Thread: anxiety!
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Old 03-02-2019, 08:08 AM
  # 6 (permalink)  
murrill
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I was always deemed "high strung," even before I started drinking. I evolved into what can best be described as "a hot mess" during the drinking years, but I thought all of that was behind me once I quit.
Not exactly. I began having free-floating anxiety in the early months after quitting. It seemed to come from nowhere: Rapid heart rate, shortness of breath, panic. Fortunately, it never lasted very long, and people assured me that it was normal and temporary. It occurred with decreasing frequency during my first year of sobriety as I began to face living sober.
Here I am now, sober for decades, struggling with a full-blown anxiety disorder. I feel it coming on, attacking me from the inside, undermining whatever strength and resolve and self-confidence that served me well in the past. It is debilitating.
I hope that does not frighten you. I think there is probably a difference between the anxiety of my early sobriety and what I have now. In that early days, I was learning to live sober, holding onto sobriety for dear life, and repairing my central nervous system. It is normal, and it passes.
My current anxiety disorder is, I think, in response to a trauma I had a few years ago. Regardless of the timing or the source, there are things that have helped me to endure. Meditation, yoga, mindfulness--these give me reprieves and tame my fight-or-flight response. All I really know is that drinking will not help.
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