What Is Benzo Withdrawal?
What Benzo Withdrawal Is
Without all the Fear
Withdrawal is your nervous system recalibrating after adapting to benzodiazepines. Think of it less as a disease and more like your brain’s software updating after being run on outside support for a long time. The update process is messy, noisy, and uncomfortable, but it’s progress, not permanent damage.
The Brain’s Balance System
Your brain runs on a balance between GABA and glutamate:
GABA = the brakes of the nervous system. It slows things down, helps you relax, sleep, and feel safe.
Glutamate = the gas pedal. It speeds things up, gets you alert, focused, and moving.
Benzos artificially pushed on the brakes (boosted GABA).
Over time, your brain adjusted:
It weakened the brakes (less GABA sensitivity).
It strengthened the gas pedal (more glutamate activity).
When the benzo is reduced or stopped, the balance is off: not enough braking power, too much gas. That’s withdrawal.
🐻 The Limbic System (the Bear)
With the brakes weak, the limbic system (survival brain) goes into overdrive.
Normal body signals (heartbeat, dizziness, muscle tension) get misread as danger.
The Bear keeps you on patrol: scanning, ruminating, panicking.
This is why withdrawal feels like anxiety, fear, or hypervigilance, even if you never had those problems before benzos. It’s not “you being weak.” It’s a temporary state of nervous system imbalance. And this will heal!
🎤 The GABA Microphone Analogy
Another simple way to understand the neuroscience of withdrawal is something I call The GABA Microphone Analogy. Picture your GABA receptors as the microphones of your brain’s calming system. GABA, your body’s natural “brake pedal” neurotransmitter, is the voice that speaks calmness into those microphones.
Benzodiazepines don’t increase the amount of GABA. They just make the microphones more sensitive, turning the volume up artificially. Everything feels more sedated because the calming voice of GABA is being amplified by the drug.
Over time, the brain says:
“Whoa, this is too much calm input! I better turn some of these microphones off.”
So it removes or downregulates the microphones (GABA receptors).
The voice of calm is still there, but the brain can’t hear it as clearly anymore.
Now picture there’s noise in the room, loud alarms going off. This noise represents the limbic system, your fight-or-flight response. In withdrawal, the microphones (GABA receptors) are quiet or broken, and the alarms (fear, panic, hypersensitivity) are blaring. Even if GABA tries to speak, it can’t be heard over the chaos.
And here’s the key insight:
The more you engage in fear, rumination, obsession, or symptom scanning, the louder the alarms get.
Every time you panic, the limbic system pumps out more cortisol, norepinephrine, and glutamate, and the noise gets louder.
🛠 How Healing Happens
Healing comes from two directions:
Turning the microphones back on (GABA receptor healing = a natural biological process over time)
Turning down the alarms by calming the Bear (the survival system) through:
Neuroplasticity Building
Rewiring our fear circuits (changing our relationship with fear)
Mindfulness Practices
Restoring Hope
Breathwork Daily
Somatic safety practices
Cognitive reframing
Radical acceptance
Avoiding rumination
Gradual exposure therapy
Gentle daily rituals that retrain the brain
Reclaiming leadership
This is neuroplasticity at work, and it's all integrated into our recovery work here in the school. It begins with psychoeducation, positive co-regulation, disengaging from fear triggers, and gently working toward restoring hope through building your path forward.
The voice of calm hasn’t disappeared. It just needs the mic turned back up and the alarms turned way down.
In withdrawal, you’re not broken, you’re just trying to hear a whisper of calm over a screaming alarm system. Your job isn’t to scream back. It’s to gently turn the noise down and let the microphones come back online.
What Symptoms Mean
Withdrawal symptoms = evidence your nervous system is recalibrating.
Physical: tremors, burning skin, dizziness, palpitations, headaches.
Emotional: fear surges, sadness, irritability, anhedonia.
Cognitive: brain fog, memory slips, earworms, rumination.
Perceptual: DP/DR, hypersensitivity to light or sound, tinnitus.
Symptoms fluctuate because circuits recalibrate in waves. Windows and waves are part of healing, not signs of damage! This is very important to remember. You might feel broken or damaged, but you're not. You're recalibrating and healing.
🕒 Phases of Withdrawal
Acute: First days to weeks after a cut/stop. The brakes are weak, the gas is strong — symptoms peak.
Subacute: Weeks to months. The system tries to balance → waves and windows.
Protracted: In a smaller percentage, symptoms linger longer — not because healing isn’t happening, but because recalibration takes more time.
🌱 What About BIND?
BIND = Benzodiazepine-Induced Neurological Dysfunction.
It’s not a new disease.
It describes persistent, withdrawal-related symptoms that last beyond the expected acute phase.
Likely rooted in ongoing neuroadaptation (receptor recalibration still happening) and conditioned limbic responses (the Bear staying on patrol out of habit).
The term is useful because it validates that some people take longer to heal. But it can be overused online to explain every problem forever. Recovery still happens. Do not fear BIND.
🚦 Hyperarousal vs. Hypoarousal
Hyperarousal (too much gas): anxiety, panic, insomnia, racing thoughts.
Hypoarousal (too little braking power): fatigue, flat mood, brain fog, feeling shut down.
Both are temporary states caused by the brain’s balance system trying to reset. Neither is permanent. It's common to fluctuate between these states during withdrawal and while in recovery post-benzos. Again, this will resolve.
Bottom Line
Withdrawal = rebalancing of brakes (GABA) and gas (glutamate).
Symptoms = signals of recalibration, not permanent damage.
The Bear (limbic system) is loud, but with time and retraining, it learns: feelings ≠ danger.
Recovery is non-linear — waves and windows are part of the process.
BIND describes the long tail for some, but it’s not a separate disease.
🧠 Healing = recalibration in progress.
You are not broken. You are rebuilding.
Our Recovery Program can help you facilitate recovery, navigate withdrawal, and rewire your fear circuits.