Our dedicated team is here to guide you through every step of the detoxification process, offering a blend of medical expertise, compassionate care, and a supportive community environment. It’s important to approach withdrawal with the understanding that while the process can be challenging, the symptoms are temporary and manageable with the right support and resources. Healthcare providers play a crucial role in guiding individuals through withdrawal, offering reassurance, and adapting treatment plans to address the person’s evolving needs in recovery. Recognizing the variability and potential challenges of benzodiazepine withdrawal is crucial. Individuals can navigate this complex process with appropriate support and management, moving toward recovery and returning to health.
Patient Infographic
- National Library of Medicine, these drugs are known to cause dependency and cognitive decline over time, making using them very difficult to manage.
- Protracted withdrawal syndrome refers to symptoms persisting for months or even years.
- Practices such as drug tapering or using other drugs to help ease withdrawal may make early withdrawal symptoms milder and more manageable.
However, they typically will last for several days and up to a week, slowly improving. However, some individuals can suffer a serious setback such as a seizure even weeks later. Benzo dependency happens when a person has to have the drug to function on a day-to-day basis. Without it, they may have extreme levels of anxiety or irrational thoughts. The definition of dependency is having withdrawal symptoms when you stop taking it.
- If you want to stop taking benzodiazepines after consistent long-term use, your doctor can help you gradually taper off your medication.
- Withdrawal phenomena appear to be more severe following withdrawal from high doses or short-acting benzodiazepines.
- Withdrawal seizures typically occur in individuals who took high dosages of benzos for a long period of time.
- So, your doctor may recommend a slower taper schedule as a safety precaution.
Acute Withdrawal Phase
Emerging research also suggests acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) could also have benefits during benzodiazepine withdrawal. This approach helps you learn to tolerate discomfort and distress, instead of avoiding it, and choose to live according to your values. That’s what makes it essential to stop taking benzodiazepines slowly, with support from a medical professional. But when you start removing benzodiazepines from your system, suddenly your clogged neurons become an open freeway with no traffic lanes. All those extra chemicals flood your brain, and the excess activity causes symptoms like anxiety and sweating.
Other Physical
After prolonged periods of benzodiazepine abuse, the brain develops tolerance to the drug. Tolerance means that users require higher doses to feel the effects of the drug. Tapering schedules vary based on the dose, duration of use, and specific drug involved.
What is a Typical Benzo Withdrawal Timeline?
It requires a nuanced approach, considering the drug’s impact on the brain’s chemistry and the individual’s unique physiological and psychological makeup. With this knowledge, patients and healthcare providers can develop strategies to navigate withdrawal with greater safety and comfort. Benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome is a complex physiological and psychological process that occurs when an individual who has taken the drug for an extended period either reduces the dosage or stops its consumption altogether. The symptoms of withdrawal are the body’s response to its dependency on the substance and its sudden absence from the system.
A physician may implement a tapering schedule, gradually lowering the dose to reduce risks. Medications like carbamazepine, phenobarbital, trazodone, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) benzodiazepine withdrawal may help manage symptoms. Detox programs often include therapy, behavioral support, and ongoing monitoring of blood pressure, sleep, mood, and cognition.
Edmund has an extensive background in SUD research and medical writing, working collaboratively with doctors, substance use disorder specialists, and clinical experts across all content on Recovered. These symptoms are a direct result of GABA dysregulation in the nervous system. Stopping the medication cold turkey can trigger severe effects and even life-threatening complications such as seizures. As chief Clinical Officer at FHE Health, a nationally recognized behavioral health treatment provider, he ensures quality, innovation, and comprehensive treatment for patients. It may include an increasingly rapid heart rate, higher blood pressure and sweating.
- The best way to detox from a benzodiazepine is under medical supervision and in the care of addiction specialists.
- Short-acting benzodiazepines, like triazolam, pass quickly through the body, so you’ll likely experience withdrawal symptoms sooner — sometimes within a matter of hours.
- These factors don’t guarantee you’ll have severe withdrawal symptoms, but they can increase your vulnerability.
- Since benzodiazepines impact the mind and body, the drug’s withdrawal symptoms do as well.
- Conversely, those who have used benzodiazepines for a shorter period may experience a less severe withdrawal phase.
With benzos, this can create a very uncomfortable experience, and in some cases, it can cause a very dangerous outcome. Benzodiazepines are a versatile medication with the ability to treat multiple symptoms by affecting the central nervous system. The broad group of drugs that comprise benzodiazepines can target different functions, act at different speeds, and affect the body for varying lengths of time.
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Common medications include diazepam, alprazolam, lorazepam, clonazepam, oxazepam, nitrazepam, temazepam, and chlordiazepoxide. These medications function by enhancing GABA activity in the central nervous system, reducing neuron excitability and promoting calm behavior, sleep, and relaxation. These drugs tend to be readily available because they are used so routinely in the treatment of a variety of disorders and symptoms. They are often used to treat anxiety disorders such as panic attacks and can be used to help with seizure management and to relieve insomnia.
The Alcoholics Anonymous contents are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of nor an endorsement by the FDA and Department of Health and Human Services or the US Government. The funders had no decision-making role in designing and conducting the systematic reviews, data collection, analysis, and interpretation of the data or approval privilege on the recommendations. As requested, FDA officers provided nonbinding feedback and technical support to the guideline panel and methodological team.