the truth is somewhere in the middle.

 

Bets' post:

 

Obviously that dopamine issue is nonsense.

 

Most people are doing mostly fine after short term or even medium term (months) use of benzodiazepines at medium or low doses. As long as it is their first time, there is no polydrugging etc ...

 

'Benzos damage the brain BEFORE withdrawal even begins' Well, yes and no. I was mostly fine before I tried to taper ... But that's me. Obviously there are changes to the brain if one takes a benzo.

 

A few points about banning benzos:  I think that in that case we need to ban antidepressants and antipsychotics as well, or there will be a shift from benzos to those drugs. And how do we prevent people being put on Lyrica and Neurontin instead ?

I think that the key point is the idea that when these drugs are prescribed by a doctor it is for your health and that it is 'safe'. I don't mind people taking drugs as long as they don't hurt others, but doctors prescribing these drugs ?

Anxiety is not a disease and and the same goes for insomnia. However cruel that may sound.

Obviously there are some people that benefit from these drugs, but I believe that the world would be a better place if the psychotropic drugs did not exist. Echoing Peter Gøtzsche.

 

'Dr. Heather Ashton, who for years, ran a benzodiazepine withdrawal clinic, is the leading expert in benzo withdrawal. She is often scorned here in the United States as a “kook."'

Professor emeritus, these days ... I wouldn't call her the 'leading expert', in fact I would question the word 'expert' when we are referring to people that became iatrogenically dependent.

Almost all of her work is decades old. That there are no major modern (public) sources for withdrawal from benzodiazepines does not negate that.

She started as an addiction doctor. Some of her work seems to be based on the very same principles as putting heroin addicts on methadone. Most of that information is not easy to locate.

And the fact that many people who taper off diazepam after switching from their primary drug seem to have hellish withdrawals once they get below the therapeutic dose or at very low doses should make one think twice ...

One could say more, like her famous project in which she switched people over from their original benzo had a sample size of 300 people (or was that 50?), none of whom was on clonazepam.

I certainly wouldn't call her a kook, but I get the impression that some people are so desperate when they get into a harsh withdrawal they tend to cling to the articles of faith in the 'Ashton manual'. She did good original work, but as someone on another website put it 'it is not her fault that people made her into a saint'.

 

Taking benzodiazepines long term often ends up in disaster. But banning drugs ? The 'war on drugs' has not been successful.

Something like a 'black box warning' would be nice. As well as holding doctors acountable for prescribing these drugs.

I believe this is the link to the article:

 

http://prescription-drug.addictionblog.org/what-your-doctors-or-alexander-zaitchik-wont-tell-you-about-benzo-withdrawal/

 

 

By the way, you might want to read some of the responses. It's pretty heart-breaking stuff -- exactly what we're reading here on BB every day. Here's an exchange that includes a response from the author herself:

 

Pat

10:16 pm July 19th, 2015

 

"i agree with everything, but I question truth #3. Of course, banning benzos would be the ideal solution, but that’s not going to happen. Look at the long, hard ,expensive fight the U.K. Has put up for years. It’s all about the money. I think putting money into researching for an adjunct for a drug to help people withdrawing from this poison is a stellar idea. And,of course, the effort to ban them could still go on. Like maybe that adjunct could be developed in 10 years and the ban could take 20 years, that’s an awfully lot of misery that could be eliminated or lessened between year 10 and year 20. The drug companies would be amazed at how much money they could make since they seem to be ignorant about all the pain and ruined lives these drugs cause. I say let’s do both."

 

 

Dr. Jennifer Leigh

5:28 am July 25th, 2015

"Pat I hear your logic on number three. My concern is anything that changes the brain seems to have a high price to pay at some point. If we fight hard enough, we may see a ban sooner than we think. With the internet now connecting victims, our voices are loud and clear. More has been written in the last three years about benzos than the last 30 combined! We are gaining speed!"

Thanks so much, Lapis, for the link!! 

 

And also for Jennifer's response regarding banning benzos. She's absolutely right.

 

It's heartening to read her response regarding the increased attention in the past 3 years. I don't have that kind of perspective, so I appreciate hearing it from someone who does.

Yes, I agree with you, Lapis. I don't have that perspective, either, but it's great to hear that there is increasing awareness and progress going on!