They conclude that slowing the mind down will diminish the anxiety. They then consume some sort of sedation, either alcohol or a pharmaceutical central nervous system depressant, or both.
Since this does slow down the mind, and the anxiety diminishes, they feel the anxiety unpleasantness has been solved.
But it has not. At best it has been postponed. At the cost, the serious cost, of Sedation: central nervous system activity diminishment and degradation. With its accompanying impairment of accurate thinking; impairment of awareness of the difference between logic and emotion; impairment of ability to not slide into melancholy, depression, and suicidal attempts.
All this because of misunderstanding what is actually happening with anxiety.
Anxiety is caused by constant worry. Worry results from not placing a limit upon repetitive mental patterns and ruts. This happens because of a subconscious belief that logic is subject to random luck; run the same pattern in one's mind enough times and a new result will eventually occur. But, this can only be true if new input occurs; with the same old input the result is guaranteed to always be the same. Rather than run the same input over and over [worry], one must search for new input, or a new perspective [which is in itself a new input].
The mind signals the brain of an emergency. The brain supplies the mind with increasingly extra energy to deal with the emergency. But then the mind dissipates and wastes this energy through worrying and anxiety; by allowing the extra energy to repeat endlessly in the same pattern hoping for a new result. An alert mind that truly perceives this error is shocked by it; and this shock automatically ceases the energy dissipation. Dissipation ceased, this extra energy supplied by the brain to the mind accumulates, and thus raises the mind to a different perspective, a new insight, and a solving of the problem that caused the worry and anxiety.
Sedation is Never the answer to anxiety.