March 3, 2008
Alcohol The Worst Treatment For Anxiety
Many people correctly believe that minor stress, which is NOT like anxiety disorder, can be lived without medical treatment. Unwisely and using the worst solution to a common problem, many sufferers of anxiety use alcohol as a temporary solution to anxiety.
These days, more and more, we have to deal with all sorts of stress and we have to cope with it in our everyday life as well as we can. Luckily this can be learned over the years. For many anxiety sufferers living with this stress can be more difficult than it seems so they look for a temporary fix. Few classes of Tequila, bottle or two of nice wine, cold beer…these are all cheap and fun ways to make everyday stress seem to be little less overbearing and for a while it seems to ease the pain as well.
Alcohol can cause some bad side effects as well, like lowering blood sugar levels and irregular heartbeat which in turn might increase anxiety symptoms. One must also remember that alcohol tends to be addictive and it has numerous side effects, both physically and mentally, especially if person drinks often.
Some people buy alcohol to temporarily escape their anxiety - which is the same if they would purchase a large dosage prespriction without any advice from their doctor - and in the long run this could be extremely harmful. Even worse, person can become very dependent on alcohol.
One problem with this kind of solace in alcohol and with any kind of addictive temporary fixes like self-cutting, smoking and OTC pain relievers is that none of them really treat the problem of anxiety itself. Same can be said of Valium and Xanas whcih are prescription medicines. These are all quick fixes and used to escape the real source of anxiety at the risk of injury to themselves.
There’s a theory that’s held by many psychotherapists (according to the father of psychotherapy Sigmund Freud) where it’s believed that the reason people have anxiety in our lives is actually caused by previous traumas. So when we have issues in the present that reminds us of past traumas, it brings anxious feelings to surface.
Avoiding the anxiety by depressing or stimulating the mind with drugs, alcohol or other forms of addictive behavior teaches us only how to deaden the pain, not to confront and resolve the source of anxiety.
With alcohol especially - as many people drink wine and beer casually - not to escape anything particular, but for pleasure, they are many times unaware that they are actually feeding an addiction and their primary reason for drinking is anxiety, although it can be a very mild form of anxiety.
Only in the case of alcoholics is the addiction ever made manifest; in the case of people who drink enough to escape the pain but never get totally drunk, the truth of the matter may not be realized for years to come.
If you believe you might suffer from anxiety and you feel that you may drink too much there is a very simple test to see whether it’s true. Just see how many days you can go without a drink.
If you start feeling anxiety increasing to an abnormal level and if you start to go through withdrawals, then you might need to seek help in overcoming the addiction and start treating the anxiety itself, instead of avoiding it.
Filed under Health & Fitness by Charles T. Winnbaker

