nick_london
12-07-06, 16:28
I replied in the other thread but the browser got a bit stroppy and it doesn't show up in mine. So, repost:
I has my first panics in the late 80s as a teenager. I remember sitting on top of a bus one morning - with a hangover, having smoked many French cigarettes the night before - feeling my thoughts to be racing; 'overthinking' I called it. Terror and fear were not there then but it wasn't long before I was walking along the street one Saturday morning, wondering what I was going to do with my life and how I was going to get a job that I wanted to actually do, when I had the first of the 'killer' ones. I somehow got to a pub and glugged a few quick pints down - I'd read somewhere that 'alcohol calms the brain'.
I didn't realise it then but a pattern was being set in stone. I was 19. I'm now 36.
I started to have them in public places: a big one in WHSmith in Croydon I remember; feelings of self-conciousness in public places, pubs and clubs required bigger doses of booze to cope. Meanwhile, my personal life was turning to crap. I had big ambitions - to act, to write etc but the anxiety and panic/ booze therapy always got in the way. Back then this was all a taboo - I never thought about seeing the doctor: I just thought there was something uniqely wrong with me.
So I binge drank, did menial work, had panic attacks and eventually became unemployed. Now I was 21. I had asthma (I sometimes think that a study of Ventolin use in childhood and its correlation to adult panic and anxiety would be revealing: a friend of mine who I only came to know in the last couple of years and who is exactly the same age as me has had a similar, though markedly worse 17 years of panic and anxiety). One winter my asthma became bad and I went on steroids which caused weight gain and ratcheted up my panic attacks 50 fold. They gave me dizzy spells and on one occasion I had a huge attack. The attack that was really the year zero of the whole condition.
It sealed my great fear of dizziness. I was incapacitated with fear; lying on my bed for ten hours convinced I'd had a stroke or suffered some greivous brain injury; I whimpered - I'd never known fear like it. No young person - nor old for that matter - should.
After that I got it back together but I developed a morbid fear of another 'attack'. In pubs and social company I tanked up to escape the fear - and suffered nervous hangovers. By my early twenties I was - by the rigorous John Hopkins University test - an alcoholic. I worked for periods and then didn't work for longer ones. I discovered marijuana - which at first was very calming. I developed a liking for drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana because 'it made it all go away'.
Only it didn't of course. And a panic attack on Marijuana is like a normal panic attack triple distilled. The strength of the twentysomething kicked in and, not put off, I just loaded more booze into the equation with a wider set of friends and acquaintances. Aged 23 and bound up with panic attacks and anxiety and the dissociation symptoms of marijuana I went into an extended period of panic, anxiety and depression. Of course, I didn't quite know what it was, except that I was more scared than I'd ever been, was scared to be alone, felt guilty all the time and hopeless.
So I presented to the doctor - who was a bluff young Australian doctor with his rugby trophies on the shelf behind him, who decided that there was nothing much wrong with me and that I 'should talk to my friends'. It was a problem long undiagnosed and now I left the surgery, scared witless and walked slowly down a dark suburban street in November - utterly lonely. I just got on with it after a fashion and worked all Christmas in a department store fighting panic, anxiety and utter despair.
The next few years saw me get some work, move in with a girlfriend and get up to all sorts of adventures - with panic attacks a constant feature and anxiety mixed in. I went to the doctor and got benzodiazepams out of him after making up a story about being spiked on LSD. These helped and, with a sinkin
I has my first panics in the late 80s as a teenager. I remember sitting on top of a bus one morning - with a hangover, having smoked many French cigarettes the night before - feeling my thoughts to be racing; 'overthinking' I called it. Terror and fear were not there then but it wasn't long before I was walking along the street one Saturday morning, wondering what I was going to do with my life and how I was going to get a job that I wanted to actually do, when I had the first of the 'killer' ones. I somehow got to a pub and glugged a few quick pints down - I'd read somewhere that 'alcohol calms the brain'.
I didn't realise it then but a pattern was being set in stone. I was 19. I'm now 36.
I started to have them in public places: a big one in WHSmith in Croydon I remember; feelings of self-conciousness in public places, pubs and clubs required bigger doses of booze to cope. Meanwhile, my personal life was turning to crap. I had big ambitions - to act, to write etc but the anxiety and panic/ booze therapy always got in the way. Back then this was all a taboo - I never thought about seeing the doctor: I just thought there was something uniqely wrong with me.
So I binge drank, did menial work, had panic attacks and eventually became unemployed. Now I was 21. I had asthma (I sometimes think that a study of Ventolin use in childhood and its correlation to adult panic and anxiety would be revealing: a friend of mine who I only came to know in the last couple of years and who is exactly the same age as me has had a similar, though markedly worse 17 years of panic and anxiety). One winter my asthma became bad and I went on steroids which caused weight gain and ratcheted up my panic attacks 50 fold. They gave me dizzy spells and on one occasion I had a huge attack. The attack that was really the year zero of the whole condition.
It sealed my great fear of dizziness. I was incapacitated with fear; lying on my bed for ten hours convinced I'd had a stroke or suffered some greivous brain injury; I whimpered - I'd never known fear like it. No young person - nor old for that matter - should.
After that I got it back together but I developed a morbid fear of another 'attack'. In pubs and social company I tanked up to escape the fear - and suffered nervous hangovers. By my early twenties I was - by the rigorous John Hopkins University test - an alcoholic. I worked for periods and then didn't work for longer ones. I discovered marijuana - which at first was very calming. I developed a liking for drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana because 'it made it all go away'.
Only it didn't of course. And a panic attack on Marijuana is like a normal panic attack triple distilled. The strength of the twentysomething kicked in and, not put off, I just loaded more booze into the equation with a wider set of friends and acquaintances. Aged 23 and bound up with panic attacks and anxiety and the dissociation symptoms of marijuana I went into an extended period of panic, anxiety and depression. Of course, I didn't quite know what it was, except that I was more scared than I'd ever been, was scared to be alone, felt guilty all the time and hopeless.
So I presented to the doctor - who was a bluff young Australian doctor with his rugby trophies on the shelf behind him, who decided that there was nothing much wrong with me and that I 'should talk to my friends'. It was a problem long undiagnosed and now I left the surgery, scared witless and walked slowly down a dark suburban street in November - utterly lonely. I just got on with it after a fashion and worked all Christmas in a department store fighting panic, anxiety and utter despair.
The next few years saw me get some work, move in with a girlfriend and get up to all sorts of adventures - with panic attacks a constant feature and anxiety mixed in. I went to the doctor and got benzodiazepams out of him after making up a story about being spiked on LSD. These helped and, with a sinkin