Social Anxiety and Alcohol

College Students Use Alcohol as Way of Coping with Social Anxiety

It’s no secret that alcohol use is alive and well on college campuses across America. New research studies investigate a largely unexplored area — the relationship between heavy drinking and social anxiety.

According to a recent report by the National Institute of Health (NIH), anxiety is a psychological risk factor associated with heavy or problem drinking among college students.

Along with anxiety and other psychological factors, the NIH report suggests that an impulsive personality and a family history of alcohol abuse may be additional risk factors for problem drinking.

People with social anxiety, students and non-students alike, can benefit from these findings by taking action to eliminate risk factors for problem drinking and address their anxiety.

Social anxiety is the most common type of anxiety disorder and it affects 15% of Americans. Social anxiety, also known as social phobia, is diagnosed as overwhelming anxiety, fear, and self-consciousness in everyday social situations.

It triggers a host of physical symptoms, anxious thoughts, and avoidance behaviors.

People that suffer from social anxiety disorder usually realize that their fears are unfounded or extreme, but still feel unable to control their fears that others are looking at or judging them.

What You Can Do

Ask yourself why you drink. Do you drink to relax, to relieve stress, or to help alleviate social fears and anxieties? If any of these reasons describe you, you may be using alcohol in a vain attempt to cope with the root cause — social anxiety.

Drinking large amounts of alcohol may mask the problem for a few brief hours. However, once the mask comes off you are faced with yourself, and your anxiety returns stronger than ever.

In fact, problem drinking hinders you from making positive strides forward in healing because instead of one problem to overcome, you now have two problems, social anxiety AND alcohol abuse.

Related articles to anxiety disorders

• What is Anxiety? (psychcentral.com)
• Alcohol and Anxiety: Alcohol Aggravates Anxiety Symptoms (thindependence.com)
• Young adults ‘anxiety overload’ (news.bbc.co.uk)
• What is the difference between shyness and social phobia? (liveactivecultures.net)