Getting off a benzodiazepine is hard enough without waiting rooms, fluorescent lights, and a long drive while your nervous system misfires. If you have been searching for a telehealth benzodiazepine tapering program, your instinct is right: the care should come to you.
For many people in withdrawal, sound is too loud, light is too bright, and travel drains a day’s worth of strength. Asking you to commute for healing gets the whole thing backward.
Dr. Mark Leeds built his practice on the opposite idea. You do not travel to the program. The program travels to you.
How the telehealth benzodiazepine tapering program works
The structure is simple. One physician, Mark Leeds, D.O., an osteopathic physician focused on benzodiazepine tapering, guides your entire taper from the first conversation to the final dose.
The program has three working parts. Weekly video or audio visits that can last up to an hour. Text access to Dr. Leeds around the clock between those visits. And precise prescriptions, prepared as liquid formulations by compound pharmacies, measured down to a fraction of a milligram.
Before any dose comes down, stabilization comes first. A steady, predictable dose gives the nervous system safety, and safety is the ground every taper is built on.
Nothing about it resembles rehab, because you are not being treated for addiction. Physical dependence is not addiction. It is a medical injury caused by prescribed treatment, and this is medical care for it: no groups, no meetings, no labels.
A full hour, every week, with the same physician
Most medical visits last about fifteen minutes. A benzodiazepine taper cannot be managed well in fifteen minutes.
Your weekly visit can run up to an hour, by video or audio, whichever feels easier that day. There is time to go through the week honestly: sleep, symptoms, stress, and how the last reduction landed. Then you and Dr. Leeds decide together whether to reduce, hold, or adjust.
You will not spend that hour convincing anyone your symptoms are real. That argument ends the day you join the program.
Holding is not failure. It is the nervous system asking for time, and in this program, the schedule listens.
Picture the appointment itself: morning light in your own kitchen, your notes on the table, a physician on the screen who already knows every chapter of your story. No traffic. No waiting room. When it ends, you are already home.
Between visits, you are not alone
Withdrawal does not keep office hours. The frightening symptom arrives at two in the morning, on a holiday weekend, in the middle of a wave.
That is why the program includes 24/7 text access to Dr. Leeds for urgent questions between visits. Not an answering service. Not a portal that promises a reply within three business days.
A medication question, a strange new sensation, a wave that will not break: you send a message, and the physician who knows your case is the one who responds.
Often, what the moment needs most is information. Knowing that a surge of symptoms is a recognized part of withdrawal, and that it passes, can change the whole night. Fear amplifies symptoms. Answers shrink them.
No handoffs. No coaches. No middle layers.
Plenty of online programs advertise physician care, then route you to coaches, group calls, or a rotating cast of prescribers. In this program, there is no routing. Every visit and every text reaches Dr. Leeds himself.
That continuity is not a luxury. A taper is a long story full of small details: how you responded to a cut eight months ago, which symptom shows up first when a reduction is too steep. A provider meeting you for the first time cannot read chapter twelve of a book they just picked up.
One doctor, the whole way down. That is the program.
The clinical method behind the program
Telehealth is only the delivery. The medicine underneath follows the methods the benzodiazepine community has trusted for decades.
Dr. Leeds uses the crossover approach from the Ashton Manual, moving patients from their current benzodiazepine to diazepam (Valium), a long-acting medication that leaves the body gradually and can be reduced in very small steps. Reductions follow a hyperbolic pattern, meaning each cut is smaller than the one before, consistent with the Maudsley Deprescribing Guidelines.
The timeline is yours. Six months at the absolute minimum, a year or more for many people, several years for some. Along the way, Dr. Leeds directly manages benzodiazepine-induced neurological dysfunction (BIND), the wide range of nervous system symptoms that can come with withdrawal, rather than referring you elsewhere.
Recovery through a taper tends to move in windows and waves, stretches of relief followed by temporary returns of symptoms. Dr. Leeds reads those patterns week by week and shapes the plan around them, because symptoms are information, not failure.
He also serves on the medical advisory board of the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition, an organization devoted to people harmed by these medications.
States served, and how to begin
Prescribing and medical management, the full program described here, are available to patients located in Florida. If you are in Florida, everything above can happen without your leaving home.
If you live elsewhere, consultations are available. A consultation is a paid session, by video or audio, up to an hour, available anywhere. It can cover any topic, but it is not a medical visit and does not establish a physician-patient relationship.
Either way, the first step is the same. Send a message through the contact form on drleeds.com, and follow-up will come by email or phone.
Somewhere tonight, someone is white-knuckling a rapid detox they never should have been given. You found the other path. Take the next step from the safest place you know: home.
Frequently asked questions
Is telehealth benzodiazepine tapering as effective as in-person care?
For tapering, telemedicine is not a compromise. Visits are conversation, observation, and planning, and doing them from home removes travel stress that can worsen symptoms. Weekly hour-long contact also adds up to far more physician time than most in-person practices offer.
What happens during the weekly hour-long visits?
You and Dr. Leeds review the week: sleep, symptoms, stress, and how the last dose change landed. Together, you decide whether to reduce, hold, or adjust the plan. The visit is by video or audio, whichever works better for you that day.
Who answers the 24/7 text line between appointments?
Dr. Leeds does. There are no coaches, nurse lines, or answering services in this practice. The physician who manages your taper is the one who reads and answers your message.
How do prescriptions work in a telehealth benzodiazepine tapering program?
Dr. Leeds sends prescriptions to a compound pharmacy that prepares precise liquid formulations, allowing reductions as small as a fraction of a milligram. Doses are adjusted through your weekly visits as your taper progresses.
Can a family member join my telehealth tapering visits?
Yes, if you want them there. Many patients include a spouse or family member for support or note-taking, and it can help loved ones understand what recovery from benzodiazepine dependence really looks like. The choice is always yours.
About the physician
Mark Leeds, D.O. is an osteopathic physician providing concierge telemedicine care focused on benzodiazepine and z-drug tapering, psychiatric medication deprescribing, opioid dependence treatment, and alcohol use disorder. Dr. Leeds works directly with each patient, with weekly appointments and 24/7 text access between visits. He serves on the medical advisory board of the Benzodiazepine Information Coalition and hosts The Rehab Podcast on the Mental Health News Radio Network. Medical management is available for patients in Florida; consultations are available more broadly.