Originally Posted by
stillpooh19 
Life was going well, then boom, I was hit with terrible anxiety and depression. I believe it was an accumulation of life events that finally became too much.
Has anyone experience this? If so, how did you manage? I am thankful to not be experiencing the other symptoms like depersonalization, derealization, paranoia etc but whew, I thought I was in the clear.
You're saying it's PAWS. I experienced very similar symptoms but I didn't find it had anything to do with any type of withdrawal symptoms. In my case, those symptoms ARE untreated alcoholism and one who's alcoholic (or a drug addict) can and will experience them regardless of how long it's been since their last drug or drink.
I too had a lot of "clean time" under my belt at the time but, as I came to discover, I hadn't really recovered from alcoholism. I would have said I was IN recovery or that I was recoverING..... but really I was basically not getting drunk or high anymore and doing my best to navigate life. Precisely the same things I did that led to my drinking and drugging and precisely what I did while I was IN my addiction.
From what I know of PAWS, the passage of time and possibly some therapy/counselling/or maybe some meetings can help greatly. If it's untreated alcoholism, as it was with me, those same 3 things may help but that's doubtful. In my case they worked for a short while then it was back to that oh-so-familiar restlessness, irritability, discontentment and bone-crushing depression.
Eventually, my complete unwillingness to continue living in that up and down hell-scape got me to consider some recovery avenues that, up to that point, I was unwilling to try.
Maybe it'll go away.......but maybe it won't. Luckily for us, if it's the former you'll be good to go sooner or later. And if it's the latter, there's a solution for that too.
I'm curious though, how would one know those symptoms
are PAWS rather than untreated alcoholism?