Saturn Returns · Saturn Returns Production

Owen O'Kane: Are You Addicted to Anxiety Without Even Realising It?

April 21, 2025·1 hr 11 min·5 clips

An ex-drug addict in Owen O'Kane's NHS anxiety group said quitting cocaine was easier than letting go of anxiety.

Anxiety is treated here as something familiar enough to mistake for shelter. Kagi introduces Owen O'Kane through the parts of his life that matter for this conversation: medicine, psychotherapy, and growing up in Belfast during the Troubles. The cold open ties conflict, religion, repression, and identity to his interest in suffering, but it does not overstate the point. It gives the episode a little ache before the clinical language arrives. Owen's book Addicted to Anxiety gives the conversation its thread. The idea is simple and uncomfortable: anxious thoughts and soothing behaviors can become habits because they feel protective in the moment. That protection takes something back. Kagi and Owen spend the strongest stretch of the episode on the tiredness of being watchful even when life is going fine. Joy gets squeezed out by scanning. The client story makes it land. Owen describes someone recovering after years of anxiety, rebuilding her life through work, relationships, travel, and confidence. Then one morning she wakes without the usual knot in her stomach and nearly panics. The missing anxiety feels wrong. When she calls anxiety a place of safety, the conversation gets softer and more honest about why people go back to patterns that hurt. Control sits underneath the whole exchange. Uncertainty can feel worse than exhaustion, so old fear starts to look like a plan. Kagi's short replies keep the room warm and let Owen stay practical without losing the feeling of it: knots, vigilance, relief that arrives carefully. The ending turns toward listeners sharing the show through WhatsApp and finding older episodes late. It leaves recovery sounding less like beating anxiety and more like noticing when peace feels strange.

As heard by us

A calm, grounded look at how anxiety turns into a habit, and how it can be mistaken for safety.

The episode treats anxiety as a habit the mind learns because it feels protective, and that gives the conversation a steady center. Owen O'Kane's clinical perspective keeps it grounded as he connects worry to family systems, early conditioning, and the way familiar fear can…

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Why you'd press play

If anxiety feels like your safety blanket, Owen O'Kane has a calmer way through.

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