If carlsberg made anxiety

[RichieSwansea]

Hi All,

To cut a rather long/ very very long story short, i have trouble with generalized anxiety and social phobia and have for a very long time (14-27).

I have a fairly normal lifestyle, tidy job , house etc, since i was very young i have always been a bit of a drinker, my life these days tends to be try and work on anxiety Mon-Thu then the weekend spend mostly drunk or hungover and in a really high state of anxiety/ constantly thinking bad is going to happen and surreal feelings.

For some reason i can not stop drinking on the weekends even though it is making my anxiety much worse , I have tried writing lists of reasons not to drink and what would be different but i tend to avoid reading this if I am going to drink on that day, but this pattern has been with my for 12 years and I am struggling to break it.

Just wondering has anyone else had some similar problems?

Thanks for your time. :whistles:

[tamo]

Hi Richie
I could never work out why some folk can drink and not feel up or down next day and others suffer badly .If I over do things I get serious hangovers too ,my brain feels numb and head buzzes for hours , cant sleep , repetitive intrusive thoughts ." I wont do this again I swear it ,"next Friday comes and the Stella is out and do it all over again . Done this for years except for 2 years completely dry in 1997 . I have learned one important lesson , never drink next day to get rid of the hangover or its 10 times worse next day then your in trouble , cant get off it , a few cans will fix this ? NOT A CHANCE , its got you trapped .
Yes Richie , been there and feel for you . Only advice I can offer is drink less but you know that already .

Good Good Good that you see you there's an issue with the drink though , well done for recognising this which is very important .

[RichieSwansea]

Thanks for the reply,

I usually drink to avoid the anxiety the next day, but it takes me even more to get drunk then boils over to the next day worse, Monday to Thursday i tell myself i wont drink, then Friday forget it all and get hammered.

I try and tell myself "drink if you want but don't go to crazy", that phrase doesn't really help once Ive drank quite a bit, as ill just carry on as I'd started drinking and it seems like a good idea (I think its nice sometimes escaping the anxiety when really drunk, not that I'd know as usually to drunk to remember the next day lol).

Do you still drink or cut down a lot?

Cheers m8

[tamo]

I do drink and keep it controlled but every now and then I over do it but only one night , I never use the hair of the dog . I ride it out ,snack on warm foods ,drink litres of water/juice .
I'm glad ive learned all that I have but it wasn't always this way , ive wasted many many days and weeks suffering bad hangovers . I drank for security( social anxiety) and to take away negative feeling but in the long run it doesn't work .
The internet is brimming with help for drinking problems , better dealing with it now rather than 20 years from now.

good luck

[Kevsurf]

Hi mate, I really sympathise with you on this. I was in the exact same position for many years. All through uni I followed that behaviour and for years afterwards. The hangovers were so bad it's hard to even explain. I would feel right on the edge all day right up until I managed to get to sleep again that night. I would often take the good old hair of the dog approach but boy would it hurt again the next day. I'm not sure how old you are now but basically I grew out of the binge drinking lifestyle and this horrible cycle came to an end. It also really helped my general anxiety levels when I cut down the boozing. One thing which really helped me to kick the drinking was that I got really into mountain biking and hiking on the weekends. I would plan my weekends mission during the week and tell myself that if I got drunk Friday night the weekend would be a write off and I would be so gutted to have missed out my activity. I guess it depends what you're into but if you can build a weekend lifestyle which doesn't revolve around drinking then you can start to break the cycle.

Honestly, I went to some dark dark places in those years and I am glad to have left it behind. I still drink fairly regularly but it's the binge drinking that really gives the anxiety an unwelcome boost in my experience. I concluded that the damage the hangovers caused just weren't worth it whereas now I can have a couple of pints and still enjoy a night out.

Drinking sure can cause some short and long term problems so go steady buddy. Good luck!

Kev

[tamo]

Well done Kev , your story is similar to mine , I relate to everything you say . I done AA for a couple of years but found it was beginning to depress me going over and over why we drank and what we did when drunk , however AA helped immensely in the early days . AA is a great fellowship and keeps many folk sober so I don't mean to criticise them , its just that I felt I needed to move on .

Richie I agree with Kevs advice about attempting to change your weekend plans away from drink . I know it can be difficult , it was for me and I still struggle at times especially now that its the darker nights . As Kev says the second day drinking only makes things much much worse . I was in a bad place at one point in my life when I was doing 5 -10 days drinking , it was pure hell getting off it , not days but weeks of mental torture . Im telling you this as i's hate to see you in that position .

[RichieSwansea]

I think i would be OK if i could stop for a weekend, just so i know i could do it, but its just so automatic Friday night i just tunnel vision for a beer, think I'm going to start having a look on Google or perhaps force myself to Google it in work before i go home and buy booze, just got that feeling no matter what i do its not going to stop me.

The thing is i have social phobia as well so i don't even go out, i can happily sit in the house and get plastered, but then if i changed my plans and went out, i'd more than likely end up needing a drink to cope with being outside the house lol.

Thanks for your help guys.

Kind regards

Richie

[tamo]

Its only you who can make the decision to change , your intelligent , you know where its going wrong .Self pity and excuses dont help , Dont learn the hard way like i done , its up to you , all of it you .

Best regards .

[RichieSwansea]

Many thanks for your help, hopefully its sinking in slowly, think i may need something else to turn to lol,

Best of wishes for the future both,

Kind regards

Richie