Anxiety is a significant problem that affects millions of people around this country. It’s the feeling that a cop is behind you flashing his lights when you’re speeding, and you know you’re about to get a ticket. The only problem is that the feeling never entirely goes away. Some days are better than others, but you find yourself turning into a shell of the person you once were. You feel like your life is not the same, and you will take anything just to get rid of the pain.
Understanding Anxiety
General Anxiety Disorder is a broad classification when someone experiences constant anxiety with panic attacks. However, you can have OCD or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, which makes you want to organize stuff, do things in a repetitious manner, and have rituals that must be met. It doesn’t matter where your life falls on the anxiety spectrum; it’s plain miserable. Here are some of the common symptoms observed with anxiety:
- Dizziness
- Nausea and Vomiting
- Headaches
- Body Aches and Pains
- Sweating
- Shaking and Chills
- Feelings of Impending Doom
- Chest Pains
- Feeling like You’re Choking
- Diarrhea
- Weird Sensations
- Derealization
- Depersonalization
- Excessive Sleepiness
- General Malaise
- Inability to Function as Before
- Shortness of Breath
Do you experience any of these symptoms? You may have a mental health issue caused by a chemical imbalance in your brain.
Getting Help
When you first experience issues with anxiety, you may shake it off or try to ignore it. Soon, it becomes more powerful and begins to dictate your life. You rush to the doctor or the emergency room for help. They run a battery of tests on you looking for something medical that is causing the condition. Oddly enough, you can have other medical problems that make you anxious, but that doesn’t mean you have a mental health issue.
For instance, if you have diabetes, the strange sensations you get when your glucose is at high levels can cause you to become anxious. Your anxiety may be mild, and you can still function, or it may be debilitating. When all the tests come back negative, they will try to treat the underlying issue with an antidepressant medication. Some people can use non-habit-forming drugs and find relief, but even if the prescriptions work, they often don’t work for long periods. Your body will change, and the medications need to be adjusted. It’s estimated that anxiety prescriptions don’t work for up to 70 percent of the population. Call us at 844-639-8371.
A doctor may start you on a benzodiazepine drug called Ativan, Xanax, Klonopin, or Valium. However, they’ve become very picky about these medications as they have a strong addictive nature. They may give them to you for a short period with no refills as they’re a controlled substance. These drugs are exceptionally good at controlling anxiety, but when they’re gone, you have nothing to control all the sensations you feel. The doctor won’t give you any more of the one thing that helped you, so what are you to do? Many turn to the streets to buy benzodiazepines or other drugs to help them cope.
Your Story is Not Uncommon
In Naples, Florida, intake workers hear this story 100s of times a week by people who started out with a valid medical condition but soon were unable to control it without the help of drugs. Your paralyzing anxiety caused you to self-medicate, and your addiction took you to places you never dreamed possible. You may have an addiction to Xanax, and you’re spending thousands of dollars trying to keep the anxiety at bay, and the withdrawal effects from ruining your life. Or, you might not have been able to find Xanax, so someone offered you cocaine that could also help to ease the pain you felt.
Now, you have two issues. You have an underlying mental health problem and an addiction that needs to be treated. The stigma against mental health and addiction must be stopped. No rehabilitation center across America wants to live the way they do. They all have something that caused them to drug seek, and then the vicious cycle spun out of control. These people need help, not only for their addiction but for the underlying mental illness that is driving them to drug-seeking.
There is help available to you. Some people will understand and never judge you or where you’re at in life. Call 1-800-123-4567 to speak to a trained counselor that wants to get you on the road to recovery.