Anxiety in the UK – Lots of drugs, but nobody to talk to.

Like many people, some long-term anxiety sufferers like myself, and other newcomers, have been dealing with a huge increase in anxiety, since the original Lockdown of March 2020. Prior to the lockdown, my anxiety was well under control and was almost a distant (or repressed) memory. I was hoping that over time, I would go back to normal, however I seem to be as bad as I was a year and a half ago.

I recently reached out to our local GP surgery to report the issue and the first recommendation was to sign up for therapy (you can do it online these days, which is handy!). I have signed up for this, however I soon received a notification to say that there is a wait time of over a month and a half, before I can speak to someone! That’s a long time to wait, twiddling your thumbs and retching on the way to the park.

Not wanting to do nothing for so long, I contacted the GP again who then prescribed me some drugs (Citalopram, which I had a long time ago and did seem to help at the time). Within 15 minutes, I had collected the prescription from the local Pharmacy and had already started dosing myself up (unfortunately, Citalopram takes a week or two to kick in).

So in summary, talking is probably the best option, but having to wait almost two months to speak to a therapist, drugs, it appears, is the quickest short-term solution. I will do a follow-up report on how I get on with the drugs over the next month or so, as well as a post on how the talking goes, though that may not be possible for a while.

Theory on dreams

The other morning I woke up thinking how I had managed to conjure up and relive several dreams during the night. This is when I developed my new theory on what dreams are and where they come from.

The more I thought about it, the more the theory made sense. Basically, the theory suggests that dreams are false memories created by the brain, so when you are having a dream, you are simply “remembering” the false memory.

If the theory is correct, then that leaves the question of why. Why does the brain do this during REM sleep? This leads to the second part of my theory.

I reckon that the brain creates these false memories to be recalled and test reactions in the brain. There might be a particular reaction the brain is concerned with on occasion and we you recall the same memory, which would be a recurring dream.

Anyway, that is my theory, which I thought I would publish just to see if everyone thinks I’m crazy, or whether there may be something to it! Maybe my Psychology A-level wasn’t a waste of time after all.