Hello everyone,

This is my first time posting about what I've been going through for the last 3 months and I suppose I wanted to tell my story and see if the symptoms I have are all anxiety related, thanks in advance for reading and for any replies!

I'm a 20 year old male and I would say I've had a stressful 12 months but never really thought it would have the effect on me it has had, perhaps I was just naive to the effects of stress. To tell you briefly , I moved out of my parents place in February as I had started a new full time job on the phone dealing with customers, it was a pretty high pressure job and we did frequently have complaints.

The place I currently live in since getting that job is located right in the city centre and is loud all day everyday. I had a girlfriend during this time (and before I moved in) for about 7 months who I did really like but she ended up cheating on me and messaging a couple of my friends afterward. I also had a very close friend who we all found out had been stealing from us all and had lied about having a job and the place that she lived, she was very clever the way that she tricked us. Finally I had also been taking mdma quite a lot with my friends which was stupid of me but I wasn't thinking about it at the time. This is all intended to give you a bit of background about me, I have always been an anxious person socially but never really had any physical symptoms other than the obvious when meeting new people.

Anywayy, I was at work one day a about 3 months ago fter a heavy weekend on the phone when I started to feel a pain in my shoulder and worried about it. I started to feel breathless and then I flew out of my seat , hung up the phone and had to walk out of the office with my heart pounding , shaking, white face, blue lips and feeling like thiat was the end of my life. My colleague helped calm me down and drove me to the hospital where I was diagnosed with having a panic attack. I felt pretty normal for a week after and then had another panic attack at work, this is when it all really started for me. I very frequently (daily) have these symptoms: feeling my heart rate go up , sweating, shaking, crackling sound in my brain, ache and pains, head throbbing headache, numbness, clicking sensations in my head, tight chest , shooting sensations in my arms but I wouldn't describe it as pain (perhaps adrenaline?), dizziness, nausea the list goes on and is constantly changing.

I've been the A&R 3 times now, once after my first panic attack. Another when I had been drinking and my heart rate went up to around 120bpm and it had me lying in bed for hours noticing every sensation in my body so I decided to get the taxi to hospital. finally last week after a whole day of lying in bed trying to calm down with meditation and breathing exercises and a lot of sleep I woke up feeling quite normal which was strange for me and it felt a bit like a calm before the storm, sure enough I got up out of bed and had a full panic attack and went to hiospital again where they did the usual tests (ECG and blood tests) and everything came back fine again.

I've been off work for two months now because of this. I have to move back into my mums place due to lack of money, which may be a good thing as it's a very quite place and if this is all anxiety it's probably better for me than living right in the centre of a busy city. I was on propranolol for a few weeks but it have me real bad nightmares so I stopped. I have also been doing CBT for a while and I can't tell if it's helping or not as I'll sometimes feel a bit better and then be bed bound again. I've been convinced I had something wrong with my heart, that I was about to have a stroke, blood circulation problems, now I'm worried that the pretty heavy mdma usage is the cause for this and it's going to kill me any second ( I haven't done any since my first attack)

One symptom I've been having lately is racing uncontrollable thoughts before I fall asleep and kind of feel constantly half awake when I actually am sleeping. Last night I woke up because of a shooting sensation in my left arm, it wasn't painful but I also wasn't panicking at the time. Lastly I was out with my friends on Saturday night and had been practicing my anxiety management techniques before going out and felt relatively normal for once, I actually had a good time and felt myself for a while,other than this breathing OCD I get tends to get worse when I drink, I feel like I'm not getting enough air and concentrate in my breathing so much I can't stop thinking about it and don't breathe naturally it's forced, I have had this for a long time before my first panic attack,. I've also had ticks and bad habits my whole life. Anyway back to the night out, I felt fine then went back to my friends house and we were all taking then out of nowhere I had the shooting sensation in my left arm that felt like it went up to my Brain along with a crackling and tingling sensation , it sounded like rice crispies popping in my head. After that I went to sleep and when I woke up went to the shop and had to leave due to dizziness and feeling like I was going to pass out, so I went home and back to bed and pretty much slept through to today, I can't tell if that was just because of fear of getting up or what.

Anyway sorry for such a long story and my bad grammar but I was just wondering if anyone has experienced anything similar to me and if it's possible that this could all be panic and anxiety?

Thanks everyone for your time In reading this and this forum is really helpful for people like me so thankyou,