Alcohol and Anxiety (Hangxiety) Causes, Risks, & Treatment

What is Anxiety Disorder?

According to The National Institute on Mental Health, occasional anxiety is a normal part of our life. When confronted with a challenge at work, before a test, or before making a critical decision, you could experience anxiety. However, anxiety disorders involve more than just passing fear or terror.

It’s vital to get anxiety treatment as soon as possible since it does not go away for someone with an anxiety disorder and can worsen over time. Anxiety might influence daily tasks like work performance, academic progress, and interpersonal relationships. Generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and different phobia-related disorders are only a few of the several sorts of anxiety disorders.

Individuals with a generalized Anxiety disorder (GAD) display extreme anxiety or worry, most days for at least six months, about many things, such as personal health, work, social dealings, and everyday life circumstances.

How Does Alcohol Cause Anxiety?

There is some truth to the idea that drinking can help lower stress. Alcohol has both calming and depressing effects on the central nervous system. This is why so many people drink too much to deal with their anxiety and become hooked on it.

People who have an alcohol use problem often say things like, “Alcohol is the only thing that helps my anxiety.” In the beginning, drinking helps to calm down and take your mind off of issues. It might make you feel better, happy, and more at ease. Some of the effects of alcohol are similar to those of drugs used to treat anxiety. So, some people mix anti-anxiety drugs with booze to make the results of both substances stronger, which can lead to severe alcoholism and drug overdose.

If your doctor lets you drink, having a glass of wine occasionally might not be bad for you. But if you start drinking, you might get used to how booze makes you feel better. This could make it even harder to deal with worry and anxiety.

Also, drinking too much booze can be harmful to both the body and the mind. Over time, drunkenness can hurt your brain, make you forget things, make you black out from drinking, and cause other serious health problems like liver damage. These signs of alcohol abuse may make you feel more nervous as you deal with them.

The calm feeling you get after drinking is often caused by how much alcohol is in your blood. BAC levels that rise cause short-term excitement, while BAC levels that drop cause depression. In other words, having a few drinks that raise your BAC before bringing it back to normal could make you feel even more nervous and stressed than you already were.

How To Stop Anxiety After Drinking Alcohol?

If you’ve been through an alcohol anxiety attack before, you probably already have a toolkit of coping mechanisms. However, if you have a throbbing headache or the room spins when you move, you probably won’t go for a stroll, do yoga, or blog about your alcoholic anxiety feelings.

The more you consume alcohol, the more your brain responds to the dose of alcohol it is receiving. If you’re struggling with alcohol use disorder, stopping at one or two drinks may feel impossible. If you think you might have a drinking problem and are interested in seeking help, look for an accredited alcohol treatment center for the best recovery results.

Individuals with unsafe alcohol consumption are more likely to report psychological distress than those with lower alcohol intake. Although depression and anxiety are correlated with alcohol use, the connections may be more robust for depression symptoms.

Both clinical and population-based studies show that heavy drinking is linked to higher depression levels. Anxiety and stress have been found to connect to both alcohol craving and consumption causally. Stress is associated with increased alcohol use/heavy drinking, with a positive association between the number of stressors and alcohol intake. Stress also relates to poorer mental health, and, therefore, the use of negative coping styles, such as increased alcohol consumption, is more likely to develop.

Coping involves using thoughts and behaviors to handle internal and external stressful situations or strategies to manage vulnerability to stressors. Adaptive (problem-focused/active) coping techniques indicate advantageous mental health outcomes and less alcohol use, whereas maladaptive (avoidant/passive) coping styles are associated with increased alcohol use. Furthermore, stressful situations are possibly more easily managed by individuals with high levels of mental resilience. Mental resilience refers to the ability to recover or bounce back from stressful events. High levels of mental strength are associated with lower stress levels and unsafe drinking levels.

Learn More:

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• Adjustment Disorder with Anxiety
• Clonidine for Anxiety
• Anxiety and High Blood Pressure
• DMT and Anxiety
• What is the Best SSRI for Anxiety?
• Social Anxiety Disorder Test
• Grounding Techniques for Anxiety Attacks
• Short-Term Disability Mental Health
• Anxiety Disorder Treatment

Alcohol Induced Anxiety Explained

Alcohol changes the amounts of serotonin and other neurotransmitters in the brain, which can make anxiety worse. You might feel even worse after the alcohol goes off. When you drink, you might feel anxious for a few hours or even the whole next day.

Getting drunk to treat your social anxiety problem can be dangerous. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) says that about 7% of Americans have problems with social anxiety. Another problem that a lot of them have is that they drink and have social nervousness.

If you have social anxiety, you might not be able to handle going to social events. A lot of people with social anxiety disorder use alcohol as a way to deal with social situations. This could lead to becoming dependent on alcohol when socializing, which could make anxiety feelings worse.

A little over 20% of people who have a social anxiety problem are also dependent on alcohol. Besides needing alcohol to feel at ease when with other people, these are some other signs of alcohol dependence:

• The desire or need for a boozy drink to get through the morning.
• Drinking too much at least four days a week.
• Not being able to go to a social event or party without drinking.
• Not being able to stop drinking.
• Having five or more drinking drinks in a single day.

Overdrinking can also lead to alcohol hangovers. A hangover can cause signs and symptoms that make you feel more anxious, including the following:

• Headaches.
•  Dizziness.
•  Nausea.
•  Dehydration.
•  Low blood glucose (sugar).

• Trembling hands.
• Sweating.
• Heart rate over 100 beats per minute.
• Hallucinations.

• Nausea.
• Vomiting.
• Seizures.

Managing Anxiety and Alcohol Problems

Someone has both a substance use disorder (like alcoholism) and a mental health problem (like anxiety or depression). This is called dual diagnosis, which is also called co-occurring disorders. People who have both anxiety and drinking problems often find that the two conditions make each other worse. To self-medicate or deal with their anxiety, some people turn to alcohol.

This can lead to drinking more and becoming dependent on it. When treating someone with a dual diagnosis, you have to deal with both conditions at the same time because ignoring one can slow down the growth of the other. Integrated treatment plans that include therapy, medication, and changes to a person’s lifestyle can help them deal with both their anxiety and alcohol problems more successfully, which can improve their overall health.