Originally Posted by
bookpunk 
Mallard and DG re: angry face during recovery:
I sometimes think that what we call "PAWS" is just life. You get sober, you start to have a whole range of emotions including confusion and anger and frustration. Normal people feel those emotions too. As a drunk, I was able to drown these emotions and not really deal with them.
The idea of PAWS is reassuring: That it's just leftovers from being an alcoholic, and this too shall pass. PAWS or not, it WILL pass. That's life.
As St. Johnny Rotten once said, "Anger is an energy."
I am going to have to disagree here. What we experience the first few months isn't the same at all as life as a sober person. Anger is normal... but losing your mind and wanting to murder you roommate because you misplaced your sunglasses isn't. That's overreacting. A typical PAWS symptom is experiencing a normal emotion, but to a much larger degree than is normal for the situation.
Here's a list of PAWS symptoms as described here:
Why We Don’t Get Better Immediately: Post-acute Withdrawal Syndrome (PAWS) | What...Me Sober? Symptoms
PAWS symptoms reach a peak from three to six months after we get clean. Any use of drugs or alcohol, even in small quantities or for a short time, will effectively eliminate any improvement gained over that time, as it will keep the brain from healing. There are a variety of symptoms. Not everyone will experience all of them. Here are some of the main ones.
Inability to solve problems
Inability to solve problems leads to lowered self-esteem. We feel embarrassed, incompetent, and “not okay.” Diminished self-esteem and fear of failure lead to living and working problems. These all add to our stress, and the stress further exaggerates the other problems. Six things contribute to this: trouble thinking clearly, emotional overreaction, memory problems, sleep disturbances, physical coordination problems and difficulty managing stress.
Inability to think clearly
Our brain seems to work properly only part of the time. Sometimes our head just feels fuzzy because of the changes that occurred in our brains while we were using. The changes take time to improve. It is also due to the simple fact that we are trying to process a lot more information than we did before. While using, we mainly thought about getting more, using, and turning off our brains. Now we are considering the myriad things necessary to truly live our lives. To begin with, it can be a bit much.
Inability to concentrate
Abstract reasoning suffers, and we find our minds, like a confused cowboy, jumping on its horse and riding off in all directions. Also related to the reasons above.
Rigid, repetitive thinking
Thoughts go around and around in our heads, and we are unable to put them into useful order. We have not yet developed the ability to channel our thoughts and concentrate on one thing at a time.
Memory problems
We may hear something, understand it, and 20 minutes later…it’s gone! This sort of thing complicates our lives in many ways. It upsets supervisors, annoys significant others, and makes us wonder if we’re losing our minds.
With memory problems it is hard to learn new skills and absorb new information. We learn by building on what we have already learned, and memory difficulties can make it very difficult (if not impossible) to do that. Again, these difficulties add to stress, especially if we do not understand what’s happening to us. We may think, “This sucks! I might as well be high.”
Emotional overreaction or numbness *
People with emotional problems in early sobriety tend to over-react. When this overreaction puts more stress on our nervous systems than we can handle, we react by “shutting down” our emotions. We become emotionally numb, unable to feel anything. We may swing from one mood to another. These mood swings may baffle us, seeming to come without any reason, and may even be misdiagnosed as bipolar disorder. If we have developed insulin resistance or diabetes as a result of our drugs and drinking, this can become extreme. (See H.A.L.T. below)
Sleep disturbances
Disturbed sleep is common in recovery. It may last only a short time, or a lifetime. Often, this depends on what we consider to be a problem. If we are night owls who used alcohol or pills to get to sleep in the daytime, we may discover that the only solution is to make significant changes in our schedule, and perhaps even in our occupations. Sleep deprivation stresses the body, prevents our minds from working well, and generally exaggerates any other difficulties we may be experiencing.
We may experience changes in our sleep patterns, sleeping for long periods at a time, or getting sleepy at different times of the day. Although these may persist, we are usually able to adjust to them. The important thing is to be willing to adjust. We may not be able to keep to our old sleeping habits.
Stress
Difficulty managing stress is the most difficult part of post acute withdrawal, and of early recovery in general. Early on, we may not be able to distinguish between low and high stress situations, because for so many years we managed stress by using mood-altering substances.
Worst of all, the other PAWS symptoms become worse when we are under stress, and this causes the stress to increase! There is a direct relationship between elevated stress and the severity of PAWS. Each amplifies the other.
At times of low stress, the symptoms of post acute withdrawal may lessen or even go away completely. When we are well-rested, relaxed, eating properly and getting along well with others, we seem to be fine. It is easy to see how we can get careless at these times, and many a relapse has occurred when things seemed to be going just fine.
These things are really quite different from what a normal person experiences. I didn't have those things BEFORE I started drinking. But I have faith in others who have quit that it gets better.
It's important to me to be aware of because it lets me handle and manage the stuff when it comes up. I highly recommend reading the whole article quoted here. It goes on to talk about how to stabilize, manage and prevent episodes of PAWS. It's more than a matter of thinking, "with time this will go away". There are plenty of other things we can DO to actually make it go away faster like eating well, exercising, etc.
There's more to being an alcoholic than just the drinking, too. Most of us sacrificed our eating habits, sleep habits, exercise habits, healthy social habits, etc. All of these things also have a huge impact on our emotional and physical health so it stands to reason that once we're quit a while and are able to take better care of ourselves we will become happier and healthier. Of course, we're not going to be smiling ALL the time or anything, but the baseline will be higher and we'll be generally more stable.
Also, here's another good PAWS article from Wikipedia:
Post-acute-withdrawal syndrome - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia