Natural/herbal remedies for anxiety - do any of them actually work?

I'm afraid I never had any success with valerian or passiflora or hops or chamomile or any OTC remedies containing mixtures of these, not even when I swallowed down half the jar (in desperation) and washed them down with alcohol (in even greater desperation).  I tried rescue remedy too, but that didn't help at all, nor any other of the flower remedies.  

I have a long history of trying such things, plus also various psychological approaches, although the range on the NHS is very limited.  Plus I've been on a few courses too.  I always thought the answer would be just around the corner and I'd be able to bring my anxiety levels down. 

Meditation, tai chi and yoga have helped to a degree, and especially over the years as my nervous system has seemed to calm down as I've aged.  Not what you're asking about, I know, but those practices helped to restore hope for me.

Unfortunately, the only herb that has helped me is cannabis and then only when it has at least a little THC in it.  I believe the Sapphire Clinic are offering places for subsidised treatment at the moment, but I don't know how many or how affordable this might make it.  The THC oil works well for me and is expensive at £80 a bottle.  However one bottle lasts me 3 months so the cost/day is reasonable. 

To be honest, I wish I could go back and bin many of my other efforts as the costs for those mounted up over the years.  A bit of acceptance of my anxiety-prone self would have helped too, plus more understanding of the many drivers behind it.  

Sorry you are going through this.  I know it's a load to carry each day.  I know I recommended cannabis before and there are many barriers to accessing it, unfortunately.  If you have a local cannabis club they might be able to help.  For me edibles were the way to go and a low dose,  slow and steady approach has enabled me to relax without any negative side effects.  Please pm me if I might be of help on this subject.  Cannabis is one of those subjects where I expect to get deleted, even though I get it on legal prescription these days.  

Hi Jenny - many thanks for this - it’s extremely helpful. Your experience sounds very similar to mine - and it made me laugh to read of you swigging down natural remedies and wine in desperation - I can relate! 
What’s not funny of course is how hard it is to live with long term, persistent anxiety - at its worst it feels genuinely life threatening because it can become unbearable. 

Like you I feel I’ve wasted a lot of money trying things that don’t work - which is frustrating (I ordered more yesterday……). 
I’ve contacted Sapphire Clinic this morning - I remember you mentioning them before - so thank you for sharing your experience. It’s completely legal and I find that very reassuring. 
I’m so glad it’s helped you. It really should be available on the nhs in my opinion - so many of the other drugs the nhs prescribes are much more dangerous than low doses of medicinal cannabis after all! 
 Thanks for your help Jenny - and I hope it keeps working for you. It’s so hard to enjoy life when your anxious - and we deserve to be able to enjoy life - just like anybody else. 

Kate Kestrel said:

Your experience sounds very similar to mine - and it made me laugh to read of you swigging down natural remedies and wine in desperation - I can relate! 
What’s not funny of course is how hard it is to live with long term, persistent anxiety - at its worst it feels genuinely life threatening because it can become unbearable. 

Me too! In desperation I swigged nearly the whole bottle of CBD oil, instead of the recommended few drops. Still no effect. Then on another occasion recently I finished a whole bottle of wine in less than an hour. I certainly do not recommend that and I don't think I'll be touching wine for a while yet 

It is so hard to live with persistent anxiety. I wake up anxious, I go to bed anxious and remain anxious to some degree at every waking second in between. Most of the time I don't even know why I'm so anxious, since I've removed myself from as many triggers and stressors as I can.

When my baseline anxiety is so high to start with and something does trigger me the physical effects very quickly become unbearable. I understand when you say it can feel genuinely life threatening. As our bodies age I think we become more aware of the damage that kind of constant fight or flight stress response can do.

Kate Kestrel said:

Your experience sounds very similar to mine - and it made me laugh to read of you swigging down natural remedies and wine in desperation - I can relate! 
What’s not funny of course is how hard it is to live with long term, persistent anxiety - at its worst it feels genuinely life threatening because it can become unbearable. 

Me too! In desperation I swigged nearly the whole bottle of CBD oil, instead of the recommended few drops. Still no effect. Then on another occasion recently I finished a whole bottle of wine in less than an hour. I certainly do not recommend that and I don't think I'll be touching wine for a while yet 

It is so hard to live with persistent anxiety. I wake up anxious, I go to bed anxious and remain anxious to some degree at every waking second in between. Most of the time I don't even know why I'm so anxious, since I've removed myself from as many triggers and stressors as I can.

When my baseline anxiety is so high to start with and something does trigger me the physical effects very quickly become unbearable. I understand when you say it can feel genuinely life threatening. As our bodies age I think we become more aware of the damage that kind of constant fight or flight stress response can do.

I think that the dangers can be mitigated if we realise that we're neurodivergent.  Plus in many ways things can be improved because we'll have more knowledge and awareness to draw upon, alongside any support or reasonable accommodations that we can access IF we know we're autistic. 

In my wider family, there were repeated patterns of alcohol problems, mental health issues and one suicide.  And within my immediate family growing up we faced isolation, poverty and sometimes even ridicule and other kinds of bullying.  We became very ashamed and hid from the world even more because, of course, we were blamed and misunderstood.  And we couldn't have friends round because the house was in such a state.  Meanwhile I was a bit of a nerdy swot at school and got bullied for that too, with people assuming that I came from a privileged background (I got free school dinners and wore the cheap version of the the school uniform but everyone, including the teachers, thought we must be well heeled because I was well spoken, polite, no trouble at all and very academic).

I honestly think, though, that much of this could have been avoided with better knowledge and even just a bit of extra support.  And you're probably in a much better position to parent these days, with identification. more resources and forums like this one.  My parents did the best with what they had.  It's just that what they had was very little - emotionally, practically and financially.         

Actually one of the first self help books I read.  That and "How to Win Friends and Influence People".  I wonder how many of us have built up a whole library of self help books...   

As autistic parents of autistic children I worry about our parenting. Lots of love here but also not very organised and added mental health issues mean that I often feel that ‘my best’ as a parent is not as good as I’d like it to be. We muddle along but it’s not ideal. 

That sounds really tough - your poor mum must have been through a terrible time. It must have been hard to go through that as her child. Claire Weekes is really good - I had her book recommended to me years ago and it really helped me - pulled me back from the brink! I still sometimes refer back to it even now. 

NB  Compare and contrast with one bit of advice from the Retreat in York after my son's diagnosis in his last year at university: 

We both attended the follow up appointment which covered options for support while he was still studying.  And one thing that was mentioned was that an appropriate accommodation would be for presentations to be done on a 1:1 basis just with the tutor, or prerecorded, or turned into another piece of work covering the same subject (i.e an essay or report to be shared with the rest of the group).  I couldn't help quipping, "Wow!  You mean we don't have to drink half a bottle of whisky to get through it after all?"   

Yes, it probably was a long shot me getting to university, but I didn't realise that I was autistic and I actually believed that my anxiety was due to me being brought up in a very socially isolated family.   So I just read loads of self help books and kept using my own version of exposure therapy to try to "improve myself".  Some it it actually helped a little but it was mostly doomed and I got into some situations that were deplorable and which I'd never want anyone else to fall into (mostly fueled by self-medicating with alcohol).

My dad had a severe burnout/depression for around 10 years and I also desperately wanted to escape a really bad home environment.  My parents were lovely, caring and as supportive as they could be.  But I now see that they were both probably neurodivergent themselves, with  no support, no knowledge and no money and the dire and shabby circumstances were actually the best they could do.  :(   I feel really sad about it all and they'd have been really shocked if they'd ever discovered that I basically nearly drank myself to death in order to quash my nerves. 

When I went to sixth form and university, there were no allowances made for anything either.  I was expected to speak up and perform, then blamed when I couldn't.  Apparently, I was reliably informed, "Everyone gets butterflies but they just stick with it".   Either that or I was just "being silly". 

Another desperate situation involved me taking one of my dad's valium tablets (which at the time were massive capsules, not the tiny dots of it you get now) just so that I could do a brief presentation, one which lots of others treated as fun.  I sweated for weeks beforehand, with waves of nerves and fear and really unable to sleep properly until it was over.  The valium did work but, of course, is now considered addictive and only given in a small course.  (This was all in the late 70s and early 80s for university).   

So yes, I'm glad I've found something.  Just very put out that that something is illegal and there's not going to be a grow-your-own feature on Gardeners' World any time soon. 

Thank you for your kind thoughts and likewise I hope you can find solutions to help you too.

You are right that alcohol doesn't help, one glass of wine is enough for me too these days. In my younger years I used to consume copious amounts at work social events, just to get through them, but it never made them any easier.

There is a real lack of understanding of autistic anxiety in the medical profession. I hope that more research will be done, so that in future autistic people don't have to suffer like we have without any effective help or support.

Kate Kestrel said:

I want to enjoy my life again

That's how I feel too. Strive to hold on to the belief that if you have been able to enjoy life before then you will be able to again in the future, however difficult things are right now.

You did really well just to make it to university with your anxiety. I had to drop out of sixth form because mine was so bad at the time. I expect the lecturers were quite used to students turning up under the influence of something! 

I think my earliest conscious memory of that anxious feeling would have been around 4 or 5 years old like you. I'm in my early 50s now and have had more than enough of it.

Throughout my childhood I was observing my mum's battle with her severe anxiety and I guess I just thought that was normal at the time. I used to attend relaxation classes with her and listen to the 'self help for your nerves' recordings by Dr Claire Weekes. 

My mum was on high doses of anti-depressants and benzodiazepines for years, including throughout her pregnancy with me. Watching her repeatedly trying to come off the Valium throughout my childhood was horrible. I believe I would have been suffering the withdrawal symptoms during my first few weeks of life and have often wondered if that has contributed to my high baseline anxiety. 

I'm pleased you've finally found something which helps. I'm not sure I'm brave enough to try that currently but if I get desperate enough maybe. I'm not ruling anything out.

Hi - that sounds so similar to me. Wake up feeling anxious, spend all day feeling anxious, go to bed feeling anxious. It’s no way to live and it’s absolutely exhausting and wears you down. 
I am so sorry you’re experiencing this too. Just like you any extra stress on top and then it’s seriously difficult to manage. We need to get our baseline down.

but how? I’m still trying to find a way. Even alcohol doesn’t really help me at the moment (I only have a small amount as I have quite low tolerance for alcohol  - one glass (or two at most) is about all I can have as I feel ill if I have more. It helps a bit - but of late is not much help. 

I’m so tired of it all. Ultimately though I don’t want to give up because I love my family and I want to enjoy my life again. Life is precious - too precious to spend feeling absolutely terrible all the time. I’m going to keep trying to find ways to deal with my anxiety. 

best of luck to you - I hope you find solutions to help you feel better soon.

Yes.  I am actually aghast at how many of us have battled with this, often over a period of years and years.  

My worst ever attempt to relieve my anxiety was when I was at uni and got some Frisium prescribed by the campus GP.  This was after going through the first couple of years of my ill-chosen modern languages degree in a constant state of anxiety and even dread at times.  I needed copious amounts of alcohol to enable me to socialise and it took me everything I had to summon up the courage to go to the GPs.

So...  What happened was probably fairly predictable.  I tried the Frisium, in the prescribed dose, and it didn't help!  So then, in order to join my "friends" (they weren't really, it turned out later) on anight out, I took a double dose, washed it down with wine, then went out.  It still wasn't working, so, being prepared and having the jar with me, I took even more.  I even, in state of false sociability and drunkenness, shared the tablet with my friends.  Plink, plink, fizz, as the advert used to go...   None of us remembered what happened next but we did eventually sleep it off and I was left with the feeling that it had worked.  

This (actually dreadful once others shared their thoughts on how the night out had gone!) experience encouraged me to take more Frisium to help me with an assessed seminar I had to do the following week.  Of course, I knew I needed to take more than the prescribed dose. In fact I was so crippled with nerves I took the rest of the jar!  And, I felt OK (for the first time in a class like this)...  for a while.  Then I made some silly "asides" in my presentation (the lecturer was scowling, I was later told) and, even though I thought i'd done well, I only just scraped through.  I attended another lecture immediately afterwards and, in my state of newfound confidence, took copious notes.  "Great!", I thought.

Of course, none of this was great.  I hooked up with unsuitable partners while in this state and attempting to socialise, I didn't do as well on the course as I might have done (with the correct identification and support) and as for my brilliant notes - when I looked at them the following day it looked as though several spiders had crawled over the page!   It also took me the best part of a week to recover! 

And yes, I struggled in certain situations but my baseline anxiety seemed much higher than others too.  As one of my GPs later observed, I was "differently calibrated".  I was so keyed up every day that it became my normal, and this started before I even became aware of it.  I can remember feeling that way in reception class age 4 and I still felt it at age 54!

So the prescribed cannabis has been a revelation for me.  Could it be the medication I always needed?