Seeking recommendations for alternative treatment for anxiety!

Medical marijuana has been known to treat anxiety like magic. It’s beyond hearsay now; researches like these have been published multiple times that talk about the benefits of MMJ against anxiety. Anxiety 101: 9 Ways How Medical Marijuana Helps with Anxiety - MMJ DOCTOR It’s time we move beyond the stereotypical stuff that we hear about marijuana; it has some amazing medical benefits that need to be brought to good use.

Well, so sorry about your bad experience with using CBD. But personally, I don’t think there is any better alternative to treat anxiety than hemp oil. I used it when I was having anxiety and it did work for me. I think the major problem is where you got the CBD from.

My PTSD and anxiety was so bad I couldn’t even leave my house. Took several medications prescribed by my doctor and ended up highly sedated so I was sleeping all the time. I was introduced to Bali kratom and my symptoms vanished within a few minutes! It allows me to work again and be around people again without sitting around hunched over in a chair with drool running out of my mouth, or sleeping 14 hours a day. My doctor had the nerve to lecture me about the “dangers” of kratom and i even consult to ketaminescottsdale, so I handed him the inserts of all the side effects of the medications he was prescribing me.

I am surprised actually that CBD has not worked for you. I have used marijuana since the time I was diagnosed with anxiety; never used anything else and I have been pretty much satisfied with the way I sort of gain this control over my emotions. I think a lot depends on the type of strain that you are using; not all strains can work for anxiety. I have been using some of these strains for my anxiety; do give these a try and tell me if it works for you.

I don’t deal with anxiety per se, but work to keep my body calm and LOOSE with Inositol. I’ve been taking it for years.

Trying to navigate around here and have trouble.

 

I’ve struggled with severe depression and anxiety for most of my life. I’ve been prescribed a variety of psychiatric drugs. I completely understand that you feel they’re not working for you, or not working very well, or even possibly making things worse.

I haven’t used any psych meds for about 10 years now. I still struggle with mental health issues, but I have learned some coping skills that help manage my issues somewhat better.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy has shown to be effective for many people. It was developed by Marsha Linehan and is closely based on many Buddhism concepts.

Some other good suggestions in this thread… meditation can be helpful, but can also bring up more self-awareness than one would like. :wink: Often I feel I’m more aware of what’s causing my moods, or reasons why I have had problems with relationships for much of my life; problem is, I haven’t come up with great solutions yet. :wink:

As for meds, I think there are more risks associated with them than what the public has been told, that their efficacy is hyped up far more than their actual effectiveness.

(on a personal note, my dad died of suicide a week and half after being prescribed a benzo. I don’t have any proof of course that the med had any influence, but looking at the side effects it seems definitely within the realm of possibility.)

There’s a documentary that was released recently called “Medicating Normal” It features stories from 5 people who claim to have had severe adverse events to psych meds and the film promotes the idea that patients should receive more information before consenting to being prescribed medication. There are some links on the film website to many resources which support the idea that the public has not received very complete information about risk/efficacy benefits. Some other people interviewed in the film are doctors, and a prolific journalist on the subject, Robert Whitaker.

One great book I read on the subject in 2008 is called “Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower and a Bestselling Antidepressant on Trial”. Written by Alison Bass, a former reporter with the Boston Globe (The links on the film website I mentioned above has resources by mostly physicians).

From what I can tell from my own experience and from reading anecdotal stories, patients are told to ignore any instincts if they have negative feelings about their treatment, their doctor, or their meds. But I feel that sometimes people are on the right track and should definitely be skeptical. Of course that’s true with most subjects or things we hear in the news or products advertised, so I’m sure that doesn’t come as any surprise. :wink:

This is a pretty diverse resource list of general mental health resources; some online and some not. I hope you can find something to help you cope better and restore some hope.

Getting things figured out ok? Maybe I can help?

I could only agree with you to a limited extent. People are getting misinformed by the media and by psychiatrists. If people are looking for advice on the Internet, it may mean that they’ve been in the system (I’m one person who falls into that category) and that led to valid reasons to mistrust what they’re being told by advertisements, network news (who are getting paid to air the ads) and their doctors.

Debunking the Two Chemical Imbalance Myths, Again

Mad in America

World needs “revolution” in mental health care – UN rights expert

I really liked the “two myths” approach to the problem. So many debates today are on the fringes, the places where the facts are fluid, and people take advantage of the lack of certainty, or sometimes just misrepresent the commonly held beliefs as if they are the best science.

I’m not sure which thing you meant to link to in “Mad in America”, it was a big list of blogs.

Due to the fact that all scientists around the world have misconceived theories about anxiety, the treatment methods for anxiety are also completely ineffective. Anxiety is caused by palpitations, and the treatment methods for palpitations are very complex. The symptoms and treatment methods for each type of palpitations are different. Nowadays, therapists blindly use the same medication to treat different types of palpitations, which not only has no therapeutic effect, but also worsens the patient’s condition.

Not a medical website. Not a place for medical advice. Especially really bad advice that says “all scientists are wrong”. How would you even begin to prove that? You don’t have any scientific evidence, unless you are a non-scientist who has done research and has data and has a has made conclusions that have been confirmed. Oh wait, that makes you a scientist.

This is not a medical forum, but that see, please your doctor concerning your anxiety and stop fooling around with herbs that have no scientific evidence that they work for anxiety.

A person may have the exact same physiological response to a stimulus, yet experience an entirely different emotion.
Factors such as the individual’s existing mental state, cues in the environment, and the reactions of other people can all play a role in the resulting emotional response.[1] For example, if you experience a racing heart and sweating palms during an important exam, you will probably identify the emotion as anxiety. If you experience the same physical responses on a date, you might interpret those responses as love, affection, or arousal. If you experience the same physical responses you are walking in the woods, and you see a grizzly bear. You will interpret your physical reactions and conclude that you are frightened .Another example, if someone sneaks up on you and shouts, your heart rate increases. Your heart rate increase (palpitation)is what causes you to feel fear(nightmare). If you see a grizzly bear, but you do not have racing heart (palpitation), you will not have fear.
In the same way, all human emotions such as anxieties panic attacks, nightmares[2] and sleep paralysis[3] are caused by such physiological symptoms as palpitations and hypotension attack. In this way, the problem becomes very simple, that is, the cause can be determined according to the patient’s symptoms. For example, if the symptom of a panic attack patient is palpitation, the cause of the panic attack is palpitation. If the symptoms of panic attacks are hypotension attack, the cause of panic attacks is hypotension attack. If you do not have palpitations, hypotension attack, these physiological symptoms, you will not have any fear.
Scientists all over the world still say that they do not know the cause of panic attacks, sleep paralysis and nightmares. It reverses the causal relationship between fear and palpitations. For thousands of years, all scientists around the world have been studying a problem that does not exist at all. Why does fear(panic attacks, sleep paralysis and nightmares) cause your racing heart(palpitation)? Of course, they will not get any valuable results.
If you think about what scary emotion this scary hypotension attack symptom that often occurs when you are awake will cause when you sleep, you will immediately know that it is sleep paralysis! But for thousands of years, no scientist in the world has thought about what kind of emotional problems will be caused by such scary hypotension attack symptoms when they are sleeping.There is a corresponding difference that Popper sees in the form of the claims made by sciences and pseudo-sciences: Scientific claims are falsifiable – that is, they are claims where you could set out what observable outcomes would be impossible if the claim were true – while pseudo-scientific claims fit with any imaginable set of observable outcomes. What this means is that you could do a test that shows a scientific claim to be false, but no conceivable test could show a pseudo-scientific claim to be false. Sciences are testable, pseudo-sciences are not. For example, we can determine whether the scientific opinion that sleep paralysis is caused by hypotension is correct by measuring whether there is a sudden drop in brain blood pressure when sleep paralysis occurs. However, we cannot find a test method to determine whether the pseudo scientific opinion about sleep paralysis is correct.
[1],The James-Lange Theory of Emotion
By Kendra Cherry Updated on November 19, 2020
[2]https://www.quora.com/What-do-dreams-about-being-chased-and-killed-mean/answer/Cheng-Ming-24
[3]https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-herbs-or-medicines-that-cause-sleep-paralysis/answer/Cheng-Ming-24

The drugs recommended by therapists to treat anxiety now have antihypertensive effects. If the patient’s anxiety is caused by hypotension, taking the antihypertensive medication recommended by the therapist not only has no effect, but also further lowers blood pressure and increases the patient’s condition.

There’s too many wrong things to respond to. This one is just a complete abuse of the English language.

Sorry, I don’t understand English. My English was translated through translation software, which is definitely not very accurate. I think you should understand what I’m trying to convey.

A symptom can’t be a cause. Not when diagnosing a disease. What language are you translating from, i can look up the words and see if it helps

@lausten I completely agree. But unfortunately that’s often how psychiatry works, using circular logic. If you have symptoms of anxiety, and they exceed the bounds described in the DSM, you have an anxiety disorder.

What are Anxiety Disorders?

The causes of anxiety disorders are currently unknown but likely involve a combination of factors including genetic, environmental, psychological and developmental. Anxiety disorders can run in families, suggesting that a combination of genes and environmental stresses can produce the disorders.

Psychiatry is quite a bit different than other medical fields. For example, if a patient reports symptoms of cancer, they won’t be diagnosed with cancer. Tests will be done. It would obviously be negligent for a doctor to diagnose someone with cancer simply based on symptoms the patient has expressed only verbally.

In a psychiatric session, a patient reports their symptoms. If they have symptoms of an anxiety disorder, they may be diagnosed with an anxiety.disorder. Though in that quote I stated above, anxiety disorders are

likely involve a combination of factors including genetic, environmental, psychological and developmental.

So basically it could be stated that anxiety is a symptom caused by those things. If you eliminate those as factors, the person’s symptoms of feeling anxious will likely subside. They may not have the “disorder” anymore (at least until the factors return). For cancer, if there was some hypothetical way for the symptoms to be eliminated, the disease would still exist.

It’s pretty similar to how depression is diagnosed. Here are some factors:

Biochemistry: Differences in certain chemicals in the brain may contribute to symptoms of depression.

Genetics: Depression can run in families. For example, if one identical twin has depression, the other has a 70 percent chance of having the illness sometime in life.

Personality: People with low self-esteem, who are easily overwhelmed by stress, or who are generally pessimistic appear to be more likely to experience depression.

Environmental factors: Continuous exposure to violence, neglect, abuse or poverty may make some people more vulnerable to depression.

Note that the first two have never been scientifically proven (at least not to my knowledge, but anyone feel free to post a link or two if I’m wrong). For example, the information about genetics comes from people who generally live together and have been exposed to similar situations. There is no scientific test available that identifies a gene or similar DNA that causes depression (again, please correct me if I’m wrong).

And note for the “BIochemistry” factor the use of the word may. Again, there’s no physiological tests for depression.

Actually I don’t believe any scientific evidence exists to support the idea that depression or anxiety disorders are a disease. Though they definitely act like diseases to be sure. They can be debilitating and deadly, and definitely the people who experience these problems should be taken seriously, and any treatments that have proved to be helpful should be considered.

What did I miss? You listed causes and effects, then said of you n eliminate the causes, the effects will change. Isn’t that how I said it should work.

Please excuse me, I wasn’t too clear. Yes, if you remove the causes, the effects will change. But when a patient reports the symptoms of anxiety, or anxiety, they may be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, Usually when a patient is diagnosed with a disorder or disease, that indicates a cause, such as cancer. But the causes (again I’ll quote from the article I linked above)

The causes of anxiety disorders are currently unknown but likely involve a combination of factors including genetic, environmental, psychological and developmental. Anxiety disorders can run in families, suggesting that a combination of genes and environmental stresses can produce the disorders.

are external to the individual (from what we know so far, there’s no scientific evidence connecting DNA or genes).

Basically, the acknowledged causes are not the symptoms, YES. But people are diagnosed with a disorder based on their symptoms. So using the term “circular logic” in my previous post was incorrect on my part.

I’m not sure how often that’s the case, but it sounds like you’re talking about iatrogenic harm: