Severe Panic Attack Left Me On The Side Of The Freeway For 30 Minutes.

[Jyar]

I was out on an interview today for a new job. The interview went well, partly because I knew my subject well enough to have the rare confidence to speak openly and at length about it. The other half of the solution was my daily dosage of diazepam. So the interview to say the least went swimmingly and I felt really well, in a way that I haven't felt in over a decade.

As I was driving home down the freeway, a CHP patrol car pulled off the side of the road and rode my tail for about 10 minutes. I wasn't speeding and he had room to go around, yet he choose to ride my bumper.

My confidence that I had gained during the crucial interview just a few moments before was obliterated. My hands were clammy and I bece a pool of sweat. My neck tensed up so badly that I worried I may inadvertently cause myself to have a stroke. Even though I wasn't doing anything wrong, I was completely terrified and panic stricken. I began treming so badly I had to pull off to the shoulder. I was frozen there for about 15 minutes before I could collect myself and I waited another 15 minutes just to make sure I was as calm as possible. The entire event left me completely drained of energy, I felt as if I had just run a marathon or stayed awake for 24 hours straight.

I am writing this because I want to know if anyone else has ever experienced this? Even while on a medication such as diazepam.

 

[mamachick]

I have not but my sister has. She had panic attack so often on expressway and taken by ambulance to hospital and tested overnight on a couple of occassions. She gets severe chest pain. Now she just doesnt drive expressway. She just wont go places. Another sister panics on highways too so she takes all back roads. An hour trip will take her 3-4 hours.

 

[stuff]

I definitely know the obliteration feeling. That's usually how things go for me when they get bad. I go from fantastic to hiding in my car freaking out and then sleeping for three hours somewhere random until I can drive safely again. I usually just take ativan if I'm having a bad go, but it doesn't really work very well, so I couldn't say about the diazepam. I avoid benzos as much a possible mostly because I had them forced on me as a teen before I had to go on stage a lot.

It actually seems to happen a lot when things have gone really well. The good stress of an event will sometimes tip me over as bad or worse than the bad stress.

 

[mamachick]

Fear of success?

 

[just me here]

Most of my worst fears involve car accidents and lack of control of the situation in traffic. For me it comes from my own accidents, years on a motorcycle saving my life from bad drivers daily and countless calls to accident scene as an EMT. I regularly feel myself tensing up and my blood beginning to rush to my head and arms, I know it is time to pull over and relax awhile. Usually I can sit calmly and listen to the radio for 5-10 minutes and go back out.

Being afraid of traffic and driving is in my opinion just accepting a reality most people live in denial of. A comparison:

If I was to stand on a corner with a handgun hanging from my hand, my arm hanging at my side, reading a magazine with the other hand, gun unloaded, well dressed and clean cut, totally unthreatening-just a man on a corner with a gun hanging limply in one hand, every person that saw it and had a cell phone would be dialing for the police. People would talk at work about the guy they saw standing on a corner with a gun. The police would arrive in force, make a felony arrest when (in some cities) no law has been broken. I would have loaded guns pointed at me by screaming cops and probably get wrestled down and cuffed no matter how compliant I was.

If I was driving and ran a red light at the same corner, I would most likely go totally unnoticed, possibly be seen by a police officer and ticketed, possibly seen and ignored, possibly get photographed and summoned in the mail. No cell calls, no office chatter, no felony stop.

Fired from a .357 magnum handgun a 158 grain bullet is deadly at possibly 25 yards, more if it is well aimed, less if it hits bone or if the victim is wearing a heavy coat. Admittedly, bullets kill all the time everyday, some smaller than a .357, some larger and some at longer range and some closer, but one shot mortality from one of the most common calibers out there is roughly limited to 100 feet or less.

A drunk driver is wielding a several thousand pound mass of metal, capable of killing anyone in it's path, and the deadly zone isn't just .357 of an inch in diameter and a hundred feet long, it is roughly 6 feet wide and 4 feet tall and goes on for miles and miles.

Why don't we call in every driver we see break the law? Isn't any sign that a driver is impaired or careless or just plain ignorant enough to alert us to the horrible danger of allowing them to continue driving?

There is nothing wrong with being scared in traffic, maybe there is something wrong with not being scared.

 

[Jyar]

For myself it isn't the traffic. If need be I can move through traffic gracefully, as if my car were a beautiful woman and we were dancing along the freeway.

It is the police that cause my panic attacks, the sight of a cop going in a different direction can cause anxiety, but to have one directly behind me causes sheer panic and terror.

 

[cherryblossom]

a CHP patrol car pulled off the side of the road and rode my tail for about 10 minutes.

What does CHP mean? I'm assuming this is somehow crucial to your experience, but I have no idea what it means.

 

[Jyar]

California Highway Patrol.

 

[just me here]

Thus the name of the annoying 70's television series, CHiPs. Ponch and John were in my nightmares back then, riding side by side on their overweight and underpowered Kawasaki 1000's talking on the cop radio without a hair out of place and unbothered by road noise. Or accuracy regarding legal issues.