Mentors should be prepared to repeat encouragements again and again, week after week, as their words are soon forgotten. The sleep engendered by benzodiazepines, though it may seem refreshing at first, is not a normal sleep. Benzodiazepines inhibit both dreaming sleep (rapid eye movement sleep, REMS) and deep sleep (slow wave sleep, SWS). The extra sleep time that benzodiazepines provide is spent mainly in light sleep, termed Stage 2 sleep.
Common Symptoms Associated With Benzodiazepine Withdrawal
- Chapter II discussed the need for slow withdrawal and gave practical examples of dosage tapering.
- His understanding of addiction as the overlapping symptoms of biopsychosocial development is the foundation to his care model.
- These are sometimes prescribed during withdrawal, especially prochlorperazine (Compazine).
- Tinnitus occurring during dose reduction or discontinuation of benzodiazepines is alleviated by recommencement of benzodiazepines.
- Acute withdrawal begins as soon as you stop taking benzos and is often marked by many, if not all of the physical and psychological symptoms listed above.
By Corinne O’Keefe OsbornCorinne Osborn is an award-winning health and wellness journalist with a background in substance abuse, sexual health, and psychology. Psychotherapy can help you understand the benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome root cause of your substance abuse problems. It can also help you learn to identify psychological triggers that may cause you to relapse so that you can avoid them in the future. A 2018 analysis also revealed that drug misuse accounts for about 17% of benzodiazepine use among adults in the United States. If you would like to learn more about how our services could help you—or your loved one—begin the path to recovery, please contact our admissions representatives today. In addition to answering any questions you may have about our services, they can assist with verifying your insurance coverage to help you better understand the potential cost of seeking treatment.
- Over-the-counter pain meds can be used (sparingly as they upset the gut microbiome and cause the liver to work harder at detoxification).
- People looking to get off benzos should do so under the guidance of a healthcare professional, who may recommend coping strategies and other tools to make the withdrawal process more comfortable.
- Short-acting benzos tend to cause withdrawal symptoms sooner, while longer-acting benzos may take longer for symptoms to appear.
- It is important to note that anxiety is a normal and necessary response to stress.
Benzodiazepine Withdrawal Symptoms, Acute & Protracted
Consequently, experts recommend you take benzodiazepines for no more than 2 weeks if you use them daily. If you only use them once every few days, you may be able to https://ecosoberhouse.com/ take them for up to 4 weeks. If your reasons for quitting benzodiazepines are that you were misusing them or unable to control your use, then you may require further substance use treatment.
EXTRA MEDICATION DURING BENZODIAZEPINE WITHDRAWAL
If you have been taking benzos for more than 4 weeks, contact your doctor for advice on how to safely taper your dosage. Benzodiazepine withdrawal can also lead to disturbances in mental function that persist for several months or years after onset of symptoms (referred to as post-acute-withdrawal syndrome in this form). Though therapy generally can’t address withdrawal symptoms specifically, it can help improve some symptoms, like anxiety and insomnia. If you experience unpleasant withdrawal symptoms during your taper, your care team can help you explore options to address those symptoms and get relief. In addition to the immediate health risk, benzodiazepine withdrawal can seriously affect your quality of life.
The largest factor that might predict the length of the harm is how the patient discontinued the drug (slow, controlled taper or over-rapid or cold-turkey withdrawal). Apart from tapering rate, there are no other known predictors for the severity of the withdrawal syndrome. Slowly reducing the dose, less than 5 to 10% of the current dose monthly, can minimize the severity of the withdrawal symptoms and is the recommended way to discontinue benzodiazepines safely.
It is possible that benzodiazepines can cause subtle changes which are not detected by present methods, but on the available evidence there is no reason to think that any such changes would be permanent. Flumazenil is thought to act by “resetting” GABA/benzodiazepine receptors (See Chapter I) so that they are more receptive to the inhibitory actions of GABA. The results suggest that some protracted symptoms are due to the failure of the receptors Substance abuse to revert to their normal state after they have become unresponsive to GABA, due to the development of tolerance (See Chapter I). The response to flumazenil also shows that benzodiazepines can cause longer-lasting pharmacological effects than previously believed. A number of unpleasant bodily sensations may persist after withdrawal including tingling, “pins and needles” or patches of numbness in the trunk, face, limbs and fingers.
