Hi! I'm a 26 year old female. I have been sober for 6 months and 17 days. I haven't done drugs in 11 months. When I stopped drinking (well and drugs), and a few months before I stopped, I had the worst anxiety ever. Having panic attacks all the time. I'm on ativan and zoloft for my anxiety. The panic attacks are better, but I still am going back and forth between being happy and content, and being completely anxiety ridden. I recently started attending AA again. I go about twice a week because my license is suspended. Some of the meetings I like, and some of them offend me. I have become pretty religious in the past 6 months, and I feel like I have had a big change in my life, but a lot of the horrible alcoholism stories bother me. Not that I didn't do the same thing. It just makes me sad and anxious to see people stuck in insanity in the meetings. I don't have a sponsor. I haven't met many women in the program because of my limited meeting schedule. I don't want anyone to pick me up because I am so anxious about new people and germs. I was never like this before. I was always outgoing and didn't worry about things. What can I do? Does anyone have any experience with anxiety/panic attacks? Is this related to alcoholism?
I am very anxious at the moment and wondering the same thing, is it related to alcoholism, I think it is, as I stuffed my feelings an awful lot by using alcohol as a crutch, eventually it really turned on me, I too have good meetings and bad ones but I am working on my tolerance levels which are low, alcohol also raised those and it was not always a good outcome, some of the responses to my most recent post were really helpful so it might help you too, hope all goes well for you,
Thank you, I can relate to stuffing feelings. I have had a whole range of mostly negative emotions in the past year or so that I haven't experienced before at this intensity. I read the answers to your past topics - the letting go thing definitely applies here. It's really hard. I don't remember having such a problem with it, but I guess it's hard. So much worry and anxiety, it's effecting the way I feel everyday. I definitely need a sponsor, I just have a lot of fear about it.
working the 12 steps (especially 3-9) will help tremendously. There are a dozen psychological terms now for what Newcomers in AA, for the last 74 years, have related to as "wreckage of the past", "restless, irritable and discontent", "self centered fear", "justifiable anger", "self pity", "self loathing".... and the doctors are right there to hand out the pills. The majority of us recovering alcoholics (or recovered ones) have gone through it and felt just as bad. I know that I did. If you're not bi-polar are psychotic or "clinically depressed" (there are those who's brains are chemically imbalanced and need to be on meds) then you really ought to challenge yourself with this question- "Do I want to be an alcoholic and work the program to stay sober, change the way that I live my life and consequently feel better or do I want to be a mental patient and take pills for the rest of my life"?
My Mother (33 years sober) was a mental patient for 13 years. 2 nervous breakdowns, 2 forced mental ward stays, and 13 years of psychiatric care and drugs. Then she got sober and withing a year was off meds and never saw another shrink again. And I'm telling you that I know her pretty well and she has suffered from some pretty severe depression, and at times appears momentarily marginal due to some paranoid feelings, but she wouldn't go back to taking drugs for anything.
Anxiety was the main reason I continued to drink. I have found working the steps so far (me: 1-4) to help lesson it. I feel working the steps with a sponsor, one I totally trust and respect, especially in terms of the quality of (her) sobriety and spirituality is vital. This is the first time in my life I feel I might get relief from the fear factor. The fear response is so ingrained in my behavior patterns, I expect this to take time. I know I may always have fear responses in a situation. I'm already handling it differently by choosing not to drink. I also think that the steps have concrete and proven methods to deal with these and other issues. I did a ton of all different kinds of therapies to work on anxiety, some helped and still do a little. Acknowledging the connection to alcohol was a major step in recovering in both areas. I learn this more everyday, especially when working the steps. Hope my comments help. I am now becoming aware of how thick the prision bars made of fear truly were. I managed to "keep up appearances" and yet live caged internally and really externally too. I believe freedom is possible. Sincerely, Angeline
I'd like to add to my comments. I've known many people that were receiving "therapy" and meds (my Mother included) that drank along with. You can Not and should not drink if you are on meds (it's drug abuse) and you won't get far in therapy if you're drinking at the same time. Therapy is basically what we do in meetings and working the steps. It involves group discussion, journaling, deep introspection and dealing with your feelings. How can you do that when you are self medicating and/or self medicating over top of meds?
Well, this one hits for me. You can pretty much see my response on the matter in one of Newcomer's (Lorna's) last post. I have been weaning down on my psych meds for this entire year. I suffered anxiety and panic intensely prior to stopping drinking. I also have been diagnosed with depression. I have been on and off meds for 12 years now, having had my first "breakdown" at age 25. Some of these issues predate my total insane drinking behavior, so I am wary and skeptical that they will go away entirely. Also the genetic loading for anxiety and mood disorders is actually stronger in my family than alcohol and addiction is. With that said, what I know is that my moods are stabling out now coming up on 11 months sobriety. I am taking less meds than I was. Previously, I abused my meds and would swallow the benzodiazepenes I had prescribed like candy and I callled the doctor and tried to get refills on those before they were due many times. I have not done that at all and usually have a surplus of those now. I consider taking those meds beyond the prescription to be a total relapse. Eventually, I would like to be off all meds, but I dunno if it will happen. I can say that I desperately needed coping skills and faith more than any meds. What I am working for in AA now is more of a long term fix than anything I have ever done to manage my emotions and mental health. Yes, at first things got worse before getting better. Getting sober did trip off a major depressive episode (but so did moving out on my own and getting a virtual divorce at the same time). At first, when they would read How it Works, I would cringe when they got to the part "of course there are some that suffer grave mental disorders...their chances are less than slim" I fully put myself in that category. I now know that my psych issues are not grave and I have always dealt with them...I just haven't dealt with them the right way. Building coping skills and faith through AA is training my brain to react differently to situations. The daily toxin of alcohol was DEFINITELY pepetuating my problems and when I added benzodiazepenes, the more I took of them, the more I drank. Anyhow, some of the anxiety and things you find yourself fearful of now, you just need to walk through. It's all to easy to learn how to isolate and trade in drunkeness for being a recluse. That is one of the most dangerous ways to try and be sober, not so much due to the risk of relapse, but the risk of ongoing misery. I do feel blessed that while I have some of these issues, I don't have a lot of social anxiety and reservations about meetings and service have not been an issue. I love meeting people. The insanity of some in the rooms reminds me how I was and also sometimes what kind of program I don't want to work (if it's coming from an oldtimer). Either way, it's all good and I just wanted to say, it's a slow slow slow journey with emotions all over the map in this first year...Especially if one was anxiety prone, depression prone, or anger prone to begin with. All those are going to explode during the first several months until the coping skills and faith start to replace them. That's just my take, as I am still very much a work in progress and always will be.
Mark
P.S - Yah I got so wrapped up in the topic, I forgot to say Welcome Love Always! Please keep coming back here and sharing! Nice to meet you. MIP has helped me a great deal in this past year too. I know it is not a good replacement for meetings, but it is an awesome way of just adding to "being connected" to part of something, which keep me and others sober. It is AA in one of it's many forms, and it's a great thing.
-- Edited by pinkchip on Monday 17th of August 2009 09:10:03 AM
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Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
Take all of what Mark, (Pinkchip) said, add what Angela wrote, Hit the nail on the head in both. So no need to repeat. Great Advice.
I was Cross-addicted to Valium and Alcohol for years, and I believe that the Prescribed Valium had a lot to do with my not really "getting" the Program for 10 years. I did suffer with Anxiety, a lot, but just like Angela said, that is also why I was on a roller Coaster of in and out, in and out of AA.
Valium withdrawal was to me, worse that giving up the Alcohol, but nothing in the World compared to how wonderful it was to add Clean to Clean and Sober.
The Medical profession, well as it was explained to me, was Alcohol in dry, Pill form.
The working of the Steps, with someone just like Angela talked about, and the process is a slow, but sure way to get a handle on that anxiety, and watch it dissapate as the months go by, WITH THE WORKING OF EACH STEP.
Hope you will find someone with some long term sobriety, and that has "been there, done that" so as to understand where you are coming from.
Getting back into my self will, will instantly bring back that anxiety in a split second, but now have the Tools to turn to "Praying ONLY for HIS Will, Not mine be done" seems to work and gives me freedom from anxiety.
"Do I want to be an alcoholic and work the program to stay sober, change the way that I live my life and consequently feel better or do I want to be a mental patient and take pills for the rest of my life"?
WOW! Thanks St. Pete :)
I really needed to hear those words in a matter-of-fact light! I was toying with the idea that i would "try out" the depression drugs and see if that "helps" and maybe/maybe not, i thought "wut the heck - it can't hurt! its worth a try"...
but when i stopped to think about it - i realized that i had never disclosed my alcoholism to my counselor... or any of my addictive personality traits and characteristics which would make me a prime candidate for addiction to prescription-drugs.
i just got off the phone because i just canceled my "evaluation" that i was going to see a shrink about on Thursday. However, i pressured my counselor to set up the appointment even though my counselor didn't want to have me on prescriptions right away because she knows some of my background problems with alcohol.
PJD, those exact words came straight from my Mother, albeit she used the word "crazy" where I substituted "mental patient". She was trying to make a point and she did.
The bottom line is that in accordance with the second step, we're here because "we're not all here". This IS a mental disease and the work that we do does bring us around to sanity, but it takes work and it takes time. There are no shortcuts, we just need to buckle up, show up, sober up, and buy time. How much time? From my experience, I say that I started making consistently good decisions somewhere between 3-5 years. At 5 years I was really comfortable with my sobriety and most of the "promises" had availed themselves to me. That doesn't mean that we're in for years of disappointment in the first few years. It gets better and better as we go along, and because we "don't know what we don't know" it's not that apparent that we are that deficient in our thinking, problem solving, and decision making. That's why we need to keep a sponsor ( and other trusted advisers) around and bounce all of our issues, situations, and proposed decisions off them so that they can give us some objective feedback and help us to look at the issues from a different slant. Over time, we begin to step outside of ourselves and look at life differently. Our decisions begin to come from the perspective of the greater good instead of "what's in it for me right now".
As far a depression goes. I really believe that when we are allowing ourselves to be depressed, we are not living in today. We are fretting about the past (usually) or grimacing about the future. And most of it is about shame, guilt, and self centered fear about what we lost or didn't get, or might lose. Self centered fear also causes us to be afraid of people. A lot of people now say that they have "social anxiety disorder". We all do to a certain extent and it stems from us thinking that we are important enough for others to waste time thinking about us and judging us, when the reality is those people are busy thinking about themselves, just as we are, but maybe not as much lol.
In early recovery I chose 2 home groups. Both were 12 steps and 12 tradition step meetings where we read 1 step per week, and then had a discussion about it. These are your premium meeting, the one's that you find someone talking about unhappy the are because the boss said something that they didn't like. One of these meetings was on Monday (to get my head right for the week) and the other was on Friday (to get my head right for the weekend) That book is packed full of the details about the mental issues that we go through, cause and affect, and the what we need to do to turn ourselves around. It is absolutely essential that your program include at least one weekly 12 step meeting that you go to every week without fail.
I never missed those two weekly meetings (unless I was out of town) for the first 3.5 years and one was on Friday night! Considering that you cover the whole book (the 12 steps) in 12 weeks, you'll go through the book 4.5 times in a year. And it takes a couple years (and about 10 times through the book) before you comprehend most of what's in there. There are situations explained in the book that we haven't experienced "Yet" that won't register with us. There are character defects discussed that we aren't aware that we have yet, that will glaze over us, until we read it again next month, next year, or a few years down the road. The important thing is that we keep reading the book and more will be revealed.
-- Edited by StPeteDean on Tuesday 18th of August 2009 01:07:35 PM
I get some anxiety when I go into certain restuarants or I have to go into a bar for a pool tournament (which I joined earlier this month). Some people and places make me have anxiety too (especially when I see someone I used to drink with on the weekends, it's hard for me to hangout with them anymore or call them anymore).
I've learned to just move on, get rid of their number, and don't go to those type of places anymore. Now my favorite hangout spot is the Step One Coffee House, about 1 mile from my house. I ride my bike there and have a good time. No anxieties in there, that's for sure.
