Now is your chance to make your voice heard! The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) has opened the period for public comment on the first national benzo deprescription (tapering) guidelines. These guidelines will be how clinicians will treat their benzo patients for at least the next 10 years.
It is very important that these guidelines reflect the lived experience of patients. The Alliance and other patient groups have created a list of corrections that need to be made to this proposal. The Alliance is asking that you help us emphasize these points to ASAM. The top 4 changes that must be made in order to protect those who want to discontinue benzos are listed below. Please choose 1 or more of these points to include in your response to the survey.
Help us correct these mistakes by submitting feedback before the period for public comment ends on July 19th.
Please choose 1 or more of the top 4 changes and include them in your response to the survey.
1) Page: 8
Line: 9
Comment: (Item 7) Strongly disagree on 2 points: 1) The starting taper is too fast
for many patients. It should be 5%-10% initially and can be adjusted up or down
depending on patient response. 2) Reductions should not be the same amount
each time but should decrease with each subsequent cut.
2) Page: 7
Line: 1
Comment: (Items 2.a, 3.a.1, 5, and 9) These are too weakly worded. Shared
decision making requires full informed consent, including the risks and benefits
of both continuing to use as well as discontinuing benzodiazepines.
3) Page: 7
Line: 17
Comment: (Items 4, 15, 24.a) Inpatient tapers are too heavily recommended.
They should only be recommended in extreme cases. Most facilities taper
benzodiazepines too fast.
4) Page: 8
Line: 21
Comment: (Items 9, 10, 11) The description of tapering strategies is insufficient.
It needs more detail, especially when safe pill cutting is no longer sufficiently
slow.
To submit these comments you can use this link and follow these instructions:
-Scroll down on the ASAM page to find the Draft Guidelines which you can review on your own or use the recommended corrections that we have provided above.
-Click the Provide Comments link (See image below)
-The website will only allow you to submit 1 page number and 1 line in each comment, but you can provide the range that we have provided in the ‘What is your comment?’ box.
Click here to view a step-by-step instructional video on how to submit your public comment (starting at 9:15).
If you are having difficulties accessing this page or submitting your comments, please send a message to any of our social media accounts (@BenzoReform), or send an email to Hunter@benzoreform.org.