Does Sunlight Help With Benzodiazepine Withdrawal? Daylight, Sleep, and Comfort Measures During a Taper

Does sunlight help with benzodiazepine withdrawal?

Sunlight does not treat benzodiazepine withdrawal, and it will not make a taper any shorter. Yet, morning daylight helps the body keep its days and nights in order, and sleep is one of the first things a taper disturbs.

The same answer holds for time outdoors, music, gentle massage, and a pleasant scent at bedtime. They are comfort measures. They can make a hard night or a long afternoon easier to get through, and none of them changes the withdrawal underneath.

Most of the people who look for these comforts took a medication exactly as a doctor prescribed it. Physical dependence is not addiction. It is the nervous system’s adaptation to a medication taken every day, and the way out of it is a gradual, medically supervised taper over months.

So, what is daylight actually good for, and what should a person with a sensitive nervous system know before trying the rest?

Why does sleep fall apart during a benzodiazepine taper?

In Chapter III of the Ashton Manual, Professor C. Heather Ashton explains that the sleep a benzodiazepine produces “is not a normal sleep.” The medication suppresses both dreaming sleep and deep sleep. As it is withdrawn, dreaming sleep rebounds, so dreams turn vivid, nightmares may come, and a person wakes again and again during the night.

Deep sleep takes longer to return. She writes that this is probably because anxiety is high, the brain is overactive, and it is hard to relax completely.

Then, the broken night bends the next day. Patients often describe the same pattern: awake until four, asleep until ten, a nap in the afternoon, the curtains closed because light hurts, and wide awake again at midnight. The body’s clock can drift later, and insomnia during a taper may gain a second cause on top of the first.

Does normal sleep come back? Yes. In Professor Ashton’s words, “The need for sleep is so powerful that normal sleep will eventually reassert itself.”

Morning daylight sets the body’s clock.

The body keeps time with an internal clock, known as the circadian rhythm, that decides when a person feels alert and when sleep comes. It does not keep perfect time on its own. It is like a watch that runs a little slow and has to be set every morning, and the signal that sets it is light reaching the eyes early in the day.

That is the whole case for sunlight during a taper. Time outside in the first hour or two after waking, at about the same time each day, tells the clock when the day began, and a clock that knows when the day began is readier for sleep that night.

A cloudy morning still counts, because outdoor light is far brighter than a lit room. The evening is the other half, and dim lamps and a dark bedroom finish the job that the morning started.

How light sets the body’s clock is ordinary physiology. However, the evidence for morning light in people tapering a benzodiazepine is limited, and there is no tested amount to recommend.

A regular time each morning probably matters more than a long one. This is clinical experience, and it varies.

The early hours are also the gentle ones for the skin. Sunlight on the skin is how the body makes vitamin D. Whether to take a vitamin supplement during a taper is a separate question, decided per patient with a physician who understands the pharmacology.

What if ordinary light is too bright?

For many patients, it is. In Chapter III, Professor Ashton describes a heightened sensitivity to all sensations during withdrawal, including hearing, sight, touch, taste, and smell. She writes that many of her patients “have had to don dark glasses because ordinary light seemed dazzlingly bright,” and that one had to stop every clock in the house because the ticking was unbearably loud.

So, the advice to get morning light has to bend to the person. Sunglasses are fine. A shaded porch, a seat by an open window, or five minutes at the door is a real start, and outdoor light through dark lenses is usually still brighter than a living room.

A person who feels worse outside can go back in and try again another day, with less. That is not failure. The sensitivity reflects heightened activity in the nervous system, and it settles with time and with a taper paced to what the person can tolerate.

Time outdoors counts, even when it is only the garden.

Daylight rarely comes alone. A walk around the block or through a park adds movement and a change of scene, and both are scarce in a taper spent mostly indoors.

In the same chapter, Professor Ashton recommends regular moderate exercise during withdrawal, and the aim she sets is some exercise “in a form that is enjoyable.” A slow walk counts as gentle exercise during a taper.

Gardening fits that description for many patients. It is slow, it happens outside in the light, it can be stopped at any moment, and it leaves something to show for the day. On a bad day, a chair in the yard is enough.

Does time in nature change the course of withdrawal? No one has shown that it does. It is a pleasant, low-risk way to spend an hour that would otherwise be spent watching symptoms.

What about music and calming audio?

Music is a low-risk way to lower arousal, to take attention off symptoms for a while, and to settle before sleep. In Chapter III, relaxation tapes “with music and calm words” are among the things a person can use at home, and relaxation tapes are on Professor Ashton’s short list of sleep hygiene measures.

Today, that means a quiet playlist, a relaxation recording, guided imagery, or nature sounds. Some patients like binaural beats, in which each ear hears a slightly different tone. Playing an instrument or singing counts as much as listening.

The evidence that any of this changes benzodiazepine withdrawal is limited. A playlist is a comfort measure, and its job is to make the next hour easier.

A nervous system that hears a ticking clock as unbearable will not be soothed by loud or busy sound, and some patients with ringing in the ears find headphones or binaural beats aggravating. The volume stays low, and the track goes off if it makes things worse.

What about gentle massage?

Benzodiazepines are muscle relaxants. Professor Ashton writes that stopping them after long-term use brings “a rebound increase in muscle tension,” felt as stiffness and pain in the limbs, back, neck, and jaw.

She lists massage beside stretching, moderate exercise, hot baths, and relaxation exercises as measures that ease these symptoms, and she is candid that they “may give only temporary relief at first.” Of massage, aromatherapy, and the other complementary techniques, she writes that all can help a person relax, “but the effects tend to be short-lived.”

That is the right expectation. Gentle massage can loosen a tight neck and make it easier to fall asleep that night. It does not treat dependence, the evidence for massage in benzodiazepine withdrawal is limited, and clinical experience varies.

Unfortunately, the same hypersensitivity that makes light too bright can make touch too much, and deep or vigorous work is often poorly tolerated. So, the first session is light and short, the person giving the massage is told that the nervous system is sensitive, and it stops if symptoms flare.

What about lavender and other scents?

Aromatherapy is the use of scented plant oils, such as lavender or chamomile, for relaxation. A scent in a diffuser at bedtime is a harmless ritual for most people, and a ritual that marks the end of the day has some value when sleep is hard to find. Some patients pair the two comforts, and use a lightly scented, well-diluted oil for a gentle massage of the hands or shoulders.

The evidence that any scent eases withdrawal is thin. This is clinical experience, and it varies from person to person.

The safety rules are short. Essential oils are never swallowed, because many are toxic by mouth. They are diluted in a plain carrier oil before they touch the skin, tried first on a small patch, and kept away from the eyes, and during pregnancy the question goes to the person’s own doctor first.

Smell is one of the senses that withdrawal heightens. A scent that was soothing last year can be sickening now, so the first try is a faint one, and the diffuser goes off if it bothers the person.

None of this takes the place of a slow taper.

Pages that offer music therapy, massage therapy, or aromatherapy as natural alternatives to medication promise more than anyone can show. The only safe way off a benzodiazepine is to reduce the medication itself, gradually.

When the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) updated the boxed warning on benzodiazepines in 2020, it stated that physical dependence can occur “even as prescribed,” and that stopping abruptly or reducing the dose too quickly can result in withdrawal reactions, including seizures, which can be life-threatening. For a seizure or any other medical emergency, call 911.

In Chapter II of the Manual, Professor Ashton describes slow withdrawal as a gradual taper, usually over a period of some months, and she insists that the person tapering must be in control of the pace. Where it helps, a crossover taper moves a patient from a short-acting benzodiazepine to diazepam (Valium), which leaves the body slowly. The Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines add the hyperbolic shape, in which each reduction is sized to the dose that remains.

Comfort measures have an honest job inside that plan. They make the days between reductions more livable, and a good week with any of them is not a reason to cut faster.

And, when sleep falls apart after a reduction no matter how good the morning routine is, that is information about the pace. The usual answer, worked out with the prescribing physician, is a hold and a smaller next step.

Fortunately, a slow taper leaves room for comfort.

Sleep can take its time to settle. It does settle, and until then a patient is entitled to take comfort where it can be found, whether that is the morning light, a walk, a quiet song, or a hand on a sore shoulder.

Dr. Mark Leeds is an osteopathic physician and deprescribing specialist in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. His practice does not provide massage, music, or scented oils, and he does not prescribe them. What the practice provides is the taper itself, built around one person, with holds when they are needed and a pace the patient directs.

Dr. Leeds’ practice is a concierge practice, not an insurance practice, and it offers one service: medically supervised benzodiazepine and z-drug tapering for patients in Florida. Contact Dr. Leeds to discuss a taper that leaves room for the bad nights.

This article is educational. It is not medical advice, and reading it does not create a doctor-patient relationship. Decisions about starting, continuing, or tapering any medication should be made with your own physician.