Does Alcohol Help Anxiety? Understand the Risks

This review broadens the psychiatric perspective on the association between diagnosable alcohol and anxiety disorders to include the psychological/learning and neuroscientific disciplines. Cross-referencing and reconciling (if not integrating) discipline-specific approaches may reveal opportunities for synergy. Beginning in the 1990s, stress-related alcohol research evolved from its roots in tension-reduction research to become a multifaceted subspecialty focused primarily on the psychophysiological and neurobiological correlates of the stress response, stress regulation, and alcohol misuse. Increasingly, this research includes examination of the long-term genetic and environmental influences on stress reactivity and regulation and their connections to the development of AUD vulnerability. However, restricting attention to a single diagnosis and its relationship to alcohol misuse does not align with more recent research.

Coping Mechanisms for Anxiety

Having a substance use disorder can also increase the chance of having an anxiety disorder. If you or a loved one uses alcohol to cope with anxiety, especially during socializing, it may lead to being dependent on alcohol, especially in social settings. Anxiety disorder symptoms can disrupt a person’s life, making it difficult to work, participate in social events, and maintain relationships. Few people may realize it, but you can actually be allergic or intolerant to alcohol.

1. Alcohol use can cause new onset anxiety and worsen pre-existing anxiety symptoms.
2. Having a drink might seem like a good way to ease anxiety, but you may be doing more harm than good.
3. Alcohol can also make anxiety worse because it affects the levels of other mood-influencing chemicals like serotonin.
4. These allostatic adaptations in the brain lead to the second stage of addiction—withdrawal/negative affect.
5. If you believe you or someone you love has anxiety that gets worse with alcohol use, you or your loved one can take steps to treat their anxiety and cut down or stop drinking.

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Each discipline has independently contributed to the understanding of how to best describe and treat alcohol use disorder (AUD) in the context of negative affectivity. However, very little cross-communication has occurred among these disciplines. This insularity and particularism continue to impose significant opportunity costs in this field. People with generalized anxiety or panic disorder are more likely to develop unhealthy drinking behaviors around the same time that they start having symptoms of their anxiety-related mental health condition. While alcohol might feel like a solution in the short term, this drinking behavior comes with many problems.

A 2022 longitudinal study highlights a bidirectional relationship between AUD and anxiety disorders. The authors suggest someone with AUD has a higher risk of developing an anxiety disorder and vice versa. People with AUD may have a higher risk of developing an anxiety disorder, such as generalized anxiety disorder or social anxiety. There are many effective treatments for anxiety and alcohol use disorders, including ongoing individual therapy, group therapy, prescribed medications, or a combination of these methods.

If you have a history of anxiety or mental disorders, make sure to share this with your healthcare provider so you know how alcohol or other substances may affect you differently. Let’s say you drink a beer and martini but you don’t drink any water in between. Alcohol is a diuretic, meaning it makes you lose water through peeing, so it’s very important to drink plenty of water as well when you’re drinking alcohol. Anxiety disorders are a potential comorbidity of alcohol use disorder (AUD).

In this time of information overabundance, much of which is inaccurate, unhelpful, or even difficult to understand, Northwell Health is on a mission to make a difference as an honest, trusted, and half life of soma caring partner. The site connects with consumers to provide them with personalized content that reduces their stress, makes them laugh, and ultimately feel more confident and capable on their healthcare journey. If you find yourself reaching for a drink when you’re stressed or anxious, consider reading this. Alcohol is a natural disinhibitor — meaning it can cause you to make choices you may not make while sober. This is why some people can wake up feeling embarrassed about things they said or did. This can definitely cause anxiety and worsen any existing phobias or overthinking tendencies you may already have.

Anxiety problems in the absence of alcohol misuse

The whole idea behind self-medicating is using alcohol, drugs, supplements, or other substances as ‘home remedies’ to handle health problems. While this approach can relieve some symptoms, these aren’t doctor-recommended or prescribed methods. In many cases, self-medicating leads to other problems, including worsening symptoms and substance use problems. Alcohol can produce a sense of euphoria and decrease a person’s inhibition. These effects can make it seem like drinking alcohol is providing the person with relief from their anxiety.

If drinking gives you the sensation of temporary anxiety relief, you may be inclined to drink more often, to cope with uncomfortable circumstances. But people who drink frequently may develop a tolerance to alcohol, so that they need to drink more alcohol to experience the feelings that they desire. Even if you’re consuming a standard amount of alcohol — a 12-ounce beer alcohol and mirtazapine or a 5-ounce glass of wine — you’ll experience a mild detox or withdrawal.

Similarly, it could be argued that dysregulated biological stress responses share little construct space with subjective negative affect and drinking to cope. However, as already noted, a dysregulated stress response is a known biological marker for the development of anxiety disorders and AUD, as well as for relapse. Recent “big data” modeling approaches have advanced the understanding of epidemiological data related to the association between anxiety disorder subtypes and risk for alcohol misuse.

Also, the concept of causation among co-occurring conditions may be based on an incorrect assumption. Rather than two distinct conditions, each requiring a cause, negative affect and alcohol misuse may be parts of a single, neurobiological-behavioral syndrome. This view aligns mostly with recent neurobiological theories of addiction, but it also shares similarities with early typologies, in which negative affect was considered a fundamental trait among a large subgroup of people who had problems with alcohol. People with anxiety disorders may use alcohol as a coping mechanism, which could lead to alcohol use disorder (AUD).

Additionally, panic attacks can be triggered because of the effect alcohol has on GABA, another brain chemical that normally has a relaxing effect. “‘Self-medicating’ with alcohol is a dangerous path that may cause an addiction, along with other medical complications, and may also have legal consequences,” says psychiatrist Sabina Fink, MD, who specializes in addiction psychiatry at Northwell Health’s Zucker Hillside Hospital. Opinions expressed in contributed articles do not necessarily reflect the views of NIAAA. The U.S. government does not endorse or favor any specific commercial product or commodity. Trade or proprietary names appearing in this publication are used only because they are considered essential in the context of the studies reported herein. People need to speak with a doctor if they are experiencing the above effects due to alcohol.

This later stage of addiction marks a shift from impulsive use driven by positive reinforcement to compulsive use driven by negative reinforcement. In this stage, compulsive substance use is aimed, in part, at decreasing the negative affect caused or aggravated by the allostatic reset in the brain’s stress and mood systems. Several clinical trials have examined drug rehab success rate statistics the effect of supplementing standard AUD treatment with a validated treatment for anxiety or mood disorders among individuals with both conditions. While it might be tempting to turn to alcohol to manage feelings of anxiety, it can be a slippery slope that worsens anxiety problems and increases your risk of developing an alcohol use disorder.

In the United States, “moderate” typically refers to two drinks a day for adult men and one for women. Older adults metabolize alcohol faster, so if you’re in this age group, limit yourself to one alcoholic beverage per day. Research shows that people with alcoholism find it difficult to recover from traumatic events. This is possibly because of the effects of alcohol abuse, which can actually change brain activity.

The largest and most comprehensive community-based surveys in the United States include the Epidemiologic Catchment Area study (N ~ 20,000), the National Comorbidity Survey (N ~ 8,000), and the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC, N ~ 43,000). A key challenge to applying a comparative perspective across disciplines and time is the use of unique and evolving terminology and definitions for similar phenomena. Terms such as anxiety, anxiety disorder, depression, mood disorder, tension, stress, stress disorder, and negative affect are used differently across disciplines and time. The relationships among these constructs can be conceptualized as a Venn diagram, with the shared spaces representing overlapping constructs. In these overlapping spaces, the greatest opportunities for integration across disciplines can be found.