Six Reasons Benzo Recovery Is Subjective

As a benzo coach, I naturally receive a constant stream of questions about recovery. People want to know what benzo they should use to taper, what taper speed and method they should use. They want to know the best diet, nutrition, and whether they should take supplements or avoid them like the plague. They want to know what withdrawal and healing will look like for them, and they assume the stories they read online will inevitably become their own.

When we look at the benzo communities, there’s so much dogma, so much regurgitated advice. There are books written telling us how we “should” taper and giving us specific answers to all the questions I just highlighted above, and more. But when you take a much closer look at many of these communities, you see something a bit concerning. It’s the patients running the asylum, and I mean that with all due compassion and respect.

These forums and benzo institutions are run by people who went through the benzo hell ride. Needless to say, many have a dog in the fight. Most hate big pharma and frame benzos as neurotoxins, as poison, and reject all medication out of trauma response, if nothing else.

And who could blame them? But this isn’t about blame or demonization. It’s about accuracy, truth, and the actual science.

While your coach was burned deeply by big pharma, and he absolutely has his gripes with psychiatry and how psych meds are prescribed, pushed, tapered, etc., at the end of the day, he is a scientist. I’ve spent half my life in academia learning to think critically about science and to put my emotions and feelings aside.

I think that’s a very important thing for a scientist to do. And to not be influenced by outside agendas, which is something we sadly see today also poisoning the well of science. Follow the money, and you will often see cherry-picked statistics to verify or deny specific claims.

But here’s the truth about all of this… some aspects are indeed universal in our withdrawal and recovery, and there are many aspects that are subjective. And on that, here are six reasons why benzo recovery is subjective.

1.        Healing Is Not Linear, and It’s Deeply Personal

The reality is, no two nervous systems are the same. Healing depends on genetics, trauma history, tapering strategy, lifestyle, beliefs, support systems, and more. What worked (or didn’t) for someone else does not predict your outcome! I don’t know about you, but I find that comforting. We are all different. For example, a quick taper might wreck one person, but for another, it might be just what they need, saving them from years of needless and potentially harmful tapering.

Sure, most people will benefit from a slow, steady taper, but not everyone. And many people actually drag out their tapers needlessly long simply because that’s what the community taught them was the Golden Standard. But even the great Dr. Asthon wasn’t fond of that idea. Then again, I suppose most of the benzo community feels she’s outdated and we’ve well moved past her. Your healing journey is personal, very personal. The art is finding out what works for you, and not simply blindly following your neighbor online.  

2.        Fear-Based Communities Amplify Sensitization

This is one of the most fundamental things I can share with you about your recovery. And it’s a shame because most of us are simply looking for information and support. We get into these communities, which are often running wild with fear, and we begin to become sucked into the vortex, the gravity of fear. It happens very slowly, very gradually, but builds up steam. 

Constant exposure to doom-and-gloom stories activates the Bear (limbic fear system), reinforcing panic, hypervigilance, and negative expectancy. It can even wildly create nocebo effects (psychosomatic negative neurological dysregulation). Echo chambers online are often unregulated, anecdotal, and driven by unprocessed trauma, not balanced education and insight. It’s fear leading fear, and trauma leading trauma. This was a huge reason why I created the Benzo Recovery School, a positive, hope-driven, insulated community with a path forward. This is the foundation for helping our limbic systems navigate recovery without amplifying things to a dangerous level in response to chemical fear withdrawal.

3.        Beware of Gospel Narratives: “This always happens” & “You Might Not Heal.”

There’s so much of this going on in the community that it inevitably paints a scary picture, a reality of our future we likely cannot escape. I know that in my healing withdrawal journey, this nearly killed me. I buckled under the terrible things I read online, and the image of my future was created for me. But we must remember these so-called gospels are just the outliers. They are isolated stories, cognitive distortions pretending to be truths. i.e., catastrophizing, all-or-nothing thinking, etc. And unfortunately, many people embrace these false narratives and even exploit them for money. Again, your nervous system is very different than everyone else. Your story, its details, are so very different. But if you surround yourselves with these false premises and deeply become intertwined with them, then self-fulfilling prophecies can occur. Be smart. Break away. See through the lies.

4.        Recovery Requires You to Lead, Not Just Follow

Empowerment means building your own roadmap, using science, mindfulness, psychology, coaching, and reflection, not just forums filled with panic stories and lopsided, misguided advice. Being a passive consumer of fear makes you feel powerless, and when we feel powerless, the Bear becomes stronger. It is precisely powerlessness that activates the Bear on a primal level. He comes running to empower us, only he does this by amplifying our survival responses, which inevitably, unfortunately, only amplify our withdrawal suffering. Over time, this amplification can lead to more serious conditions and dysregulation.

Leadership is about reclaiming control by learning to get out of the survival amygdala mode and back into the driver's seat of the prefrontal cortex brain. Fear, symptoms, doubt, and pain may still exist, as they are symptoms of withdrawal, but that doesn’t mean we need to surrender everything over to the Bear. We can still navigate with leadership. Leaders have doubts, fears, pain, and hypervigilance. But a great leader continues to lead. Many of us never really got a fair chance to be the leaders we could be, and began to follow. We followed the Bear, our friends, our peers, our families, our institutions, and even those who were also afraid and following. And if you track the line of followers to the front, you will find the Bear leading the way.

5.       The Bear Gets Stronger When We Outsource Our Safety

Relying on online strangers to confirm “you’re okay” can become a powerful dependency trap. The Bear learns to distrust your own inner compass, as if it were broken and wasn’t able to know the truth for ourselves. As if we cannot lead ourselves. Healing comes when we learn to face fear directly, with compassion, and build confidence in ourselves again. And this doesn’t happen by outsourcing our safety to others. Which, in all reality, really doesn’t happen anyway. We find so much more fear and suffering than anything remotely reassuring, despite our instinct for constant reassurance.

In the Benzo Recovery School, we have a positive community filled with people winning, reaching, healing, growing, navigating, and reclaiming their leadership. It isn’t just people saying, “hang in there! You might make it! I didn’t, but maybe you will!” Does that kind of thing really help any of us? I think not. In fact, I think it’s heartbreaking and the recipe for a slow, gradual collapse if we are not careful. We need the truth, and we need to see people winning. Healing isn’t linear, and there will inevitably be difficulties, but we can continue to push forward in our recovery. The Bear needs desperately to relearn this!

6.        Healing Isn’t Just About Tapering. It’s About Rebuilding

You’ve heard me say this countless times before, I’m sure, and for good reason. As a benzo coach, it might sound crazy, but I see tapering as kind of being the lesser mountain we all must climb. In some ways, it’s the easier path because once you have the taper figured out, there’s not much else to it other than go extremely slow, hold on for dear life, and just keep tapering. That’s it. In that regard, healing is just a game of distance, of steps taken in a taper. The art is in white-knuckling it. Of course, that’s a terrible method if that’s all you have. And healing is certainly bigger than merely tapering.

You’re not just trying to get through a taper, my friends, you’re reinventing your nervous system, your habits, and your outlook. That’s why recovery. Must include neuroplasticity building, brain rewiring, learning to change our relationship with fear, fostering mindfulness in everything we do, working a daily checklist of recovery, mastering cognitive reframing and how to speak the Bear’s language, finding meaning and purpose again, and learning to navigate gentle graded exposure. It’s mastering the art of ‘lulling and pushing’, and rebuilding and refining ourselves on every level, mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And this is why I say healing work, I mean real recovery effort, is self-growth. It’s the most challenging, yet most rewarding work we can do.

And that is why you won’t only taper off the meds, which you will, but you will come out of this a better version of yourselves!

You can ensure your success in reaching your goal and remaining off the meds because you created a new neurological foundation, and succeeded in truly rewiring your brain, not just modulating GABA or Serotonin, not just trying to outrun or tranquilize the Bear. But by befriending him, you can regain your throne as a leader.