I’ve talked about my struggles with anxiety at nauseam on this site. To explain it one more time there is a physical tension throughout my entire body that is intense and perpetual. It’s accompanied by a chronic tension headache and the usual malaise that comes with schizophrenia. Over the 13 years I’ve had the disease I can count maybe 10 times that it’s let up. Sometimes for minutes other times for several hours. Every times been a little different but ever time everything gets better. For these short periods of time life feels like it’s worth living. I went 7 years without using from 2012-2019 only drinking occasionally. Then I found kratom. When I use kratom the anxiety doesn’t go away but it does get drowned out to the point where life has some quality again. Out of those ten times when the anxiety has let up about 5 on them where after I started using. Some of this is besides the point but I wanted to provide some context. The point is I don’t see a way to get sober when my baseline is so miserable. I don’t know how to give up the only thing that gives me some relief. If I could somehow relieve the anxiety I then could see a way out of addiction but without getting past it I honestly don’t see a way out. The days when I don’t use are put simply painful. I don’t know how I went 7 years like that. I don’t feel trapped I am trapped. I want to get sober but I don’t see how that will be possible if I can’t bring down the anxiety. My only hope is to fix the anxiety. I need help.
Getting rid of the alcohol and drugs were necessary because they simply made things worse for me resulting in my anxiety (and the rest of my life) being more out of control. I went from thinking I couldn’t live a day without booze and drugs to never wanting to spend another day under the influence of them for the rest of my life. I have discovered joy and they will steal it away from me if I let them.
Most new AA members are amazed to learn that not only did they not ever need the booze as they assumed, but how much it hurt them and held them back over time. They thought it was helping. It was doing the opposite.
Kratom seems to be controversial, it’s legal in some states and countries and illegal in others. You say you’re addicted; it’s bad to be addicted to anything. What AA, CA and NA say about addiction and alcoholism is “We’ll change when the pain of staying the same is greater then the fear of changing.” All I know about kratom is a paragraph I read from ChatGPT, I don’t know how bad it is to be addicted to it. Is your addiction greatly affecting your life, is it making your life harder and more unmanageable and affecting your health? If it is, then that is enough of an excuse to stop using it. I don’t know what to say about the anxiety, have you done resaserch online about treatment for it?
I definitely did more with my life when I was sober but every moment was a struggle. Every day I had to push through pain while getting very little out of it. Like I said my base line was horrible sober. I’m I worse person now but the pain isn’t all encompassing. Again I don’t know how to give up the only thing giving me relief. It’s very similar to someone who uses opiates for physical pain. You don’t take them of the drug until you fix whatever is causing the pain. That’s what It feels like. Like I said I’m just not going to be able to stop if the anxiety is going to be like this forever. It’s like being on fire and with the push of the button you stop burning. I’m not going to be able to stop pushing the button unless the fire goes out for good.
It’s definitely making my life worse in that it’s extremely difficult to function now if I’m not on it. Also the general checklist of life is 100% worse. But again I just don’t see a way to stop while things hurt so much.
If someone told me you won’t be able to get to the core of the anxiety while you’re using then I’d find a way to stop. That thought is the thing that inspires the days that I don’t use. But I’ve sat with the anxiety for hours. The tip I’m working on now is not to fight it or distract. The advice is that when you cope or distract your telling your subconscious that the sensations your experiencing are unsafe and for the anxiety to resolve you have to know on a subconscious level that the sensations your experiencing are not unsafe. But while sitting with the anxiety I’ve experienced some insanely intense sensations. A feeling like I was going to explode. I don’t know what to do.
Well, it’s bad to depend on a drug in order to function. What do the doctors say about your anxiety? Maybe there’s stuff to fight it you haven’t tried yet. If you look at the big picture you would realize that you can’t stay on kratom forever, somethings gonna give and you’ll pay for being on it with bad health maybe or psychological damage. Like I said, I don’t know a lot about that particular drug but I know a little bit about addiction and being dependent on drugs can only lead to bad results. Maybe there’s a supplement out there that could help with anxiety or exercise or lifestyle changes.
The goal is to get off I just don’t know how. Right now I just feel like I have to conquer the anxiety if I’m going to be able to get off it.
I was addicted to crack but I got clean through AA. Maybe you can try AA or NA. It seems like if you’re on kratom it might interfere in finding a solution to your anxiety problem. It seems like the kratom would mask the anxiety and make it harder to deal with directly.
I could see that. I did go 7 years trying to get it to resolve but I’ve found new approaches since then.
This is the guy whose approach I’ve been working on. There’s several anxiety people on YouTube and a lot of it is very similar.
1:45 is the technique everyone preaches. Stop fighting is essentially the strategy they say will cure you.
This is what chat gpt says.
You’ve been fighting a brutally difficult battle for a long time, and your frustration is completely valid. What you’re describing—the constant body tension, the fragmented mind from schizophrenia, the exhaustion from trying so many things—is real, and it makes the kind of acceptance you’re attempting not just hard but extraordinarily hard.
The approach promoted by people like The Anxiety Guy and Shaan Kassam—radical acceptance, removing resistance, allowing the sensations without judgment—is rooted in well-established ideas like somatic experiencing, polyvagal theory, and mindfulness-based practices. For many people, this kind of approach can help rewire the nervous system over time by signaling to the brain that the threat has passed, even when the body still feels activated.
But here’s the thing:
That process depends on having enough internal coherence and safety to actually let go.
If your mind is fragmented (as is common in schizophrenia), the baseline level of chaos can make the act of “simply accepting” feel almost impossible. It’s not that the approach is wrong—it’s that it’s incomplete for someone in your position. You’re not failing the method; the method isn’t designed with all of your complexity in mind.
A few grounded thoughts:
1. You may need a “hybrid” approach.
Instead of just radical acceptance, you might benefit from blending:
- Somatic regulation tools (like grounding through breath or movement),
- Relational safety (safe therapeutic connection or co-regulation),
- Medication support (if you’re not already optimized here),
- Cognitive containment (a way to “hold” the fragmentation when it shows up).
You don’t have to pick between fighting and surrendering—you can support your nervous system in more than one way at once.
2. Extreme body tension can come from multiple systems firing at once.
When anxiety and psychosis-related processes overlap, your sympathetic nervous system (fight/flight) and sensorimotor disintegration might both be contributing. Your body is trying to survive something it can’t fully locate or understand. That kind of chronic hyperarousal doesn’t just turn off with a thought, or even just acceptance. It might take physical retraining in very small doses.
Think of your system like a traumatized animal. You can’t just tell it “you’re safe” and expect it to relax. You have to create conditions that feel safe consistently and let the trust grow slowly.
3. You’re right—relaxation is not just a skill; it’s a biological capacity.
And right now your system might not have access to that capacity in the way others do. That’s not your fault. The idea that people can just “accept” their way to calm works best in systems that aren’t constantly being overwhelmed by internal noise, threat detection, and sensory fragmentation.
4. If it helps: it’s not a life sentence.
Neuroplasticity is real. You’ve probably heard that before, but the fact that you’re still working at this—even in your frustration—is proof that there’s still a part of you alive enough to want peace. That’s the part we need to nourish.
Possible directions (not solutions—just footholds):
- Try micro-practices instead of full-body surrender. For example, one square inch of skin relaxed on purpose. One breath through the nose, counted. One sound in the room listened to, fully. These build safety in pieces.
- Work with a somatic therapist (if accessible), especially one trained in trauma or psychosis-informed care. They can help titrate the overwhelming sensations so you’re not doing it all alone in your head.
- Record your own voice saying calming, validating things (or I can write a script with you) and play it during high tension times. You might find it anchors you more than external voices.
- Validate, validate, validate. Even saying aloud:
“This tension is unbearable, and I am surviving it anyway.”
is better than pretending it’s fine or trying to override it.
You deserve rest, peace, and ease. Not as a reward for effort—but because you’re a person, and your system was never meant to stay stuck in fight-or-flight forever.
If you want, I can help you build a micro-practice that fits the reality of your system. Or write something for you to read or listen to when you feel this tension spike.
You’re not alone in this. I’m with you.
Alcohol aggravates anxiety.
I have a feeling that the drug is causing you rebound anxiety.
Best thing you can do for yourself is to come off the Kratom
We are supposed to go through this. This is the source of personal growth. If you sidestep necessary hardship you limit future success.
I think this applies to the normal amounts of resistance people feel when there challenging themselves not the pain that comes with disorders. Running a marathon is a great goal if your relatively healthy but it could kill you if your 400 pounds.
Could be, but I had horrible anxiety before I started it. The plan is to quit but I’m gonna do it slowly and try to get my anxiety under control before I’m completely abstinent.
Oh by the way i dont fixate on it. Im used to it
When you are 400 lbs you go for short walks and aim for 390 lbs. I wasn’t doing 8 hour river runs in 2020. Start small and build on it.
Chat gpt gave me the best advice I’ve ever gotten about what to do about it last night. Check out the link, maybe it can help you too.