Does L-Theanine Help With Benzodiazepine Withdrawal, and Is L-Theanine Withdrawal Real?

Does L-theanine help with benzodiazepine withdrawal?

Some patients report that L-theanine takes the edge off anxiety or poor sleep during a benzodiazepine taper. The evidence is limited, though, and experience varies. It is a mild supplement, and it is not a treatment for benzodiazepine withdrawal.

It is also not a substitute for the medication, and it cannot make a fast taper safe. A supplement does not change what the nervous system can tolerate.

Many people arrive here after searching for “L-theanine withdrawal.” L-theanine has no known withdrawal syndrome of its own. A person who feels worse after stopping it, while taking or tapering a benzodiazepine, is almost certainly feeling the benzodiazepine.

Dr. Mark Leeds, an osteopathic physician and deprescribing specialist in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, takes the same position on every supplement. The decision is made per patient, with a physician who understands the pharmacology. Some supplements help during benzodiazepine withdrawal, some can be a problem, and individual response varies.

What is L-theanine, and what do patients hope it will do?

L-theanine is an amino acid found in tea leaves. People have been drinking tea for centuries, but the compound itself was not identified until 1949, and it has been sold as a supplement only since the late twentieth century.

It is not an old remedy. It is a modern product.

Patients who are tapering a benzodiazepine or a z-drug usually hope for two things, calm and sleep. L-theanine is sold without a prescription, and it has a reputation for being gentle. So, it is often the first thing a person tries.

What do patients report? Some describe a mild easing of tension, or a slightly easier time falling asleep. Others notice nothing, and a few say that they felt worse, which is not surprising when a nervous system in withdrawal can react unpredictably to anything new.

How would L-theanine work? Nobody has settled that.

How it might work is not settled. L-theanine resembles glutamate, one of the brain’s excitatory chemical messengers, and the proposed explanations involve glutamate and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA), the calming messenger that benzodiazepines act on.

These are not established facts. They are proposals that rest mostly on laboratory work.

Professor C. Heather Ashton took a plain view of supplements in general. In Chapter III of the Ashton Manual, in the section on diet, fluids, and exercise, she wrote that there is “no general need for dietary supplements or extra vitamins or minerals” during withdrawal, and that all of these “can be harmful in excess.” The chapter does not mention L-theanine by name.

Is L-theanine withdrawal real?

There is no recognized L-theanine withdrawal syndrome. L-theanine is not known to cause physical dependence, and stopping it is nothing like stopping a benzodiazepine.

So, why do people search for it? Usually, a person stopped the supplement, felt worse, and went looking for the reason. When that person is also taking or tapering a benzodiazepine, the benzodiazepine is the far more likely cause.

Withdrawal symptoms can appear while the medication is still being taken every day. A recent dose reduction may still be making itself felt.

A short-acting benzodiazepine can wear off between doses, which is called interdose withdrawal, and a dose that used to be enough can stop holding symptoms back over time, which is called tolerance withdrawal. And, withdrawal symptoms come and go in waves, on no schedule that a supplement controls.

There is one more ordinary explanation. If L-theanine was softening anxiety or poor sleep, then stopping it lets those symptoms come back.

That is the return of a symptom. It is not withdrawal from an amino acid.

The benzodiazepine is the medication that cannot simply be stopped.

The benzodiazepine is another matter. Dependence on a prescribed benzodiazepine is the expected result of taking it regularly, and physical dependence is not addiction. Still, the dependence is real, and it is the reason a benzodiazepine cannot simply be stopped.

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) updated the boxed warning for benzodiazepines in 2020. The agency cautioned that stopping abruptly, or reducing the dose too quickly, can cause withdrawal reactions, including seizures, that can be life-threatening. Call 911 for a seizure or any other medical emergency.

L-theanine must never be used to cover a faster taper.

This is the real risk of a gentle supplement. A person takes it, feels a little calmer, and decides that the next reduction can be larger, or can come sooner.

Withdrawal symptoms are information. They report how well the nervous system is keeping up with the reductions. A supplement that quiets the symptoms does not change the pace that the nervous system can tolerate.

It is like turning up the car radio to drown out a noise from the engine. The noise is harder to hear. The engine is the same.

When symptoms rise after a reduction, the answer is in the taper itself. The patient can hold at the current dose, or the next step can be made smaller, and that decision is made with the prescriber. In Chapter II of the Manual, Professor Ashton wrote that the person tapering is usually the best judge of the pace and “must be in control.”

The Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines describe hyperbolic tapering, in which each reduction is sized to the current dose, so the steps get smaller as the dose gets lower. That takes months, and sometimes longer. Unfortunately, no supplement is a way around it.

Why should the prescriber know before L-theanine is added?

First, there are possible additive effects. L-theanine may add to the effect of blood pressure medicines and to the effect of sedatives, and a benzodiazepine is a sedative. A prescriber can only account for what is on the medication list.

Second, supplements are not held to the standard of prescription medications before they are sold. The amount in a capsule can vary from one brand to the next. Many products sold for calm or sleep are blends, with several ingredients in one capsule.

Third, timing matters. When a supplement is started or stopped in the same week as a dose reduction, nobody can tell which change produced the result. A change made during a stable stretch is much easier to read.

What about valerian, passionflower, and kava?

These herbs are often sold alongside L-theanine, sometimes in the same capsule. They are a different matter. Each is thought to act on the GABA system, the same system that a benzodiazepine acts on.

That can muddy a taper. During a taper, the nervous system is slowly adjusting to less help at the GABA receptor. An herb that pushes on that system on some nights and not on others makes it hard to know what a symptom means, or what the current dose is really doing.

The patient community is cautious about kava in particular. Those cautions have merit, although they are not universal. Yet, this is not a blanket prohibition.

It is a reason to read the label of any blend, and to make the decision with a physician who understands the pharmacology. The article on which supplements help with benzodiazepine withdrawal covers the wider question.

What else do patients ask about L-theanine?

Can L-theanine replace Xanax, Klonopin, or Ativan?

No. L-theanine is not a benzodiazepine, and it does not do what Xanax (alprazolam), Klonopin (clonazepam), or Ativan (lorazepam) does. Replacing a benzodiazepine with a supplement amounts to stopping the benzodiazepine abruptly, which is exactly what the FDA warning describes.

Does L-theanine need to be tapered?

There is no established reason to taper it, because no withdrawal syndrome is known. The practical question is when to stop it. Stopping during a stable stretch of the benzodiazepine taper, and telling the prescriber, keeps the picture readable.

Is drinking green tea the same as taking an L-theanine capsule?

No. A cup of tea has a small amount of L-theanine along with caffeine, and a capsule usually has far more L-theanine and no caffeine. In the same section of Chapter III, Professor Ashton wrote that tea or coffee in moderation is compatible with benzodiazepine withdrawal, except for the few people who are very sensitive to caffeine and those with very high anxiety. So, how a person feels after a cup of tea says little about how a capsule will feel.

How does Dr. Leeds approach supplements during a taper?

Dr. Leeds makes no blanket prohibitions and no endorsements when it comes to supplements. Each one is a decision for that patient, weighed against everything else the patient takes. L-theanine is not a treatment that his practice offers, and it is never a substitute for a gradual taper.

The taper is the treatment. It is gradual and patient-directed, with a crossover to diazepam as described in the Ashton Manual where that helps, and with reductions that get smaller as the dose gets lower.

Fortunately, a slow taper does not depend on any supplement. If the pace is too fast, the answer is a slower pace, and the patient decides when the next step comes.

Dr. Leeds’ practice in Fort Lauderdale provides medically supervised benzodiazepine and z-drug tapering for patients in Florida. Contact the office to ask about a supervised taper.

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.