Effective Treatment Methods for Depression and Benzo Dependence
It’s often the case that depression and benzodiazepines go together. An individual with depressive symptoms may turn to benzodiazepine therapy in an attempt to medicate, only to find that the depression severity continues to worsen and an addiction to benzodiazepines grows.
Eventually, a dual diagnosis may be assigned to someone in this situation. In that case, receiving combined therapy for the two conditions is an important step on the path toward improved mental health and lasting sobriety. This page will look at the connection between major depressive disorder and benzodiazepine use to gain an understanding of this harmful connection.
If you or a loved one is in the position of needing benzodiazepine treatment, now is the time to get started. The professionals at South Shores Detox are ready to help you conquer this substance abuse issue and move forward with your life in a positive manner. We hope to receive your call today.
Understanding Benzodiazepines and Their Effects
Benzodiazepines are a class of psychoactive drugs. They can be prescribed to address a number of different conditions, including anxiety disorders, panic disorder, and insomnia. You may be familiar with some of the brand names that are available today, including Xanax, Valium, and Klonopin.
As with most prescription drugs, benzodiazepine therapy can be quite effective when utilized properly. As a combination therapy with other forms of treatment, benzos may be able to help people move beyond their anxiety symptoms. However, these drugs are best used as a short-term solution. When benzodiazepine therapy carries on over the long term, problems can develop. Long term benzodiazepine use will increase the individual’s tolerance for the drug, build a physical dependence, and can even make depressive symptoms worse.
Depression and Benzo Dependence Can Be a Vicious Cycle
If benzodiazepine treatment is used as an antidepressant medication, instead of another option like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, a simple cycle can easily develop that leaves the individual in a far worse situation than they were at the start. Initially, depressed patients may be prescribed benzos as a way to manage the anxiety or sleep issues they are experiencing.
And, at first, this approach can work. There is moderate quality evidence that the sedating effects of the drug can be helpful in turning down racing thoughts and helping to quiet the mind. Unfortunately, as the use of benzodiazepines increases to account for a growing physical tolerance for the drug, depressive and anxiety severity can actually start to get worse.
Specifically, depression will worsen, causing the individual to feel isolated and their emotional responsiveness may be blunted. It’s possible that someone who has moderately severe depression at the start will now be severely depressed and also addicted to benzodiazepines.
The story actually gets a little worse at this point. If the individual decides to stop using benzos, the withdrawal symptoms could lead them back into generalized anxiety disorder even worse than before, along with a whole host of other symptoms. Suicidal thoughts may even appear at this stage. Despite being commonly prescribed, this cycle highlights why benzos can be a slippery slope when it comes to antidepressant treatment.
What is a Dual Diagnosis?
The term dual diagnosis refers to the presence of both a mental health disorder and a substance use disorder. It is often seen that people with a mental illness of some kind will also develop a substance abuse problem, typically in an effort to medicate their mental health challenges.
So, in the context of this page, someone with a depressive illness and an addiction to benzodiazepines could be given a dual diagnosis. This is an important step because it provides for help to be given on both fronts at the same time.
There wouldn’t be much point in treating the depression while the drug addiction remained, and stopping the drug addiction alone could be a losing battle if the individual is still depressed. Confronting both simultaneously has proven to be an effective way to help people with mental disorders like moderate depression get their lives back on track.
The Risks of Benzodiazepines for People with Depressive Symptoms
Prescribing benzodiazepines to someone with depression is inherently dangerous. It’s true that people who have experienced a major depressive episode, or even those who have lesser depression severity, often have anxiety, as well. And, so it follows that benzodiazepine therapy would make sense, since benzos are a prescription often assigned to people with anxiety.
But there are risk factors in place here that need to be considered. The adverse effects of using benzodiazepines compared with other antidepressant drugs just might not be worth the potential harms, such as those listed below.
Increased Risk of Suicide
One potential treatment response to long term benzodiazepine use and increased risk of suicide. Patients with mood disorders have been shown to struggle with self harm more than others when they use benzos as an ongoing way to address anxiety.
Cognitive Impairment
When benzodiazepines are used as an antidepressant therapy, they can dull the cognitive functioning of the individual in question. That impact may even last after treatment discontinuation, depending on how long the drugs were used and at what dosage. This negative cognitive impact can make it even harder than normal for an individual to deal with depression. They might not get the same type of results from therapy and might find it more difficult to implement their coping strategies during day-to-day life.
Physical Dependence
Taking the minimum effective dose at the start might work to provide the desired effect from these drugs. However, many people are soon adding benzodiazepine dosages throughout the day to get the same results.
Outpatients with major depression who are self-medicating could find that they keep taking more and more of the drug, elevating the risk ratio as they go. Depression in adults can continue to be a downward cycle, as discussed above, when this pattern develops.
Emotional Blunting
People with depression typically feel blunted emotions in daily life. That’s a primary outcome of this condition and is one of the things that tricyclic antidepressants aim to fix.
However, using benzodiazepine treatment can actually make this worse, causing people to feel even less emotion than before they began taking the drug. These feelings of emptiness and disconnection will drive the individual even further down into their depressed state.
Common Signs You May Be Facing a Dual Diagnosis
It’s best to work with a medical professional to receive a formal dual diagnosis if that is the situation you are facing. With that said, you might be able to notice some of the common symptoms in yourself before even reaching out for help. Here are some of the signs that you’ll want to watch for moving forward.
- Feeling the need for benzodiazepine use to numb the emotional pain you are experiencing
- Depression that is getting worse the longer you continue using benzos
- A sense that you simply can’t function properly without taking a pill
- Gradually becoming isolated from family and friends
- Losing interest in various activities that you once found to be pleasurable
- Experiencing panic disorder, irritability, or insomnia between doses
Noticing any of these signs in your life is an excellent reason to reach out to a partner like South Shores Detox for help. It will only take a single phone call to put things in motion and open up a whole new world of possibilities moving forward.
How Withdrawal from Benzodiazepines Affects Depression
If you have been using benzos for a long time, perhaps as a combination treatment with other medications, you may find it difficult to quit. Even if you are determined to stop using these drugs, the withdrawal symptoms that you are likely to experience can make getting away from benzos a particularly notable challenge.
First, there are some physical symptoms to consider. Those can include sweating, heart palpitations, shakes, and even seizures. The potential for these physical symptoms to become quite serious is why you should go through a formal medical detox rather than trying to quit on your own.
There are also powerful psychological symptoms that can be experienced when you stop using benzos. Specifically, you might find that your mind snaps back into powerful anxiety and panic attacks as the drug leaves your system.
Depressive disorders can also become much worse, even to the point of causing suicidal ideation. Many people trying to stop using antidepressants plus benzodiazepines also struggle with sleep, and being fatigued will only serve to worsen mental instability.
The Importance of a Personalized Treatment Plan
Everyone needs their own unique treatment plan to deal with this kind of dual diagnosis. Custom treatment is important because every individual is fighting their own battle.
You might have comorbid anxiety disorders that complicate things, or you may have combined antidepressant drugs with other substances to create a complicated network that needs to be untangled.
Fortunately, there is a way out. You can partner with a team like that at South Shores Detox to have your own treatment plan crafted specifically to suit your needs. That plan will likely include the four steps below in some form or fashion.
Medical Detox
This is where it all starts. Stopping benzodiazepine use is the first step and it should be done under medical supervision. No matter what the reason was for originally starting to use these drugs – perhaps it was bipolar disorder or other clinical factors that pushed you in this direction – getting the drug out of your system is the foundation on which everything else can come together.
You’ll be far more likely to make it through detox from short acting benzodiazepines when you have a medical team on your side.
Psychiatric Evaluation
With the acute phase or detox in the past, a complete psychiatric evaluation can be completed. This will allow the mental health team to understand the severity of your depressive disorder and determine an appropriate course of action to move forward.
This evaluation will be able to assess your depressive severity accurately now that the drug is out of the way and the withdrawal symptoms have faded into the past.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
For many with depression, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is going to be an excellent treatment option. This technique helps individuals recognize disordered thinking patterns and challenges their negative beliefs. Thought patterns can be deeply engrained in a person’s mind and they are very difficult to change.
This is part of the reason why it’s so hard to break out of conditions like depression and anxiety. Through the use of CBT with the help of a trained professional, you can develop healthy coping strategies and start to see your brain as an ally rather than an enemy.
Medication Management
In some cases, it will be possible to use non-addictive antidepressants to treat your condition. This is not the same as the path you went down previously that led to subsequent long term benzodiazepine use.
Rather, these medications have been shown in randomized controlled trials to not be addictive, so you can use them with confidence when prescribed by a doctor. It could prove to be that a blend of medication and therapy is the best way to alleviate your symptoms.
Explore Our Services for Depression and Benzo Treatment Today
Fighting the battle of benzodiazepine dependence on your own is a huge challenge. Putting the right team on your side won’t necessarily make it easier, but it will make it easier. For adults with major depression and a benzodiazepine addiction, going through a professional medical detox may be the only winning strategy to consider.
South Shores Detox is ready to take your call on this important matter. We have helped many others who were in your position and would love to guide you toward a brighter future. If you deal with substance abuse along with anxious depression symptoms, receiving treatment for both issues at once is often the best strategy. Simply give us a call now and see what’s possible with the right people on your side.