9Iron

Generalized Anxiety Disorder:

Approximately half of patients attending mental health services for conditions including anxiety disorders such as panic disorder or social phobia are the result of alcohol or benzodiazepine dependence. Sometimes anxiety pre-existed alcohol or benzodiazepine dependence but the alcohol or benzodiazepine dependence act to keep the anxiety disorders going and often progressively making them worse. Many people who are addicted to alcohol or prescribed benzodiazepines when it is explained to them they have a choice between ongoing ill mental health or quitting and recovering from their symptoms decide on quitting alcohol and or their benzodiazepines. It was noted that every individual has an individual sensitivity level to alcohol or sedative hypnotic drugs and what one person can tolerate without ill health another will suffer very ill health and that even moderate drinking can cause rebound anxiety syndromes and sleep disorders. A person who is suffering the toxic effects of alcohol or benzodiazepines will not benefit from other therapies or medications as they do not address the root cause of the symptoms. Recovery from benzodiazepines tends to take a lot longer than recovery from alcohol but people can regain their previous good health. Symptoms may temporarily worsen however, during alcohol withdrawal or benzodiazepine withdrawal.[10]
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Not the cure of course, but reading this hit me like a ton of bricks and to why I'm might be at where I'm at. It's felt like I've been carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders for the past 5 years, and have increasingly become more and more anxious and nervous going into the simplest meetings. Even driving my car into work in the morning I'd sit in traffic worrying about all things big and small, all punching me in the gut the entire time. Standing up and public speaking, forget about it. Used to have no problem with it, not anymore. I've been walking around with a knot in my stomach that only one thing could untie, if even temporarily, was a drink.

Anyone else here ever been diagnosed with this? I know this doesn't undue the drinking problem, but I'd somehow feel better if I knew the route source.

AlkalikeH

Hey there! Glad to see you around (with a different username).

I am getting a whole new "re-diagnose" right now. I medicated myself for the past 15 years with bars, pints and cocaine lines. Sometimes less booze and more blow, then when blow stopped working i moved full on with the bottle. Anxiety and depression, all through the years, untreated. So yeah, it is possible. And it sucks.

A healthy move is to make an appointment with your doc or shrink (i like therapy but hate pills - yet i found a good psyquiatrist that sent me to do a bunch of blood tests, MRI, EEG, the works and do a full analysis of my situation before even bringing medication to the table). So far, eating healthy, working out and multi-vitamins are helping to keep things sorta under control.

All the best! I am off to see Star Trek

Anna

I used alcohol to self-medicate depression and anxiety. I had tried to get those things figured out for years to no avail and ended up drinking to try to get through it. In the end, I had to give up the drinking and get the depression treated. The anxiety I try to deal with.

flutter

A huge percentage of us here have an anxiety diagnosis. My anxiety went away about 90% after some serious sober time, and a committment never to imbibe again. But to answer you, yes, I was dually diagnosed as alcohol dependent (history of), and generalized anxiety disorder. Years ago I was prescribed benzos for the anxiety, I ended up preferring the anxiety to that horrible feeling, course that was well before I enjoyed feeling really f'd up. I still have some anxiety, but it's situational and tolerable, and likely pretty natural. And all that time I thought I was self medicating anxiety and insomnia, when really.. I was just causing it to get worse. A LOT of us are in the same boat... it's amazing how many people come here wanting to quit but worried about their anxiety and how to deal with it.. really MORE amazing how our bodies and minds own coping mechanisms are able to function so much better without being drenched in drugs or alcohol. Who'da thunk it.

9Iron

Flutter:

Thanks for all of your input over the past few days and everyone else as well. Do you think it was anxiety that got you on your path to begin with, or was it two interrelated but each inevitable conditions that fed off of each other?

I know it's irrelevant to my situation, but if someone is diagnosed with an anxiety disorder early and is warned about the likelihood of alcoholism if intake isn't monitored very closely, how many here wouldn't have to be here at all?

tommyk

"It's felt like I've been carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders for the past 5 years, and have increasingly become more and more anxious and nervous going into the simplest meetings. Even driving my car into work in the morning I'd sit in traffic worrying about all things big and small, all punching me in the gut the entire time. Standing up and public speaking, forget about it. Used to have no problem with it, not anymore. I've been walking around with a knot in my stomach that only one thing could untie, if even temporarily, was a drink."

That was my situation. I put myself in the hospital on two separate occasions due to extreme anxiety lasting for months, that led to full blown depression each time.

I've been drug & alcohol free for years now thanks to my HigherPower, the 12 steps, and using what the NA/AA programs taught me about dealing with life on life's terms.

I only took benzos back then as prescribed, and even then not as much as I could have. I haven't had to use any for years (but knowing benzos are available to save my life again if necessary is comforting).

I knew I had an alcohol 'disorder' many, many years before I quit drinking. I just wasn't ready to address the problem, I liked getting blitzed.

flutter

Well..it's kinda the chicken before the egg thing for me. I also think it was a double whammy, a bad combo. My anxiety was first diagnosed when I was in grad school.. and I was very alone, a new state, freaked out of my mind.. that is honestly when I started drinking pretty patholigically. Drinks by myself, drinks to get online and chat, drinks before going out.. yada.. the patterns of drinking I developed then became habit, hard core etched in stone habit for me.

Only towards the end of my drinking career did I start noticing how incredibly anxious I was most all of the time. I often used it as an excuse to take a few shots extra here and there. And more and more. Chug a few quick chugs of wine as I passed the fridge.. damn anxiety.. and it would work. Til the alcohol wore off.. etc etc etc.

I'm sure the comorbidty of substance abuse and anxiety disorders is HUGE, but I don't know (and honestly don't care) which precipitates which.. if at all. The rate of alcohol abuse in most clinical mental health disorders is high overall.. is that then lack of coping skills? Reaching for 'medicine' to quiet the muck? Boy..that can be a hairy long discussion, very worth having, but unnecessary I think a lot of the time.

If I drink, I will die. When I stopped drinking finally (after what, 10 years since that anxiety diagnosis and start to an alcoholic drinking pattern?), my anxiety left. Not overnight, but pretty damn close. I had worked myself in to such a frenzy that I was convinced I would grow so anxious without my medicine, I wonder sometimes how close to death that probably brought me on several occasions. I only know of one, and that's because I was made aware of my BAC. At .568 I was walking, talking, coherant saying I was just buzzed.

Again.. if I drink, I will die. My drinking progressed from several drinks in the evenings out with my husband to full blown hiding vodka, drinking even during the night to get through my "anxiety", in TWO WEEKS. I don't know what switch got tripped, and again, I don't care.

Sometimes I'm anxious, but it's during times that I should be. I'm excited about buying a new house, makes me a bit jittery.. but it should.

I grew up in an alcoholic home too.. if you want to throw that one in the mix. My parents were black out drunks until I was 19.. the only coping skills I learned were likely from them. So maybe when I became anxious, I already knew from childhood how to cope. Maybe? Maybe not.. Maybe it's all unrelated.. maybe it's all entertwined into some sick delicate dance of life.. I don't care. If I drink, I will die, and I don't want to die, not from drinking.. and I wont.

Mattcake

I was diagnosed with depression before I started drinking - I was 17. The depression was left untreated at that time. I also suffered from just about all flavours of anxiety (panic, social phobia, GAD) that I consciously medicated with alcohol.

Needless to say, alcohol only made matters much worse, and became a problem in its own right.