Anxiety And Panic Attacks Ruined my Life

Anxiety And Panic Attacks - Cause and Cure

It's a terrible thing when life becomes a negative experience, when the neutrality of death seems preferable.

I'd worked in IT for many years then set up my own one man outfit running management training courses. I'd jet off to Spain every now and again to sit on a beach. I liked flying. I looked forward to doing all those things you can do when you have more time to call your own.

Then everything changed. I had to give up work, I couldn't contemplate getting on an aeroplane, I dreaded all those things I had looked forward to. Life became a never ending torture.

How do you go from being a pretty ordinary bloke to a wreck who dreads every day? With hindsight it's clear what happened but at the time it was a mystery.

Four years earlier I'd had an infection. Caused simply by not drinking enough water, bugs get into the waterworks and you get a fever. Being a man I'd delayed going to the doctor, by which time the bugs were so entrenched it took seven months of antibiotics to get rid of them.

A few months later I began to feel ropey again and thinking I recognised the symptoms I rushed to my GP clutching a warm urine sample. He dipped the litmus paper in it. It was normal - no infection. And my temperature was normal, yet I felt feverish. I was pronounced fit to fly (I was due off on a Spanish jaunt a couple of days later) and it was all put down to a passing virus.

After that I started to have bouts of feeling under the weather, sometimes just for a few hours, sometimes for days on end. I suspected it was something I was eating, so I cyclically changed everything in my diet. It made no difference. Maybe it was bugs lurking in the kitchen: the kitchen got a deep clean, hygiene became scrupulous. But it made no difference. Too much sun, bath water too hot, the stuff I was spraying the roses with - all came under suspicion, each was eliminated, none was the cause.

After a year of this I went back to my GP during a bad bout. He was puzzled and concerned so took a blood sample. The test results showed nothing. I was declared perfectly fit and normal. Except that I wasn't.

I began to suspect I had some rare disease that would eventually do for me and I imagined my GP going "ah, so that's what it was" after the post mortem. Still, I soldiered on. Sometimes I'd go for weeks feeling perfectly OK. Oddly, bouts of feeling really grim often seemed to coincide with family events - particularly my wife's family events. At one wedding I felt so ill I sat at the back of the church by the door just in case. On another occasion I didn't make it at all. My wife began to suspect I was putting it on to avoid these gatherings. I wasn't. And so it went on for four years.

And then whatever had ailed me seemed to go away. For months I was right as rain. I zoomed off to the Canaries for a week, to an all-inclusive resort - free food, wine literally on tap. A glass of wine with lunch, several with dinner, the odd beer during the day - I felt great! Normally I only ever drank in the evenings but I was on holiday and it was free.

Then on the fourth day I ate some odd tasting fish for lunch, felt a bit off colour and skipped dinner. Felt groggy the next day and had to make a hurried exit from a crowded sauna, and found myself shaking and feeling sick having escaped from it. I got worse and started to worry that I wouldn't be able to get on the plane home. The hotel was a bit out of the way with no doctor on site and I didn't feel up to going out to find one. I just made it home.



Back home I felt awful. The next week I ran a course when I should probably have stayed in bed - but when you're self-employed you do. My wife booked a last minute Christmas holiday. En route to Gatwick I felt increasingly unwell and couldn't face three hours of feeling that ill on a plane. They had to get our cases out of the hold. The doctor said it was probably flu - that's what went on the insurance claim.

Things didn't improve. For the next couple of weeks I felt grim most of the time, didn't eat much and could hardly face a glass of wine. After Christmas, now convinced there was something very wrong with me and feeling pretty desperate, I saw my GP. He decided to do extensive blood tests, which would take ten days to come back.

That evening I decided to get drunk, something I rarely if ever did. I was at a very low ebb, feeling physically and mentally rotten. My irrational thinking was that maybe a good dose of alcohol would drive out whatever bug was doing this to me. But I overdid it and got senseless.

Next day my wife wasn't happy. I felt none too good (but at least I knew why). I decided to punish myself by not having another drink till I found out what was wrong with me. Now there was an incentive to get better. Next day I felt OK till the afternoon when I quite suddenly felt unwell.

The day after that I thought I was dying. Sweating, shaking, no energy, not thinking straight. However, I was running a course the following day so I struggled out of bed and to the nearby hotel to set everything up. But I felt so dreadful I knew I couldn't do the course, so rushed home in a panic and very apologetically contacted the attendees.

The following day was even worse. Sweating, shaking, panic attacks, a feeling that I was probably dying, a certainty that I was losing my mind. Whatever rare illness I had was at last coming out. The next day and the next day were equally hellish - waves of utter physical and mental hell. I feared everything. Just my wife ringing and me thinking she might suggest we go out, or plan a holiday, invoked panic. In my more lucid moments I scoured the internet for every disease known to mankind, looking for one that matched my symptoms.

But on the sixth day, it was a Friday, I was transformed. I woke up feeling positively exhilarated. I jumped into the car and tore off round muddy country lanes, driving far too fast. I found a deserted grassy car park and started doing power slides and hand-break turns - car completely covered in mud, great fun! But not me. I'm a careful driver who can't bear the thought of scratching the paintwork. I got home and washed the car - in itself noteworthy as I hadn't had the energy to do that for weeks. Then, once the mania had passed, down I went again. Back I went to Google, looking for the answer.

And then bingo! On Saturday morning something made me wonder if the fact I hadn't had a drink for a week had anything to do with what I'd been through over the past seven days. And there it was, a 100% match for my symptoms. Alcohol withdrawal. I'd been through a week of cold turkey. Everything fitted exactly: the symptoms, the timescale, even the manic behaviour on the sixth day. I was elated. I looked back over the past four years: I realised all those times I'd felt ill for no apparent reason had been mini bouts of alcohol withdrawal. The more I thought about it the more it all fitted. And I'd never even considered myself a drinker: a few glasses of wine in the evening was about it. But my body had obviously become alcohol-dependent. I looked forward to seeing the doctor on Monday.

The doctor studied the blood test results. "Well," he said. "The blood tests are all normal, I know you haven't been well, but I have no idea what is wrong with you."

"I do," I said. My, did I feel smug.

The doctor looked surprised. "Really?" he said.

And I launched into my well prepared piece: what had happened over the past week, the authoritative websites describing the symptoms, the rationalisation of the illness bouts over the past four years and so on.

At the end of it he said: "Well, I have learned something this morning." His exact words.

I was so relieved. First, I knew what had been wrong with me and secondly I knew how to cure it: give up drinking. But, more darkly, it also occurred to me that if I had not discovered what was wrong with me, and had the doctor said he had no idea what was wrong, I may well have fallen into a pit of despair and spiralled down to God knows where - things had got that bad. But good had triumphed over evil, light had vanquished darkness, hope had banished despair. Or so it seemed.

Little did I know that my troubles were just beginning.


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