Acute anxiety and panic can become so chronic that without medical help, it will build and build and leave the person incapable of functioning normally. When it happened to me I was basically bedridden. I could not watch TV without feeling ill. I did not want to eat, but occasionally would choke down some Ensure, a banana or plain hamburger with nothing on it. I did not want to get up or go outside, shower, or do anything but try to sleep. Sleep only would come in 15 minute waves it seemed, waking in a sweat. I became hopelessly attached and reliant on my girlfriend as I feared that feeling of sinking into my own head or suddenly not recognizing objects around me. Sitting or laying on my side would result in an escalation of the already terrible anxiety and into a panic mode, which seemed to happen regardless as my mind started to depress and dread my plight. Doctors kept me on such a low dose of medication that I never felt relief from it. I wasn't suicidal much but every day for 3 months, I wondered how on earth I would survive the next day. Some advise was to do active things to keep your mind of the anxiety, I even went for a run. Nothing worked, I could not sit, I could not stand. Panic was in complete control over me, there was no talking me down from it.
I would try and lay down and just shake inside myself. I'd have my Amanda sit right next to me and read out of a book and try to focus and eek out a few responses here and there. I fought the need to go to the hospital for financial reasons. I knew my girlfriend had to work. I told her I would be okay every night she had to work, but it was pure hell. Something terrifying and beyond physical pain. The sense that the shaking energy within wants to hold me down but also rip from myself. All of it centered around my fears of not getting enough oxygen, not breathing right and feeling the pain and cramping around my lungs and diaphragm which left me horribly fatigued and insomniac.
Ativan only gave me an hour of relief, of which I was allowed to have once every 8 hours as prescribed. The relief was a pitiful solution. After 4 months the one thing that saved me was the third antidepressant I had tried. I really don't know what I would have done without it, the relieving effects were so profound. Only then did I notice any effect from Ativan, Valium or Xanax. At this point I can function but needed much more therapy to start my life again, motivate, challenge my new found irrational fears. It took 2 years of therapy before I could go to a job interview again, or drive by myself. Be proud of myself.
Today I am dealing with my substance abuse issue that developed as a way to cope. I have finished therapy for now. I help out at my local animal humane shelter, taking the steps to get therapy for my sleep apnea, and I am going to enroll next term in school for pharmacy tech. So I know I have come a long way from just a few years ago. I feel far from 'cured' of anything. I still feel panic disorder, I still dissociate and have 'illusionary' type effects to my vision sometimes. Certainly I feel that the anti anxiety and depression medication has made an impact. I have simply gotten used to being nervous and even afraid and so I have also gotten used to 'just jumping in' and doing it! Finally I have something I haven't had in a long time, which is sense a self worth.
Still on 40mg Paxil, .5mg Klonapin 2x a day, or just as much Xanax depending on the level of anxiety or panic. I take 2mg of Prazosin also. For sleep, I sometimes rely on Diphenhydramine, Gaba, Melatonin or Valerian. Without these meds my anxiety will build and build until it becomes a run away panic attack that does not seem to end. Even with the shitty family abuse, drug use, death of my father, fighting, being robbed and touched once by a sicko on the school bus (hi schoolers should not have approval to ride on the same school bus as grade schoolers!) The problem with a diagnosis is that I might have it managed so well that I can only really identify with the panic disorder. I am not sure, the doctors aren't sure, and my therapists aren't sure either.
