A panic attack is hard to describe to anyone who hasn't had one. The best I can come up with is that it's like a negative orgasm. Something totally uncontrollable takes over your brain, you are in a heightened state and, although you can think while it is in progress, you cannot stop it. But rather than pleasure there is truly terrible anguish and fear. Usually the panic latches on to something so that it seems you are panicking about something and at that moment you could be offered all the money in the world to do that something and you would not take it. One of my panic attacks was at the thought of having to sit in an optician's chair having an eye test. Crazy. A panic attack lasts maybe ten to twenty minutes (unlike its opposite). Afterwards you feel completely drained, shaky and exhausted for a couple of hours.
Anyway, there I was, walking home from the doctors, thinking all would now be well, my week of withdrawal hell having finished. I still felt slightly groggy, but my spirits were high.
I'd rescheduled people from the cancelled training course onto the next one in six weeks time - plenty of time for me to recover. But each time I thought about that next course, panic would start to rise. Still, there was plenty of time for that to wear off.
The opposite happened. As the date got closer the feelings of panic got worse. It seemed partly rational - what if I was ill during the course? - and partly irrational: each time I thought about the course a wave of panic just swept over me.
I went back to the doctor - a different doctor this time. I described my symptoms and he said it was anxiety, which was a common after effect of alcohol withdrawal. He prescribed Librium. I took one and within 30 minutes I was having a full blown panic attack - the drugs can do that sometimes. Next day he prescribed Valium. Valium was better but not a complete cure. I cancelled the February course, moving everyone to the one at the end of March. I'd be recovered by then surely.
Not only did I feel awful most of the time and have the occasional panic attack, but also I'd get sudden attacks of shaking: for half an hour I'd just shake, and then feel numb and drained. My mind was affected - I couldn't do mental arithmetic as fast or as reliably as before; watching quiz programs I just could not recall answers quickly and sometimes even when I knew I knew the answer I could not bring it to mind. (Who wrote detective novels featuring Hercule Poirot? I knew I knew but just could not get at the information). I had read that alcohol withdrawal can cause brain damage - that went on the list of things to worry about.
Every night when I lay in bed I would shake - a sort of internal tremor. Every morning I'd wake up sweating pungently - but sweating only from the armpits, not from the forehead or anywhere else. And when I woke my mind would be filled with gnawing, obsessive worry. I had no energy, I felt cold all the time, I felt ill most of the time.
And on it went through April, May and June. There was no joy, no joie de vivre, no pleasure in anything. I dreaded everything - holidays, going out for a meal, running courses - everything. All I wanted was a future that was completely empty - a future in which every day was the same and full of nothing. A future in which there would never be anything, a future in which I never had to do anything or to go anywhere. Only the prospect of endless nothingness calmed me.
The textbooks list many symptoms of general anxiety disorder including: abdominal discomfort, diarrhoea, dry mouth, shortness of breath, dizziness, frequent urination and difficulty swallowing. But I never had any of these symptoms.
Symptoms I did experience included obsessive worry, feeling uneasy, feeling tired, being easily irritated, a fear that I was going mad, an inability to concentrate, occasional rapid heartbeat, pins and needles in the lips, tremors, having a sense of dread, thinking constantly about the worst outcome, obsession with one subject, feeling cold even on the hottest days, a fear of getting stuck somewhere I couldn't 'escape' from (aeroplane, crowded sauna, back of a two door car), the fear of having a panic attack, the fear of becoming unwell. But most of all I just felt plain old-fashioned ill - just like you feel when you've got food poisoning, but never progressing to the throwing up stage.
My symptoms were not an exact match for anxiety. Indeed, I concluded I was not just suffering a psychological condition. I was sure the main reason I felt so bloody awful was physical: after 35 years of drinking my body had become so dependent on alcohol that my brain and body chemistry had gone completely haywire in its absence. I did think about having a glass of wine a day to see if that made me feel better, but I was afraid it might. If one glass made me feel better how much better would two make me feel, and how much better would a glass first thing in the morning make me feel... I could see a slippery slope to proper alcoholism there so I never tried it, deciding to ride it out hoping my body would eventually adjust to an absence of alcohol.
I tried Valium on and off, and Librium again. Neither completely prevented the anxiety, and coming off them itself caused withdrawal symptoms - even the medicine was making me ill.
I forgot to mention that a few weeks before all this had started I'd torn a knee cartilage. Even on that holiday in the Canaries I had been painfully hobbling around. And the knee just would not heal. I didn't consult the doctor about it: I just would not have been able to go into hospital - not for all the money in the world - even the thought of it got the panic rising. So just at the time when lots of exercise might have helped I was incapacitated. Sod's Law.
In September, after months of putting people off, I made the decision not to run any more courses. Quite apart from the panic attacks and so on, I felt I simply did not have the strength any more to run three day courses and that if I tried it would take so much out of me I'd have some sort of collapse. So I shut the company down. And it was at this point that the mental desperation, desolation and utter hopelessness set in. There was nothing in life I enjoyed doing, nothing I looked forward to, nothing that brought pleasure. I started hoping the next day would not come.
GPs do not seem geared up to help in these situations. Perhaps had I felt well, strong and assertive I would have demanded a referral to a clinic or something like that. But I did not feel well, or strong, or assertive - nor was I thinking all that straight.
My GP did suggest an alcohol withdrawal group. I went along. But they were alcoholics trying to stay dry. I was never that kind of drinker and I had no urge or desire to start drinking again. So though it got me out of the house once a week and it was nice to get a bit of moral support it didn't really address my particular needs.
By October - nine months on - the panic attacks had become infrequent - perhaps one every couple of weeks - but the almost unbearable feeling of just being plain old fashioned ill most of the time persisted, as did the mental hopelessness. I started to work out how I would commit suicide. And yet I had occasional days when I felt almost normal. But the ups were fleeting and the downs were very low.
Now willing to try anything I went to a hypnotherapist - I found her via my friend Google. Three sessions at £50 each. And it helped, it definitely helped. My feeling of mental desolation lifted. One of my panic-inducers was the prospect of going to the theatre - of being trapped in the middle of a long row. Encouraged by the therapist, I went to a theatre one afternoon in November. I sat on the end of a row and the theatre was only half full, but I felt no panic and I actually enjoyed it. Progress. I was recovering.
For the next 6 months there were ups and downs. On days when I had nothing to do I felt fine - sometimes for the whole day. Feeling well for a whole day was something I had not experienced for at least a year. But the slightest bit of stress or tension - or just being in a busy supermarket - would make me feel ill, panicky.
And so we come to today, 18 months after I stopped drinking.
I no longer experience tremor when I lie in bed. I no longer wake up sweating. I haven't had a full blown panic attack for several months and only occasionally get minor ones. I no longer feel cold all the time. I only rarely feel physically ill. Some nights I go to bed actually looking forward to the next day. That is real progress. I even feel energetic some of the time and occasionally I even feel really well.
But I am far from whole. I do not want to go abroad on holiday: the thought provokes mild anxiety and I have a rational (I think) fear that I would get unwell, and quite possibly increasingly panicky, as any planned holiday approached. So flying is out. Some days I am still beset by soul destroying, obsessive worry. Stress can still plunge me into a state of nervousness and anxiety. Within the space of a few minutes I can go from feeling fine to being unwell.
The illness is a bit like a mad dog. A lot of the time it behaves like a friendly pet, but every now and again it turns on you and bites you. When I'm up I think: that's it, I'm cured! But when I'm down it all floods back and the darkness and despair descend.
I've just tried 5-HTP. It is supposed to increase serotonin levels and make you feel good. First day it seemed to be calming me, but the third day was a bad one: I felt restless and anxious. The fifth day was odd: I felt I should be worrying more about some of the things that crossed my mind - as though the 5-HTP was blocking off the 'proper' reaction to those thoughts. I gave the 5-HTP a week - probably not long enough for a fair trial. Only a week because I discovered another miracle cure I wanted to try and couldn't wait: Relora.
Relora, if one believes what one reads on the internet, is even better for anxiety. And reading the blurb on a Relora website I've also managed to convince myself that I may have an underperforming adrenal gland which, if true, would be compounding my symptoms. Relora apparently helps adrenal gland function. Mind you, I have over the past 18 months from time to time convinced myself I have any number of ailments.
On the second day of taking Relora (2 x 250mg a day) I had a minor panic attack, for no apparent reason. This was very disappointing. I don't know if it was coincidence or if the Relora caused it. I had the feeling that had there been anything worrying on my horizon the attack would have latched on to it and it would have developed into a full blown panic attack. Disappointing indeed.
I feel that what I need now is a period of a few months of feeling OK with no relapses. Perhaps 5-HTP or Relora will give me that. I think a period without anxiety, panic or feeling ill would give my sub-conscious its confidence back, the confidence to do the things normal people do: go to concerts, go to crowded places, fly off on holiday. But I know I am nowhere near that yet: just writing this paragraph has fanned the embers of panic.
I also feel I've permanently lost a little bit of my mental abilities - I'm not as quick as I was and sometimes my mind does not spot connections that it once would have.
Is there a cure for panic attacks, is there a cure for anxiety? My experience suggests there is no magic bullet. Though perhaps a lead bullet would have done it - and there were times when that seemed like an attractive solution.
The only cure for anxiety and panic attacks, it seems to me, is the Great Healer: time. Psychological intervention - self help books, cognitive behaviour therapy, hypnotherapy - I am sure can improve things but none of them offers an instant or a complete cure. Though any therapy that takes weeks will seem to be effective thanks to the coincident passage of time while the great healer does its work. Drugs - whether prescription or dietary supplements - can help and can mitigate symptoms. Drugs and psychiatry help but only time heals.
I can only surmise, from my own experience, that if you are reasonably mentally stable before anxiety strikes you down, and the cause of the anxiety is eliminated, that you have to be prepared to write off a couple of years of your life while your mind and body heal themselves. Whether thereafter you will for evermore be a cracked vessel I cannot say. I can only hope not.
...
It's now 4 years on.
Just after I'd written the above I went on a narrow gauge railway. A small, crowded compartment induced panickiness and for an hour I fought the urge to pull the communications cord and jump off. An hour of hell. But at the other end, after 10 minutes walking the panic wore off and I took the train back - this time paying extra to ride in half empty First Class - and I was fine.
I've had to go to a couple of funerals in the past 2 years. The thought of being trapped in a pew induced panickiness and only liberal doses of valium got me through.
Four years on some damage remains and, one must assume, is permanent. A few weeks ago I became mildly panicky on a conducted tour of Bath Abbey: on a narrow spiral staircase, with half the group in front of me and half behind me, the panic started to rise. For the rest of the tour I made sure I was last up and down the stairs and was OK, but I felt a little shaky and very disappointed for an hour or so afterwards.
My flying days are over. Particularly after the attack in Bath a few weeks ago, I know I would not be able to handle a couple of hours locked in a confined space.
So my life is limited and I have an abiding sense of disappointment at the inability to do the one thing I was most
looking forward to in retirement - jetting off to sunny climes.
But I'm physically well and can handle Tesco without the hustle and bustle making me feel ill.
If I avoid situations likely to cause distress I'm more or less OK.