Anxiety and Addiction
Anxiety and Addiction
Anxiety is a pretty common response to something frightening, unknown, or somewhat dangerous. Humans are built to have some anxiety to help keep their impulses under control, think twice before you make a move sometimes. But what if even ordinary activities and interactions made you feel this way much of the time? What if you turned to drugs and alcohol to calm your nerves? Unmanaged anxiety and addiction can go hand in hand to cause a lot of problems.
Anxiety Disorders And Symptoms
Anxiety disorders can range from mild social or performance anxiety to panic disorders and agoraphobia. As stated earlier, a little anxiety is pretty normal. You do need to worry a little about what would happen if you paid your bills late, or if you didn’t get to work on time, or if you remembered to turn off the oven before you left town. The usefulness of anxiety only goes so far. When most things trigger the fight-or-flight response, it becomes difficult to tell what is really threatening and what is a false alarm.
Anxiety symptoms can include many sensations including heart palpitations, sweating, clammy hands, a hot flushing feeling, tingling, shakiness, faintness, upset stomach, and diarrhea. There are also lots of negative thoughts, “what if’s”, self-doubt, feelings of uncertainy and fear. Some people who have panic attacks can feel so bad they believe they might be dying, having a heart attack, or losing control of their mind.
How Would an Addict With Anxiety Look to Others?
A person with anxiety may isolate themselves, or limit their activities that cause their anxiety to get worse. They may have the idea that if they don’t “push” themselves, they can prevent the anxiety from coming on. They might make their personal world smaller and smaller, avoiding anything that might seem to difficult to cope with. They might very well still feel anxiety, regardless of their self-limiting actions.
They most likely do a lot of their drinking or drugging alone. If they do need to be out in public and feel anxiety from this, they are likely to use just prior to or while being with others in the situations that make them uncomfortable. And some drugs may actually make their anxiety worse, such as marijuana and stimulant use and coming off alcohol or another depressant. The person is compelled to use more drugs to get rid of the uncomfortable anxiety sensations.
Treatment For Anxiety and Addiction
Generally, a person can learn to manage their anxiety with cognitive behavioral therapy. Often, anti-anxiety medication is used to help calm the mind and make physical symptoms better. When a person with anxiety also has an addiction, it is important to get treatment for both together. The reason for the drug use is tightly linked with the anxiety. Getting a person sober without addressing their underlying anxiety problem will make sobriety difficult to maintain.
The Canyon offers a full program for anyone suffering from anxiety and addiction together. The beautiful surroundings, expert dual diagnosis staff, research-based addiction treatment, and the unique therapies help the whole person through the start of their recovery process.
Tags: Anxiety and Addiction, drug-rehab, Dual Diagnosis
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August 4th, 2008 at 8:52 am
Anxiety is not something to mess around with. It’s very serious, and should be taken seriously. If you have anxiety, i would recommend getting help. Suffocating yourself in you own little world is not a solution, just avoidance.