It's not a benzo, but it is a GABAergic drug. The ironclad law to avoid brutal dependency and addiction is to never take it more than once every 7 days, preferably less frequently than that. No redosing on the same day either. This means it will take a couple weeks to slowly find an effective dose.
It really is a social anxiety off switch for me (once it fully kicks in after 5+ hours, lasting for about 24 hours before things slowly return to baseline). Alcohol in troubling quantities has that effect to a lesser extent, but of course it's sloppy as hell too and I hate the hangover. Not so with phenibut.
That makes it tempting to use before 7 days have passed just for this one social occasion. Although committing to not do that has flipped the dynamic: Even after enough time has passed I'm reconsidering, is today actually worth using it and being "blocked" for another week during which something more interesting might come up? Trying to make my occasional visit to normie vibe space count, it's kind of nice there.
https://psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Phenibut