soberlife123

Sever hypochondriac (googlechondriac?) with a bad anxiety disorder here.

What do you guys take? doctor said couldn't prescribe certain medications if I were still drinking so today is day 1 alcohol free.

Anna

The best thing is to talk to your dr because it's against the rules here to give medical advice.

10. Medical Advice: No Posts giving medical advice, medication advice, or psychiatric advice. Do not use the forum to give or ask for professional medical or psychiatric advice. If you are a medical professional, please remember the forums and chat are for peer support only and not to be used for distributing professional medical advice and/or using the forum to represent your professional services. Medical and Psychiatric advice includes giving a diagnosis, treatment plan, medication advice and dosage suggestions, over the counter and natural home remedies that should be approved by medical professionals. Detox can be dangerous and life threatening at times. Please consult with your physician.

HJIK

Alcohol causes way more anxiety than it relieves , that for sure. By day 90 you anxiety will likely be 75% less, hard to believe at day 1, I didn't.

I quit the meds for anxiety thing, the "non addictive" ones like SSRIs never worked but created withdrawal reactions in me despite the "non addictive" label. The addictive ones are usually always nightmare in the end. Worse than alcohol.

Clonopin was a major nightmare.

My anxiety never got under control until I quit the drinking and the chemical med assault on my body called "treatment".

Anxiety is mostly the body's reaction to thoughts, mine was so bad I feared the anxiety itself and actually caused it in the end.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a psychotherapeutic approach that addresses dysfunctional emotions, maladaptive behaviors and cognitive processes and contents through a number of goal-oriented, explicit systematic procedures.


I really wanted a pill to fix it but they either made me addicted (Clonopin) or turned me into a zombie who still had anxiety.

Quitting drinking made my anxiety level go way down.

DoubleBarrel

Trading one drug for another got me in trouble plenty of times.

The brain has an amazing ability to heal, and when I drank, it stopped working to soothe anxiety, in fact I believe hangovers and withdrawal triggered it terribly.

How about trying to go all natural, and see what you are really like without anything?

Seems it would be great not to need something to feel ok, right?

Diet, I,e. No processed food or chemicals, exercise, and sleep. Meditation.
I believe this would work for the vast majority of people. It has worked miracles for me.

SineadOConnor

Good suggestions which I've started to take on myself. Its a lot better.

HJIK

Try exercise , you can do a scientific experiment.


Do something that can cause some anxiety, like goto an 8pm meeting with alot of people.

Then the next try doing some heavy exercise a few hours before 8 pm and go again.

You will notice a difference I bet.

DylanS

There are also some really effective therapies that assist with anxiety disorders, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in particular is proven quite effective.

LifeRoad

Exercise. Heavy Exercise one day then palates the next. Balanced Exercise that heals every part of your body. The success rate for exercise is something like 60%. Meditation - Mine is the 23 psalm. Routine. I lock down in a routine when I'm stressed. When somethings not working, I focus on tweaking the routine. The routine is an essential compass that gives you important feedback about where you are in the world.

The right therapist can be a god send, but you need to be prepared for the wrong therapist who is wasting everyone's time and sending you down the rabbit hole.

Things not to do are ponder your past, engage slippery slopes or find a new addiction. I don't eat out. Grow sprouts, make your own bread and design the perfect salad. I do go bike riding, hiking and roller blading. Oh, shopping can be pretty harmless if you don't buy stuff. Barnes and Nobles is pretty safe and so is the library.

If you can't handle one day at a time, try 10 minutes, 20 minutes or even 6 hours.

Breath, clear your mind. Repeat.

freedragonfly

I get bad anxiety too. Never found any pill that really helped. I used to do meditation and that helped. Somehow stopped doing it (perhaps drinking played a part in that). Meditation is difficult but good. Just five minutes can help. I should really get back into it. I also found that exercise helped me in the past. Then drinking stopped me from doing that too. I am looking into how to start being more active now.

advbike

Yoga is awesome and exercise in general helps. Biggest benefit was from mindfulness training, ie. learning to recognize and disassociate from the endless chatter in the head.

Mountainmanbob

I agree and it sounds like me

Mountainman

justsomeone

No more drugs for me. I got off Zoloft about a year and a half ago. That was right before something pretty awful happened in my life. I had to learn to deal with it without the drugs. It took a while to do it without alcohol too.

What has really helped: exercise (if I stop, my mood really drops and anxiety rises), mindfulness, spirituality, healthy eating

I also recently stopped drinking coffee and my heart palpitations and chest pains have gone away.

Aellyce

I took some meds for my anxiety a long time ago, when I was ~18... for a couple months or so. I don't even remember if they helped as I wasn't aware it was anxiety back then. I ran to the doc with what I thought were heart problems; found out only years later that the pills he prescribed to me were primarily anxiety treatment. I would never go back to that doc again - he did not tell me what was wrong just gave me a script... I figured out all of it years later completely by myself.

I never took meds again for it but did self-medicate with alcohol, like many of us. In the last years of my drinking career my anxiety was extreme... I will save you from the description of the thoughts I had back then. I actually thought I had developed a serious anxiety disorder and would be stuck with it for life, drinking or not...

Amazingly, after about a month sober, MOST of that debilitating anxiety was gone. The only thing I do have now is a generally hyper mind with a lot of internal stimulation often without any reason. I try to tame it by many of the methods others have mentioned above: exercise, meditation and other relaxing activities (I love spas!), keeping busy (so that my external reality can match the internal one), a balanced diet, social life, and trying to not take more than I can handle at least for a while now.

Still need to work on my daily routine, structure, and sleep schedule.

The main form of anxiety I still have and need to improve is related to my self perception of my competence in work and other "performance-oriented" activities. This is what some like to call "creative anxiety". I am a very creative person but also have very high standards for myself, so I run into problems with these often.

I started psychotherapy a few weeks ago, and my therapist has been quite helpful with the above issue.

Lawgirl - I really suggest that you give sobriety a good few weeks at least - it's "magic"

SoberCAH

Glad you are with us, Lawgirl.

Please stick around.

justsomeone

Scratch my last post! I'm going back on an anti-depressant. On top of my normal general anxiety and social anxiety (which I was able to manage), I'm now having symptoms of ptsd and hypochonria.

Good luck to you if you choose this route. There are draw backs for sure. But when it gets this bad for me, it's worth it for a while. I'm tired of spending my nights not sleeping and being scared that I'm dying or my kids are going to die.

HealthyK

I will say this - I am on anti-anxiety meds for Anxiety and Depression. However, the time that my anxiety and depression was at the lowest point is when I was exercising regularly. Especially walks outside near nature. Just a suggestion.