The Problem with Unnatural Stress Relievers
If you have stress in your life, you’re not alone. There are millions who suffer from stress. Unfortunately, the go-to answer seems to be to rely on medication in an effort to relieve the stress. The problem with using this approach to deal with stress is that the medication is a temporary fix.
Stress Relief Isn’t All You Get with Medicine
It’s true that there are numerous medications on the market today that are designed to treat stress. You can get a prescription from your doctor today and, depending on the medication he prescribes, you can feel relief from the stress almost instantly.
That’s what most people focus on. The quick relief, only and not what else they might be introducing into their body. When you get a prescription, you always get a pharmacy information insert with it.
Most people don’t even bother to read those. But this information is there for a reason. It’s there to warn consumers about the side effects of taking certain pills. You’ll always see the disclaimer that the doctor has decided that the benefits of the medicine far outweigh any side effects.
Which doesn’t sound so bad, so most people go ahead and take it. Then comes actually having to live with the side effects and those can be a deal breaker. These well-known medications are known as anti-anxiety drugs.
They’re designed to work on your nervous system. They’re powerful drugs that can work quickly to make you feel calm. But the problem is that because they impact your nervous system, you won’t function at 100%.
The medications can cause you to feel sleepy during the day and can also rob you of energy. You’ll feel lethargic as if you’re a beat behind. Other side effects of the medications include slowing down your ability to react.
While that might not seem like a big deal, it can impact your ability to drive a car as well as react in any emergency situation. Because the medications affect the brain, you may start to notice that you have trouble speaking clearly.
You won’t be able to concentrate as well and you can experience a lack of clarity in your thinking. Some people refer to this as “brain fog.” Taking medicine for stress relief can give you problems walking because it can cause you to feel like the room is spinning.
You might experience problems with dizziness and feel like you’re going to pass out. Other side effects include things like trouble recalling events due to struggling with memory retention.
You might also feel sick to your stomach and have a loss of appetite. Some people also experience problems with comprehension and struggling with feelings of depression is also common on stress relief medications.
Dependency Can Be a Problem
Like many other types of drugs, anti-anxiety medications do have the potential to become addictive. In fact, one of the known side effects of many stress relieving drugs is developing a dependency on the medicine in order to function.
This happens because the medications give you those feel-good sensations or reward pathways within the brain that you would get from taking drugs like heroin. You might not have a substance abuse history in your family and you might be someone who has never become dependent on a drug in your life.
However, because of the way anti-anxiety medication works on the brain, you can easily cross the line because over time, the effectiveness of the medication lowers. So what happens then is that people end up taking more and more of the drug because their tolerance level has increased.
They have to take a higher dosage of the medication in order to get any relief. This is why most anti-anxiety prescriptions are written for short term use only and are heavily monitored by doctors.
Over time, what happens is that anti-anxiety drugs have been known to build up in your system. When that occurs, you actually end up with too much of the drug in your body. This can lead to a state of being medicated beyond your body’s ability to metabolize it fast enough.
What’s worse is that when your doctor has to raise your dosage, the likelihood of having a buildup in your body increases as well. People who are on even small dosages of anti-anxiety medications used to treat stress can end up with numerous side effects.
These side effects can give off the same symptoms you would see in someone who had too much alcohol to drink. You would find it difficult to function in your professional and private life.
Signs of dependency on anti-anxiety medications are pretty easy to spot. You’ll feel tired and won’t have the energy to do much. Feeling confused and unable to concentrate are signs of dependence.
So is developing trouble walking without shuffling or stumbling when you move. Red or glassy eyes that appear vacant is a sign. So is trouble speaking and having trouble understanding simple questions.
Changes in mood or sudden mood swings are yet more signs of dependency. You become easily irritated and feel upset at the thought of not being able to take the medication.
Being unable to sleep, or feeling wired or edgy, is also a sign of dependency. Going from doctor to another in an effort to get more of the pills is also a sign you’ve become addicted.
On top of becoming physically dependent on stress relieving medications, you can also become psychologically dependent on them. When this happens, it’s easier to rely on the medicine rather than try to make changes to eliminate stress.
Medicating for Stress Relief Numbs You
You can’t take medication without experiencing changes in the way that you think and feel. Anti-anxiety medications for treating stress are known to cause changes in how you feel and cope with life.
If you’re someone who has struggled with stress, you might feel that being numb would be better than feeling everything you’re feeling. However, the medication can make it difficult for you to deal with more than whatever caused your stress.
When you take pills in the anti-anxiety class of medications, they don’t simply make you stop caring about whatever was stressing you out. They make you stop caring about a lot of things.
You’ll find it difficult to connect personally. You won’t care what goes on in your family, not because your feelings toward friends and loved ones has changed, but because the medication has changed the way your brain receives and responds to emotional information.
Taking medication isn’t effective for stress relief because it binds your emotions. You won’t feel sad. You won’t feel happy or excited. Nothing will give you pain but you won’t have pleasurable feelings, either.
In fact, you won’t feel at all. You simply go through the motions of living life that you’re not really experiencing. The medicine prevents you from finding effective stress relief and keeps you from reaching a resolution because it acts as a smothering cover.
You don’t feel the emotions that you once felt with stress so you think you’re okay now. But the problem is that you can’t move forward when you’ve been numbed to the stress. You’re still stuck in the same situation, in the same place with the same stress, but you don’t feel it so you don’t deal with it.
What’s going on is that the medication acts as a “bridge out” mechanism preventing you from crossing over the stress to get to the other side of it. This is the point where many people develop the habit of pretending they feel happy or other emotions, and they often don’t even realize they’re doing that.
When it’s time to get off the drugs, you’ll end up feeling worse when you do finally stop the medication than you did when you first started taking it because the reaction and symptoms you had to the stress will still be there.
It’s always best to find a natural way to deal with whatever stress is going on in your life rather than relying on any type of chemical solution. You want something that will help you to relax and relieve stress that you can turn to over and over again that won’t end up numbing you.
Medicating Addresses Symptoms Not Root Causes
Everyone experiences stress at some point in his or her life. Stress can be big or small and can impact your life to the point it can become a struggle just to get through a day. There is a big misunderstanding about exactly what stress is.
When people are dealing with it, they believe that it’s a condition like a disease that can easily be treated if they just take some medicine. But stress is not a condition. It’s not a disease.
That’s why medication isn’t the answer. Stress is a collection of symptoms. It’s the symptoms that medicine targets. Stress can manifest itself in a variety of ways and no two people will feel it the same way.
You might feel anxious or worried. You might have fears and not really understand them. You might experience upset stomach and nausea. You might struggle with insomnia or go to the opposite end and sleep way too much.
All of those are merely signs that the stress in your life is showing up physically. It can show up emotionally, too. You can find yourself becoming increasingly short tempered. Little things might irritate you or cause you to blow up at others.
You can have bouts of crying and not know exactly why you’re crying. When some people realize that what they’re going through is because of stress, they end up seeking a medication solution.
Unfortunately, it’s not really a solution. Treating stress with medication is a pause. If you want to cure stress or reduce it in your life, you must address the root cause that’s behind the stress.
Sometimes this can be related to your job or to relationship struggles. To figure it out, you just need to stop and reflect. Ask yourself why you feel like your stomach is in knots or why you dread facing a situation or someone.
Of course, identifying the root cause is the first step to take toward eliminating it. Once you know what’s behind the stress, you can get it out of your life or learn how to manage it properly.
But in the meantime, you’ll need an outlet to find relief from the stress. Otherwise, the symptoms will feel too overwhelming to deal with. You have to give yourself a break both physically and emotionally from stress.
What many doctors suggest for that for people who want to avoid taking anti-anxiety medications is to get involved in some type of hobby that’s calming. Everyone will have a different idea of what interests them.
Medicating Is Expensive, Inconvenient, and Stressful
Regardless of what type of way you pay for your medications, it can be expensive to buy medications for dealing with stress. Even buying generic medications can be costly. With some types of health insurance, you can usually get medicine to treat stress at a pretty decent price.
However, not all insurance plans will cover medications for stress that aren’t specifically labeled as for an anxiety condition. Since stress is not an anxiety disorder, your doctor won’t treat it as such.
If you have insurance, regardless of which medication your doctor might decide is best for you, your insurance company has a list of preferred ones. You could be forced to take a generic or a completely different type than what your doctor first chose.
If you try one medication and have a reaction to it, you’ll have to stop taking it. Then, it can become inconvenient to have to go back and get a different script. Some medications used to treat stress aren’t able to be called in.
Depending on what they are, federal laws prohibit some from being routed electronically from your doctor’s office to the pharmacy due to their addictive nature. Plus, your doctor’s office might have a policy about calling in a new medicine if the first one didn’t work.
You’ll have to go into the office and pick up another script. If you have medication limitations per month on your insurance, this can count against you if it’s not properly booted out of the system.
Taking medication to treat stress can actually turn around and cause stress. You can’t take certain ones with alcohol because they can be fatal when taken that way. You can’t take some of them with other medications.
It can also be stressful if you end up losing, spilling, or accidentally running out of the script. You can’t simply quit stress relieving drugs cold turkey. You have to slowly wean off of them using the tapering method.
Depending on how long you’ve been on them, it can take months to taper off. Even then you still run the risk of having to deal with withdrawal symptoms once you stop taking them.
It’s better to find more natural methods to relieve the symptoms of stress rather than to rely to medications that can cause side effects and prevent you from dealing with stress in a healthier way.