About Dr. Mark Leeds
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- About Dr. Leeds
Dr. Leeds sees every patient himself, in Fort Lauderdale or by telemedicine throughout Florida.
Mark Leeds, D.O., is an osteopathic physician and deprescribing specialist whose practice is built around one service: medically supervised tapering off of benzodiazepines and z-drugs. He graduated from Des Moines University College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1996, completed his Family Medicine residency in 1999, and has spent over two decades treating medication dependence.
Dependence is not addiction.
A patient who took a benzodiazepine as prescribed and became dependent has a medical condition caused by the medication, not an addiction. Unfortunately, addiction treatment facilities still offer rapid benzodiazepine detox, a stay measured in days with the goal of being off the drug by discharge. That is the harm this practice exists to prevent. Safe discontinuation is a gradual, medically supervised taper over months.
Patients shape the plan and set the pace.
Dr. Leeds treats each patient as a partner. The plan is written together, the pace is set together, and no one is pushed faster than they can tolerate. If a reduction is too much, the dose holds. Coaching toward meaningful activity is part of the care. Dr. Leeds also helps patients taper other prescribed medications when those are part of the picture.
The Ashton Manual and the Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines guide every taper.
Professor C. Heather Ashton wrote the Ashton Manual, and the Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines added the modern detail: reductions that get smaller as the dose falls. That means a careful assessment first, a crossover to diazepam where it helps, small reductions with holds whenever they are needed, and follow-up that continues into protracted withdrawal. A taper takes months, and sometimes longer. There is no fixed timeline.
Many patients arrive here after a doctor dismissed their withdrawal.
Patients were told it was not withdrawal.
Patients told a doctor about the symptoms and heard that it was the original anxiety returning, or that the medication could not do that. So, the first job here is to listen and to believe the account.
In 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) updated the boxed warning on every benzodiazepine to name physical dependence and withdrawal reactions. A doctor who dismisses withdrawal is behind the drug’s own label.
Prescribing without an exit plan is learning to fly without knowing how to land.
Many patients were never told that the drug could cause dependence, or how they would come off of it. Informed consent means the risks first, the alternatives, including no medication at all, an exit plan from day one, and the right to decline. That conversation happens before a taper starts, and it continues, because consent is not a signature. It is an ongoing conversation.
Protracted withdrawal is real, and it does get better with time.
For some patients, symptoms continue long after the last dose, in windows and waves that outsiders find hard to believe. Dr. Leeds does not mistake protracted withdrawal for the original anxiety. Follow-up continues after the taper ends, and no one is hurried. The brain heals on its own schedule, and the plan follows it.
How the practice works.
BenzoDoc is the website of Dr. Leeds’ practice. One physician provides all of the care, in Florida only, at the Fort Lauderdale office or by telemedicine. The practice is concierge, not insurance, so no coverage limit decides how fast a taper goes. Office hours are Monday to Friday, 10 AM to 2 PM. It is a medical practice, not a facility and not a stay: the care is the taper itself, and the follow-up that comes with it.
The work goes beyond his own patients.
Dr. Leeds serves on the medical advisory board of the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition, and he hosts The Rehab Podcast, where his guests include physicians, authors, and filmmakers. He has practiced family medicine for over 26 years. A consultation starts with the contact form: Contact Dr. Leeds.