Anxiety and drinking - worried mother here

[frances]

Hi all,

I see a common theme of anxiety among many here. I'm looking for some feedback on your experience - did the anxiety initially trigger the drinking, or have you found that drinking has eventually triggered anxiety (or maybe a bit of both?)?

The reason I'm asking about this is that my daughter suffers from anxiety. She will be 16 this summer. I worry about her turning to alcohol to help with her anxiety. She does not drink yet, and is pretty adamantly against it, but who knows if that will last? So I wanted to ask those of you who suffer from anxiety - do you remember if you had it when you were a teenager? If so, is there any advice you would give me to help my daughter deal with this better? Is there anything that helps you that you wish you had known about earlier? She does not currently go to counseling but has gone in the past (when she was ~12) and there were some techniques that they gave her that really helped. But since she was much better, we stopped and haven't done much else for her. But I know it's still there inside her - just not quite as noticeable because she probably doesn't talk about it as much.

I do not suffer from anxiety myself - one thing that drinking definitely addressed for me was insecurity and lack of self-confidence - a little similar to anxiety in social situations I guess, but not the same, I don't think, as what I see people posting about here. So I don't think I have a good point of reference of experience to help me.

Any thoughts or feedback are greatly appreciated.

[lex]

worried mother-

You can probably relax. Though it seems counterintuitive, studies do not show much of a correlation between pre-existing anxiety and subsequent alcoholism. The more common situation is chronic alcohol abuse leading to anxiety, leading in turn to further alcohol abuse and ultimately alcoholism. More highly correlated with alcoholism, by far, are ethnicity (Irish leading the pack), alcoholic parent, and "antisocial" (or, "risk-taking," "rebellious") childhood. See, Valliant, G., Natural History of Alcoholism Revisited, available from Amazon.com.

Some may take issue with the foregoing, of course, but in my view it is hard to argue with a 70-year longitudinal study conducted by a Harvard MD.

I suggest her teenage anxiety is more likely to land her in a prestigious college than in an alcohol treatment center.

[paulywogg]

Frances,in my case the drinking definitely started my anxiety, I never even knew what a true panic attack felt like until about 2 years into my drinking,since then I almost feel like some of my anxiety is a habit that I'm used tohas your daughter seen a doctor? I agree that it may just be normal teenage stress( hopefully)

[SKendall]

Frances, I can certainly understand your worries. I was always an anxious child and all I knew was a drink made me feel better. I would definitely explore this with your MD.