How Anxiety and Addictions connect to each other and what we can do about it

If you've landed on this site, its probably because the words 'anxiety', addiction' or 'meditation', or all three, have some special meaning for you right now. In my work as a psychotherapist and on my personal journey, I have found that the combination of anxiety and addiction, broadly defined,is both widespread and often extremely distressing. We will go into this relationship more deeply on this site, but suffice to say at this point that if we think of anxiety as ranging from overwhelming panic, through traumatic experiences, to more generalized worry, to simply feeling uncomfortable in our own skins, it is hardly surprising that many of us turn to the immediate relief and comfort of alcohol and drugs, and compulsive activities of various kinds, such as gambling or just plain old busyness that we can't seem to moderate. We are in a very real sense, trying to escape ourselves form moment to moment.

The problem is, what starts as fun, especially when we are younger, and temporarily soothes us, does not generally stay that way. Before long, and this is different for all of us, what seemed like the perfect solution to, say, social anxiety, can begin to take over, becoming a problem in its own right, not the least because we are avoiding doing anything about the underlying problem.

From many years of work with clients, I can say that there is considerable hope that we can effectively address these issues, provided frankly that we are willing, as best we can, to have a look at them, something perhaps that we have avoided our whole lives. This website is intended as a resource to help us do exactly that, to identify what is the problem, and examine various options to help us out, and there are many out there!