Advertisement
My friend Priscilla Warner wrote the following piece for the site, Drinking Diaries. I thought her words would be helpful to anyone tempted to self-medicate anxiety with booze. You can get to her piece by clicking here. I’ve excerpted below.
***
I suffered my first panic attack when I was a fifteen-year-old waitress at the Brown University cafeteria. As I stood behind a counter dishing out peas, I felt an electrical current tear through my body. My heart raced, skipped beats, and flopped around in my chest. My lungs tightened up so fast that I was breathless. Or so I thought.
I was actually breathing too quickly. I began to hyperventilate. My throat closed up, my body trembled, my arms grew rigid and my fingertips tingled. I thought I was dying.
But I managed to get home, curl up in my parents’ bed, and watched dazed as a family physician paid a house call, examined me and announced that I was “just a little bit nervous.”
Was I ever.
He wrote me a prescription for a tranquilizer, and I carried the pills with me everywhere, on high alert for the next attack. Now that I’d been prescribed a drug, my condition was official: I was a freak.
I knew that for sure.
None of my teenaged friends had a defective central nervous system that reared up and exploded, catching them completely off-guard, turning them into a quivering mess.
Back in 1968, no one ever used the term panic attack. Nobody was in rehab, or at least admitting it. A few kids were messed up enough to disappear, leaving town for places unknown. But I was normal enough to stick it out. Or try to, as I played the role of a mentally healthy adolescent.
I didn’t have panic attacks every day. And I didn’t take Valium all the time. I never talked to my family or any of my friends about the fact that I faced death on dozens of occasions when the all-too familiar symptoms of an attack – tightening lungs, a pounding heart – snuck up and clobbered me.
To continue reading Priscilla’s story, click here.
Follow Priscilla’s journey from panic to peace at http://priscillawarner.wordpress.com.
|
Previous Posts
Therapy Thursday: Sweat
posted 6:01:57am Feb. 09, 2012 | read full post »
Scrupulosity: What It Is and Why It's Dangerous
posted 6:17:35am Feb. 07, 2012 | read full post »
The Treasures of Darkness
posted 6:06:40am Feb. 06, 2012 | read full post »
On Groundhog Day: 12 Winter Depression Busters
posted 6:30:47am Feb. 02, 2012 | read full post »
6 Ways to Stay Resilient in Stress
posted 6:00:24am Jan. 31, 2012 | read full post » |
|
||
|
|
||
| click here to see all of our uplifting newsletters» |
Meet others on the journey in
Therese’s community group
Ask Therese to be your friend
Therese J. Borchard writes the daily blog, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet and is a regular contributor to the award-winning blog, World of Psychology, on Psych Central. Therese is the author of Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes and The Pocket Therapist: An Emotional Survival Kit. Subscribe to Beyond Blue, visit her website, or follow her on Twitter @thereseborchard.
Meet others on the journey in
Therese’s community group
Ask Therese to be your friend
Therese J. Borchard writes the daily blog, Beyond Blue, on Beliefnet and is a regular contributor to the award-winning blog, World of Psychology, on Psych Central. Therese is the author of Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes and The Pocket Therapist: An Emotional Survival Kit. Subscribe to Beyond Blue, visit her website, or follow her on Twitter @thereseborchard.
posted February 7, 2010 at 10:25 pm
Panic attacks won’t kill you ,but you think they are going too seek panic disorder treatment online you don’t have to panic no more
posted September 16, 2010 at 8:23 pm
gas intergovernmental effects ipcc
posted September 16, 2010 at 8:25 pm
temperature limits issue