Edward_1980
28-09-12, 14:28
Hello. My name is Edward and I am 31 years old. I have been suffering with anxiety, agoraphobia, depression and panic attacks since I was 18 years old. The first panic attack I had was one Sunday evening in the bathroom while brushing my teeth. I suddenly became very anxious, my heart was pounding, I had tingling in my hands and I couldn't swallow and thought I was either choking to death or having a heart attack/stroke. This went on for a few hours until my Mother brought me to the Doctor. I was hyperventilating and he just told me it was a panic attack but I was disagreeing with him and told him it was a heart attack. he told me to breath into a paper bag at home and sent me home. The attack didn't go away and stayed with me for hours. I eventually got to sleep and the next morning I was calm again, only now I was convinced I had a heart problem which make me anxious on and off for weeks. I eventually went back to the Doctor, who gave me 5mg Diazepam to be taken four times daily. I was in heaven. No more panic and was relaxed without my "Heart Problem" worrying me. I took these meds for a year until they stopped working and I suffered such bad panic attacks that crippled me to the point where I became Agoraphobic and refused to leave the house for months on end. The Doctor, now worried about my health and my mental state that he gave me 1mg Ativan to be taken three times daily on top of the Diazepam. This worked for a while and I was so sedated that I left the house without bother and got around to doing daily things. Skip to one year later and I was so depressed and anxious even with the sedatives. I locked my myself into the house (I moved with my partner Markus from Cork to Dublin where I should have been happy. I wasn't and locked myself in again) and had to have every door locked. I was so anxious and paranoid that I thought I was loosing control of my sanity. I began seeing a Psychiatrist and he came to the decision that I needed to come off the Benzos and start talking about my problems in order to beat the depression and Anxiety. I was weened down slowly for months on end, but I began to keep pills hidden in a bottle upstairs where no one could see them. I did this for weeks on end until I had enough to do what I wanted to do. The depression and Anxiety got worse as the withdrawal went on and I decided that I wanted to end it all there and them. I took the pills all at once in a depressive state and layed down to die. It didn't work and I ended up in hospital on a drip to flush my system. I thought it was all going to be OK, but my Psychiatrist and my mental health nurse decided that a spell in the Psychiatric hospital was just what I needed. Feeling defeated and mentally torn down, I agreed and spend two weeks going through intensive Occupational Therapy and learning how top cope with life after Benzos. After I was released I saw my Doctor and Psychiatrist on a weekly basis and my prescription was changed from collecting it weekly to collecting a day's supply at a time in case I overdosed again. I am now on 30mg Zispin, 20mg Zyprexa and 75mg Lyrica (Valium and Ativan replacment). I'm not always feeling good these days. I have anxiety all the time and I switch from depressive to elated and then crash down with full blown panic attacks. I really hope that my story will help someone who is in need. It's been a long and hard road for me, but today I am a better person and I never give up the fight against depression and anxiety. I'm feeling the fear and doing it anyway. I wouldn't say that I'm cured, I would be lying if I did, but I am just living each day as best I can and fighting the illness along the way.