Odd Behaviors Or Thoughts Caused By Anxiety & Mild Paranoia

[blight12]

Anxiety is a bastard, we know this, but ever after 8 years of managing high amounts of it, some of the strange thoughts and behaviors still confound me. Mostly anxiety related thoughts that are simply not logical or something to be concerned about, yet even thought you can see the clear logical flaws in your reasonings, its still really hard to fight the thought process sometimes. It literally breaks your reasoning abilities sometimes.

I think most of the worse ones related more to paranoia type thoughts from anxiety, I prob had more of an issue then just GAD.

For me recently, the most amusing one is being anxious about taking anxiety medication like benzos because im afraid its not going to work and give me more anxiety somehow. I mean wtf? . Even after a week of use for getting of the boose im still breaking up my pills and taking slowing just in case. Though similar things happen with any medication these days as I have learnt to be careful (paranoid?) with everything, even vitamin type stuff.
Yet ill still hit a fat line of meth with no concerns even though there is obviously more risk there?

Car to share some of your own. Bet you cant beat me below lol. (Drug OD, to much meth and comedown type events dont count). Just general day to day anxiety issues.

Others:

Getting paranoid and always checking whether I have sent a skype message or email to the right person, (In case wrong inappropriate skype message to a work contact instead of a friend).

Run my own business but refuse to use the phone for communication due to anxiety over whether im going to say something stupid when put on the spot. Still hate any type of phone calls due to anxety related to speaking abilities. Also fear of telemaketers (I cant say no). Somehow my business still works without a phone, so thats cool. Speaking to people i know is fine though.

When driving, being way overly caucious, slowing down and checking 3 times at every road intersection or traffic light that I have not somehow missed the fact that there is a stop sign or somehow misread a red light for green, just to make sure. Etc. This was made worse once by taking Phenibut and compeltely disregarding a red light somehow and luckily never died at this busy intersection as it was a Sunday. Never happened before, stuff is sneaky and risky with driving, way worse then booze IMO.

Generally Driving sucks with anxiety.

In the past, the worst serious issue was being convinced I was going to die every night from a robbery/home invastion etc type situation for a year or two, due to a previous minor non violent robbery incident. Those where bad times. This is fixed now and is a lesson in not being stupid with MDMA use.
Hypervigilance from anxiety for situations like this can be hell, checking every single little noise all night. A half bottle of vodka a day helped with this for a while. Not even the strongest Xanax helped at the time (benzos just make me more stimulated for some reason, in a good way, but definitely wont result in me sleeping)

Convinced for a few years (same period as above) that a civil war was going to start and we where all going to die. (Politics paranoia).
Freaking out for 2 years at any fireworks or distant sounds I would hear at night or in the day signaling the start of the war, was not fun at all. In Dec left the country for a week due to suspicions of a war start date during that period. Fortunately this trigger is now resolved and now I can scrap my plans for leaving the country.

Funny enough anxiety (fear) can be an amazing motivator. I built a successfull work from home business from scratch on a topic i new nothing about, simply so I could escape the country and have an income wherever I went. Pretty awesome. Now i try and use it to my benefit as motivation for other things as well. Also definitely improves my business as I am super careful and make sure everything is perfect.

Double and triple checking everything to make sure its done correctly (work stuff eg) or if I have my car keys, wallet etc. OCD?

And when i was a kid, i made the mistake of reading a medical textbook and paniced for quite a while that I was sick or going to die or something. I think I fainted once from a panic attack about having a ruptured spleen, for no reason of course. I guess I had anxiety issues from then already, so stimulant abuse was prob not the best idea.

Would be interested in other stories as well?

 

[95Land]

I'm not gonna psychoanalyze you beyond saying that if there were two drugs I'd tell someone in your position to avoid, meth and MDMA would be right near the top of the list. Just gonna hurt but I bet you already know that.

I had some somewhat similar stuff for a while. We were made to go to a pretty legalistic and generally just fucked up church for a period of time when my siblings and I were children. We were told that our actions and THOUGHTS were being monitored by the all present, all seeing god. Also, if we acted up and disappointed god we would in turn make the devil and his demons happy and he or them would be laughing/grinning in the corner of the room. And, of course, if we sinned and died, we would BURN IN HELL FOREVER.
I was like 6 when this shit started getting laid on me and it, for all intents and purposes, made me schizo. I believed my thoughts were being monitored and thus constantly tried to stop "bad" ones or censor out unacceptable words. I was also incredibly paranoid at night and developed a OCD level check list prior to bed time.
What all this did is cause me to develop mindless routines that were absolutely necessary for my relative mental stability to stay in tact. It also made me horribly paranoid of dying. Horribly. I was terrified of riding in a car for fear that any slip or skid of the tires signaled a accident and impending doom/damnation. Also, no where was safe from the influence of a truly malevolent force.
Now keep in mind, the heaviest of all this mind fucking occurred between my age 6-10. As I grew older I was able to think much more rationally and subsequently was able to recognize the religious stuff for what it is. Complete and utter bullshit and something that should NEVER be laid on the mind of a child.
Some generalized paranoias stayed with me. Including checklists, OCD style checking and double checking of minute details, a belief that people had to be picking up on impossible to pick up on changes in my attitude, demeanor and were then judging me. These things, amongst others, caused horrible social anxiety when I was a teenager and my life for a while was a hell of routine and paranoia. As I grew a bit older and got more pragmatic I was also able to recognize these behaviors for what they were. Complete and utter bullshit. I have nearly 100% killed them.
A big part of it is I've done tons of drugs that made me just not give a fuck. Even after getting mostly sober, I still didn't and don't give a fuck about torturing myself in those ways. I feel pretty good these days.
So, I feel you, dude. You seem pretty goddamn smart and you can beat this shit. Your mind is truly your worst enemy. Use the benzo's. Stick with them, give them a fair shake. When you start getting a particular panic or paranoia setting in, fight it. Do not feed it. Tell yourself over and over this is stupid and I won't feed into this. You recognize that it's irrational so just keep telling yourself that and that you have nothing to fear, you're ok. Don't do meth.
You have some pretty extreme fears. I did, too. It's not anything that can't be overcome. You built your own business, FFS. You know how many brilliant people try and fail at that? Use that brain of yours to kill this shit and see where you and your business will go after that. Far.
Once I was able to kill my own paranoias, my life flourished in some positive ways. I quickly found a line of work I like and make good money in, I've had some pretty happy, good, non drug-centric relationships and I wouldn't consider the last few years of my life torture. Besides the sporadic drug addiction. Otherwise, shit's good. Good luck, meng. Let us know what's up.

 

[blight12]

Yeah, basically MDMA abuse, way to high dosages way to often is what caused everything and broke my brain. That usage ended 8 years ago, not touched since. After 8 months of usage I eventually suffered a bad event where i took like 7 pills and that following week the hell started, derealization/personaliation, brain zaps etc and i knew something had gone wrong, worst experience ever. And then it was screwed from there.

Basically i really messed up the Serotonin part of my brain. Took 7 years to come right but it eventually healed itself quite fast on that last year, so these days its all good. Most of the above major issues are gone, for a while already, just the minor general anxiety stuff is still around but thats easily managable.

I used coke in those 7 years and meth recently after the major issues went away and it never created any more issues, made anything worse, pretty much had zero effect on day to day anxiety/depression/mental stuff. So for me at least dopamine stims are fine, but ill tell anybody to this day do not fuck with MDMA if you dont know what you are doing. I mean i was quite surprised but even high dose meth for 4 days causes no anxiety issues afterwards and no issues so far for a year of perhaps twice a month usage. Coke never caused long term issues either for me personally. You can fuk up the next 7 years of your life, though i dealt with it ok and have no regrets because I try and take learnings from anything I do and it taught me alot and built me a business lol.

The business thing convinced me however that it doesnt take smarts, it takes motivation, perserverence and a lot of time (6 years for me, but that was basically also self studying marketing from scratch and many failed starts). Money is not even really necessary, if you get creative. In my case the anxiety and fear ensured i never gave up, the motivation was there, succeed or die, literally, the ultimate motivation. People should use it more often lol. I also learnt to turn disadvantage into an advantage, have no regrets and learn something from every situation, turn every negative into a positive. I wouldnt take back the 7 years of shit. Then I wouldnt be me. Life is all about experience, good or bad, the more you have the better, and the more difficult the more valuable. As long as you learn from it.

Yeah the religous stuff can probably cause some serious anxiety and paranoia issues. My parents are christian but never forced it on my or instilled any fear, but I still had fear of dying and felt guilty about not proceeding with it properly. I never had anxiety issues with it directly but that idea probably made the fear of death on the other issues worse, however I have always more feared how you will die and not death itself for some reason. Now I follow another "spiritual" path and have no more concerns about death, but possibly still the method of death. Quick and painless please.

I drink a ton but am rehabing now and feel a shit ton better, smarter, no anxiety, so thats awesome. Alcohol is such shit, especially due to how it makes anxiety and related issues so much worse for those prone to it the next day. Its a vicious cycle of usage to ease the pain everyday with more booze. I guess the same with any daily addiction.