Decided to make this post to share some of my experiences with anxiety.
There are some quite interesting phenomena about anxiety that aren't often talked about and I'll start with the positive part of it (yes, there is one).
For me this positive and weird phenomenon occured when I was close to recovery. In my experience, I've had tons of anxiety episodes throughout my life, but only recently did I start to notice positive effects of it. They kind of appeared like nostalgia for me which is quite weird since my anxiety never seemed as a positive thing, even during recovery I hoped to recover as fast as possible. Yet now I remeber my anxiety episodes with kind of nostalgia. Like I feel emotionally empowered thinking about them even though at that time it was so awful. My explanation for this could be that this anxiety created some form of disociation that mimicked effects of drugs like marijuana that put me in a deeper state of thinking about life itself. Also it could be the fact that at that point I had recovered and learned to enjoy life better. It is kind of a weird nostalgic feeling to explain, but I've seen some other people having that too.
About the negative side, yes, it is awful, but you must learn to accept it. It feels weird, because at least for me anxiety brings disociation and DPDR, all these feelings of not myself and that everything is different, like emotional numbness. At these bad times it always feels like there is no way out, but that is wrong. There is way out at all times and all it takes it to wait it out positively.
Little bit about drugs and anxiety.
Use of any drug if you have an anxiety disorder is a really bad idea as it can cause your feelings of anxiety and disociation come back even though you have recovered. For me, alcohol and nicotine triggered DPDR, but it was relatively easy to come out from. What was the worst experience for me was use of marijuana. First 3 times it was all fine, I felt some DPDR but I knew that I did not have to fear it so it passed soon enough, however I never really enjoyed the effect so I smoked it only due to peer pressure from my friend. Fourth time for me was bad because my friend got me a different strain than usual and that gave me a bad panic attack and severe disociation. It was so awful, the effects themselves made me feel like I had lost my mind. I felt like everything was spinning and I literary could see my thoughts. My psychologist explained that Marijuana itself is not the cause for panic attacks, but it does makes some forgotten trauma to come up and cause lots of anxiety.
Currently, it's been a month since I last smoked and I do not intend to do that again ever. This past month has been quite rocky, there have been really good times and really bad times, but I am sure I will get over it.
Anyways, just a little informative post on this. Good luck to all those suffering.
Reply With Quote
