What Is Hangxiety And Why Does It Follow Me After A Night Out?
If you have been drinking long enough or hard enough, you have probably felt what a hangover is. The dreadful feeling of nausea, head pounding, dehydration, and the feeling like the sun through your curtains could kill you. Add in some anxiety with all of that and you may have a sense of a hangxiety.
Hangxiety is a psychological symptom associated with drinking and a hangover. It happens when anxiety overrides a hangover and you ask yourself what you did last night in the hopes that you can remember it all.
Not to worry, just like hangover cures, we have some hangxiety cures that will help you deal with the morning after a night out.
What is hangxiety?
Hangxiety is an anxiety-driven hangover. When you drink alcohol, it targets the gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). This receptor is responsible for making a person feel relaxed and calm. Drinking alcohol enhances the production and connection of GABA neurons, making your mind more relaxed.
With the transmitters working over time, your body tries to go back to a homeostasis state by blocking GABA, but when you stop drinking, your GABA levels are low and you crash. This causes a person to have intrusive thoughts, worries, and depression.
Why does it happen?
There are several reasons why people may suffer from hangxiety. They could have been anxious before they started drinking, and when they stopped, everything came back tenfold. They could also be extremely dehydrated, they may not have gotten enough sleep to allow their brain to reset, or maybe they did something the night before that they remember and regret.
Dehydration
It is with no surprise that when you drink more, you pee more. With alcohol being a diuretic, you lose more liquid than usual, and I’m sure we’re not all the best with rehydrating with water on a night out, but instead more alcohol.
A 2014 study was able to find that a decrease in water intake for drinkers has a negative effect on mood, including, “reduced feeling of calmness, satisfaction, and positive emotions.”
2. Social Anxiety / Shyness
Hangxiety, just like a hangover, may look different on different people. When people are more anxious in their daily lives, they have a higher chance of suffering from hangxiety. It is also shown in a study that shyness can cause an increase in hangxiety.
Social anxiety also falls under this umbrella. When a person with social anxiety, just like shy people, drinks, it brings down a barrier and allows them to relax in the environment they are in. But only for a short time. When the alcohol wears off, all of the anxiety comes flooding back, and now also with the combination of a hangover which heightens the hangxiety level.
3. Not Enough Sleep
Sleep is important, whether you have been drinking or not. When you drink alcohol, it may feel like it is helping you fall asleep, but it is actually messing up your sleep patterns and making you more tired. This, in turn, can make you more anxious and increase the sense of a hangxiety.
How to deal with it
There may not be the perfect hangxiety cure, but we have some options that may make your hangxiety easier to deal with. In addition, combining some of these options could help lower your anxiety and hangover faster than being dealt with individually.
Distract yourself
Something easy to get your mind busy on something else. When you are dealing with hangxiety, you are thinking about all the bad things, whether you had done something you regretted the night before, you didn’t get enough sleep, or you are just a naturally anxious person.
Whatever it may be, getting your mind busy on something else like a light outdoor walk, a hobby, a TV show, and even light tidying chores around the house will help you stay distracted and out of your own head. Play uplifting music or podcasts and remember, “this too shall pass!”
2. Rehydrate
This may be the easiest tip to get rid of hangxiety. You can even start it the night before a night out. If you know you are going to be drinking for the night, you can set a jug (something with a lid) of water by your bed so the next morning or even in the middle of the night, you have your liquids ready to rehydrate.
3. Breathing exercises or meditation
Practicing mindfulness meditation or breathing will help you relax. This will help with the anxious feeling you are having about your hangover and allow you to find peace. There are many self-paced or instructional videos out there that can help you through this. This is one my favorite relaxation exercises led by the great Bob Proctor. I’m confident it can help you ease out of hanxiety!
How long does hangxiety last?
This will depend on the person and the action steps they took before drinking. If someone ate a full meal and had some water during their night out their hangover may not be as bad as someone who started drinking on an empty stomach.
Most hangovers don't last more than a full day, this being no more than 24 hours after you have stopped drinking. Any anxiety-driven feeling after this is considered to be ‘normal’ anxiety and no longer fueled by alcohol.
Final Thoughts
Hangxiety is a real thing. Although not a term coined by health professionals, it happens to people all over the world who drink alcohol. It may be more common for people who are shy or already anxious, but is not limited to only those individuals.
Make sure you take the proper precautions before drinking, and I hope that some of these cures help you the next time a hangxiety occurs.