Alcoholism and Anxiety Disorder

Alcoholism and anxiety disorder often go hand in hand. There are several reasons — one being that alcoholism and anxiety disorder can coexist. This means that a person has two diagnoses – alcohol use disorder and anxiety disorder. In this case of co-occurrence, alcoholism and anxiety disorder are both treated as separate conditions, although as I’ll write about below, they affect one another. If a person is an alcoholic with an anxiety disorder, the drinking makes the anxiety worse, although the person thinks the alcohol is helping the anxiety– it becomes a vicious cycle.

Most people get confused with a chicken/egg question — which comes first? Does anxiety disorder cause alcoholism? Does alcoholism cause anxiety disorder? There’s no evidence that anxiety causes alcoholism, but anxiety can complicate alcoholism. It’s long been known that anxiety causes some people to abuse alcohol, but there’s a difference between abusing alcohol and alcoholism. In the case of the person with an anxiety disorder who abuses alcohol in a misguided attempt to self medicate, if the person receives professional help to treat the anxiety, the person will likely stop abusing alcohol. In the case of co-occurring alcoholism and anxiety disorder, if the person treats the anxiety but not the alcoholism, the alcoholism will continue, and vice versa.

There’s some research showing that alcoholism might cause anxiety disorder, that both conditions relate to the same area of the brain that’s changed by alcoholism.  It becomes confusing, but understanding each condition and how they relate to one another is important when determining courses of action to deal with either or both. Drinking to alleviate social anxiety, panic attacks, or generalized anxiety only complicates the anxiety, and can make the anxiety worse — also, as mentioned above, if a person suffers from both alcoholism and anxiety disorder, treating one but not the other will not solve the problem.

When dealing with alcoholism and anxiety disorder it’s important to know that recovery won’t be easy, but when recovery does happen, very good things happen.