I can relate on the GAD part.
“at least three of the following chronic symptoms (for six months or more): restlessness or impatience, fatigue, concentration difficulties, frayed emotions, muscle tension and problems falling asleep or sleeping.”
Yup, that’s me! 
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Me too.
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I’ve got all 6
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Maybe 70% of foreigners in Taiwan have these symptoms.
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Damn this hits close to home.
At least I can still keep my head up. So many folks on the streets of Taipei City look utterly out of it, walking around like zombies.
Was Taipei always like this?
Guy
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No, it started with the explosion of smart phone use, day and night!
The only one on the list I have is poor sleep quality, but I have no doubt that if I had to put up with the rigmarole your average Taiwanese working stiff has to put up with, I’d be experiencing the full spectrum of symptoms.
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Stop prescribing sleeping pills, for a start.
I can’t help wondering if wafflestop’s post might be onto something: smartphones. That level of absorption in mindless shite is simply not normal or healthy.
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Exactly, I don’t deny some people do need certain drugs and they have benefits. But some anxiety is normal and I think people forget that. People just don’t have the proper coping skills with it and practice them habitually.
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Taiwanese education system, Confucian values, Overwork culture, Scooter rampage, Overall ugly environment with enormous visual noise (cities), Smartphone infestation…
This is a recipe for mental health nuclear bomb.
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I wonder how many of us are reading this on a smartphone. 
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…while slowly shuffling down the sidewalk, head down!
Guy
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Not me. Don’t have one 
Yeah, it’s sometimes very hard to draw the line between a genuine problem and a normal reaction to life. If you have a shit life and you can’t sleep, that’s completely normal. The solution is not sleeping pills, but to fix whatever’s wrong with your life, or at least have a concrete plan for doing so.
Exactly. The doctor’s easiest way to get rid of an annoying and time-consuming patient.
Um, I hope that posting on online forums is exempt from being absorbed in mindless shite.
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I used to suffer … would lay my head down at night and wake up alert exactly 15min later every night. Before that I was under so much self-induced pressure that only whiskey would help me get to sleep. Doctor had prescribed sleeping pills, which I then had to deal with dependency issues.
It’s not so much an issue now, my neighbor who gets home with their noisy pre-schooler at 11pm is my current problem. I don’t know why it disappeared but I’d like to think I got over whatever anxiety I was experiencing.
Can anyone spare a xanax?
A couple of Xanax and a few beers and I’m good to go, duuuuuuude.
They gave me xanax for nerve damage. Seemed ok. Didn’t do much for the neighbours kids that seem to stay up all night every night playing online games next to my room…
Huh, you’d think it’d mellow the kids right out. Maybe up the dosage?