Many people wonder if there’s a relationship between panic attacks and alcohol. The answer is in fact yes, there is a relationship, although it is a very tricky one. There are many different situations and examples of how alcoholism has resulted in panic attacks and even vice versa. There are many people that have gone into alcoholism in an attempt to cope with frequent and serious panic attacks. There are situations where hard drinking and hangovers as lead to panic attacks. And curiously enough, there are situations where alcoholics who have stopped drinking have started to have panic attacks. From the aforementioned examples, you can see how many different relationships alcohol does have with panic attacks. Each of these cases is different though and each has its own explanation.
One big relationship alcohol has with panic attacks is the jump some people make to alcohol in an attempt to reduce the symptoms of their panic attacks. This is a serious mistake. Alcohol is a depressant. It can seriously alter a persons mood, and even make a person’s mood unstable. Doesn’t sound like something that will help with panic attacks does it? Especially since panic attacks are a mood disorder and rooted in the fact that people are having trouble emotionally. And if alcohol does seem to alleviate any symptoms, it is only a short term solution and it will not last, and most likely it will not be effective and you’ll probably wind up having a problem with both alcohol and panic attacks.
In fact, alcohol seems to be the cause of panic attacks for many people. Many people report panic attacks after a heavy night of drinking, and this is certainly not unusual. After a night of heavy drinking, people often suffer from panic attacks when feeling the anxiety and stress of a hangover the next morning. This is also often worsened by the fact that energy drinks were consumed in conjunction with alcohol the night prior.
A third situation in which alcohol has a connection with panic attacks is that in which long time alcoholics are no longer drinking. There are former alcoholics who report having panic attacks. This is most often due to the stress that comes along with quitting the habit of drinking. These people usually suffer from many withdrawal symptoms and it’s certainly not an easy thing to go through. This process can sometimes trigger panic attacks. If you think you’re experiencing panic attacks as a withdrawal symptom, you want to be certain of it by visiting a doctor. They may not be panic attacks at all and my simply be harmless symptoms of withdrawal. If you’ve determined that you are experiencing panic attacks, there’s no reason to go back to alcohol. In fact, many of the treatments and remedies of panic attacks will help you on your quest to quit alcohol by relaxing you and improving your mood.
If consuming alcohol is causing you panic attacks, the best thing you can do is to stop drinking. The tradeoff seems pretty clear to me, I would certainly give up alcohol if it meant never having panic attacks. But if you’d still like to enjoy a drink once in a while without fearing for a panic attack, you can always treat the panic attacks directly as in this day and age, there’s no reason for anybody to suffer from panic attacks as there are a wide variety of effective treatments readily available.