Pharmaceutical Drug Withdrawal and Chinese Herbal Medicine by Dr. Matt Van Benschoten

Patients with chronic sleep disorders, anxiety, depression, or pain may request assistance in withdrawing from long term use of pharmaceutical medications when side effects or lack of effectiveness become problematic. Benzodiazepines are especially difficult to discontinue, requiring minimal dose reductions over long periods of time. Withdrawal symptoms can include panic attacks, severe insomnia, tremors, confusion, memory loss, muscle pain and stiffness, perceptual changes, mania, hallucinations, seizures, and suicide.

Case Study

Mr. A is a cancer survivor with a history of complex pelvic injury, fracture of pubic bone, diastasis of symphysis pubis, multiple surgical procedures including abdominal surgery to remove a malignant retroperitoneal tumor, spinal surgery to remove a Schwannoma at L5/S1, removal of an angiolipoma from the left buttock, and most recently, pelvic fusion surgery. Patient also suffers from severe hydronephrosis of the right kidney, and chronic kidney stones. He has managed chronic pain and sleep disturbance with Restoril/temazepam, Tramadol, Flexeril, Vicodin, and Oxycodone. He now feels the temazepam is causing neurological problems, and is having severe insomnia from reducing the dose.

• Polygonum stem (ye jiao teng) and Salvia (dan shen) have sedative/hypnotic effects.
• Gentiana macrophylla (qin jiao) interacts with the benzodiazepine receptor and relieves stiffness of the joints.
• Rhodiola (hong jing tian) has antianxiety effects and interacts with the opioid receptor.
• Cyperus (xiang fu), Lippia (ya she huang), and Portulaca (ma chi xian) interact with the benzodiazepine receptor and treat stress induced stomach pain and diarrhea.
• Acorus (shi chang pu), Ocimum (jiu ceng ta), Gambir (gou teng), and Ganoderma (ling zhi) have antidepressant and anticonvulsant effects.

With the use of these medicinals, the patient was able to slowly reduce the dosages of all medications over an 8 month period, and completely discontinued the temazepam with normalization of sleep.

Patient describes the process:

I was prescribed temazepam for more than eight years before the commencement of any prominent adverse reactions. During the eighth year on the medication, I noticed a yellow coating starting to develop on my tongue that eventually migrated to my teeth. I also began to experience extreme thirst and dehydration, including extreme dry mouth throughout the night and decaying teeth and gums. During the ninth year on temazepam, I suddenly began to experience shortness of breath, tightness in the chest and chest pain, heart palpitations, pounding or racing heart, tachycardia, anxiety, panic and terror attacks. The first herbal prescription normalized my day to day experience and reduced the awful side effects/symptoms to the point where I could not only function, but experienced much needed hope. The herbal prescription needed to be adjusted every four to six weeks as the titration process progressed. Significantly, the herbs allowed me to achieve a healthy amount of sleep throughout the process.