This study aims to compare two strategies performed by GPs to help patients taking benzodiazepines on a daily basis for at least six months to discontinue their use. The first strategy consists of the usual or standard support provided by the GP, which often starts with a discontinuation advice or letter, the second is blended support where face-to-face consultations with the GP are alternated with web-based self-learning by the patient.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Patients aged 18 and older capable of giving informed consent,
• Having his/her Global Medical File managed by one of the participating general practitioners
• Receiving prescriptions of (z-)BZDs from participating GP for use on a daily basis
• Reporting daily intake (≥ 80% of days) of (z-)BZDs in the last 6 months for a primary indication of sleeping problems

Exclusion Criteria:

• Presence of any severe psychiatric and neurologic condition that in the judgment of the treating GP implies a contraindication for (z-)BZD withdrawal
• Presence of terminal illness
• Any cases where stopping of (z-)BZDs might be harmful
• Unwillingness or inability to provide informed consent
• Not having e-literacy (being familiar with email and internet use)
• Patients with a substance use disorder (other than (z-)BZD) will also be excluded from the study because in these cases there is often a sub-therapeutic (z-)BZD dependence and/or comorbid psychological/psychiatric comorbid conditions requiring specialist care.

All individual participant data (IPD) that underlie the results in our publications will be made available upon request. The IPD set will consist of deidentified participant data. It can be obtained by contacting the research team at KU Leuven: PI, catharina.mathei@kuleuven.be; trial coordinator, marc.vannuland@kuleuven.be; project manager, kristien.coteur@kuleuven.be. Each request before September 2023 will be reviewed by the Sponsor.

In addition to the IPD set, we will also make the study protocol available through an open access publication, and have registered the trial on clinicaltrials.gov (NCT03937180). The informed consent forms are also publicly available through the trial website (www.bigbirdtrial.com), where the clinical study report will also be disseminated at the end of the trial, after approval of the funder KCE.

All IPD will be available upon request, after publication of the results concerning the primary outcome, starting six months after publication. The IPD set can be requested until September 2023. For any request later than this date, follow-up by the Sponsor cannot be guaranteed.

Reuse of the IPD set is only allowed for non-profit research, with correct reference to the original research and Sponsor.