July 10, 2026 · Wellness & Culture

Tomorrow is World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day, and we're sharing our founder's story, the truth about a system that overprescribes, and why we're opening the conversation.

What Is World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day?

Every year on July 11, people around the world mark Benzodiazepine Awareness Day. It's a day built by survivors, for survivors, to talk honestly about what these drugs can do to a life.

Here's the number that started Normalize: doctors in the U.S. write over 92 million benzodiazepine prescriptions a year. That's tens of millions of women handed a pill for anxiety, sleep, panic, grief, and sent home with little explanation of what it actually means to come off it, or whether there was ever another option on the table.

Our founder, Kathleen Saucerman, was one of them.

Kathleen's Story: From the Divorce Cocktail to Plant Medicine

Kathleen calls it the "Divorce Cocktail." Benzos, SSRIs, sleep aids, stacked on top of a life that was already unraveling. She was also navigating a diagnosis of Small Fiber Neuropathy, and the medications meant to help were quietly making everything harder to feel and harder to fix. So she went looking for something else — retreats in Ecuador, cannabis coursework at Sativa University, a global search for plant-based tools that actually told her the truth about what was in them and what they'd do.

That search became Normalize.

Between 2016 and 2019, Kathleen was prescribed more than 3,600 pills: benzodiazepines, antidepressants, sleep medications. In one 18-month stretch alone, that was 840 Xanax tablets across 14 fills. That prescription history is the reason Normalize exists.

Kathleen's story is common. It's the story of every woman who's been handed a prescription instead of a conversation. High-functioning. High-achieving. Looking fine from the outside while she's quietly falling apart underneath. She needs honest options and people who won't flinch when she tells the truth about her cocktail.

That's the question we ask in our community: what's your cocktail? We mean it as an invitation. Every woman's mix of medications, supplements, habits, and coping mechanisms is different. All of it deserves to be understood without shame, so she can make her own choice about what stays and what goes.

Know What You're Holding

A lot of women were never told much of this when they filled the prescription. Benzodiazepines go by many names: Xanax, Klonopin, Ativan, Valium, Restoril, Halcion, Librium, Versed. They're prescribed for anxiety, panic, insomnia, muscle spasms, seizures, and sedation.

They also carry the FDA's most serious warning. In 2020 the FDA updated the boxed warning across the whole class to spell out the risks of abuse, addiction, physical dependence, and withdrawal. Dependence can set in within days to weeks, even when the medication is taken exactly as prescribed. The guidance is the lowest effective dose for the shortest time, and never stopping suddenly — always under medical supervision.

There's a name for what some women carry afterward, too. BIND — Benzodiazepine-Induced Neurological Dysfunction — describes the lasting symptoms that can show up during use, during tapering, or after stopping: anxiety, insomnia, memory and cognitive trouble, tingling or burning, muscle pain, dizziness, depression. It can be hard to explain and deeply isolating. For a lot of women, just knowing it has a name is the first relief they've had in years.

Knowing the names, the side effects, and what the warning actually says gives a woman more to work with when she walks into her provider's office.

More Than One Option on the Table

Today, on World Benzodiazepine Awareness Day, we want to do two things: tell the truth about a system that overprescribes and underdelivers for women, and put something better within reach.

One thing we want to say plainly: your medication is your call. If a prescription is working for you, that's a decision between you and your provider. We're against the assumption that the heaviest option is the only option, prescribed without a real conversation about alternatives, dosage, or how to come off something safely if you ever choose to. We want every woman walking into that conversation with more choices in front of her.

Plant-Based Alternatives for Anxiety and Sleep

We curate a collection of plant-based, scientifically backed alternatives built for stress, anxiety, and sleep — the same things benzos are so often prescribed for. That includes CBN and other plant-based options a lot of women reach for to wind down and support an evening routine. Every product carries a Certificate of Analysis. Think of it as widening what's on the table. You can start wherever you are, and keep whatever's already working for you.

If today is the day you start asking questions about what's in your cocktail, we're glad you're here.

Shop our stress, mood, and sleep alternatives →

Start With One Honest Moment in the Mirror

Healing starts small. Sometimes it starts with washing your face. There's a page from a book that sat on Kathleen's mirror through the hardest season of her life, one line she read every day:

"Girl, get ahold of your life. Stop medicating, stop hiding out, stop being afraid."

That reminder became part of the foundation of Normalize.

Take a breath. Open the conversation. Because healing often starts with one honest moment with yourself.

Awareness That Outlasts the Hashtag

Today is about awareness, and about building something that lasts past a single day. Education without judgment. Tools that tell you the truth. A community that's been exactly where you are.

You don't need to wait for a crisis to make a change. You just need to be ready to make the choice. End the silence. We heal in community.