tes

Hi. Ive made the decision to stop drinking and was looking for sugestions on how to deal with the stress and anxiety that accompanies stopping. Ive been a heavy drinker for around 10 years now and I have been through it all, detox, AA, etc, all of which never worked. The temptation was allways too overwealming for me to resist. Lately ive been finally starting to realize what my drinking is doing to me. I have no short term memory left, there is this persistant fog in my head that makes it incredibly hard to focus on anything, constant confusion, light headedness, and my drinking has often led me to the use of drugs such as meth that I would normally want to have nothing to do with. I have also been having unemployment problems that are usually related to my drinking. Id have to say that in the past decade I havent been sober for more than around 2-3 weeks at most. I have really bad anxiety and I simply cannot handle stress, and drinking has always been the thing that can eliminate it for me almost instantly. I "freak out" in basicly any social situation unless ive had a few drinks, which has made it difficult to maintain employment. Ive tryed zoloft in the past but had to stop because it made me feel so terrible. If I were to start taking an SSRI such as zoloft, paxil would I need to maintain sobritey for a certain amount of time before starting using the meds? When I tryed zoloft I was sober for only about 4 days and I had to stop a few days after taking them because the side effects were unbareable, and then just went back to drinking again. I cannot continue drinking to alleviate it anymore, it has caused so much despair and mental/physical/social problems that I find it extremely difficult to leave the house anymore.

scarlati

I don't know anything about Zoloft or Paxil, but anxiety is what initially lead me to alcohol. I've been on an SSRI, Lexapro, and it has helped with the physical symptoms of anxiety but didn't do much to fix the irrational fears and thought processes that were ruining my life. Lexapro would keep my heart from racing and keep me from getting the shakes and breaking out in a cold sweat whenever I felt anxious, but I'd still feel anxious. And it didn't do much for my alcohol cravings either. What HAS worked for me is a combination of Lexapro and therapy. The SSRI is helping with the physical symptoms while the therapy is helping me understand the thought processes that were making me anxious and causing the physical symptoms to begin with. I think you should talk to a psychiatrist about what meds you should be on and get into therapy with a psychiatrist or councellor.

GailJ

Hi Welcome to the forum, You should be sober and not drink at all if your going on anti'ds. I found the paxil unbearable, tried three times and it made my anxiety turn to black depression and suicidal thoughts. Saw a psychiatrist rather than just my gp explained about he drinking,(binger) but then switched to effexors and found the side effects diminished 10 times sooner and that it is working wonderfull for me. I do need to take seoquls to sleep, only half a tab a night now as he effexors will cause insomnia. But a gods nights sleep is wonderfull after years of insomnia and waking up a three in the morning and not being able to go back to sleep. I here a lot of praise by anxiety sufferers about cilitropam as well. But then again everybody is unique. I do suggest seeing a psychiatrist first before going to detox. They will want yo to detox first if your alcoholism is sever.

I agree with Scarleti that therapy that's right for you should be involved too. Hope this helps

tes

Thanks for the replies. I suppose that I should go talk to someone other than my medical physician about it, as he doesnt seem to have much experience with these issues. I have no insurance and I am in a whopping amount of debt as it is so thats made me hesitant about seeing someone else. I asked my physician if he could prescribe xanax or something similar and he strongly objected and gave me the prescription for the zoloft, which I still have inside of my medicine cabinet collecting dust. My anxiety symptoms vary, sometimes if it is triggered I will have panic attacks that can be very scary at times (feels like im dying/having a heart attack), but most of the time I get so extremely stressed out that it causes me to get sick to my stomach and ill start throwing up uncontrollably (this is very common), and I can neither eat or sleep, and all that I can think about is getting a drink just to make it go away. I also seem to have developed some sort of phobia when it comes to social interaction, this will trigger these bouts of anxiety alot. I am also under an enormous amount of stress and my blood pressure is through the roof.

pedagogue

He did you a favor by not giving you xanax or something similar, because it can be habit forming, not to mention very dangerous when mixed with alcohol. Ideally you'd be able to see a psychiatrist, as they are specially trained to deal with these sort of things. Any chance you can get yourself into a detox?

-p