Have you ever experienced waking-up feeling awful, dehydrated, head-throbbing headache, nauseous, etc.? Of course, you have. This feeling is what you experience after drinking too much the night before.
You might also feel anxious about the things you did that you cannot remember while drunk. While it is a normal feeling, it can also be a symptom of a deeper issue called “hangxiety.”
What is Hangxiety?
After consuming too much alcohol, one may feel a sense of shame and anxiety. Sometimes, rather than the alcohol itself, anxiety during a hangover is from a person’s behaviors during or after drinking.
Dopamine floods the brain’s pleasure region as a result of alcohol consumption. Your brain is packed with the feel-good hormone, but the high typically ends quickly. When dopamine levels drop, the anxiety symptoms return with increased severity.
Why Does Alcohol Increase the Anxiety Level?
Heavy drinking causes brain changes. Increased gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) affects the brain as you drink, making you feel pleasant and at peace. Drinking is addictive, and suddenly quitting causes withdrawal symptoms.
Your body becomes accustomed to using alcohol as a coping mechanism, but when it’s gone, anxiety likely follows. Excessive drinking causes disrupted sleep, combined with hangxiety, depression, and anxiety might become even worse.
People who suffer from mental health illnesses are the ones who are most likely to have hangxiety. They try to ease their unpleasant feeling from depression and anxiety by drinking, but it will become a cycle once they experience a severe rebound of hangxiety.
How to Treat Hangxiety?
Excessive drinking due to mental health illness can become a full-blown alcohol use disorder. And getting help is the wisest decision.
Here at Skyward Treatment, we commend individuals who accept that they need help to recover. We offer various treatment programs that target substance abuse disorders and mental health illnesses or co-occurring disorders.
Skyward Treatment is based in Sugar Land, Texas. If you need support, our helpline is open, call us today.