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[Music] hey this is dr ken starr with the wellness group in a row grande i wanted to take a minute to talk about benzodiazepines and tapering and detox. this is by far the vast majority of questions we get, benzo patients and benzo questions.
there's so many ways to do this. let me summarize it for you because i say the same thing almost all the time. number one, try to do outpatient tapers. try to come down ten percent a week, ten percent every two weeks, ten percent a month, whatever you can do is fine. make sure you're on a long, long-acting benzo, preferably diazepam or clonazepam will work. why? because you don't want to have interdose withdrawal. so if you're dependent or trying to get off xanax, alprazolam, that's not real good. it comes on fast, it goes off fast. you don't want to yo-yo your central nervous system. okay, so get on a long-acting benzo, have your doc convert you over to that, do outpatient slow reductions.
what i don't like to see happen is someone going into rehab for a week or two thinking they're going to detox off huge amounts of benzos that they've been on for a long time. it doesn't end well. um, when we detox people off of opiates or alcohol, that's a very predictable withdrawal process. we know exactly when they're going to get better. we know exactly what they're going to go through. with benzos, it's so much, it's just so unpredictable. if you have experience with this, you know autonomic dysregulation, hot/cold, tonight is depersonalization, headaches, all those weird stuff that can last for months and months and months and months and months. that most doctors won't even believe you if you tell them that.
if you're going to use nad, here's what i want you to know. if you're on a lower dose of benzo, that's variable. if you're on a lower dose, i would say you can certainly stop that and then come into an nad program where you have medical supervision because we can use other medicines along with supplements to to really manage the withdrawal and result in a good restoration.
if you're on very high doses of benzos, i think you could still come in and do an nad program, but you might not stop entirely. you might just try dose reductions during the course of the infusion weeks and see how you tolerate that. if you're tolerating it well, we continue to do sort of much bigger drops than you would use an outpatient. um, but be patient with benzos. it takes a long time. you know, there's a lot of support groups out there that can help answer questions so you're not going crazy.
i would encourage you to use nad for benzos. i think it works. i would encourage you not to go into a residential program for just benzos if you don't have to, just because the receptors are sticky. it takes much longer to result in those changes. it's like you don't go into a a one-week treatment for diabetes. you education. it's more of a lifelong education with diabetes. detoxing on benzos is so slow, it takes so long. you have to be patient. you have to know what's going on. and there are medications and supplements that can help that be easier.
um, call us if you have any questions. please email us. we're happy to try to talk to you. please subscribe. please share this. thank you. and that's my two minutes on benzodiazepines.