During my junior year of high school, I was prescribed my first benzodiazepine, called lorazepam, at 16 years of age. At the time, my parents and I did not understand the potential consequences of long-term use of benzos. Like so many other patients out there, we trusted that the healthcare system would not only provide treatment and correct guidance to move forward with my prescriptions, but I never realized they would be the force that would ruin my future and so many dreams I had for my young adulthood.
What followed was a years-long struggle with severe medication dependence and withdrawal that fundamentally changed my life for the worse.
Unfortunately, my story is not all that unique. Millions of Americans have been prescribed benzodiazepines such as lorazepam, alprazolam, and clonazepam. These medications can provide important short-term relief for anxiety, panic disorders, and other conditions. But for some patients, being over-prescribed, such as being constantly prescribed for 9 months straight, can cause severe mental and physical dependence due to sensitivity to benzos – everybody is different, and experiences can be drastically different. Some people can take benzos for months or even years on and off and feel okay, but many others can become hooked very badly.
The big question here isn’t whether benzos should exist in the first place - they have legitimate medical uses and help many people. The question is whether our healthcare system provides patients with sufficient education, monitoring, and support when these medications are prescribed for extended periods.
Trust is one of the foundations of healthcare. Patients trust physicians to explain risks honestly. Families trust healthcare institutions to keep pace with emerging evidence. The public trusts regulators to ensure that treatment guidelines reflect the best available science. When patients feel uninformed about dependency risks or unable to access consistent withdrawal support, that trust can fade away.
Although benzos have been on the market for many decades, they are still being studied about how they impact patients long-term. Patients often encounter conflicting advice from different providers about how long they should be prescribed (1-2 months should be the max) or otherwise, patients will build a dependency on benzos, and the severity of the withdrawals while coming off of them will vary from person to person. Some patients will receive detailed guidance as to exactly how long they are supposed to be prescribed and are told about the dangers of coming off of them and how to be cautious while about the pace of withdrawing from these medications. Unfortunately, many other patients are left to navigate complex withdrawal experiences largely on their own, no matter if they have been prescribed benzos for one month or one year, physicians might not truly understand how long to exactly prescribe them, how much and how carefully to withdrawal from them. The variation in care can leave patients confused and frustrated at a time when they are already vulnerable.
This is not primarily a story about individual doctors making bad decisions. Rather, it is a story about systems struggling to keep pace with a complicated public health issue. Physicians operate within larger structures that include medical education, professional guidelines, regulatory agencies, insurance policies, and healthcare institutions. When those systems fail to provide consistent information and evidence-based protocols, patients bear the consequences.
Improving this situation does not require assigning blame. It requires reform, and that reform will be the responsibility of patients to make their voices heard about their experiences with being prescribed benzos, we cannot be afraid of expressing the facts of what we go through – and then physicians will be responsible for following through with the new information they will receive about how to better prescribe, for how long, and how carefully to withdrawal patients from their benzo.
Medical schools and continuing education programs should ensure that healthcare professionals receive comprehensive training on dependency-forming medications and safe discontinuation practices. Patients should receive clear, standardized information about potential risks before beginning long-term treatment. Healthcare systems should develop better pathways for monitoring patients who remain on benzodiazepines for extended periods and provide access to evidence-based tapering support when needed – such as the Ashton Protocol, which is a withdrawal process that tapers off 5-10%. For example, I used to be on 30 mg of valium, came down 1.5 mg-2mg over two weeks to a month, so my body did not notice my body reducing valium in my system.
Policymakers and regulators can also play a role by supporting research into long-term outcomes, encouraging best-practice guidelines, and promoting transparency in patient education. Better data collection and reporting would help healthcare leaders identify care gaps and improve patient safety. For instance, giving patients a proper prognosis, such as an expectation of tapering by 5-10% every couple of weeks, would help temper expectations, as patients who eventually get impatient want results quickly and to know exactly when their withdrawal process will end.
My experience ultimately led me to write a book, Poisonous Band-Aid, to share my story and raise awareness about challenges some patients face with benzodiazepines. But the purpose of telling that story is not to revisit the past; it is to contribute to a larger conversation about accountability, patient safety, and public trust. I want physicians to be better informed and able to talk to their patients in a straightforward manner, so the facts are explained clearly. There needs to be a lot less uncertainty going on about how to properly get diagnosed and withdrawn from benzos in a timely manner.
Healthcare works best when patients and institutions work together. That partnership depends on trust, transparency, and a willingness to learn from difficult experiences. By strengthening patient education, improving professional training, and developing more consistent standards of care, we can help ensure that future patients are better informed and better supported than many have been in the past.
Eamon Janfada is a San Angelo, Texas, resident and the author of the book Poisonous Band-Aid.
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