Anxiety is not the occasional bout of worry or stress. It’s not irrational and it’s not all in your head.
Being worried from time to time and stressed out goes with the territory of living. It’s something we all go through. While being anxious is a reasonable response to many of the situation’s life throws at us, there’s a difference between that and the chronic and persistent anxiety that some people grapple with.
For people who are also coping with substance abuse, dealing with an anxiety disorder can add extra stress to the process of recovery. Undergoing substance abuse treatment can already be difficult. But working to manage anxiety, enduring withdrawal symptoms, and entering a recovery program add extra levels of difficulty to the recovery process. Those who experience anxiety often need different resources than those who do not in order to develop healthy coping mechanisms and maintain sobriety.
Anxiety Explained: Are Anxiety and Addiction Related?
Anxiety disorders are recognized and diagnosable conditions, of which there are five major types:
- Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Chronic anxiety, exaggerated worry, and tension with little to no external triggers.
- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): Recurring, unwanted thoughts, aka obsessions, and/or repetitive behaviors, a.k.a. compulsions. Performing them only brings temporary relief and skipping them brings on ever-increasing anxiety.
- Panic Disorder: Unexpected and repeated instances of intense fear, which comes with physical symptoms (like chest pain and shortness of breath) in the form of panic attacks.
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): This is ever-present anxiety that develops after a terrifying event, such as sexual assault, disasters, accidents, experiencing active combat, etc.. The anxiety from this acute event can interfere with everyday life.
- Social Phobia (or Social Anxiety Disorder): Overpowering anxiety and extreme self-consciousness in normal, day-to-day situations. It can be specific to one type of experience or may occur any time an individual is around others.
The rates of people who have an anxiety disorder often overlap with those with substance abuse, i.e. people with a dual diagnosis of anxiety and substance abuse. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) observes that “multiple national population surveys have found that about half of those who experience a mental illness during their lives will also experience a substance use disorder and vice versa”. They go on to say, “data show high rates of comorbid substance use disorders and anxiety disorders—which include generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder.”
Ultimately, about 1 in 4 people have a co-occurring serious mental illness (SMI) and a substance use disorder (SUD). This suggests that many people may be using substances to treat anxiety or anxiety symptoms in the short term, all the while increasing their future need for addiction treatment.
The Negative Consequences of Using Substances to Soothe Anxiety
Many of those conditions are difficult to live with. They can become so overwhelming that people may turn to self medication by way of drugs or alcohol. This is present with many mental health conditions, but people with anxiety may turn to substances to relieve symptoms without using coping skills that ensure long-term soothing. Slowly but surely, the individual begins to build a tolerance and needs more of their substance of choice to get back to what feels like stable footing. That cycle continues until a person has a full-fledged substance use disorder.
How to Cope with Anxiety Symptoms Without Substances
Anxiety has many different treatment options, including with prescription medications. But this may not be the best option for everyone. Some anxiety medications have addictive properties, or may not be suitable for every anxiety disorder. A person with anxiety disorder should consult with their medical professional before undertaking a regiment for anxiety treatment, especially if it includes potentially addictive substances like prescription drugs.
Here are some options for coping with anxiety in the moment, which can be adapted according to the needs of the person in the moment:
When a panic or anxiety attack is underway, some physical symptoms (such as shallow breathing) often make the situation feel much more and more immediately dire than it may be in reality. By practicing mindfulness and working to stay in the present moment, a person can slow or even halt the anxious reaction that may feel accurate or appropriate to them in the moment. Deep breathing, picturing a calming setting, and even stretching can help with overcoming anxiety in a physical sense so that a person can trust their body in an intense situation.
Undergoing individual therapy is a common tactic when working with mental health disorders. But if someone is in recovery for addiction, they can also take advantage of resources like family therapy to also explore their anxiety disorder. By communicating with family members about their anxiety and how it affects them, individuals are opening the door to future communication when they’re feeling anxious or need help stopping an anxiety attack.
If someone has trouble coping with anxiety, it may help to seek out resources (or members of their support system) that they can reach out to in times of crisis. Many addiction-themed programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, encourage individuals to reach out to other people in recovery when the temptation to imbibe in substances arises. They can provide distraction, encouragement, or reminders of the positive outcomes that that person is working toward in their recovery. People with anxiety can adopt the same system if they’re working on not using substances as self medication.
It can be hard to predict when an anxiety attack will happen, and it’s hard to completely avoid the interactions that may trigger social anxiety. But it’s possible to relieve stress on a daily basis so that coping with situations that cause anxiety is easier. Building a healthy baseline of health can help keep anxiety symptoms from being aggravated, allowing an individual to better tap into their self-soothing abilities. This may include prescription medications, exercise, a clean diet, or even regular exposure to social situations to lessen the impact of the recurring sources of anxiety.
Getting Help with Addiction Recovery and Anxiety
Given how one can feed into the other, addiction recovery and treating co-occurring disorders are best dealt with together. Anxiety disorders and substance abuse disorders are both, at their core, mental illnesses. For the sake of an individual’s mental health, it’s important to take anxiety (and the dual diagnosis condition itself) into account when developing plans for treatment and relapse prevention.
To free oneself of an addiction to drugs or alcohol but not touch the anxiety disorder, which may be part of why the person was using to begin with, is leaving the door potentially wide open for relapse.
At Principles Recovery Center in South Florida, we offer a dual diagnosis program that treats both addiction and mental illness simultaneously. Working through those underlying issues can give individuals a markedly better chance at maintaining the sobriety they have worked so hard to achieve.
Get in touch with us today to learn if our dual diagnosis program is right for you. We work to help people achieve and maintain recovery, as well as cope with mental illnesses so that they’re no longer obstacles to that goal.
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