The last several months have been busy for our volunteers, with recent work focused on improving benzodiazepine awareness in the medical field. Our message to the medical field is that they are failing prescribed benzodiazepine patients. We hope our work will help make knowledgeable care the standard, not the exception, prioritizing informed consent.
Call to Action
- A major TV network seeks women impacted by prescribed Valium (diazepam) for an upcoming documentary project. To learn more, or to be considered as a film subject, go here.
- Anyone can report benzodiazepine harm to the FDA! Our instructions on how to file a MedWatch report are available here.
- Ph.D. Researcher opportunity The SAFEGUARDING-Psychotropic Use Project: Supporting sAFE and GradUAL reDuction of loNG-term Psychotropic Use (page 11)
Support Us

Our work relies solely on the generosity of our supporters and volunteers. Our generous donors allow us to:
- Conduct informed, relevant research
- Educate about prescribed benzodiazepine harms and safety protocols at conferences and events
- Maintain our website, reaching hundreds of thousands of people annually, with accurate information and awareness about benzodiazepine harm
- Facilitate our programs
Our organization is the only patient-led organization globally addressing prescribed benzodiazepine injuries. Your donation funds a movement that understands this problem because we live it. If you are in a position to give, would you consider supporting this important cause with a donation today? You can make your donation here: https://www.benzoinfo.com/donate/.
BIC Updates
We welcome Dr. Mark Leeds and Dr. Jennifer Swantkowski to our Medical Advisory Board.

Dr. Leeds is an osteopathic physician focusing on medication-assisted treatment for opioid addiction and alcoholism. He also provides concierge private benzodiazepine withdrawal services.

Dr. Swantkowski is a therapist with lived experience. Since her injury, she maintains a YouTube channel focused on prescribed benzodiazepine harm and therapy topics.
Our Research and Publications
- In 2018, our director Dr. Christy Huff, and BIC General Advisory Board Member, Dr. Jane Macoubrie, conducted a patient survey on experiences with benzodiazepines. Published in April, Experiences with benzodiazepine use, tapering, and discontinuation: an Internet survey is the first in a planned series of papers reporting the survey results. The survey found:
- many patients experienced an array of protracted and severe symptoms, even years after benzodiazepines were completely discontinued
- adverse life effects were numerous and occurred in a majority of respondents
- 54% of respondents reported suicidal ideation or attempted suicide
- the authors concluded that “greater awareness is needed for both prescribers and patients about the potential for a difficult withdrawal from benzodiazepines.”
- Dr. Christy Huff and BIC Medical Advisory Board member Nicole Lamberson, PA, co-authored Supporting safe and gradual reduction of long-term benzodiazepine receptor agonist use: Development of the SAFEGUARDING-BZRAs toolkit using a codesign approach. The article focuses on developing an intervention to support the discontinuation of long-term benzodiazepine receptor agonist use among willing individuals.
Our Outreach
Dr. Christy Huff presented at the Colorado Consortium’s benzodiazepine-focused webinar series about Benzodiazepine Induced Neurological Dysfunction (BIND).
Our Blogs and Other Publications
- Nicole Lamberson, PA published a new blog entitled Fixing The Benzo Problem: Open The Proverbial Closet Door And Look Inside. Her blog spotlights how patients made iatrogenically physically dependent on prescribed benzodiazepines have to pay the same medical system that harmed them to (painfully) fix the problem.
- Dr. Mark Leeds wrote a blog Why Must We Stop Gaslighting People With Medication Induced Akathisia?
- Dr. Jennifer Swantkowski published a memoir, The Waiting Room: My Recovery Journey from Medication Injury & Benzodiazepine Withdrawal.
Our Media
- Nicole Lamberson, PA, interviewed two BIC Medical Board Members for Medicating Normal’s Facebook Live Interview Series: Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring about Benzos, Antidepressants, Protracted Withdrawal & the FDA, and Dr. Mark Leeds about Addiction Medicine, Benzodiazepines and More.
- As a sponsor of the documentary Medicating Normal on PBS, we were featured in several resource videos on social media for May’s Mental Health Awareness Month.
Coming Soon

- In August, Dr. Christy Huff will give a keynote lecture on her benzodiazepine lived experience at the California Society of Addiction Medicine’s State of the Art Addiction Medicine Conference.
- Christy Huff, MD, and Nicole Lamberson, PA, will participate in a Priority Setting Partnership (PSP), and serve on the Steering Group through the James Lind Alliance. This partnership will identify a top 10 list of research priorities in the field of benzodiazepine deprescribing. The Steering Group members will select key priorities and help identify networks to engage key stakeholders (clinicians, people with lived experience, and carers) in determining the critical uncertainties in this area.
- The Colorado Benzodiazepine Action Work Group’s benzodiazepine peer training program is in development until late June 2022. Both Christy Huff, MD, and Nicole Lamberson, PA, are on the core team. More details on the curriculum are coming soon!
Benzo-related Media
- Independent: We are repeating mistakes from the 1970s when it comes to antidepressants
- Mad In America: Research Explores the Experience of Benzodiazepine Withdrawal
- New York Post: 43% of world’s rivers contain dangerous levels of prescription drugs
- Psychology Today: Benzodiazepine Withdrawal Tied to Serious Long-Term Harms
- Radically Genuine Podcast: Benzodiazepines. Everything you don’t know but should
- Woman’s World: These Common Insomnia and Anxiety Drugs May Increase Your Dementia Risk, Study Shows
New and Interesting Research
- An interesting case report describing benzodiazepine withdrawal-induced Taktsubo cardiomyopathy (aka broken heart syndrome).
- This study investigating the link between benzodiazepines/Z-drugs and dementia found that, as a whole, benzodiazepine users did not have an increased risk of dementia. However, there was an increased risk of dementia found specifically with short-to-intermediate half-life benzodiazepines and Z-drugs. This risk was higher in women and increased with higher doses of benzodiazepines. The authors concluded: “These results address the importance of avoiding long-term use of these medications.”
- This systematic review of 19 studies on prenatal exposure to benzodiazepines and Z-drugs found that “it is currently not possible to conclude with a reasonable degree of certainty whether prenatal exposure to [benzodiazepines] and/or z-drugs is associated with neurodevelopmental outcomes in offspring.” The authors conclude that more research is needed and have outlined several strategies.
- Yet another review on prenatal exposure to benzodiazepines found that it “was associated with four developmental outcomes indicating an impaired long-term-development of the offspring: internalizing problems, impaired gross motor skills, lower academic achievements and increased attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) traits.” The authors once again conclude that further research is needed.
- A fascinating case report of drug-induced liver injury from lorazepam (Ativan).
- Dr. Steven Wright discusses benzodiazepine stewardship in this article. He discusses the indications for benzodiazepine prescribing and the importance of having a plan for deprescribing at the time of prescription.
- This viewpoint article suggests a new term, complex persistent benzodiazepine dependence (CPBD), to describe the symptomatic and functional decompensation that occurs in some patients during benzodiazepine deprescribing in the absence of substance use disorder (SUD). Of note, the characteristics of CPBD discussed in the article are similar to that of complex persistent opioid dependence (CPOD), a term already used in clinical practice. The authors conclude that research is needed to validate the term CBPD and further define its clinical characteristics.
- In 2017, a new regulation in France limited the duration of zolpidem prescriptions to 28 days and placed further restrictions on prescriptions. A survey was conducted to see how practitioners adapted to the new regulation. Age was a significant factor in practitioners deeming the restrictions helpful v. harmful; younger practitioners are more likely to consider the restrictions beneficial. The number of years of treatment with zolpidem was the leading factor practitioners cited in determining their prescribing strategy. For example, in a patient older than 65, the most common strategies were to maintain the drug or, at a minimum, decrease the zolpidem dose.
- In this report on opioid and benzodiazepine prescribing in patients hospitalized for COVID-19, benzodiazepine exposure during admission was associated with a six-fold higher odds of a discharge prescription.
- The key take-away from this article on the use of benzodiazepines in schizophrenia supports short-term use only of benzodiazepines. The authors state: “Short-term benzodiazepine therapy in patients with schizophrenia results in better clinical outcomes than long-term benzodiazepine therapy.”
- Researchers discuss their recent study detailing a mechanism for cognitive impairment from long-term diazepam. In this interesting excerpt from the article, they raise the question of diazepam also possibly leading to severe fatigue:The compound studied, diazepam, didn’t go directly to the long spines and synaptic connections between the nerve cell itself, but to the microglia. By doing so, the drug changed the normal activity of microglial cells and indirectly the maintenance function that microglia have around synaptic nerve cell connections. It is intriguing to see how the brain’s local immune system, of which microglial cells are part, directly participates in the overall functional integrity of the brain.There are several serious illness conditions, such as dementia but notably also those characterized by often extreme or prolonged fatigue, such as we see now in ‘long COVID’ or after accidental or therapeutic radiation exposure, where we know that the immune system responds very strongly.If the connections between neurons are severed by the activity of the microglial cells, then it’s almost like unplugging neural connections, and that would explain, how very subtle changes could drive a further progression of dementia, or – more speculatively – cause severe fatigue.