panic (1)
Posted 19 December, 2003 in that is f'ed up., preconceived notions
i feel the need to be somewhat confessional today. i also feel the need to state my position on psychotropic medication and psychotherapy. being an englishwoman living in america, i see both sides of the following argument.
it seems that quite a few brits view american doctors as too eager to diagnose psychological ailments. and they see american “civilians” as too eager to medicate themselves and seek therapy for these ailments. on the other hand, being a brit myself, i think too few uk-dwellers look for psychological help when they’re depressed or anxious. the stiff upper lip is still in full effect. sure, there are a lot of americans who decide that they need meds and therapy when their problems may be mild enough to be handled by themselves/their family/their friends, or fleeting enough to merit sitting tight and seeing if they pass on their own. but the backlash towards this trend might leave a lot of people feeling too ashamed to look for help when they need it, in case they’re told they’re wimps, or in case their reason for seeing a shrink is to be able to go on and on about themselves with impunity.
for six years i suffered from panic disorder. during those years i struggled to decide what was the right thing for me to do about it. half of me wanted to be strong enough to eliminate the problem myself. the other half was slowly becoming sure that i couldn’t handle it on my own.
i had my first panic attack during spring break 1994. my boyfriend at the time was leaving school that day. i was leaving the next day. we decided to say our farewells while partaking of some wacky tobacky. five minutes after partakage, i was back in my room, lying on my bed, wondering why i felt so dizzy and weak. soon i had the shakes, the sweats, and the dry-heaves. worse, every time i thought about my ex, i felt horribly sick. it was the strangest feeling; i didn’t want him to leave, because i would miss him during spring break. that made me feel sick. but the thought of him coming in here and seeing me this way made me feel even sicker. i don’t know why i was so intent on no-one seeing me. shame, or pride, maybe. stiff upper lip.
i shut my door and lay in bed. i cried for about four hours straight without knowing why, convinced i’d either gone insane or was about to die, or both. i had laundry drying downstairs, but i was too scared to go get it, in case i threw up or fainted or just went even more insane than i already felt i was. finally i went next door and explained to my neighbor what was happening to me. the only thing she could offer me was more wacky tobacky, the freshman-year cure-all. i smoked myself into a stupor and finally went to sleep.
the next morning i woke up feeling semi-normal. i called the ex-boyfriend and told him what had happened, hoping he would have had the same reaction and that i could then conclude our tobacky had been laced with something nasty. but he was fine. i put my freakout down to too much partying over the course of the semester, and vowed to have a clean and restful spring break.
two hours later, all the fear was back. i skulked around campus, avoiding people, convinced that if anyone asked me what was wrong, the floodgates would open, i would immediately go insane, and i’d be like that for the rest of my life. i was terrified. had i damaged my brain somehow? was some hitherto unknown genetic timebomb kicking in? had i always been destined to go nuts?
i left for the airport three hours early to catch my flight back to LA. i couldn’t stand being on campus anymore. as soon as i got in the cab to the airport, i lost my shit again. i was blessed, though, with the sweetest cab driver known to man. his name was sylvester simon, and he came from trinidad. he must have been about seventy. he counseled me for the entire hour it took to get to the airport. while i sobbed and hiccupped and attempted to explain what was happening to me, he told me that sometimes it was as hard to say hello as it was to say goodbye. he said sometimes, when you have to move around a lot, it all gets to be too much, and everything makes you nervous. he was an angel. i wish i could find him and thank him for what he did for me that day.
looking back, i think i’d always known something was up with me. at the movies when i was a tiny little kid, my parents liked to watch the end credits. meanwhile, everyone else in the theater was getting up to leave. i would be terrified that we’d be the last people in the theater and get locked in. i would become hysterical, and my poor dad would have to grip my shoulders, look into my face, and sternly tell me to calm down. later, on sunday nights at boarding school, saying goodbye to my parents became so painful to me that i would throw up. and i’d cry buckets. at the airport, in my dad’s car on the way to the airport, in the house before we got in the car to go to the airport. no other kids i knew did that. no other kids i knew freaked out in movie theaters.
during that spring break, i spent most of my time in my room in my bed. i was too ashamed to tell my parents what was going on. i figured, whatever it was, i’d probably caused it, or it’d been lurking in my body all along. i had weird, obsessive thoughts. i became convinced that i couldn’t stand up for too long, or i would faint. food freaked me out too. i felt sick whenever i wasn’t on my own, and i couldn’t stand to eat with other people in case i got sick in front of them.
back at school, it went on. first semester of my sophomore year, i didn’t leave my room for two weeks. my roommate brought me food, or i didn’t eat. even going downstairs freaked me out. outside, heading to my classes, the open space scared me so much i would stop walking and not be able to start again. my boyfriend at the time split, sick of my constant crying and inability to go anywhere. finally i went to the college counselor. i didn’t want to talk, though, so therapy didn’t work. after my six free sessions, i stopped going.
and it went on, and on. i considered medication, but i was afraid to take it. i thought it was a cop-out. i thought it would make me into a zombie. i thought i was just being pathetic and that i should get my act together. my obsessive thoughts continued. i thought constantly about throwing up–whether i would, whether i could think myself into it, whether once i did i would be able to stop, whether all my friends and family would abandon me in disgust, whether i’d eventually lose so much weight from my food-and-vomit-phobia that i’d wither away and die. i was terrified of malls, movie theaters, supermarkets, parties, and everyone except O, who was a patient, unwavering source of support for me.
during this time i managed to hold down a couple of jobs, and go to grad school. i thought that if i could just do normal things, people would think i was normal too. it worked; no-one knew about my anxiety. but that didn’t help me any. i looked fine on the outside, but inside i was constantly thinking about where the closest seat to the door was in case i got freaked out and had to bolt. i was thinking about how many minutes were left in class before i could go home and be safe. i was thinking about how i could get out of eating with my classmates after class, or how i could get out of whatever they were going to do this weekend. i never was completely calm unless i was at home. and sometimes, the panic even got me at home too. i never enjoyed anything i did outside my apartment. i was too worried to.
i tried every remedy i could, everything that wasn’t medication or therapy. st. john’s wort didn’t work, except when i stopped taking it and had a massive panic attack. i guess something had been happening in my body, but not enough to merit my continuing to take the stuff. i tried megadoses of calcium and magnesium. i’m sure my bones liked that, but my panic didn’t seem to notice at all. i tried GABA and pydridoxine phosphate, and tons of other stuff which didn’t work. meditation, controlled breathing, no sugar, more sugar, books, pamphlets, everything. nothing.
during this time, i found some newsgroups for panic disorder support. reading them, i felt a bit better. sure, there were some serious nutters on there, and some people who could have benefited from a kick in the ass and a dose of reality. but there were also people like me, and worse off than me. reading their stories, i realized i wasn’t a freak. or at least, there were other freaks like me. i realized this wasn’t my fault. i hadn’t brought it upon myself. i wasn’t milking it for sympathy. i learned to think of my anxiety as a disease, rather than as a lame way i couldn’t help behaving, or as a part of my personality. but i still wasn’t sure how to treat the disease. would it go away if i just left it alone? or would i be like this forever unless i found a way to stop it? and where did shrinks and drugs fit into all this?
eventually, after a giant freakout one night, one where i made O leave the room because even his presence made me panic more, i went to see a shrink. she was seventy and had big problems with her mother, which she proceeded to project onto me. i only went for three sessions.
the clincher, the last resort, happened when i missed my brother’s wedding in singapore because i couldn’t face travelling. i was so ashamed of myself, and so grateful that he didn’t hate me, that i made a doctor’s appointment the day after i told him i wasn’t coming. a few days later, i started taking meds.
i braced myself for imminent zombification. it never came. dry mouth, yawning, and sleepiness came, but no mind-numbing happiness. maybe this stuff wasn’t working either. maybe i didn’t want it to. i’d gotten so used to my panicking self that i didn’t know who i was without it. maybe the medication would hit synapses that i didn’t want it to, and i’d become an entirely different person. it was safe to stay a mess. i didn’t know what would happen if i became normal again.
then, about a month in, i started feeling weirdly curious about things i hadn’t thought of in years. dancing. maybe i’d go out dancing. maybe o and i would go on a road trip. maybe i’d go shopping during my lunch break. at first, i was so alarmed by these new feelings that i would try to think myself into a panic attack, just to see if i still could. but now there seemed to be a new shut-off mechanism in my head, telling me i didn’t need to be thinking about panic. i could stop thinking about it if i wanted to. that hadn’t happened to me in six years. i’d been so used to my thoughts being uncontrollable that i’d come to expect it.
a few months ago, my dad walked me down the aisle at my wedding. i was anxious, but the good kind of anxious, the kind that made me want to jump up and down and get in there as fast as i could so i could see my husband-to-be, because i was worried *he* would be nervous, and i wanted to be with him to calm him down. after seeing adrenaline as a poison for so many years, i finally understood why people seek out that rush. i felt like announcing it to everyone. “i’m nervous!” it felt so good to have a normal reaction to a situation. to be nervous but not paralyzed. to be sad but not sick. to be excited but not light-headed. and my brother, the one who got married in singapore, came to my wedding, despite my not coming to his. i’m so grateful for that.
i don’t plan to be on medication for the rest of my life. i would like not to have to pay the vast pharma-conglomerates $40 a month. i’d like doctors to be more objective and less swayed by pharmaceutical reps holding free samples. and i’d like someone to tell me i’ve been over-diagnosed and that i don’t need the stuff i’m taking. but i honestly feel that medication works, for me. i plan to start tapering off sometime in the near future, just to see if i’m OK without it. but if i start to fall back in my hole, i’m going straight back on the drugs again. i believe i had a serious, life-changing problem, and this is what it took to make it better.
i don’t go to therapy. i don’t feel the need. sure, i have problems, but i’m pretty sure that most of my anxiety was caused by faulty brain chemistry. my problems now are like everyone else’s: i like to smoke cigarettes but i know i shouldn’t; i eat too much junk; i don’t exercise enough; i need to write more. before, my problems were: i’m too scared to leave the house; i’m too scared to go to the market; i’m too scared to go to my brother’s wedding. that’s stuff to talk about in therapy. why i don’t do yoga as often as i should is not. i don’t doubt that almost anyone can benefit from therapy. everyone has at least one problem that a second, professionally-trained opinion could shed some light on. but as of now, i feel fine without it.
so that’s my story. i wanted to tell it in hopes that maybe someone out there is looking for help, and has been too ashamed or faux-tough to go get it till now. i’m not advocating the methods i chose, which is why i didn’t mention the name of my medication. i’m not advertising anything. but i wanted to show you, whoever you are, that meds and therapy aren’t just for sissies or hypochondriacs. they’re also for people who think hard about alternative methods, who know the corruption the medical industry’s riddled with, who are cynical and pragmatic and not whiney at all, but who still need help with something they can’t fix on their own.
we’re out there in america and england and every country. and we deserve to feel just as normal as the normals do.