Social Anxiety to Social Confidence

“It’s not surprising that if you fear interacting with other people, particularly authority figures and that means you find it hard to seek professional help for your social anxiety, then you’re going to be prone to seeking whatever solutions are at hand. Often that means self-medicating with recreational drugs such as cannabis, ecstasy, cocaine, amphetamines or more commonly alcohol.

Obviously this can then lead to additional health problems, financial problems or addictions, but aside from those issues, what I want to discuss in this video is the other processes at play when we use these drugs to cope with anxiety.

Essentially, these drugs, and by saying drugs I’m including alcohol, are attractive to people with social anxiety because they do things such as relieve anxiety, reduce inhibition, provide relaxation and increase a sense of confidence. In the short-term they provide almost immediate relief of anxiety symptoms but usually silently they are also keeping the problem going or even making it worse in the long term.

To just say that drugs and alcohol doesn’t work is a confusing message because it conflicts with the fact that when people use them they feel relief. In one sense, if your goal is to eliminate anxiety, then they do work, but the problem is that they are unsustainable and have other negative effects on our life.

As humans we have an amazing ability to physically adapt to our environment and when we are exposed to a drug our body often adapts to it. Eventually this means to get the same effect you either have to take more of the substance or wait until your body adapts to being without it. This may take a bit of time and because our body has normalised to being with the drug we then experience withdrawal, often including rebound anxiety, as our body adjusts back in the other direction.

This extra anxiety on top of existing high anxiety levels obviously isn’t good and drives a person to continue using drugs to gain relief, and too often leads to addiction. Not all drugs work this way, but many do. Although our body may adapt emotionally to the drug it cannot fully adapt to the ever increasing levels of toxins that are put in the body to get the same effect. Additionally, always being drunk or on drugs while building relationships, working or performing every day social tasks can severally effect your performance and introduce additional social problems into your life. It’s this that makes taking these drugs for social anxiety unsustainable.

So why not use them just for a bit of short-term relief? Well, apart from the problems mentioned already, such as rebound anxiety when not taking them, every time you rely on something else other than your self for confidence you undermine your belief in your own ability to cope with situations. Every time you use drugs or alcohol to cope socially you take another chip out of your self-confidence. Drugs don’t give confidence, they take it away. If you’re using drugs or alcohol to cope socially then when you do well or make progress that success is easily attributed to the drug rather than you. You miss out on the opportunities to build real confidence in your own ability and find sustainable ways of coping with your anxiety.

It can be hard to stop using say alcohol in social situations, because you feel so much worse without it. But really it’s not that you’re worse, it just that you have to face up to the full reality of the situation you’re in, and progress can’t be made unless you do that. Additionally, it’s hard to understand what really helps if any success you have can be attributed to drugs.

Consider that lasting progress will come though choosing to make your goal to increase confidence rather than to eliminate anxiety. That way you will not reach for instant relief in the form of drugs and you will see that it is through learning to cope with anxiety using yourself, rather than a substance, that solid self-confidence will be built.”

“I used to take drugs, mostly cannabis, but at around the age of 21 I started using other drugs – on the whole those other drugs were ecstasy, also known as MDMA, and like a lot of people do, I also drank alcohol. In one sense I used these because they were part of the scene I was involved in – involved is probably too strong a word there – and they were a form of enjoyment or fun, but I also used them to cope with my social anxiety.

Like so many people with social anxiety, I would sometimes have a drink or two before meeting people so I felt more confident and less anxious. And then while out with other people I would keep on drinking, partly as something to do and make myself look busy, but also to cope and try and make myself more sociable. Everyone knows that alcohol makes you feel more confident and takes away some of your inhibitions and this is why a lot of people with social anxiety self-medicate with it. By self-medicating I mean using a drug for your social anxiety without the advice or recommendation from a qualified medical professional. Because so many people use it in this way though, unfortunately lots of people do end up having to deal with alcoholism as well as social anxiety.

Luckily for me, it didn’t quite have the desired effect, in fact nothing would cut through my fear enough for me to be able to open my mouth and speak to people or dance. However drunk I got, and even when I no longer actually felt that anxious, I still couldn’t take that risk to say something and talk to people. I had a similar experience while using ecstasy. Although I felt free from fear and felt comfortable around people, I still couldn’t bring myself to socialise and talk to people. I’m not sure exactly why that was, but I believe it does go some way towards showing how drugs such as these more mask the problem than provide any kind of real solution.

Despite that, I still thought that ecstasy could be a solution to my social problems and for a short while I took ¼ of a tablet every few hours each day. I would then have the courage to go out in the world. I didn’t really have anywhere to go so I just used to go out into the city centre and be amongst people. Actually though, those times were some of my most lonely because while on the ecstasy I really felt a love and longing to be with people, and people were all around me, but I didn’t have anyone to connect with, and I still couldn’t approach people or speak to them. It was a bit like being really thirsty while stranded in an empty boat in the middle of the ocean.

Although I only made the connection in hindsight, it was at about that time in my life when I started getting strong panic attacks where my heart would beat really fast, I’d go pale, sweaty, my vision would fade out and I’d almost pass out. These anxiety symptoms didn’t happen when I was actually on the drugs, but I do believe my anxiety was worsened overall through taking them.

I stopped self-medicating and gave up all drugs including alcohol fairly soon after that. I realised that they weren’t solving anything and were just making things worse in many ways, and although it was really tough to start with; being in social situations without those things to help me cope, in terms of building solid lasting confidence, I think it was one of the best moves I ever made. Giving them up didn’t get rid of my anxiety, but it gave me the opportunities to build confidence without anything adding confusion. Being without those things really forced me to find other ways of coping in those situations, things that really did provide a solution, and if I hadn’t of given up those other unhealthy crutches I believe wouldn’t have really been able to work on those things that really do make a difference.

I’ve made a second video on this about how self-medicating can stop you making progress and how certain processes at play have a negative effect on you. So if this subject applies to you, I’d really encourage you to watch it. This video might be the one you can connect and identify with, but it’s the other video that contains the important information, so I hope you’ll join me for it.”