Anyone that has struggled with substance abuse issues will no doubt also suffered from severe anxiety. I know while actively drinking, the intensity of my anxiety attacks was directly related to the level of my blood alcohol content. The lower it went, the more I suffered from withdrawals and reality – both would set off the shakes, sweats, and manic incoherency.

I still find myself dealing with anxiety, it’s human nature and not something unique to those of us in recovery although I feel for us it does present a greater danger. I know at least for me the natural tendency is to dwell on and obsess over negative issues and situations. An uneasy feeling turns to anxiety and with procrastination (I am a Jedi-procrastinator), anxiety transforms into fear. That’s why my recovery program stresses ACTION more than anything, I cope by doing. Sometimes even busy work can therapeutic.

The key to overcoming anxiety in recovery though is keeping things manageable, one day at a time, and remembering even the worse days sober are better than the best days as a drunk.

Dr. Morris Chafetz was a member of President Reagan’s commission in the 1980s that recommended raising the drinking age to 21; he now says it was “the single most regrettable decision” of his career. My first thought on such a comment is that if this is most regrettable decision of his life he can remember, then most likely the man has just gone senile. But it is this second comment that really raised my sanity-doubting eyebrow.

“Legal Age 21 has not worked,” Chafetz said in the piece. “To be sure, drunk driving fatalities are lower now than they were in 1982. But they are lower in all age groups… (snip) the law instead has resulted in “collateral, off-road damage” such as binge drinking that occurs in underage youth and crimes like date rape, assaults and property damage.~ LA Times

I guess Dr. Chafetz must believe that if they were just allowed to drink legally, the young inebriated idiots of the world would become gentle law abiding lambs. I mean everyone knows that date rape, assaults, and property crime just didn’t exist in prior to the National Minimum Age Drinking Act of 1984- back in the good old days, when alcohol made kids smart.

10 seconds left, must hurry… I oppose lowering the minimum drinking age limits because it is a known fact the earlier one starts drinking the more likely they are to suffer substance abuse issues. Game, set, match for me. Combine this with the fact that by lowering the drinking age we just put 16 and 17 year olds as next up in the queue- no doubt idolizing the high school seniors turning up a cold beer . Even more emotionally and physically immature, they will be inheriting the angst and the ills of those almost old enough to drink.

Last month’s death of the famed Vegas entertainer Danny Gans has been ruled an accident by Clark County Coroner Mike Murphy. The extremely talented Mr. Gans died from an overdose of hydromorphone, common brand name Diluadid, which is a very powerful prescription pain killer. Proving once again that the stigma of possible drug abuse can be greater than even the grief of death, supporters of Mr. Gans want to assure the public that he did not have a problem with substance abuse.　　

Fifteen seconds left- I need to make my points in a hurry. Alternative sentencing, drug court, and treatment instead of incarceration matter little if people are too ashamed to ask for help. Stop the stigma. The man dies from an overdose of the Lexus of abused pain killers, doesn’t have a prescription, and yet people still say surely it’s not abuse. Open your eyes! Anyone can be a drug abuser and most of us at one time or another fit the bill- so why should it be so embarrassing?

For a nation so at ease with and accepting of illicit and prescription drugs, it is amazing at how quick attitudes change once someone experiences a substance problem (DUI, possession, addiction, OD).