This is a guest post by Ryan Rivera.
Most of the discussion about the effects of drugs are related to the health issues that come from drug use. Indeed, this is easily the largest problem with alcohol and drug use. Drugs are dangerous to your health, cause addiction, and can in many cases be deadly.
Generally, one of the main reasons that people turn to drugs — and return to drugs — is because drugs are often used to self-medicate for stress. The high allows people to forget about their problems. Drug users depend on their high as a way to self-medicate for their anxieties.
Because of the health problems associated with drug abuse and the issues regarding regular drug use on things like financial and relationship stress, clearly using drugs to self-medicate is the wrong choice. But there is yet another reason that self-medicating is dangerous for your ability to cope with stress — a reason that causes many people to relapse when faced with a stressful situation. That reason is that drugs replace other coping strategies.
What is Stress Coping?
Many people give tips and strategies to cope with stress. There are ways to help your mind and body experience less overall anxiety and tension. Yet at its heart, stress coping is simply the mental ability to overcome your stress. Those that “cope with stress well” are simply those that don’t let tension overwhelm them. They improve their stress levels over time, even if they do nothing at all.
That’s what stress coping really is. Breathing exercises, journaling, and yoga — these are activities that make stress coping easier, but coping itself is still the mental strength to overcome anxiety and find happiness and relaxation over time.
How Do Drugs Affect Stress Coping?
Stress coping is something that you get used to, and something that you need to practice. Unfortunately, when people turn to drugs to self-medicate for stress, they’re essentially replacing their mind’s ability to cope with stress with something external. The high becomes their recovery option (if it can be considered a recovery at all), and their mind is no longer under any pressure to figure out how to deal with stress on its own.
Stress coping is a “use it or lose it” skill. It’s the type of ability that people can lose very quickly if they don’t have a chance to keep using it. It’s seen not only with drug users but also with those kept far too busy to experience any mental rest. Law students, for example, work and study nearly 18 hours a day, and because of that, they have a much higher likelihood of depression and anxiety because they haven’t had an opportunity to keep at their stress coping abilities.
This same problem occurs regularly in drug users. While on drugs, the drugs themselves simply replace the mind’s ability to cope, and eventually, the brain loses that ability.
Learning to Stress Cope and Avoiding Drugs and Relapse
That’s why one of the most important tools for controlling drug use is simply to learn to cope again. It’s to learn how to create a mindset that is able to get over anxiety with no external help. Activities like yoga and meditation can be beneficial, but the mind itself will always be the most important tool in stress coping. Those that are ready to overcome their drug addiction should make it a priority to find out how to gain back the ability to cope with stress without any drugs or alcohol. If they can do that, their chances of relapsing go down dramatically.
About the Author: Ryan Rivera needed to regain his own coping ability cure his anxiety, and has seen the way that coping with stress affects men and women addicted to drugs and alcohol. Now he writes about anxiety and other mental health issues at Calm Clinic.
How do you cope with stress without any drugs or alcohol? Leave a comment and let us know. If you liked this post, please share on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. Thank you.
Thanks for this Cathy and Ryan – it’s a totally new concept for me “Stress coping is a “use it or lose it” skill.” And it makes so much sense. I’m not very well informed about addiction….but your site Cathy is changing all that. And the more I read it, the more amazed I am at the courage of those who every day get up and say, no. Wow.
Attempting to eliminate those difficult feelings seems to me to be a road to eliminating the good feelings too.
Thanks for enlightening me.
Love Elle
xoxo
Hi Elle,
When a person self medicates or uses drugs or alcohol to numb the pain, they also numb the joy in life. They are usually depressed and have lost their gratitude and appreciation. Glad you have some of the information useful. That is my hope to make people more conscious regarding addiction and recovery. Before addiction entered my life, I was very unaware of the true dangers of drug use. Take care.
Thank you Ryan and Cathy – this is such an important post and you’ve made several excellent points – especially this one: “Stress coping is a “use it or lose it” skill. It’s the type of ability that people can lose very quickly if they don’t have a chance to keep using it. It’s seen not only with drug users, but also with those kept far too busy to experience any mental rest.” As you wrote, yoga and meditation can help. So does exercise, sleep and nutrition — “things” that help heal the actual circuitry components in the brain – those damaged by ongoing stress. Thanks so much for raising awareness, and I look forward to following your work at Calm Clinic.
Hi Lisa,
I agree that it was a great point to mention those that are too busy to take care of themselves can easily fall prey to stress coping. Appreciate your thoughts as always. Take care.
Nice to see you Ryan at Cathy’s blog!
Yes indeed, most of us tend to self-medicate ourselves, whether it is because we are suffering due to some ailment or at times it’s just for the basics like cough and cold, without really realizing the side effects of doing so.
There are many ways that you can cope with stress in your life (I’d written a post on this long back on my blog), where things like yoga, meditation, listening to light music, and doing things that you like help a great deal. I think anything away from the routine and usual does help to cope with stress.
Thanks for sharing. 🙂
Hi Harleena,
I agree that we need to make time for self care. All the things you mentioned are wonderful and more rigorous exercise, such as running can be helpful as well. Take care and appreciate your input.
Hi,
Excellent post…thank you
be good to yourselves
David
Thanks for stopping by David. Take care.
Great post Cathy as so many addicts start off using drugs/alcohol to deal with stress. From my own experience I know that I used to drink to avoid the stress and then drink even more to avoid the stress that drink had caused!
The big difference for me now that I am sober is that I acknowledge the stress, get it into perspective and then deal with it. No avoiding. Life is always going to have it’s stresses so it’s important to have ways to manage the difficulties.
Hi Carolyn,
So true. Many do the same and and use alcohol or drugs to avoid the stresses in their life, but it does become a vicious cycle. There is always going to be some stress in life, and so we do need to find healthy ways to cope. Take care, and appreciate your thoughts.
Ryan, great post!
All your great stress relieving ideas should be taught to our young kids so that they know what to do before thinking about taking drugs. I had no idea that you could lose your stress relieving skills, too. Very interesting! I just wrote about a great yoga breathing exercise that came via Dr. Andrew Weil, at my site that I’m teaching to my children.
Thanks for these insights.
Hi Betsy,
There are so many tools of recovery that should be taught to young children. It would eliminate so many problems if we started creating this mindset early on. If we could all send our kids to safe wilderness programs in their teens, that could make a difference as well. Loved your info. regarding Dr. Weil, especially his breathing technique. Take care.
Just spent a little time catching up with your blog. Enjoyed Ryan’s guest post as well as your last monthly message. Thank you both!
Hi Galen,
Thanks so much. Appreciate you stopping by. Take care.
I hear what you’re saying here Ryan and I’ve known some people in my life that have used drugs for this very reason. I use food to numb my pain. I’m not overweight though but there has been two times in my life where I was so depressed that I gained 30 pounds because I ate. When I eat I only think about what I’m doing at that moment and of course the weight came on very quickly.
Once I “snapped” out of my depression then I had to come back to reality and know that I was the only one that was going to get myself back on the straight and narrow. I guess I’m very fortunate that I never turned to drugs or had any issues with them.
Thank you for sharing this though because I know it’s a horrible problem for many people.
~Adrienne
Hi Adrienne,
Overeating can be a big problem for many people. You caught your problem early on before it became a more destructive problem.
There are three different food addiction types:
Compulsive Eating where individuals often eat at inappropriate times and develop a type of addiction for eating over and over again. Bulimia, where individuals eat in binges and then use items like laxatives, and fiber in order to rid the body of the food. Anorexia are individuals who are terrified of gaining weight.
I’m glad your food issue did not go to this extreme. There are many things that people can turn to to numb the pain in their life. That is wonderful that you were able to snap out of your depression and change your eating habits.
Thank you for sharing your experience. Take care.
Nice post of drug addiction. People take many drugs in stress. But they don’t aware from effects of drug addiction. After some time they become addict of those drugs. which are very dangerous for health. So people should aware from drugs addiction. Narconon Fresh start program gives all information about effects of drug addiction and how to prevent from drugs addiction. Surely this program will help to you for your addiction problems.
Thanks for leaving your thoughts and your link. Take care.
Great post Ryan and Cathy and so very true. Alcohol was used in our family as a way to cope with stress. The same occurred in the generation before and probably the generation before that as well. It’s very acceptable in society to use alcohol to cope with stress, at least, that’s the way I see it. It’s dangerous to use alcohol when you have a predisposition to alcoholism. From my experience, I think the addiction numbers don’t fully reflect the extent of the problem and I think that until societal values change it’s a loosing battle. Basically, I think (as a society) we teach kids to think it’s okay to use alcohol for stress relief. But, that’s just the way I see it. I could be wrong.
Hi Marianne,
You make some very good points here! Alcohol is used to relieve stress, and I do think many of our young people get the message from advertising, peer pressure and from our society in general. We do need to develop other options, rather than alcohol. For some families, the genetic predisposition will lead to alcoholism. Teens feel the pressure to experiment, but do not have the full concept of where this might lead. Thanks for stopping by!
Gosh I love your blog! For me this post is a fresh look at the more general explanation of “using drugs to escape.” That’s what we were told back in high school. For me, that always seemed to mean a person wanted to drift around in floating flowers. The people I know who are suffering seem more like they are in a struggle with an imaginary assailant. From what I saw, my loved one began using at a young age because he had a terribly boring job, But now that you bring up this point of poor coping skills, it makes sense that he would quickly discover, hey, this works pretty good to eliminate all kinds of stress. Ten years later, working hard on his recovery, I can see that coping with stress is his most important work. After all we’ve been through, it is a joy to witness and he is surprising himself, which of course motivates him to keep going forward. Thank you both for this excellent shift from “escape” to far too handy synthetic coping strategy.
Thanks, Anne, for stopping by.