Xanax and the Rabbit Hole

[The Genealogist]

30. I developed panic disorder with agoraphobia in late 2003

I had a panic attack in a class one day. No warning, just attack. Miserable. Nothing I have experienced is worse than a panic attack. Then, by New Years Day 2004, I was having more than one a day. They are physically exhausting, and mentally disabling, and I was having them in succession on a trip home from Florida back to Missouri. Days and days of these attacks. I would begin to drift off to sleep, and as I was beginning to sleep, I would be jarred awake by attacks I called "night terror." I was crying when I wasn't having an attack, and during the attacks. I even went to the emergency room once because I had so thoroughly frightened my stepmother with the attacks that she and Dad basically drug me into the emergency room. They gave me some drug, I don't remember what it was, to take as needed til I could get back to Florida and to a doctor there for more permanent care. That doctor put me on Prozac and Clonazapam. In almost no time, I was not only able to function again, I was functioning BETTER than before the attacks started. Side effects of the Prozac were problems reaching sexual climax and weight gain. To function again was worth it. I was diagnosed with panic disorder with agoraphobia (I would run away from wherever I was when the attack was going on, to get away from people). If it wasn't for Prozac and Clonazapam, I shudder to think what would have happened to me; if I hadn't eventually become suicidal I think it would have been a miracle. The way it was, the attacks were beginning to warp my sense of reality very badly.