Anxiety and Panic Attacks

[Tacoeaterguy]

Recently I partook in a certain substance the first time. (By the way this isn't a drug thread)

Anyway, it really gave me a horrible and terrifying experience, that honestly lasted a couple of days. I had extreme anxiety under the influence of it, and I think it's really effected me in the long run. I had initially done it around 4-5 weeks ago, but I still feel really horrible

I've been having extreme anxiety attacks, in which my mind believes I'm being effected by some kind of life threatening condition/problem. The slightest little things can set it off, like taking medication of any sort. As an example, when I took an Ibuprofen, I somehow convinced myself that I was feeling like I was having an allergic reaction to it. I felt funny and I got a really odd sensation. As another example, my doctor recently prescribed me an acne antibiotic. I started freaking out the first time I took it, in which I began shaking and getting the chills.

On top of this, I can't even hang out with my friends without feeling really odd. I just feel off, you know. Like a state of semi-consciousness, and just really weird. I also started having a problem with loud and intense things. I've been clinging to very calm and peaceful things, and can barely play video games for more than 20 minutes.

Around two nights ago at around 11-ish PM, I was just laying down to go to sleep, and right as I began to close my eyes, I got very dizzy. All of the sudden my legs and hands felt really odd, and I got slight chills. Literally nothing but my mind brought this on. I had also been urinating a ton because I was drinking a ton of water. I looked up all these symptoms on the internet and somehow convinced myself I had Type 1 Diabetes, and that if I didn't get to the doctors soon, I could go into some kind of coma. I stayed up the entire night, and when to the doctor in the morning. Obviously the doctor told me I didn't have diabetes, but then I told her about the "substance", and about the anxiety and medicine she prescribed me. She told me that I should go see a psychologist.

I told my parents everything just so they had an idea what was going on, but I don't want to go to a psychologist. I'm fairly convinced the acne pills that I started taking brought on the recent panic attacks, but the real beginning was when I smoked the shit. I can't really use reasoning to calm down, and when I try and focus on something else it usually doesn't work effectively. The doctor really doesn't understand, and I really don't want to go on medication for something I can deal with it by myself. I don't need a psychologist to tell me that. I'm going to face this head on until it goes away. If anybody has gone through something similar and is willing to give me some tips, it would be very helpful.

Edit: Also during these panic attacks, I sometimes go into what feels like manual breathing

 

[15357]

I really don't want to go on medication for something I can deal with it by myself.

Eh, tbh I don't think that's a good idea. Also don't take narcotics.

Seriously though, do not ignore the doctor's referral. Go see a psychologist. DO WHAT THE DOCTOR SAYS.

 

[Tacoeaterguy]

Also don't take narcotics.

It wasn't narcotics though, I just didn't want to go into detail about the drug so the thread didn't turn into that. It was just weed. I guess "substance" doesn't really imply weed.

 

[Bad^Hat]

I got up to paragraph #2 and yeah seek help.

 

[KiplingsCat]

There's nothing wrong with seeing a psychologist or a counselor or somebody like that, for something like this. They won't insist that you take medicine. They might suggest it, but they can't really force you to. I've always felt myself that talking to a professional about stuff like this is like maintenance...I look after my hair if it gets dry, I eat oranges when I get a cold, and I look after my mind when I'm feeling very down or worried. Sure, they might not tell you anything you didn't know already. So what? There's a lot to be said for talking to someone who's professionally trained to listen to you, and who probably knows exactly how to help you with what you're going through. And if you don't like it, you don't have to go back. But even doing it and deciding not to do it again is something that can help you feel like you have control over your life.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

Absolutely, I agree with Kiplings. You asked if anyone here has gone through something similar which may be the case but you can be sure a psychologist will have met with people experiencing the same symptoms as you have and will be able assist in more ways than you would expect. You can take as much or little from going as you like but I would recommend you go and be receptive that it can help you. I've known people who have had short episodes of their life with anxiety and panic attacks and it can just be the case that it is a short period of their life where a culmination of things threw your mind off track and caught flu (metaphorically). Some maintenance (as said above) and care for yourself can help you shake it off and put you back in control.

Also remember that your lack of desire to get help for some of these things can be as a result of the anxiety symptoms you have. It's a negative cycle but you should find the energy to break it and get the care which will help. There is no shame in that at all!

 

[mechanicallizard]

Anyway, it really gave me a horrible and terrifying experience, that honestly lasted a couple of days. I had extreme anxiety under the influence of it, and I think it's really effected me in the long run.

Ive had smoking sessions that've made me extremely anxious/paranoid, so have a few friends of mine. But its always worn off in a couple of hours after we finish smoking.
So for it to affect you that badly, Id say Kiplings given you some very sound advice.

And how were you before you tried it for the first time? It wasnt built up by something else and then 'unleashed', so to speak, by the effects of the weed?

 

[Tacoeaterguy]

Yeah you know what, I think I am going to go see the psychologist. I've been having the worst night's sleeps. When I go to lay down and close my eyes, I get a slight dizzy feeling. Then I begin to feel tingly in my arms and legs. I think it was so intense last night it made me have a dream that I was smoking weed again.

I'm sure this is brought on by stress or something, but it's really sort of frightening.

 

[AKIRA]

OK.

What I'm about to say you better do and yes I'm being serious.


EAT HEALTHY. START GOING TO THE GYM

Many people are lazy ****s who listen to the bullshitters of the medical world - psychiatrists and go for the "easy" way out and get medication that does a lot more harm than good. If by chance you don't get even more ****ed up by the slew of potential side effects, the meds won't do anything but provide temporary relief. It's a band aid solution basically. In time your body will get used to the meds and they won't work and you'll have to find something else, constantly switching.

Start eating right, start going to the gym or do physical activity DAILY and take some vitamins. I can't stress that enough. While doing all of this, please go see a psychologist, not psychiatrist as they are really only there to push pills on people. Psychologists are trained in WHY your mind/body is doing this and has a varity of mind techniques to eliminate this negative train of thought.

The exercise, healthy diet and vitamin pills will help with your negative physical sensations and seeing the psychologist will help with the mental bit of your problem. Using both of these in unison will really help.

Also, important to note that you have to be consistent wtih this stuff for at least 2-3 weeks. Try really hard to not slip and you'll notice a huge difference.

 

[KiplingsCat]

Many people are lazy ****s who listen to the bullshitters of the medical world - psychiatrists and go for the "easy" way out and get medication that does a lot more harm than good.

Anxiety is a serious problem for a lot of people and sometimes they can't deal with it on their own. Taking pills isn't the "easy" way out. For some people, it's the only/best way out. Anxiety is a real medical condition.

OP, I'm not saying you need to take pills. I can't say that. The only person who can say whether or not you should take pills is a psychologist or a doctor. And the only person who can decide whether or not you take pills is you. But going to talk to someone about this =/= being prescribed medication apropos of nothing.

I would second the advice about regular exercise and eating well. That stuff makes a huge difference.

 

[Tacoeaterguy]

I've actually been doing that for awhile now. I started lifting weights and doing 45 minutes of cardio almost every day with a friend for the past 3 weeks. I can honestly say it's the only thing that truly makes me feel the way I did before this all started. Once I get home though, I just go back to feeling "off".

 

[AKIRA]

I've actually been doing that for awhile now. I started lifting weights and doing 45 minutes of cardio almost every day with a friend for the past 3 weeks. I can honestly say it's the only thing that truly makes me feel the way I did before this all started. Once I get home though, I just go back to feeling "off".

Can you define "off" a little bit more? Aside from the physical sensations what else is off?

 

[Tacoeaterguy]

Well, difficulty focusing and having trouble remembering things. I also seem to have a heightened sense of alertness.

I don't really know though. Those are all factors to what I'm feeling right now, but there's just a really weird mental sensation happening

 

[sinkoman]

Sounds a lot like me when I first started experimenting with substances a good 5-6 years ago.

Honestly, for me, I don't think it ever really went away. I still deal with the anxiety on a daily basis, and at this point, I don't think it's ever going to leave me alone. I've gotten to the point though, where i've learned to accept this fact, and rather than look disdainfully upon myself as some sort of inferior creature because of my tendency to panic, i've (only just recently) begun to try to and see it as more of a personality trait than a flaw. There are a lot of aspects of my personality that I really believe BENEFIT from the situation, and i'd like to some day get to a point where I can harness it as some sort of demented creative energy that contributes to my life in a purely positive manner.

What really helps me to manage it is adrenalin. I'm no adrenalin junky, not by any stretch of the imagination, but right around the time that these feelings became a major problem for me, I was also starting a 3 year stint on my highschool wrestling team. A psych I was seeing suggested going hard in practice (and conditioning), to try to burn off any Cortisol in my system that could be contributing to the anxiety. It helped a lot, but I noticed also that the anxiety, when coupled with the adrenalin, sort of produced an extremely heightened sense of awareness, almost as if I had just done a fat bump of Cocaine. It's an extremely euphoric sensation, which I think explains why I started getting into things like BMX and Motorcycles after I quit wrestling, and it feels great knowing that you can utilize something that's normally an emotionally horrifying experience, and produce something that's (almost) entirely positive. Couple this with the semi-long term euphoric feeling you get when your cortisol levels drop, and you've got a great way to remain in control of your affliction.

 

[Tacoeaterguy]

I don't want to manage this. I want to annihilate it.

I honestly don't enjoy sleep anymore because of how ****ing weird it makes me feel.

 

[sinkoman]

You know, it might be something as simple as feeling guilty about having smoked weed for the first time. You might not consciously think to yourself, at any point in the day, that "oh ****, weed is horrible, and i'm ****ing horrible for having smoked it", but if deep down you've been conditioned by society to look down on drugs in general (especially to the point that society wants you to look down on them), it could be enough to subconsciously weigh in the back of your mind and totally **** up your ability to function.

I also suggest the psych option. If not a psych, then just maybe talking to your friends in person about this, and seeing if they have any sort of insight into the matter. You really shouldn't go to a psych unless you really want to, I think seeing one if you aren't mentally ready to do so would be a bad idea, but I really do think that seeing one eventually can only be a positive experience.

 

[RakuraiTenjin]

Not sure what you took there man, but based on what you said it sounds like it's in your head rather than any substance. Ibuprofin does not affect your mind nor thinking- so while what you were experiencing was very real it wasn't caused by the ibuprofin, it was caused by your own brain.

Seek psychological medical treatment, it's not typical to be so on edge and they have working treatments for that type of stuff I think.

 

[Dynasty]

[Edit] A nice tl:dr post.

Going to get alot of negative 'comments' about what I'm about to type no doubt, as I'm not the brightest tool in the shed as many here will point out, this is the internet after all, but ***k it.

Dont take any of what I type personally, but sometimes people need to hear the truth, and sometimes what I write rings true based on previous post. For some reason, mainly about women...go figure.

Edit: Also during these panic attacks, I sometimes go into what feels like manual breathing

I fail to see how that sensation, I'm assuming, makes you freak out or makes you feel like there's something wrong with you.

ALL breathing is manual. Just like all blinking is manual. Blinking and breathing are controlled completely by you, whether you focus on it or not. Call it subconscious if you will. You are in control, but because you're doing it every second of every day, you filter it. You are processing every breath and blink, but your mind has trained itself to shove all that to the back of the list of things that deserve your full attention.

You said you freaked out when you took some Ibubrofen.

Ibubrofen does nothing more than inhibit.

Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as ibuprofen work by inhibiting the enzyme cyclooxygenase (COX), which converts arachidonic acid to prostaglandin H2 (PGH2). PGH2, in turn, is converted by other enzymes to several other prostaglandins (which are mediators of pain, inflammation, and fever) and to thromboxane A2 (which stimulates platelet aggregation, leading to the formation of blood clots).

That's it. That's all it is.

Back on topic though, any anxiety you feel, is you, to me anyway, simply losing control of your own thoughts, then spiralling downward into what feels like an unbreakable chain of events where you're panicking about the fact that you're panicking about the fact that you cant control whats happening, etc.

You're not alone. People do it every day. Just like we all talk to ourselves. We panic about not completing that report at work, which leads us to thinking about having to face an angry boss, which leads to a potential review, which leads to potentially being fired, then how do you tell your wife, then not affording the mortgage, and holy shit your mind is making you shit yourself. You think of a long chain of events that cause you to have anxiety as you dont want it to happen, and you become desperate because you want a solution that gets you out of trouble that you dont even know if you're in, all in the space of 30 seconds. All because of one...little...report.

We worry about so damn much in this world, for no reason.

There is one word I've used deliberately; control.

The inconvenient truth is that we are, no matter what anyone tells you, we are never actually in control. Control (like safety and safety procedures, health and safety, fire drills etc) is an illusion.

As arrogant, immature, adolescent, call it whatever, of me to think; ''Stop worrying about things you cant influence'' is what calms my mind in moments of panic of what will happen in the future. I used to think ''Stop worrying about things out of your control'' for years, until I realised we are in control of nothing. We only influence through decision and actions.

Nothing you do in your day to day routine is in your control. You DECIDE what to do that day, how to do whatever it is you decided to do, but you dont have actual control of the outcome. You can go for a drive, you 'control' the car yes, but you cant control the tyres. You cant control the electronics working behind the dashboard. You decide what the electronics do to the display, but you dont control the electricity running through the wires. You push the brake pedal, but you dont control the brake cable suddenly snapping and the brakes failing. You dont control the guy crashing into you.

Did you know that something like 80% of walking is actually falling? Think about it. You DECIDE to put one foot infront of the other and stop the fall, but you dont control the ground suddenly giving way, you dont control the individual fibres in your leg that form your leg muscles that tense with each step to soften the fall.

Get my point?

*insert over-reacted outburst from HL2.net member about how full of crap I am*

So, what's control got to do with your anxiety attacks?

Well, personally I dont believe in anxiety attacks. What a retarded statement right? Thats not me saying I think you're full of it. I'd never say that to anyone when they feel they have a genuine problem. I know plenty of people suffer from it, but I always fail to see how hard it is to bring yourself together about it. To me, anxiety is fear taking over you, over whatever it is you're thinking about, and you feel there's nothing you can do about it, so you back away from it and panic.

What you really need to do, is grab your fear and panic by the balls and tell it to **** off. You need to act when you get these panic attacks.

I'll give you an example.

I sometimes, like you are recently, really, REALLY dont want to go to sleep. Why? Because the idea of not CONTROLLING (that word again, ironically) what I dream about kind of freaks me out. The process of falling asleep freaks me out sometimes as well. Not knowing when it's going to happen. Not having any clue of what will race through your mind over the next few hours. Falling to sleep, sometimes, not always, is where I put my opinion about anxiety and grabbing fear by the balls applies.

Sometimes I'll be lying in bed with my mind on speed. Thinking about everything. Like the brain isnt capable of processing so much stuff. Like I'm smacked off my tits and blabbering at super speed about anything that comes to mind. I usually go to be at around 11:30 work nights, around 1am weekends. A few nights back, I had one of these moments in bed. Unfortunately, it takes me a while to act on it. Get in bed at like 11:30 or so, mind goes into overdrive for whatever reason, and I look over at my clock, suddenly it's 2am and I havent fallen asleep. In that moment, I think ''**** me, it's 2 am, I've been lying here thinking of bullshit for 2.5 hours.'' I will then, bear with me, LITERALLY slap myself across the face and shout in my mind ''SHUT THE **** UP! STOP thinking about shit and go the **** to sleep!''. I'll then generally blank my mind as best I can, concentrate on my breathing, count sheep, anything calm and slow. Calm..your...mind. I'm then usually asleep a few minutes later. Groggy in the morning and in dire need of some hard coffee, but still, got a good 4 hours or so of sleep before getting up to get ready for work.

So for me, when these panic attacks kick in, you're letting your own mind, your own subconscious if you will, dictate your own emotions, so you start to panic, feeling out of control of your own mind. So you panic about the fact that you're panicking, and so the spiral goes and you have an anxiety attack.

So, grab it by the balls, tell it to **** off, and calm your mind. Think about anything soothing, whatever makes you happy. That gets you back in making your own decisions over you mind.

 

[Tacoeaterguy]

I fail to see how that sensation, I'm assuming, makes you freak out or makes you feel like there's something wrong with you.

It's not that manual breathing itself freaks me out. Like you said, I am constantly breathing manually. What brought this on was when I smoked the weed, it made my throat numb. At the time, I couldn't feel myself breathing, so I didn't know if I was or not. On top of being panicky, this really scared me. Now every time I go into a panic attack, this sort of happens (just without the numb throat,) and I become completely conscious of my breathing.

Back on the subject of sleeping though, I slept relatively well last night. The past few nights have actually been interesting because I've had extremely vivid dreams. I mean, it's rare that I actually remember my dreams, let alone have ones that seem almost real.

Ibubrofen does nothing more than inhibit.

I'm completely aware of this, and I've taken Ibuprofen before. My mind though, for some odd reason, was creating an odd sensation, as well as an explanation for the sensation. I guess the most reasonable explanation at the time, was that I was having an allergic reaction. I mean, I wasn't full on freaking out or anything, but I just couldn't get my mind off of the feeling.


The two most worrying things for me right now are the problem with focus, and the problem with memory. I'm having a hard time with both today. Also, I'm seeing weird things that aren't really there. Like today I looked up at the ceiling, and I saw wavy lines, sort of like heat waves. It was really odd. I'm also seeing things out of the corner of my eye and thinking they're something else.

 

[RakuraiTenjin]

Holy shit homie if you're having full on visual hallucinations like you are saying then you should probably go to a doctor. I dont mean in general like 'you should go sometime' but more like you should go immediately, now.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Well, personally I dont believe in anxiety attacks.

sincerely,

Someone Who Has Never Had One.

 

[sinkoman]

[Edit] A nice tl:dr post.

You had my attention, up until you started referring to 100% predictable forces of nature like electricity and tire physics as being "out of your control".

Control is only as much an illusion, as the actual concept of "control" is nothing more than a thought and an idea. Sure, when it boils down to it, this perceived concept of "control" is just a mere concept, not some sort of physical law, but it'd be daft to write it off as nothing more than a thought, and ignore the fact that when you're driving a car, you really ARE in control of things like the tires, the electronics, weight distribution, etc etc.

OP, you really should go in if you're hallucinating though. There's nothing to be ashamed of when seeing a psychologist, you don't even have to let anybody know you're seeing one if it really bothers you that much. They don't just try to diagnose and "troubleshoot" like you seem to be thinking, but they'll also teach you all sorts of cool breathing and relaxation techniques that may sound like total bullshit, but are actually insanely effective.

In the meantime, you might want to try looking up "Dr. Emmet Miller" and his relaxation tapes. Again, may sound like bullshit, but they really helped me when the panic attacks started to become so frequent that i'd get at least a few every day. They were almost 100% effective at halting one when I felt it coming on.

 

[BabyHeadCrab]

...back when I had psychotic style panic attacks I would have auditory and sometimes even visual hallucinations, as well as all manner of physical sensations--this is entirely possible. Scary stuff. Luckily since then I've seen a lot of Psychiatrists and learned some non-medication related ways to cope. These grand level panic attacks are a very real thing.

If possible, stop smoking weed and reading posts by Dynasty altogether until your mind is in a better place. They will always exacerbate dormant or minor anxieties and make them seem giant-sized.

Keep in mind what is concrete, what is real, and what your niggling everyday grievances about life are. Let the realistic anxieties overtake the grandiose ones of shutdown, sensory overload and death. Don't try to completely shut off the panic or shove it under a rug, it won't just go away from neglect or being nudged away.

If you have a serious physical affliction (I'm almost certain you don't), you'll do your best to treat it--and that's the most you can do. Take comfort in that. Worrying, quite obviously, won't solve anything of that nature.

Oh, and see a mental health professional as soon as possible. It really helps. Pride comes from seeking help, not ignoring it.

 

[morgs]

I remember seeing a girl at work have an anxiety attack, was pretty terrifying.