Strategies for Coping with Anxiety Without Relying on Substances
- jocrharris
- Jun 13
- 4 min read
There are many ways people cope with daily stressors and anxiety, and one of the wrongly normalized methods to calm anxiety’s effect is relying on substances, legal or illegal, for peace of the mind, for putting the spinning carousel of worries on temporary pause. The question is not whether substance use offers relief (it often does, if briefly), but what it costs and whether other, less destructive strategies might exist out there, somewhere between the panicked Googling of symptoms and the late-night drinks.
This article will explore approaches to coping with anxiety that don’t lean on substances, offering instead a collection of practical, evidence-aligned, somewhat overlooked strategies for sustained well-being.
Anxiety and Substance Abuse Disorder: An Introduction
According to this paper about anxiety and substance use disorders, psychiatric research spanning decades has done more than hint – it has underscored with some considerable emphasis – the statistical overlap between anxiety disorders and substance use disorders. These aren’t two distinct islands. They often arise together, interact, and, in many individuals, tend to reinforce one another. This co-occurrence (known clinically as comorbidity) isn’t incidental, as it’s frequent enough to have become a significant focal point in the field of mental health research.
What stands out, beyond the data points, is the complex interaction between cause and consequence. Anxiety might push individuals toward substances; substances may deepen or trigger anxiety. The maintenance of both disorders becomes cyclical, ritualistic, and even. This interaction complicates treatment, requires specialized interventions, and often reveals how fragile and interwoven our coping mechanisms can be when panic overrides clear, rational thinking.
Strategies for Coping With Anxiety Without Relying on Substances
There’s a space – a large and often unvisited one – between anxious living and pharmacological numbing, and inside that space lives a handful of strategies which can’t be called quick fixes, but which do more than rearrange the surface of things – they subtly alter the structure beneath.
Rediscovering Skill, Joy, or Obsession: Hobby as Intervention
To say "find a hobby" sounds suspiciously like a wellness cliché, but there’s weight behind the words. The nervous system, overwhelmed, seeks out routine, stimulation, purpose, even distraction – but meaningful distraction, not scrolling, not bingeing.
As many treatment centers for both anxiety and substance abuse disorder have witnessed the quiet, nonverbal healing power of gardening in recovery – an act of earth, time, and repetitive care – there is growing recognition that old hobbies left behind in adolescence or even undiscovered interests waiting in the corners of boredom may become more than pastimes.. They may be tiny rituals of self-stabilization as a part of a holistic approach to healing – learning a new instrument, weaving something useless, building models, writing imperfect narrative poetry in lined notebooks.
Sitting Still is Hard: The Strange Art of Mindful Movement
Both mediation and yoga are acts of attention – sometimes frustrating, sometimes euphoric. And both require persistence, not performance. For individuals with anxiety, sitting with breath can feel intolerable at first. The mind doesn’t want to sit quietly. It wants to solve, fix, and run simulations.
Mindfulness-based interventions have been used in clinical settings with high efficacy, not because they distract from anxiety, but because they help generate new mental postures toward it – observation without collapse, recognition without reaction. Over time, they can soften the edge of urgency that defines anxious thought.
In Corpore Sano: Sweat as Signal
Exercise is chronically underestimated, probably because it’s persistently treated as a matter of fitness when, in fact, its psychological impacts are far more powerful.
Regular physical movement – particularly aerobic movement in extended durations – can reduce cortisol levels, increase neurogenesis in the hippocampus, and modulate the amygdala’s hyper-reactivity. These are powerful chemical corrections to dysregulated systems.
More than that, exercise can become a form of pattern interruption. When practiced rhythmically, with or without social connection, it inserts a physical narrative into the day. Movement tells the nervous system something that thoughts cannot – it says: you're not trapped.
Trees Can’t Talk (But They Help Anyway)
Spending time outdoors requires a departure from screens, interior walls, and conversations that circle in anxious spirals. Natural environments, particularly those that include greenery, running water, or open sky, reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression. And while the mechanisms are still being studied, the practice is simple.
Grab your loved one (or loved ones), go outside regularly, and stay there for longer than is comfortable. Walk slowly. Look at nothing in particular. Let the sensory inputs – light, wind, space – take priority over the tedious internal commentary. Nature provides context, and context is one of anxiety’s antidotes.
Don’t DIY Your Brain
Some situations call for self-management. Others don’t.
Mental health professionals are not generic service providers. When dealing with anxiety that persists, escalates, or compromises one’s ability to function or recover without substances, reaching out is far from being a weakness.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), exposure therapy, somatic therapies, and newer modalities like EMDR or ACT have been developed specifically to address disorders like anxiety, without sedation, without dulling the experience of life, without replacing one disorder with another.
The work can be difficult. It mightn’t yield immediate results. But it will introduce structure, insight, accountability, and perhaps most importantly, the possibility of safety within experience, rather than through avoidance.
Close the Door Softly
Coping with anxiety, when stripped of substances and distractions, is often slower, quieter, and less showy than expected. Coping with anxiety is about capacity. The capacity to wait, to tolerate, to make a change, to return to breath, to choose again.
While medications and substances may still have their place in certain contexts, the overuse of chemical numbing for what is, at times, a solvable dysfunction of thought and physiology, is neither sustainable nor necessary. So what remains are practices – some personal, some communal – that don’t mask anxiety but rather alter one’s relationship to it. Far from being a romantic notion, this is a purely technical one. And in practicing these strategies, what emerges is a form of relief that holds.
Dr. Jordan Harris is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists who works in the Northwest Arkansas area, servicing Rogers, Springdale and Fayetteville. With over 10 years of experience, he's worked in various fields from addictions, to kids, to psychiatric wards. Currently his specialty is working with couples with young children
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