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Empirical hope for Panic and Anxiety

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Published: 30Mar2009
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It'd be interesting to know what correlation there is between alcoholism, panic attacks, depression and outright fear.

I wrote an article/story not long ago where an alcoholic found that photographs on the wall changed from the benign to the terrifying. This actually happened to me. They didn't reach out and try to touch me physically, but they did change to a frightful aspect; skeletal, with burning, accusatory eyes.

This caused me sheer panic and abject fear. I was quite unable to stand at that point. I was in bed, but when I tried to rise, I collapsed and had to crawl on all fours to the bathroom.

There I retched miserably until I collapsed on the floor. Slowly, I managed to right myself on all fours again and crawl back into the bedroom. There, I found a bottle of gin and, leaning against a wall, drank a goodly portion until the alcohol level rose and I was able to stand and put on my clothes.

After all these years, it's difficult to assess my feelings, but I was able then to function, provided I wasn't far from the bottle.

Since my admission to hospital and finally 'drying out,' I've given a great deal of thought as to why I should have turned to the bottle in the first place.

Those wretched dancing lessons I was forced to take as a youngster seemed to be the catalyst; my desperation to overcome the fear I felt in having to attend them.

But as I've mentioned previously, after the first session, which I enjoyed, the fear of going to these lessons once a week left me. So why did I continue drinking?

My mother was an alcoholic, and the disease is supposed to pass down the distaff side of the family.

Let me leap forward another fifteen years when I was attending my third and final hospitalization. I'd heard other recovering alcoholics talk about the 'penny dropping.' When they finally felt free of the bottle.

I'd always thought of this as nonsense. I'd never been really free. The two previous hospitals I'd attended worked for a few weeks after my discharge, but it wasn't long before I was back to my old ways.

This particular Monday morning, (yes, it really was a Monday. I remember the incident most vividly, even today), I had breakfast and was leaning on one of the broad windowsills in the common room, gazing out onto the well kept lawns.

All of a sudden, I had this feeling as though a great weight had been lifted from me., and I knew as surely as any alcoholic can ever know, that I'd never drink again.

It was a most extraordinary sensation. I can describe it only as an overwhelming joy. My problems weren't over, and this is where my musings about alcoholism, panic attacks and anxiety re-appear.

When I was finally discharged, the effort to move from one room in the house to another, took an almost super-human effort of will. It terrified me. As for going outside, that was out of the question.

After three weeks, these feelings of dread left me, and once again a delight in life replaced these horrible sensations.

But why should this be? What happened to my mind that it was so frozen in fear one day, and yet so free, clear and happy the next? I can only think that the truth lies in the fact that I lived in a state of fear from a very early age.

My self-confidence has always been negligible to non-existent, and I wonder if a child could be diagnosed early enough, whether his or her feelings of panic, fear and anxiety could be overcome so that they could lead a normal, happy life.

There's no question in my mind that I drank to overcome fear and anxiety. Could this be prevented in a child now?

Empirically, I feel it could, but then comes the problem of medication. And yet there are programmes that forswear such medicines and indeed have been shown to work.

I would like to think that children can be, not so much cured, as prevented from these awful panic and anxiety attacks that I know from personal experience can lead to alcoholism and long term depression.

This caused me sheer panic and abject fear. I was quite unable to stand at that point. I was in bed, but when I tried to rise, I collapsed and had to crawl on all fours to the bathroom. http://www.mbizossad.com

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