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The Worst Treatment For Anxiety - Alcohol
Many sufferers of anxiety unwisely seek the "treatment" of alcohol as a temporary solution to anxiety. However, this is the worst solution to a common problem that an individual can seek. One reason alcohol is a popular solution is because people correctly believe that minor stress, unlike anxiety disorder, can be lived with without medical treatment.
Many sufferers of anxiety unwisely seek the “treatment” of alcohol as a temporary solution to anxiety. However, this is the worst solution to a common problem that an individual can seek. One reason alcohol is a popular solution is because people correctly believe that minor stress, unlike anxiety disorder, can be lived with without medical treatment.
These days, more and more, we have to deal with all sorts of stress and we have to cope with it in our everyday life as well as we can. Luckily this can be learned over the years. For many anxiety sufferers living with this stress can be more difficult than it seems so they look for a temporary fix. Few classes of Tequila, bottle or two of nice wine, cold beer...these are all cheap and fun ways to make everyday stress seem to be little less overbearing and for a while it seems to ease the pain as well.
Alcohol can cause some bad side effects as well, like lowering blood sugar levels and irregular heartbeat which in turn might increase anxiety symptoms. One must also remember that alcohol tends to be addictive and it has numerous side effects, both physically and mentally, especially if person drinks often.
Worse yet, a person who self-treats their anxiety with alcohol will start to become dependent on this form of pseudo-medication. If you buy alcohol to temporarily escape your anxiety, then you are basically buying a prescription-a large dosage prescription without doctor authorization that could prove harmful.
There’s also another problem when a person suffering from anxiety starts getting relief from alcohol or any addictive, temporary forms of substances, like self-cutting, smoking or OTC pain relievers, they are not treating the problem of anxiety itself. The main reason to use these quick fixes is to escape the real cause of anxiety and they even risk their health doing it. The same can be said to certain extent when anxiety is treated with prescription medication like Valium or Xanax.
Sigmund Freud, father of psychotherapy, and many other psychotherapists believe that we have anxiety in our lives because of previous traumas. Then, when we experience something in the present that reminds us of past traumas we tend to have anxious feelings.
Avoiding the anxiety by depressing or stimulating the mind with drugs, alcohol or other forms of addictive behavior teaches us only how to deaden the pain, not to confront and resolve the source of anxiety.
In the case of alcohol, because many people casually drink wine and beer-not for escape but for pleasure-often times they are unaware that they are feeding an addiction and that anxiety is actually the primary reason for their drinking.
Only in the case of alcoholics is the addiction ever made manifest; in the case of people who drink enough to escape the pain but never get totally drunk, the truth of the matter may not be realized for years to come.
If you believe you may suffer from anxiety and an alcohol addiction to boot, test yourself and see how many days you can go without drinking.
If there are withdrawal symptoms and your possible anxiety raises to abnormal levels, then you probably should seek professional help overcoming the addiction and start to treat the anxiety disorder instead of avoiding it.