Anxiety
New to Real Life
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: I come in Peaces
Posts: 2,071
How long have you been sober?
In early recovery my anxiety was two fold. One aspect was the physical detox and chronic exhaustion that comes from years of alcohol abuse and the resulting crappy sleep.
The other more chronic aspect was my supreme lack of real life coping skills. Happy? have a drink! Sad? have a drink! Worried? Drink up! So now I was sober and hopelessly ill-equipped for real life.
The most helpful thing I did was deliberately choose a different response for every feeling. So I would feel the anxiety, say to myself "I feel anxious and want to drink. I want to drink because I'm an alcoholic and I know no other way to deal with anxiety. A normal person would make a cup of tea" and then I'd make the tea or go for to the gym or go online or whatever.
The real deliberate approach helped a lot.
In early recovery my anxiety was two fold. One aspect was the physical detox and chronic exhaustion that comes from years of alcohol abuse and the resulting crappy sleep.
The other more chronic aspect was my supreme lack of real life coping skills. Happy? have a drink! Sad? have a drink! Worried? Drink up! So now I was sober and hopelessly ill-equipped for real life.
The most helpful thing I did was deliberately choose a different response for every feeling. So I would feel the anxiety, say to myself "I feel anxious and want to drink. I want to drink because I'm an alcoholic and I know no other way to deal with anxiety. A normal person would make a cup of tea" and then I'd make the tea or go for to the gym or go online or whatever.
The real deliberate approach helped a lot.
Member
Thread Starter
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Charlotte, NC
Posts: 49
Thanks SSLI. I guess I'm technically still in de-tox mode. The anxiety is the worst part. I'm sure it will go away soon but maybe I'm looking for a quick-fix to replace the one I used to get from alcohol.
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