Do you ever feel anxious? Of course you do.
I'm feeling anxious now about writing this article.
I'm thinking it might not be very good, that people might make negative comments, and I might feel bad as a result.
I am connecting people not liking my article with people not liking me.
Sound familiar? You might not be writing an article, but there are plenty of other things you might feel anxious about.
Sometimes this anxiety can spiral out of control and lead to panic.
Anxiety is a mental state that can produce physical effects, such as a dry mouth, racing heart, perspiration and trembling.
The physical effects can tell your brain that something real is going on here, which leads to more fear and anxiety, resulting in a downward spiral into a full panic attack.
Often the cause of anxiety is a fear that we won't be able to deal with a particular situation.
It may be meeting new people in a social setting, or just leaving the house at all in some cases.
Once someone has had extreme anxiety or a panic attack in particular circumstances this can lead to a phobia, which causes them to avoid the situation at all costs.
So far, so debilitating.
So what can we do about anxiety? There are lots of ways to deal with it such as breathing exercises to calm you down, or shrinking an image of the thing we are afraid of to reduce its emotional effect.
But the way of dealing with anxiety I wanted to have a look at is self-medication with alcohol.
Why alcohol? Because although people find it helpful it can lead to even more problems with anxiety.
When I was growing up I used to hear people getting ready to go out say they were going to have a drink "to get their shoulders back".
I never really understood what they meant until I was older, and I now see that they were feeling a bit anxious about going out and a drink would make them feel a little more confident.
So how does alcohol do this? Our brain cells produce a chemical called GABA, which is short for something you don't need to worry about.
GABA has the effect of making our brain cells less active, which is sometimes called a sedative effect.
The sedative effect of GABA is important, because without it our brain cell activity could get out of control.
So what happens when brain cell activity lacks this control? If there is a massive lack of control the result can be seizures or epilepsy.
A slight lack of control can lead to a feeling of anxiety - "what if no-one speaks to me?", "I'm sure no-one likes me", "if I go outside something might happen that I can't deal with".
See how important GABA is? To overcome anxiety, or prevent seizures, drugs that act like GABA are used.
These are called "GABA agonists" in medical terminology.
Clearly higher doses of these drugs are needed to prevent seizures than to treat anxiety.
So what kind of drugs are we talking about? Valium (also know as Diazepam) is a drug that acts like GABA.
It can be prescribed for anxiety and it works by suppressing brain activity, which makes the thoughts that lead to anxiety less likely.
Alcohol also acts like GABA, suppressing brain activity, so it can help with anxiety too.
The problem is that valium is prescribed by medical professionals and its use can be controlled, but alcohol is available for you to buy as much as you can afford, so you can easily overdo the self-medication.
The short-term dangers of excessive alcohol use include choking on inhaled vomit, while the long-term dangers include liver disease and damage to the brain and nervous system.
The use of alcohol (and other anti-anxiety drugs) can actually make anxiety worse too.
Everyone knows that the more often you drink alcohol the more tolerant you become to it.
This is because the brain cells start to ignore alcohol the more they are exposed to it, which means you have to drink more alcohol to get the same anti-anxiety effect, and there is more danger of alcohol poisoning and long-term damage.
This tolerance to alcohol also means that your brain starts to ignore the GABA that would naturally suppress brain activity.
As a result, when you have not had a drink you feel even more anxious since the brain activity isn't being controlled by the normal processes.
This rebound effect makes the anxiety worse and can also cause insomnia (we all know that 3am anxiety can make problems seem bigger than ever).
How might we deal with this rebound anxiety? By drinking more alcohol, and maybe even mixing it with anti-anxiety drugs, which is really dangerous.
So alcohol can actually increase anxiety.
When you have drunk enough of it you won't feel so anxious, but when it wears off the anxiety comes back with a vengeance.
And there's the danger - you don't want to feel like that so you drink even more.
Rather than self-medicating with alcohol, we should really have a look at the other way of dealing with anxiety, like breathing and visualisation exercises.
It seems much safer and is likely to lead to better results in the long-term.