Needinghelp82

Did many of yo have mental health issues before turning to drink/drugs?

I've been diagnosed with GAD for the past 8 years. I think I've used it as an excuse to drink but also it's been harder to explain my unhealthy drinking problem. At first my GP tied it all into my anxiety, I had to catagorically spell it out.

Gilmer

Yeah--I was bipolar. Started having symptoms in junior high, but wasn't diagnosed till age 39. I drank because I really enjoyed putting myself into a stupor! Life is so much more healthy and productive without alcohol.

DisplacedGRITS

I was diagnosed with depression before my drinking got out of control. I also had/have an unhealthy relationship with my body and food. I went to rehab after years of heavy drinking and was diagnosed bipolar. I still suffer from insomnia. I take 4 prescription meds daily and a slew of herbal supplements and vitamins. I'm not totally convinced that i'm bipolar but i know i experienced some extreme psychotic breaks when i was drinking. When i think about my heavy drinking and how effed up i was, i get really upset. A large part of me cannot accept that part of my life and where i was mentally.

I still cycle somewhat even though i'm medicated but i think i'm somewhat sane now. My paranoia and social phobias and anxieties seem to be somewhat commonplace amongst alcoholics. I think mine are a little more extreme but i'm managing them. Those fears are manifesting in other aspects of my life but i'm getting help there.

I think a lot of alcoholics have mental health issues. For me, alcohol was the answer to all of my problems. It eased my anxiety, dulled my fears, knocked me unconscious (i thought it was sleeping) and gave me the excuse i needed to isolate. Alcohol worked as a solution until it became a problem. So now, i have to find other solutions to what life throws at me. It's not easy, but it beats the alternative.

Needinghelp82

I take citalopram every day. I've previously been hospitalised for bulimia. For me drinking was a way out, I used it to try conserve my anxiety. It made it worse.

I quit everything when pregnant but was slowly upping it again.

Spinach

Drinking can mask mental health problems and cause them ! It's difficult to separate them,though the overriding consensus is that stopping drinking improves your general and mental health, depression and anxiety can fade away or become easily managed without the need for other treatment or treated far easier and deep seated depressions and anxiety can be easier to define and diagnose without all the interference drink causes.
It really is a win win going sober.
John.

pdoc

Yep I was diagnosed with PTSD resulting in major depression and anxiety. I was on all sorts of medication over the years including ECT treatment. In my mind none of it seemed to work as I wasn't getting any better that's when I started self medicating with alcohol leading to being a daily top up drunk and a heroin addict.

I'm my just over three months totally clean including from all the stupid psych meds.

Needinghelp82

I do believe my anxiety will improve with the lack of alcohol. It's tough though, for so long I've used it to self medicate. 12 days sober but my mental health is not improving.

pdoc

Just take it one day at a time, for me it took 3-4 weeks before my mental health started to stabilize and that was after my last antidepressant and antipsychotic.

Funny thing about most off the antidepressants I have been on. They actually have the side affect of anxiety and suicide thoughts. Both of which I had for years and 2 suicide attempts, now I don't have either. But it's still early days.

Spinach

Day 12 , really is a great run but I remember some great emotional upheavals in the first month before things settled, I found the good days to be an indicator of how they would become. Hang in there it's still early days, though these are of course the most uncomfortable ones.
John.

Chilledice

anxiety, depression, panic attacks all related to past trauma, maybe its some kind of PTSD im not sure! Drinking doesn't help me tho I DO know that

anewpage

Yep, my mental health issues were the reason I started "self-medicating" with drink in the first place. I was anorexic in my teens. These days I struggle with manic depression and social anxiety disorder, panic disorder. It makes everything so much worse that I live in a foreign country away from my family.

jaybee1

Yep, like many others on here I use alcohol to self medicate. At the end of the day it just makes things worse. I also find that for me depression and anxiety were bad during the the first few weeks of sobriety. I've never been able to stay sober for more than a few weeks at a time, but near the end of those stretches my mental health started to improve and stabilize.

Congrats on the run of 12 days.

biminiblue

It helps me to know that most people struggle with difficult events from their past. No one gets to be an adult without some drama that affects them. That is just the Human Condition.

Learning coping tools is the most valuable thing for me. When I was a little kid, I didn't need medication to get by. God didn't make me defective, I caused that by my distorted thinking. Therefore, I can stay sane by learning new ways of thinking.

Early days of sobriety are pretty raw. I had some big swings mentally for the first month. I thought I'd never level out. At nearly three months now, I've followed the Jellinek Chart very closely in how my recovery is going.

Hang in there! It's going to get better soon.

KateL

Still have but not as bad as when drinking xxx

Sulu1

I see a pattern here...

I also started drinking to mask my anxiety. I've been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Initially the drinking worked, until it got out of control and it was slowly driving me mad.

I'm a much calmer more relaxed person when I'm neither drunk/hungover.

EndGameNYC

Similar to alcoholism...PTSD and other anxiety disorders, bipolar and major depression depression, and virtually all other psychiatric conditions, require that the sufferer radically change their behaviors and, ultimately, their thinking and perceptions, in order to heal. Medication helps to alleviate symptoms, but the distorted thinking, faulty perceptions about ourselves and other people (and, really, about the rest of the world), and maladaptive behaviors we cultivate as a result of our afflictions do not spontaneously adjust themselves by virtue of taking a pill. More is needed.

Social anxiety disorder -- a condition that many people on SR acknowledge -- is a real, painful and debilitating condition which, left untreated, has severe consequences. People who suffer from SAD are at much higher risk than the general population for alcoholism and other addictions. Yet taking medication alone generally leaves the sufferer stuck in the same, often isolating and maladaptive behaviors that characterize the disorder. There is no such thing as spontaneous remission for a painful lifestyle. Action needs to be taken and it needs to be sustained in order for the person to live a better life.

The best treatment for anxiety disorders and other psychiatric conditions is a combination of medication and psychotherapy. We essentially need to re-learn (or learn for the first time) how to live a healthy and meaningful life. Medication may help, but it does not promote a healthy lifestyle; and doing nothing is no decision at all. There are hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of resources available for all kinds of psychiatric conditions besides therapy, and one can easily find and access them by using the Internet, and many of them accommodate a range of people's schedules, living situations and personal preferences.

When we convince ourselves that nothing will help, that it's "too late" to get relief and that we're all alone in our suffering, then all alone in our suffering we will remain.

readerbaby71

Same here. I wasn't diagnosed until I was 37. Once I quit drinking and started meds and therapy my life changed. I still have ups and downs and have to deal with this for the rest of my life, but I now realize drinking and drugs did nothing but make it worse.

Aellyce

I had anxiety since childhood but not too bad before my alcoholism was quite progressed. Eating disorders in my teens and early 20's.

Hawk07

I was diagnosed with depression in my early 20's and like you Needinghelp, also suffered from the same eating disorder. Thankfully I conquered bulimia years ago with therapy. But I didn't conquer the underlining cause of my eating disorder and depression because I used alcohol to self medicate.. My latest diagnoses is GAD and depression. I contribute the anxiety mostly to my drinking. It appeared after I had been binge drinking for a couple years and now I struggle with it every day. Alcohol was a temporary and momentary relief from my anxiety but it seemed to feed it and make it grow in the long run.

Chicagoan

I do not know if I had them before
(I was very young) but, I sure had
them after. From apathy to paranoia,
it was a squirrel cage for sure.
I'm working on it.