Christy Huff, M.D.: The Benzodiazepine Information Coalition

Dr. Mark Leeds [00:00] Dr. Christy Huff, welcome to the podcast. So thank you for joining me. So you’re a cardiologist and you’re the director of the benzodiazepine information coalition, which is a nonprofit that educates people and doctors about the adverse effects of the prescribed benzodiazepines. Tell me a little bit more about that, how you got involved with that.

Christy Huff, MD [00:27] Sure. So I became director of that organization in 2017. And what happened to me was I actually had personal experience with benzodiazepines in 2015. I was prescribed Xanax for, I was experiencing a crisis with dry eye syndrome. I was having a lot of pain and I couldn’t sleep. And so my doctor gave me some Xanax just to help me sleep. I took a very small dose, 0.25 milligrams. And after about three weeks of taking it every night, I developed some really strange symptoms. And come to find out, I was developing interdose withdrawal where I was, you know, I had become dependent on the medication was having withdrawal symptoms between doses. But, you know, we didn’t, my doctors and I couldn’t figure that out in the beginning. So I went through all these extensive tests. You know, I finally got online and found a website called Benzo buddies and, Benzo buddies. There was a lot of patients there that were having trouble with and withdrawing from benzodiazepines and kind of like a light bulb went off for me. Like I just really, understood that I was experiencing benzodiazepine and I need to figure out a way to taper off the drug. So, I read about the Ashton manual, which is a, got a protocol for tapering off benzodiazepines. And I took it to a local psychiatrist and he helped me switch over from Xanax to Valium based on her protocol. The Valium was helpful because it has a longer half-life than the Xanax and it, you know, covered the interdose withdrawal. Then it ended up, my taper took me over three years and I experienced, you know, multiple disabling withdrawal symptoms. And I’d been free of the medication for three years now, but I still have symptoms consistent with protracted withdrawal syndrome. And so during, you know, back to the organization, during this experience, I became aware that, you know, I had never heard about protracted withdrawal or the severity of the benzodiazepine withdrawal syndrome during my medical training. And so I decided that I wanted to be an advocate for this cause and spread awareness about this issue. And so I’ve been doing that since 2017.

Dr. Mark Leeds [02:56] Okay. Are you currently practicing medicine now? I saw in the blog that you taking some time off? Did you ever come back to it?

Christy Huff, MD [03:05] Yeah, so it’s kind of interesting. Actually, fortunately, I was not practicing when all this started. I became a stay-at-home mom in 2011 after my daughter was born. I needed to have a major surgery on my leg, and I just never went back after I recovered from that. And then a few years later, this, you know, incident with the benzodiazepine happened, and I was really too sick to even think about going back to work at that point. And so now I’ve just decided, you know, now that I’m, you know, finally doing better, I’m just going to continue to focus on being a mom and also working on this issue with benzodiazepine awareness.

Dr. Mark Leeds [03:46] Okay. And that’s, that’s a major issue. And, you know, I’ve, you know, going through medical school, they really don’t talk a lot about, you know, benzodiazepines and even in residency and working with other doctors, it just seems like a normal thing, you know, especially with psychiatrists. I’ve seen even psychiatrists prescribing multiple benzodiazepines at the same time and, you know, super high doses. You know, when people have asked, you know, can I take this much Xanax? And, you know, I would tell them, well, that’s something that a psychiatrist does. You know, they must know something different, you know, differently than what we know, because, you know, in the literature, it says, you know, four milligrams is the upper limit, which is a really high amount. I mean, you know, that’s like, I guess like 80 milligrams of Valium equivalent. But, you know, it seems like psychiatrists, you know, I always assumed, you know, they know what they’re doing, you know, with all these different antidepressants and benzodiazepines that they somehow have more knowledge about the chemistry of the brain. But maybe that’s not true. I mean, you know, what have you seen with that, with psychiatrists prescribing these huge amounts of benzodiazepines to patients?

Christy Huff, MD [04:54] Yeah. I mean, I think it’s very dependent on the doctor or the psychiatrist because, you know, I’ve come across some very good psychiatrists. There was a very good psychiatrist that helped me off my medication, but then there’s also ones that are prescribing inappropriately. I’ll tell you know, I was trained in internal medicine, you know, before I specialized in cardiology and we got little to no training on this issue. I think the only thing I really knew is, you know, take them short term, which was that’s what I was planning on doing. I wasn’t planning on taking them more than a couple of weeks and also to worry about the problem of addiction. But addiction doesn’t really describe what happened to me. It was more of a physical dependence and an injury to my nervous system. And yeah, I will say that, you know, I’m working with a couple of psychiatrists right now on a research project and they have, you know, they’ve told me, you know, we, in the field of addiction psychiatry, we were just not really as aware of the, all of these issues surrounding benzodiazepines. It’s not really taught.

Dr. Mark Leeds [06:04] Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, one major, one that I used to always see psychiatrists prescribing was Klonopin or clonazepam. And I always thought that was like the better one because, you know, they know better than we do. You know, like if someone, if you send someone to a psychiatrist and they’re taking Xanax, they would usually switch them to that. So, you know, I thought, well, that’s a longer acting one. It, you know, it doesn’t sound as bad. You know, Xanax has like a bad reputation for being kind of a street drug and, you know, Klonopin isn’t. But, you know, it seems like they’re kind of, for the most part, all just as bad, you know, as far as being able to cause these additional symptoms and then having a really difficult withdrawal syndrome.

Christy Huff, MD [06:44] Right. Yeah, you’re right about that. We have, you know, from our work and advocacy and just talking to other patients in the benzodiazepine support groups, it’s not just Xanax. It’s benzodiazepines all across the board. I mean, obviously, you know, the longer half-life medications don’t have the issues with the interdose withdrawal quite so much, like I experienced with Xanax. But you can still experience tolerance with clonazepam and injury to your nervous system and a difficult withdrawal. And we certainly see that with patients frequently.

Dr. Mark Leeds [07:19] Would you say now that but when I was reading one of your blog posts and I think at the time when you wrote it in 2016 you were still kind of in the middle of things and you were going through a really difficult time now that you’re three years out three years off of benzodiazepines like would you do you feel like there I mean is there hope for people I mean I would think there’s hope you know I see people coming off of them and doing better but you know what would you, what advice would you give or, you know, what encouragement maybe would you give to the person who’s, who’s just starting the taper, or maybe they just took their final dose and they’re done with it. And now they’re going to face some withdrawal. What would you say to someone?

Christy Huff, MD [08:00] Yeah, there’s definitely hope. I mean, first of all, a subset of patients don’t have, you know, a large percentage of patients, maybe about half don’t have much trouble coming off benzodiazepines at all. And that’s very fortunate for them. And then there’s those of us like me that had a very difficult time, but even though I had an extremely difficult time coming off, you know, now three years off the drug, my life looks a lot better. I still have some lingering health conditions, but it’s just, it’s still like night and day compared to how badly I was doing during the taper process. So I would just like to encourage anybody out there that it can definitely be done. And I think the best way to do it is slow and steady. It’s not a race. And if it’s, you’re thinking about coming off, definitely do your research beforehand to get a taper plan together in conjunction with your doctor to really know what you’re looking at going into it.

Dr. Mark Leeds [09:00] And you mentioned that not everybody will have withdrawal symptoms or prolonged protracted syndromes. And on the homepage of benzoinfo.com, there’s a graphic that says 40 to 80% of prescribed patients experience benzodiazepine withdrawal, and then 10 to 15 will develop severe lengthy protracted syndromes, which is a lot of people, but it’s not the majority. And then, and very importantly, and you’ve touched on this, but it’s very important for people to realize, and this podcast, it’s kind of like an addiction podcast, but this is not an addiction problem for the most part. Very, very few people become addicted to benzodiazepines. It’s a physical dependence problem, which is a whole different thing.

Christy Huff, MD [09:47] Yes, that’s very true. And I mean, I don’t think I’ve actually run across anybody in the advocacy process that has been dealing with addiction. I know that the FDA put out a warning back in 2020 that wasn’t so long ago. It, you know, warning about the risk of addiction and abuse and also physical dependence and withdrawal with these drugs. But they noted that, you know, addiction and abuse with these drugs is more common in patients with polysubstance use. And the people that are just taking them as prescribed, they’re the ones that are, you know, just dealing with physical dependence and withdrawal symptoms, you know.

Dr. Mark Leeds [10:28] So yeah yeah that makes sense and yeah so you know different from maybe different from the opioids where there’s a percentage of people you know significant percentage even though maybe maybe it is in that 10 to 15 percent range of people that go in and take they take opioids and they become addicted they actually become addicted to them not just physically dependent but the benzodiazepines don’t seem to induce addiction they just cause physical dependence which, you know, to a doctor who doesn’t know what they’re doing or a family member, when someone goes and withdraw, you know, they may say, like, oh, look, you’re a junkie, you’re an addict, you know, look how terribly you look because we just took away your medication suddenly and now you look really sick. And so, yeah, I mean, there’s probably a lot of misunderstanding about what physical dependence and withdrawal means. And it’s not somebody that you just took away their drug they’re addicted to. It’s a whole different thing. It’s not addiction.

Christy Huff, MD [11:27] Yeah, no, that’s true. I mean, that reminds me when one of the doctors that I saw to try to get help coming off the medication, you know, I told her I needed to come off the Xanax and that I was dependent, you know, that I’d read all these things online. And she just, she said, you know, I was like, basically how to, what’s my plan for getting off this medication. And she’s like, well, just give the pill bottle to your husband to control your use, you know, as a, cause I was having florid withdrawal symptoms every time I tried to cut down the dose. So just, you know, handing the bottle off to somebody was not going to take away the dependence on the withdrawal. So, you know, I did face some of that stigma being treated, treated as if I were, you know, having addiction. So it was difficult.

Dr. Mark Leeds [12:11] Did you ever have an issue with doctors who said that your symptoms were in your head, that you were not actually experiencing anything that, you know, it was all just psychosomatic or something that it wasn’t a real thing that you’re going through?

Christy Huff, MD [12:24] Yeah. So actually I went back to my primary doctor’s office first, the ones who had initially prescribed the medication after I was having all the problems. And I went through a battery of medical tests because I had a new onset tremor and when everything, all the medical tests came back normal and they couldn’t find anything wrong, she just said, well, you’re, you’ve got anxiety. You’re a head case, basically. And they gave me Lexapro to try to help me get off the Xanax. And that just kind of sent my anxiety through the roof. I could only handle that for three days. And then finally, I just realized on my own that Xanax was actually what was causing this tremor and making my anxiety. Worse and worse. But yeah, it, and I, you know, I told her, I think this is the Xanax causing all the problems. And she just said, you know, you don’t need to taper it. There’s no way you could depend, be dependent because you’ve just been on it for a few weeks. So, I mean, there’s obviously a big lack of education, I think on the part of doctors about how quickly dependence can develop.

Dr. Mark Leeds [13:31] One thing that I found interesting with when a person’s withdrawing they have a lot of these symptoms of you know they get gastrointestinal symptoms that you know they call benzo belly and you know they get fast heart rate and maybe dizziness and you know just all kinds of different symptoms and at some point a person may think or they may ask their primary care doctor you know should I get this checked out you know I just keep having these lower abdominal pains and gas you know, what if it’s something else? You know, maybe I should see a gastroenterologist or, you know, some kind of doctor and get some tests done. But, you know, as you know, in your story, I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, but like it seems like people end up going for additional unnecessary testing and additional procedures that they might not need. And they get kind of caught up in the medical system and a lot of stuff. And that may even add more anxiety. But on the other hand, you know, you don’t want to miss something. You know, what if a person does have something else going on coincidentally?

Christy Huff, MD [14:32] Oh yeah. It’s very, very tricky. You know, I experienced that myself where I’d, cause I had up to 80 different symptoms during my benzo taper. And, but there were times where I just, a lot of times I knew, okay, this is the benzo. Cause I could, I reduced my dose and the symptoms would flare up and it was kind of my traditional symptoms that I would get with the taper. But every once in a while I’d have something weird crop up. Like I had horrible rib pain that cropped up one time and I’m actually a cancer survivor as well. I was diagnosed with breast cancer during the middle of the taper to complicate matters. It was like, you always have to worry that some of the new something is the cancer returning. And so, you know, I had to couple, a couple of times where I just had these aches and pains that I needed to get evaluated. So, I mean, I guess my advice on that is if it’s something that’s new and different for you, or it just continues to persist and you’re worried about it, then it’s good to, you know, discuss that with your medical provider. But, and then just kind of get to know your symptoms, because obviously you just can’t go running back and forth to the doctor for every, every little thing, because it just, you know, there’s so many symptoms that can crop up.

Dr. Mark Leeds [15:46] Yeah. Did you ever have any concern about like with the medical board in your state of, you know, you’re having all these issues that, you know, they might, you either, there might be an issue with that, like that they want you to go for some kind of treatment or did you already kind of retire at that point from medicine and not have to worry about that?

Christy Huff, MD [16:07] Actually, I just maintained my license and I, you know, I talked with my psychiatrist about that. I mean, he said, since I wasn’t really practicing at the time, we didn’t really need to inform them. Obviously if, you know, I’ve been practicing, I would have needed to inform them that I was, you know, impaired for that period of time. So I’ve been able to keep my medical license, but I know other healthcare professionals that, you know, they’ve been through the ringer with the medical board and, you know, been told they needed to have like a addiction treatment, you know, 12-step programs and things that weren’t going to be necessarily helpful for this process. So, because they’re, you know, they’re treating it as an issue with substance abuse when it was just a medication taken as prescribed and people develop adverse effects.

Dr. Mark Leeds [16:59] Yeah, I can imagine that would be an issue because I, you know, I remember there’s, I mean, the whole medical educational system is, you know, very anxiety-inducing and, you know, some people even call it abusive and, you know, work conditions for doctors, you know, in busy practices, hospitals, you know, where they’re forced to see huge numbers of patients every day, you know, 30 to 50 patients a day and just every few minutes, you know, and they talk about physician burnout. And, you know, I can imagine that there are doctors out there that go and benzodiazepines to deal with the anxiety and the stress of all that. And then they end up facing this issue at some point of withdrawal or additional symptoms. And it is a scary thing because, you know, you hear, you know, at conferences, you hear people who are on the board give lectures and they say, you know, if you have an issue with burnout, you know, let us know. And then you think, well, if I let you know, I’m going to be going through this whole thing, you know, of, you know, they’re going to want all kinds of evaluation, like you said, I’d probably call it an addiction and not dependence.

Christy Huff, MD [18:05] Right. Yeah, I’ve actually ran across other, you know, since I started sharing my story, then people, I get messages all the time from people that will open up to me, you know, about their own issues that they’ve been experiencing. And they’ve just been keeping it under the radar and hiding all the issues because there is such a stigma. And I know several physicians who’ve been, you know, trapped on the drug or they’re trying to come off the drug and they’re just basically doing it under the radar. They can’t let the board know because they might lose their job.

Dr. Mark Leeds [18:37] Yeah. And then, and that brings up another topic that I think is interesting is that there’s, there are a lot of doctors experiencing burnout, you know, especially with COVID. I mean, things really got difficult for doctors and nurses. And so people are looking for alternatives and a lot of doctors are looking at the alternative of kind of dropping out and starting their own small practice. And it does seem like an opportunity that working with people who are on benzodiazepines and helping them through the taper process, it’s not something that a lot of doctors know about, but they can learn about it. And maybe there’s an opportunity for doctors to focus on that and providing that service and really getting to know what is benzodiazepine dependence, how does the tapering process work? So is that something that the doctors could work with your organization to learn more about?

Christy Huff, MD [19:25] Yes, definitely. So we actually keep a list of, we used to call them Benzo Wise doctors. Now we were using the term Benzo Cooperative, just to say that these are doctors that are willing to help patients, you know, do a long, slow supervised taper off the medication. But, you know, Benzo wise as more doctors that really know the ins and outs of benzodiazepines. So we’re just satisfied with somebody that’ll, maintain a patient’s prescription and supervise them and just let them taper as long as they need to. But we would love to have more doctors trained that are just really wise and informed about this issue because that’s, I would say that’s the top email that we get, at our organization. We probably get hundreds of them a month of just patients that are just struggling to find a doctor to help them taper off the medication? Because it seems like there’s doctors that A, they just won’t prescribe it all, or B, if they’re going to run a taper, they want to just do it really fast. Like, okay, come off in a few weeks or a couple of months, and it’s way faster than many of the patients can handle. So I would just say that’s a struggle for us to find doctors that can help with patients. And so we would love to find more doctors that are willing to educate themselves about the process and, you know, take on more of these patients.

Dr. Mark Leeds [20:53] Yeah, yeah, that’s great that, I think it’s a huge opportunity because I see doctors in different groups where they’re discussing, you know, like what service can I provide to the community if I go out and practice on my own? And, you know, they get nervous that they don’t want to kind of reproduce the same environment that they’re already working in, you know, seeing a million patients and, you know, this is something they can come right to you and say, you know, I want to do this and can you list me on the website and I’ve learned about it. I want to work with people. But how does, like, what is that, you know, how does that look for a doctor doing it the first time? I guess they could have help. They could learn about the Ashton Manual, how to prescribe the medication, how to do the taper for a long time. And then maybe are there people that do like counseling or coaching that are fully knowledgeable about this that can help a patient through also along with the doctor?

Christy Huff, MD [21:48] So we, right now, I guess there’s no specific training for the doctors. It’s just sort of, they learn it on their own. I know whenever we’re wanting to add someone to the list, we try to vet them and see, okay, do you know about the Ashton manual? Do you want, or do you let people taper at their own pace and adjust the taper based on symptoms. And so there’s, there’s some basic questions that we ask. And we also rely a lot on patient feedback as well. So if, you know, if a patient comes to us and said, look, this doctor really helped me through my taper and the doctor wants to be on the list, then we’ll, we’ll put them on. And every once in a while we get bad feedback from somebody that’s on the list and the patient will be like, no, they didn’t do what they said they were going to do. And we’ll have to take them off. So it’s just, it’s sort of an ever involving list, but we’re actually working with a group in Colorado, the Colorado Consortium’s Benzodiazepine Action Work Group. BIC and some of the other benzo organizations are working in conjunction with the University of Colorado, and we’re trying to start a prescriber education. Are we giving a series of prescriber education lectures? And there’s a potential, you know, once you take those lectures, we’re talking about having a way to kind of certify a doctor as Benzowise and add to that list. So that’s not really fully done yet, but something that we’re talking about and hopefully in the works.

Dr. Mark Leeds [23:19] That sounds good. Do you think it’s possible that in the future Benzodiazepines may be looked at in the same way opioids are looked at? But, you know, kind of like the way people are looking at Purdue having a big part in starting this opioid epidemic. And now it’s like a major issue with people dying from overdoses and going to the streets. I can’t imagine. Well, that is a different issue where you have addiction as part of it. But do you think at some point that benzodiazepines may be exposed as a major health hazard, you know, like kind of like sugar and smoking and all these other terrible things that we know are bad for us now?

Christy Huff, MD [23:57] Yeah, well, I mean, I would love for that to happen. I think the hard thing with that, with benzodiazepines is, you know, the opioids there, it’s so obvious that they cause not only addiction, but also the overdose deaths. And, you know, the way benzodiazepines work, it’s so subtle. I mean, you’re, you’re not having an overdose just from taking too much benzodiazepines. Benzodiazepines. Yes, it can potentiate, you know, having an overdose with opioids. But I just felt like they’re kind of sneaky in that way. And they seem to be kind of ingrained into modern society. If you listen to any TV show or read a book, you know, they’re just talking about popping a Xanax and it’s no big deal. So I just, I think a lot’s going to have to change. I will say our organization has definitely spread a lot of awareness in the past few years in this. I really think the thing that’s most shocking to me is this notion of protracted withdrawal that you can take a medication prescribed by your doctor and it can injure your nervous system and you can be left with permanent lifelong effects. And like we said before, 10 to 15% of patients, according to Ashton’s work. So, and given the fact that millions of benzo prescriptions are prescribed each year, I mean, that’s a huge number of people potentially affected by this nervous system injury. So, but like I said, we’re going to continue to spread awareness about the issue. And I hope one day it will be more in the public eye.

Dr. Mark Leeds [25:33] Yeah. Yeah. And that is a scary thing to thought that there could be millions of people out there with this subtle, basically brain damage. I mean, not like brain damage that you can see on an MRI or any kind of study, but at at a microscopic level on the level of, you know, how the neurotransmitters interact between neurons and, you know, just, but, you know, and it’s something that’s hard to go to a doctor and say, I have these weird symptoms going on and to pinpoint that and say that, you know, this is probably due to, you’re probably one of those people that developed this from taking benzodiazepines.

Christy Huff, MD [26:07] Right. Yeah. It’s very difficult because there are no formal tests to diagnose the damage, but yet there are very real symptoms that occur from it. So it definitely is at a, most likely at a microscopic level, like you say.

Dr. Mark Leeds [26:23] Dr. I saw one, you know, there’s a list of some things that doctors can do. Of course, but the first one is really important, believe your patient. I would also say, listen, you know, listen carefully to what the patient is saying and also believe them, you know, they’re not making these things up. And, you know, it’s a gray list. It’s, you know, number two is taper, switch to a long half-life benzodiazepine. But in the middle, there’s mention of medical marijuana. How is that, is that considered to be much safer, like cannabis, as far as not having, you know, withdrawal issues or, you know, being as dangerous as some of these synthetic antidepressants and other psych drugs?

Christy Huff, MD [27:09] Yeah, I mean, I think it really is just patient dependent as far as that goes. I think a lot of people do consider it safer. I’m not really sure what I think about it. I didn’t really, of course, I live in Texas, so it wasn’t really an option, but I didn’t really even want to try it because during this withdrawal process, it’s anything that you take has the potential to kind of send you over the edge with worsening symptoms as so it almost got I kind of got sick of trying things after a while because I was scared it was going to make me worse but you know sometimes people do try things like the medical marijuana and it is extremely helpful helpful for them to manage anxiety and get through the withdrawal process and so I just kind of say you know whatever is helpful for you to get through the process us and these are the options, research them, decide if you want to try it. I know as far as medical marijuana goes, it’s good to get with a knowledgeable provider that can help you find the right strain for you because it’s not all the same.

Dr. Mark Leeds [28:15] And what do you think about online communities? Some people think they’re really helpful to be around other people going through the same thing. And then some people say it seems like, you know that it gets really stressful to see like the horror stories of people having the worst symptoms and that kind of builds on their stress and they don’t really want to see all that negative negativity because they feel that you know more a more positive message would be helpful like do you think that people should look at that stuff or avoid it

Christy Huff, MD [28:42] Yeah so I think they’re both good and bad I mean I will say that the online communities they saved my life in the sense that I was able to make the diagnosis of what was going on with me from reading on, you know, Benzo Buddies. But then after you’re on there for a while, you see that people are sharing sometimes misinformation, things that aren’t necessarily correct, or it’s just extremely triggering because people, you know, share things that are really scary and you begin to think, well, this is going to happen to me. So it’s both good and bad. I mean, I ended up finding a little section of Benzo Buddies that was a man’s personal blog and kind of a group of other like-minded friends assembled there. And we were, you know, we’re very positive and we kind of, we shared our symptoms and also the things that were going on our lives. And it was very positive and supportive. So you can kind of find niches within all the scary stuff, but yeah, there were times where I just had to stay out of the groups and, you know, just turn my mind off. But then every once in a while, you’re like, okay, is this symptom, is someone else experiencing this? Or what if I try this medication to help what experience have other people had? And you go to the groups and kind of look things up and research that way. So it’s, so both good and bad

Dr. Mark Leeds [30:11] Yeah and what do you think about that as far as like you know doctors tend not to have a lot of time you know even psychiatrists but as far as having someone to listen and taking what the patient is saying and really believe what they’re saying does that does that help have you found that helps a lot for you to be able to talk to someone who listens to you and understands that you’re going through something real

Christy Huff, MD [30:37] Oh, for sure. For sure. I think it’s just so important for doctors to believe what the patients are going through because patients really just know their own bodies best. But I mean, I will say sometimes because of the lack of education on this issue, some, a lot of doctors just don’t really understand, you know, they didn’t understand what I was going through. And I remember when I was going through all my cancer treatment, I had my psychiatrist write me a letter about what I was to show to my other doctors about what I was going through, because I was afraid that they were going to think I was some drug seeker and, you know, you know, trying to get more benzodiazepines and whatnot, when I was just, you know, a good patient trying to come slowly off the drug. And that, I think that was really helpful for me to show to the other doctors, but, you know, my oncologist and whatnot.

Dr. Mark Leeds [31:39] Yeah. I think in the medical field, I mean, even for the doctors, I mean, there’s almost what seems like gaslighting and maybe the pharmaceutical companies are behind this of, you know, just for an example, like I think maybe sometime in the 90s, people were saying that, you know, doctors were saying like fibromyalgia is not a real thing. You know, it’s the patients are imagining it’s something else. You know, it’s, you know, just these patients, this certain type of patient seems to complain a lot and they’re overly sensitive and they’re imagining these symptoms and they want attention. And then a few years later, suddenly fibromyalgia is a real thing, because now there’s medications to treat it. Now there’s drug companies behind it. Now they have these fancy pamphlets saying here’s where the tender points are and here’s a diagnosis code. And now suddenly it’s a real thing overnight. It kind of seems like things work like that. Like, you know, they tell us one thing and then they tell us another thing. And, you know, but I mean, hopefully things come around to like, you know, doctors. I mean, hopefully I don’t need a drug company and tell them that this is a real issue. And hopefully we don’t have like another drug suddenly to treat this problem. But do you feel like that? Like have you seen like that kind of industry gaslighting, like where we’re told, you know, this isn’t real and suddenly it’s real. And, you know, it does seem like there’s this multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry behind a lot of this of making us think one thing or the other.

Christy Huff, MD [33:01] Oh, that’s true. I mean, I think they did that with depression as well, saying there’s a chemical imbalance, so you need to take an antidepressant. And, but yeah, I mean, I think we’re also just trained in medicine that if it’s something that can’t be measured on a test and the results will come, come back normal, then it’s gotta be all in the patient’s head. So that like, like we were talking about earlier, so that just, it makes it very difficult. I’ll say that, you know, me going through this experience isn’t really made me think hard about, you know, when I, when I was a doctor, I mean, I think I did the same thing where you, a patient would complain of symptoms. And finally, after a while you, if you couldn’t find anything wrong with them, you’d, you’d sort of blame them. And, you know, it’s definitely put things in perspective for me. Like if, you know, if the patient’s telling you something, I mean, most patients, you just need to take them at their word. I mean, they’re not making it up. It’s really is what’s going on in their body.

Dr. Mark Leeds [34:03] Yeah. And what do you think of like alternative healing things like sound therapy, people are talking about working on chakras and acupuncture, Reiki, you know, energy healing. You know, a lot of people get involved in those things. Do you think that those are good or bad, or if it helps a person, it’s okay? Like, you know, what do you think of that?

Christy Huff, MD [34:23] Yeah. So a lot of patients that have gone through this withdrawal process, look to alternative medicine because they’re kind of, they kind of get distrust of mainstream medicine and they’re afraid to take any, I mean, I myself am afraid of trying any new medication at this point after my body reacted so badly to this one. So I figure anything that’s probably non-invasive and, you know, you know, it probably has the, maybe the potential to help and hopefully little side effects or little potential to harm, then that’s probably okay to try. I mean, I know people can probably waste a lot of money on some of these treatments that may or may not work. So I’m just kind of on the things about it. I’ll say in my, for my own recovery, I haven’t done a lot of taking extra supplements or doing beyond things that my body just needed. You know, my doctor measured my vitamin levels and saw what was deficient, we depleted those, but yeah, sorry, I lost.

Dr. Mark Leeds [35:38] Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. I was actually, I was going to ask you about that. You mentioned supplements and there’s, you know, supplements that are believed to, or maybe that it’s, I guess it’s known that there’s supplements that can help to replenish neurotransmitters and help the brain to, you know, supposedly help the brain to improve function. Like for example, I think tyrosine, maybe L-tyrosine is one for, you know, various neurotransmitters need that amino acid to, you know, it’s like the building block of neurotransmitters. And if you don’t have enough of it in your system, then maybe you’re not replenishing your neurotransmitters enough. And, you know, there’s things like GABA that you can take, which I don’t know if that’s good to take. I think there’s one called 5-HTP. But there’s, you know, you can go on Amazon and find various supplements or even specialty supplements that combine all these different brain health, neurotransmitter, precursor type things. Have you heard about any of that stuff being helpful? Or is that probably you can get that stuff in your diet if you get a healthy diet?

Christy Huff, MD [36:40] Yeah, so I think that, I mean, if you look at what people say in the benzodiazepines heart group. Some people will take a supplement and they’ll say it is helpful. Then you’ll find an equal number of people that said it harmed them and made their symptoms worse. So again, everything’s really going to be trial and error with this process. So I never really recommend any specific supplements that I think that are going to help people, office. And like I said, But I sort of got tired of trying things after a while because things have the potential to make you worse. You know, towards the end of my taper, but my B12 level was low and my doctor gave me high dose B12 supplements. And it just sent me over the over the edge with my symptoms. And so like, like I said, you just have to be really cautious and we don’t really have any hard research at this point to say exactly what’s effective. So what we have is just, you know, individuals just trying things to see what happens.

Dr. Mark Leeds [37:48] Yeah have you had any experience with the binaural beat recordings like you know and using just sound sound programs that can train the brainwaves to put a person in a state of relaxation or sleep

Christy Huff, MD [38:00] Yeah no I’ve heard of it but I haven’t personally used it or I don’t think I know anybody that has but I’d be interested in learning more about it

Dr. Mark Leeds [38:09] Yeah that’s one of my favorite things to recommend and it doesn’t doesn’t help everybody but it’s one of those things that really can hurt because it, if it doesn’t help, it’s not going to, you know, it’s just sound, it’s just listening to a recording on headphones and, but they’re pretty relaxing. I mean, I use it to help me fall asleep.

Christy Huff, MD [38:26] Yeah. I mean, I like anything like that where it’s, you know, it’s non-invasive and it’s, there’s really no potential for harm or side effects. And if it helps, that’s great. You know?

Dr. Mark Leeds [38:38] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, also like, and I think I’m, it’s on the, that same list I was looking at, you know, it’s important just to get outside and take a walk, you know not to be locked up in the house all the time when someone’s going through this withdrawal process.

Christy Huff, MD [38:49] Yeah that’s very true there was a man that helped mentor me through the taper he had just finished his taper right when I was starting mine and when his favorite things to tell me was out is better than in and he would just tell me that all the time I’d be like I don’t want to go out just get out of the house even for you know a few minutes and even if it’s just to the mailbox you know, cause there’s times where you’re just so sick, you can’t get out. But, and now that I’m doing much better, it’s like every day I make sure I take the dogs outside for a walk and that sunshine and fresh air just does a world of good.

Dr. Mark Leeds [39:26] Yeah. Yeah. That’s actually a good way to summarize it out is better than in. So, but as far as what was I going to say? Forgot to, what about meditation? Do you, have you practiced any kind of meditation or is that recommended?

Christy Huff, MD [39:42] I tried that when I was going through the thick of things with Xanax interdose and I could not even focus to do it. And I’ve just never really picked it up again. I did do a lot of deep breathing during my withdrawal. But I’d like to, now that my brain can actually focus better, I would, I would like to start doing some meditation and I know, cause I know that’s been helpful for a lot of, a lot of patients.

Dr. Mark Leeds [40:10] That’s a good point, deep breathing, and maybe even making sure you do breathe. Cause I actually saw that on a group that someone mentioned it and on an anxiety group and a bunch of people agree that’s a thing that people who have anxiety tend to not breathe enough. They hold their breath. And I think I do that too, maybe because of COVID, but walking through a crowd, I find myself holding my breath and it’s definitely important to breathe.

Christy Huff, MD [40:33] Yeah. So if you do the deep diaphragmatic breathing, that’s what one of the counselors that I saw, I was in the thick of things. She saw me or she taught me to do the deep diaphragmatic breathing. And that really helps just calm your sympathetic nervous system down, which we all know is, you know, haywire during the withdrawal process.

Dr. Mark Leeds [40:52] Oh, and that’s another thing, especially you being a cardiologist. What do you think of beta blockers. Is that a good idea for people having, you know, these overactive sympathetic nervous system and fast heart rate, or is it something, just another thing that the person is going to become dependent on?

Christy Huff, MD [41:09] Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of interesting. If you look at the guidelines over from the UK, they specifically don’t recommend using beta blockers, but I actually used a beta blocker during my own withdrawal because I suffered from quite a bit of tachycardia. And I thought it was helpful for me to kind of take the edge off the high heart rate. And also it slightly took the edge off the anxiety. I could never take a very high dose of it because my blood pressure runs on the low side. And I tried, you know, going from 10 to 20 of propranolol time and I was just so dizzy, I couldn’t do it. So I just stuck with the 10 milligrams for my whole taper. And then of course I was stuck tapering another medication off that’s one of the, I guess, the only drawbacks to the beta blockers. You also have to taper that off, but it was not really a big deal considering what I went through with the benzo taper. So I would just say in individual cases, yes, it can be helpful.

Dr. Mark Leeds [42:08] Okay. Yeah, that sounds good. So there’s a lot of different things that people can try and, you know, doctors can, can research and figure out and work with patients as individuals and see what works best for them.

Christy Huff, MD [42:19] Right. Yeah. I think that’s the overarching point is just, this is such an individual life process and there’s just no one size fits all approach that works for everyone. And I think that’s where a lot of doctors get into trouble when they try to put these patients on a, you know, a fixed taper schedule with a one size fits all approach.

Dr. Mark Leeds [42:40] Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely no one size fits all approach. Sorry about the phone ring just now. So, Dr. Huff, thank you for joining me. Is there anything else that maybe I didn’t ask or didn’t cover that you think is important that we should talk about?

Christy Huff, MD [42:56] I think we’ve covered a lot of ground, so I think we’re good. But if anybody has any further questions, we have a lot of resources on our website, benzoinfo.com, and I’m also on Twitter at Christy Huff MD, and hopefully you can find some information on our website that’s, you know, helpful to you in this process.

Dr. Mark Leeds [43:24] Okay. And that’s benzoinfo.com. It’s a great website. I looked through it. There’s tons of great information in there.

Christy Huff, MD [43:32] Yeah. We have information that would be relevant to both patients and physicians as well.

Dr. Mark Leeds [43:38] Yeah, definitely. Any physicians listening, go to benzoinfo.com and look around and there’s just tons of resources there to learn all about this. So, okay, thank you, Dr. Christy Huff. Thank you for joining me.

Christy Huff, MD [43:52] Thank you for having me.