grubby

I notice a common theme in a lot of the "relapse" stories is "anxiety" of some sort or other (the other common theme being peer pressure/environment), some of the reason(s) i usually see cited:

"the anxiety finally caught up with me"
"it was a brutal day, i needed something to calm me down"
"the events were too much for me to handle, i caved"
"the anxiety overwhelmed me"
"the anxiety was simply too much"
"I couldn't take it anymore"
"I needed relief"

just out of curiosity I thought I would throw up a poll on this. Please cast your vote on the following question:

Why you stressin'?

For me personally i'd say most of my "anxiety", and I would say one of the biggest reasons i was drinking like a fish in 2013 all the way up until earlier this year when i mustered the will-power to finally quit was related to financial worries. I can't comment on the other options since I really don't involve myself with people or care much for "relationships". Peer pressure also doesn't mean much to me as I simply don't go out much or find myself in those "social" situations very often.

Windancer

For me, all of the above. But it all comes back to anxiety and despair and the false belief I cant cope without alcohol.

ElleDee

Work is getting on my nerves. I've been here an hour and a half and I'm ready to go home. r

MrPhilDuck

Financial, my boss owes me the payment of 2 months of work.

afloatsober

I stress sometimes over the disappointment of being me.
But i'm a heck of a lot less disappointed sober and with my face to the sun these days....
G

Climber122

Yes we tend to have learned to cope with problems using substances. It's normal human behavior - I feel bad, so I take (whatever it is) and now I don't feel bad. Repeat. Problem is the disease is killing us in the meantime, and our behavior also harms those closest to us because of the way the substance affects our minds, body, spirit and wallet. A big part of recovery is learning new strategies for coping with problems that don't involve self medicating. I used to drink to cope, but the truth is I drank no matter what - whether times were "good" or "bad" I was going to drink, simply because I was actively addicted to it.

anchorhold

Thanks for posting the survey. It's true, I've used alcohol to "de-stress" from various situations -- work, kids, husband, and recently menopause -- as my coping mechanism. Agree with another person in this thread, that my anxiety now is coming from a real fear that I can't do this, I can't stop drinking completely and create a new life without it. That's why I love this forum. It makes quitting real and knowing that I'm with people who are also facing the alcohol demon down.
>AH

trachemys

Ain't stressin'. Ain't sayin' life's a bundle of sunbeams and kittens right now, but I ain't stressin'.

KAD

Money (or the lack thereof) and finances are a constant source of stress and anxiety for me. I don't feel secure in my job either, even though at present there are no apparent threats to it. It's the nature of the position, however, that makes me feel uncertain of the future. So many happy, sober mornings are ruined when I suddenly recall all the things that are stressing me out.

sillysuzanfree

I'm stressing about getting older and lack of finances and security. This is against my faith but I don't know how not to be The stress I'm feeling would be much worse though if I was still drinking.

blackjay

I'm stressed because my husband and I still aren't really okay with each other. I have only been sober 5 days and I know that isn't enough time to prove that I am serious about quitting this time, but it would be nice to have some support at home.

walkbeformakrun

I have a lot of stress at work. All the time. But I don't mind that. I can take it. Maybe bc often enough the stress ends with a big financial pay off. So I thrive on it, welcome it.

At home not so much. Big stress that ends with big disappointments, anger, resentment, fear, pain and uncertainty.

JD4010

Yep. Pretty much all of them. My top 3 are:

Stressful job
Going through a divorce
Genetic disease that is eating my lungs and kidneys

PurpleKnight

Work is always my biggest stress!! . . . for me I needed to really change up how to deal with it to make any headway with Sobriety!!

Aellyce

I can stress about anything I project into the future. Usually my worries tend to be about imagined threats - well, that's the definition of anxiety. Some people say that living a good, responsible, meaningful life would eliminate this - I believe this to be true for people that are not prone to anxiety biologically. It's yet another condition some of us have. Luckily there are many efficient treatments for it nowadays, pharmacological or otherwise. I am also astonished how big a difference quitting drinking has made for me in this area, but I still recognize the tendency.

KAD

That's me. At times I have revealed to others - friends, family, therapists - what I'm so anxious and stressed about and pretty much every time, it's over things that haven't happened and aren't even on the horizon. I get so tensed and manic over "what if's." I can drive myself nearly insane imagining the worst possible scenarios. It's become so crippling at times, instead of taking the necessary action to avoid or prevent those outcomes, I just shut down. I feel paralyzed by it. That's why alcohol became so very attractive. It didn't solve anything, but it certainly did alleviate the anxiety. For a while, anyway, until it made it worse and created a whole new, and very real, source of anxiety.

Aellyce

Yep, that's how it works. Drinking for those of us with default anxiety is the worst thing we can get into, really. It seems to work for a few years and when it's not extreme, but then makes everything 100x worse.

Are familiar with Eric Maisel's book called 'Mastering Creative Anxiety"? It's a good one with useful tips and the book itself is written in a pretty creative way.
Mastering Creative Anxiety: 24 Lessons for Writers, Painters, Musicians & Actors from America's Foremost Creativity Coach - Kindle edition by Eric Maisel. Arts & Photography Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.

It was helpful for me because my biggest problem area with anxiety has always been procrastination of certain things, usually the things I care about the most. Feeling paralyzed by having too many thoughts in my head, doubting my abilities and skills, etc. This is an area I've been trying to work on intensely and it's damn hard, exactly because it's been a life-long habit. And all the self-criticisms associated with this.

My therapist tries to make me look at the whole picture of my life and evaluate it in an objective fashion, by in realistic measures, not relative to my sky-high standards. It's helpful, because each time I do this, I recognize that the "paralysis" is really not that true as I have done so many things in life, including many very courageous things and that many others would not risk. So in reality I've also been quite a risk taker, but I never do these things impulsively, or almost never. This leads to the upside of anxiety for me: it makes me an excellent planner. Planning everything comes very naturally for me and I've had lots of successes with it, for example getting funding from grants where we need to put together a research proposal for a few years and evaluate possible risks, consequences, try to foresee the outcome, etc. I've done very well in these and other tasks involving "contingency planning". I also worked together with others on these tasks and am frequently surprised how "careless" they seem to be at times - what I perceive as such - because they are not anxious and hyper aware of all those "what if's". So in reality it's not that others are careless, but that I am obsessive. But of course this only works well when the anxiety is relatively mild and is under control, not in those insane hangover states, for example.

I have learned that the best remedy is action, no matter what. Just push my limits. Most of the time, the whole thing seems very minor after getting it done and it also takes much less time than I would imagine beforehand.

I also tried to be in less stressful jobs and live in quiet environments, but that just did not work for me. I guess the anxiety, again when it's not to severe, can be a great motivator as well, if we don't get stuck in it. So the challenge is to figure out how to keep all the nervous energy within the healthy range.

360shoes

I don't know if I would call it stress but I voted money...or not enough of it.
I just always feel better when I have a few extra bucks in the bank. The price of chicken and rainier cherries stressed me out the other day.

I wonder if the general disappointment one is depression for some.

Verte

Wearing more hats than one at a moment when wearing just one hat sets more certain precedence for dealing with some current uncertainties in life. If this makes any sense at all. Heading into an 'OK, let's pare down to necessities' mode.

grubby

To be honest, i'm a bit surprised "worrying about money" didn't get more votes, lol!

No really, it's BAD out there. Just a dried-up, shriveled-up, zombie wasteland out there.......... sometimes i wonder how many people are just 1 paycheck away from the street - but let on like everything is fine when they are out in public or talking to you.

I'm also a bit surprised by how many people are voting for "disappointment", but then again our "modern" culture is largely to blame for this in a way......... just too many un-realistic expectations and fairy-tales we are spoon-fed from a young age. All sorts of non-sense that doesn't add up with reality once we finally get around to comparing the two.

They say alcohol is an "escape" from reality, i would say i agree with that assessment. The ability to mentally "check out" of this depressing reality for a few hours is probably in the top 5 of the "most common reasons people drink" list.