drinking + anxiety? ssris + drinking? a bad mix?

[bluesunset]

I'm a college student, so going to social gatherings or dinners almost always includes a drink or two. Before I was diagnosed with anxiety (about 2 yrs ago from now) I drank regularly. When I was prescribed SSRIs (which I still take), I was too paranoid to drink with them so I just cut alcohol out completely. But that also meant cutting out a lot of social events and hang outs with my friends.

Fast forward to now, two years later, I've been thinking about drinking. Y'know, a glass of wine here and there. My 21st birthday was a few weeks ago so my mom took me out for my first legal drink. It was also my first drink in 2 years. I did have a panic attack that night, and afterwards, my anxiety seemed to get a little worse, so now I'm going up a dosage on my meds.

I'm wondering if this was from the alcohol or just from my fear of it.... What are your experiences with alcohol and anxiety? What about with SSRIs and anxiety? Is drinking safe for someone with anxiety?

[MyNameIsTerry]

I think this is more about your anxiety than alcohol. Alcohol can make anxiety worse, for some sufferers not all, but it's more the imbalance caused the next day. Alcohol causes Serotonin to spike so it's probable that it takes some time to restore that balance through the food we eat.

It's also complicated because anxiety sufferers can be sensitised to physical symptoms and a normal hangover can feel worse. Then there are the HA sufferers who twist it into something of a disease or something else causing the anxiety to worsen.

I think what you have here is a situation to overcome and it naturally caused anxiety because it was literally an exposure exercise to you.

As far as safety goes, use interaction checkers like on Drugs.com which for the SSRI/SNRI's I've checked say to limit or abstain. If it were dangerous, it would be total abstinence or they would get sued for not making that clear. However, this doesn't apply to heavy drinking.