Mel12

Recovery feelings of chronic anxiety I recognize as having seeds from before I used anything. In having inborn tendencies towards anxiety, I suppose my brain was "pre-ruined." Using substances probably made things worse, and today I probably have some permanent brain effects or damage. I have enough brain left, I would like to think, to have a life with what time remains.


Withdrawal, PAWS, and the like, they say, can drag out the bad feelings for a long time--I hear even up to a year or more. Others here will know more about this syndrome.

My experience? Quitting has drastically reduced instances where I manufacture external situations that produce enormous stress. Quitting so far has reduced my problem to managing internal tendencies towards stress, instead of having external train wrecks to also manage (apart from old train wrecks that still need cleaning up).

Regarding my underlying anxiety (and not PAWS), medication has not been a solution for me. I have been through a parade of medicines that never did anything I could notice. I still take a maintenance dose of an SSRI which feels no more effective than a sugar pill to me.

I exercise a great deal, which I find to be an effective partial treatment for anxiety and depression.

It is crazy, isn't it? I wouldn't give a martini and a cigarette to a dog because I believe it is evil and horrible to torture animals. Yet look at what I have done to myself. Crazy.

It sounds like you are on a great track to a much, much better life! I am rooting for you!!

Mel