A person with extreme anxiety attacks find it difficult to breathe and function normally. The worst part is that this can become a recurrent event, with no regard for occasion or place. When a person with anxiety feels the symptoms manifest physically, blood oxygen levels tend to go down inside the brain. What happens is a cascade of chemical reactions that lead to fainting and even irrational screaming. Panic attacks are common in people with anxiety disorders, although some people don’t experience panic at all.
We can go for days talking about long term self-help treatments but some individuals with panic attacks still consider medication as the quick fix for when their symptoms become unbearable. One of the first drugs that doctors prescribe to patients is Vistaril. Read on to find out more about this drug and what it does.
Hydroxyzine is the generic name of Vistaril, which is a well known antihistamine. Many individuals are first confused about the use of an antihistamine for anxiety symptoms. After all, antihistamines are supposed to be for allergic reactions that crop up when a person is exposed to an allergen, e.g. pollen, dust, food etc. But it cannot be denied that the majority of hydroxyzine users use the drug vistaril for controlling anxiety symptoms. The other brand for this is Atarax.
Vistaril can stop allergic reactions like itching and nausea, which are significantly the same symptoms for anxiety disorders. When a person is nervous, he sometimes feels itching somewhere in his body, like he were being exposed to allergens.
With itching comes nausea and fainting, which may have been caused by the modification of blood oxygen levels. When blood oxygen levels go down, the mind concentrates on supporting a person’s major organs as well as dealing with the emergency cases like inflammation (like sites of allergic reactions), leaving the rest of the body somewhat numb for a while. Vistaril also has a lot to do with controlling queasiness caused by motion and psychological imbalance, like those that feel sea sick even on land just because the same stimuli related with sea vehicle movement are present.
Many people that use vistaril for anxiety do so to relieve insomnia. It is well known that Vistaril can bring about a state of drowsiness in an almost hypnotic manner. While it is said that the side effects of Vistaril are non-existent, many users claim that the main effect of vistaril is extremely similar to real sedatives, especially the strong ones. Depending on the dose, a person may feel like he’s out of touch with reality when doing normal chores, which could be dangerous if the person were driving or handling machinery.
For the cure of mild anxiety, Vistaril may be the short term solution. There are no physical evidences of vistaril-dependence in the users, but some users are still dependent on this drug on a psychological level. What we mean is that the person does not feel craving for the drug but he may be prompted to keep on using the drug because he fears that the attacks could come again if he stops.
