Understanding the symptoms, timeline and available treatment is essential if you’re coming off benzodiazepines, or supporting someone through the withdrawal process. In the following weeks, you might start to experience more intense withdrawal symptoms. Benzodiazepine withdrawal symptoms tend to appear within a few hours to a few days after you last take the drug. Here, we’ll explore the symptoms of benzodiazepine withdrawal, the timeline for withdrawal and the treatment that’s available to help you to withdraw safely. Find out more about the symptoms, timeline and treatment options for benzodiazepine withdrawal.
This can involve living at a detox facility or hospital for several weeks, where you can receive constant medical monitoring and psychological support. Depending on your situation, your doctor may think it best to prescribe very small amounts of medication at a time. Benzodiazepine withdrawal can be dangerous when not handled properly. To cope with these breakthrough symptoms, it helps to have a backup plan for dealing with anxiety.
In other words, your body may rely on benzodiazepines to function if you take them frequently and for more than a short period of time. Examples of benzodiazepines include alprazolam (Xanax) and diazepam (Valium). Benzodiazepines are a powerful class of medication used to treat anxiety, insomnia, and panic disorder. No one should attempt to get off benzo drugs without the supervision of a healthcare professional. A healthcare professional should supervise benzo withdrawal to help monitor and manage the symptoms.
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Severe symptoms and reactions can occur, and working with a professional can help a person avoid or manage these symptoms. Managing symptoms is important to help prevent recurrance of use/misuse. They will make this decision on a case-by-case basis, depending on the type and severity of the symptoms affecting the individual. Some symptoms may appear without warning and can be a significant source of distress. These symptoms may be troubling or affect a person’s quality of life.
Difficult tapers
Withdrawal symptoms can occur after as little as one month of use, even on small, therapeutic doses. Withdrawing from benzodiazepines can be a difficult, even dangerous process. From 1996 to 2013, the number of people filling benzodiazepine prescriptions increased by 67%. The primary difference between these drugs is the length of time they stay active in the body.
Withdrawal symptoms may be mild in people who take the drugs for short periods. For example, symptoms of anxiety or insomnia may come back or get worse without the drugs. A person’s withdrawal symptoms often depend on the half-life of the drug. The withdrawal symptoms, which vary in severity, typically begin within 24 hours and may last from a few days to a few months. Long-term treatment after benzodiazepine withdrawal will depend on your reasons for taking them in the first place and your reasons for quitting.
Protracted withdrawal
They could rate each problem as nonexistent, mild, moderate, severe, quite severe, or enormous. After a month or so, your brain gets used to sending off more neurotransmitters just so some can get past the benzodiazepine blockade. They can range in severity, though for some people, they remain mild and manageable. If you’re predisposed to seizures, your risk of having a seizure may also increase during the withdrawal period. This is because inconsistent use doesn’t pose the same risk of dependence or withdrawal. If you only use them once every few days, you may be able to take them for up to 4 weeks.
Protracted withdrawal syndrome
- In severe cases, the withdrawal reaction or protracted withdrawal may exacerbate or resemble serious psychiatric and medical conditions, such as mania, schizophrenia, agitated depression, panic disorder, generalised anxiety disorder, and complex partial seizures and, especially at high doses, seizure disorders.
- Some people might also experience more severe benzodiazepine withdrawal symptoms, some of which can be life-threatening.
- The rate of dosage reduction is best carried out so as to minimize the symptoms’ intensity and severity.
- This is the best time of year to begin treatment.
- But when you start removing benzodiazepines from your system, suddenly your clogged neurons become an open freeway with no traffic lanes.
The information we provide is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. The severity of these symptoms depends on the duration of a person’s drug use, their dosage amounts, and the method of ingestion. Psychological symptoms are irritability, insomnia, anxiety, depression, and memory loss. Benzodiazepines are used to treat anxiety, epilepsy, insomnia, and alcohol withdrawal.
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The symptoms of benzo withdrawal can vary, depending Benzodiazepine withdrawal on many factors. Supportive counseling and other targeted therapies or medications may help a person manage the symptoms and improve their quality of life. Although many symptoms subside after the acute withdrawal phase, lingering side effects are possible.
Treatment for withdrawal usually involves weaning over a 3- to 21-day period if the infusion lasted for more than a week. The likelihood of having the syndrome correlates with total infusion duration and dose, although duration is thought to be more important. The change in symptoms has been proposed to be due to changes in receptor sensitivity for GABA during the process of tolerance reversal. Symptoms continue to improve over time, often to the point where people eventually resume their normal lives, even after years of incapacity. A study testing neuropsychological factors found psychophysiological markers differing from normals, and concluded that protracted withdrawal syndrome was a genuine iatrogenic condition caused by the long-term use.
- Our medical detox service offers a controlled environment, where you can safely withdraw from substances such as benzodiazepines.
- This reaction is due tohow the drug actson neurotransmitters.
- Their levels of physical dependency and psychological addiction also come into play when determining the severity of withdrawal symptoms.
- 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.
Benzodiazepine Withdrawal & Detox Options
Most tapering schedules fall somewhere in between these two extremes. A very quick taper would involve reducing the dose by 5 mg (25%) each week. Every 1 to 4 weeks after that, they’ll reduce your dose by another 5% to 25% of the original dose.
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Though therapy generally can’t address withdrawal symptoms specifically, it can help improve some symptoms, like anxiety and insomnia. In the first week of tapering off, your doctor may reduce your dose as much as 30% to get you to a safe amount. These factors don’t guarantee you’ll have severe withdrawal symptoms, but they can increase your vulnerability.
Short-acting benzodiazepines, like triazolam, pass quickly through the body, so you’ll likely experience withdrawal symptoms sooner — sometimes within a matter of hours. If withdrawal symptoms become severe, doctors may prescribe other medications. Most people do okay with tapering their benzodiazepines at home with the help of their primary care doctor or psychiatrist. The best way to quit benzodiazepines is to avoid withdrawal by asking your doctor to taper down your dose. One woman had a medical abortion, as she felt she could no longer cope, and another woman used alcohol in a bid to combat the withdrawal symptoms from benzodiazepines. For example, abrupt withdrawal of benzodiazepines or antidepressants has a high risk of causing extreme withdrawal symptoms, including suicidal ideation and a severe rebound effect of the return of the underlying disorder if present.
Causes & Risk Factors
The benzodiazepine withdrawal treatment guidelines at The Recovery Village allow some patients to be treated with medications. Research showed that 40% of people taking benzos for longer than 6 months experienced moderate-to-severe withdrawal symptoms. Practices such as drug tapering or using other drugs to help ease withdrawal may make early withdrawal symptoms milder and more manageable. While there is no FDA-approved medication to treat benzodiazepine withdrawal, your doctor may also prescribe other medications to help you manage withdrawal symptoms.
Those who have a prior history of withdrawing from benzodiazepines are found to be less likely to succeed the next time around. It has been postulated that when benzodiazepines are cleared from the brain, these neuroadaptations are «unmasked», leading to unopposed excitability of the neuron. As withdrawal progresses, patients often find their physical and mental health improves with improved mood and improved cognition. For more information, call us today or click here to book your free addiction assessment. Addiction therapy can play a crucial role in addressing the psychological factors contributing to your benzodiazepine use. Remember, your doctor will be able to provide guidance and support to enable a safe and comfortable transition off diazepam.