Why Benzos Don't Fix Anxiety
Why Benzos Don't Fix Anxiety
Masking, not Rewiring
🧩 Why Benzos Don’t Fix Anxiety
When most people are first prescribed a benzodiazepine, it feels like a miracle. Within minutes, the racing heart, the dread in the stomach, the shaky hands, the storm in the chest, all fade into quiet. For many, it’s the first deep breath they’ve had in years, the first time they've truly felt safe.
And it’s easy to believe: “Finally, I've found something that fixes my anxiety.”
But here’s the hard truth, my friends... Benzos don’t fix anxiety. They pause it. And sometimes, that pause comes at a heavy cost.
The Quick Illusion
Benzos work by boosting GABA, the brain’s main “calm-down” chemical. If your nervous system is like a blaring stereo, a benzo is like yanking down the volume knob. The noise cuts out fast. However, the static, caused by the faulty wiring behind the stereo, remains. The pill doesn’t repair the system. It just quiets it temporarily. Or as your coach often says, it tranquilized the Bear. But eventually, he usually wakes up again, and when he does, he's confused, scared, and upset.
This is why anxiety always comes back, either through tolerance withdrawal, interdose withdrawal, or after coming off a benzo. However, it is worth mentioning that this isn't the case for everyone, and there's good reason why some are the exception.
🌱 The Neuroplasticity Illusion
Here’s something most people don’t realize. Benzos (like SSRIs and even ketamine) can modulate brain plasticity. They increase factors like BDNF (Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor), which acts like fertilizer in the brain, helping neurons grow new connections under the right conditions.
So in theory, these drugs open a “window of growth.” But here’s the problem:
👉 If nothing changes in your lifestyle, your thoughts, your behaviors, your identity, or your environment, then nothing new gets wired in.
It’s like scattering seeds in a garden during perfect spring weather… but never planting them, watering them, or pulling the weeds. The soil is fertile, but the garden doesn’t transform.
That’s why, while on benzos, people usually don’t see deep rewiring of circuits.
They don’t notice lasting personality shifts, new coping strategies, or healed beliefs. There is no initiative to make dynamic lifestyle changes. Instead, old maladaptive patterns stay put. Once the drug is removed, the “fertilizer effect” is gone, and the person is left with the same untrained Bear, the same survival patterns, and sometimes even a more fragile system.
Think about it. While you were on benzos, you didn't really need to face your fears. Many of us kept the Bear tranquilized to the point of usually bypassing fear altogether, even profound life-related worries, such as grief, divorce, and that feeling that you don't belong somewhere.
✅ Key Point for Students:
Benzos can change states (how you feel in the moment), but not traits (who you’re becoming). Real rewiring only happens when you combine the fertile conditions of neuroplasticity with active retraining: new behaviors, new perspectives, new leadership of the Bear.
Borrowed Calm, Not Built Calm
Think of benzos as borrowed calm. They lend you peace of mind, but they don’t help your brain build its own calm. Over time, the brain adapts. It stops making as much of its own GABA, and its calming receptors grow less sensitive.
That means the nervous system becomes more dependent on the pill to feel safe. Without it, the baseline feels even more anxious, more unstable. What started as “relief” quietly sets the stage for tolerance, rebound anxiety, and dependence.
And this is a slippery slope, because it can feel as though the benzo stopped working, when in reality, it just wasn't powerful enough to silence the sirens that had grown in our lives.
However, it's true that sometimes our brains adapt and the benzos do lose their effectiveness.
How the Bear Learns the Wrong Lesson
Inside all of us is the Bear, the part of the nervous system that scans for danger. Normally, we can teach the Bear: “This feeling isn’t dangerous. I can ride it.” But when a benzo swoops in and removes the feeling instantly, the Bear doesn’t get the chance to learn.
Instead, it learns something else:
👉 “I’m only safe when the pill is here.”
That lesson gets wired in. And once it does, fear and dependence grow side by side.
This can lead to a powerful subconscious belief that we cannot function without the benzo. Therefore, the lower we get in our taper, the more fearful the Bear becomes that we will collapse. However, at the same time, the Bear has come to believe the benzo is like a poison that we need to get out of our system as quickly as possible.
This puts him (and us) between a rock and a hard place. It's a no-win situation, or so he/we believe.
Anxiety Is More Than Chemistry
Another problem is that anxiety isn’t just “too much electricity” in the brain. Anxiety is a loop:
A sensation in the body (racing heart, dizziness) →
A thought about it (“I’m in danger”) →
A reaction (avoidance, tension, panic) →
Which feeds back into the body, louder than before.
Creating a conditioned fear response and pathway
Which strengthens as the patterns repeat over time
Benzos don’t break the loop. They just muffle it for a time. The moment they wear off, the cycle often starts again, and sometimes stronger. However, sometimes not. It depends on the work the individual has accomplished.
Did they gradually face their fears? Were they able to grow, heal, learn, and adapt?
The Long-Term Cost
Here’s what happens with long-term use:
Tolerance: you need more drug to get the same effect.
Rebound: symptoms come back harder between doses.
Blunting: not just anxiety gets numbed, joy, motivation, and even love can feel flat.
Withdrawal: once the brain is dependent, cutting back can cause chaos as the nervous system fights to recalibrate.
This isn’t failure or weakness. It’s biology. It's neuroadaptation.
What Really Heals Anxiety
Benzos may quiet the alarm, but they don’t rewire the system. Real recovery means teaching the nervous system to calm itself again. That’s where neuroplasticity comes in, the brain’s innate ability to re-learn safety, to re-map fear responses, to build resilience.
Through consistent practice, mindfulness, gentle exposure, reframing fear, daily regulation tools, the Bear learns a new story:
👉 “Feelings are data, not danger. And I am capable of leading."
That’s the path to lasting change!
✅ Takeaway:
Benzos don’t fix anxiety. They buy time. But the real healing comes when you change the system itself, when you stop borrowing calm and start building it.
Check out the next lesson to learn more about how our recovery program can lead to lasting changes that come without a cost or side effects.