My Anxiety & Recovery - This is a long one

[raggamuffin]

Anxiety first physically manifested itself when I was a stoner; introducing itself as a panic attack. I was sat with a friend smoking a joint and watching a TV show in my bedroom; a place that has always been a safe haven for me. Out of nowhere my vision and sensory perception felt off - the colours, the sound, the shapes; it all felt alien and surreal. I struggled to comprehend these unnerving sensations and with it, felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach as I was overcome with absolute fear and confusion. I didn't realize this was my body's fight or flight response kicking in responding to perceived danger. The intensity of these disturbing sensations escalated with each passing second. My heart began pounding with such unrelenting force; as if I had just sprinted with all my strength. This reverberation through my ribs was like an ominous drum, beating with such terrifying speed and vigour. I was utterly convinced in that moment that I was going to die. My friend noticed my abrupt change in posture and mood and asked if I was alright. I could barely focus on anything, just the sensations in my own body. I kept asking myself, "Just what the hell was happening to me?" I clambered up to my window fumbling to unlock it via the handle. When I managed to open the window I recklessly flung it open and slumped over the window sill, desperately trying to catch my breath. The cold night air seemed to help and within seconds the strange symptoms had faded and disappeared as promptly as they had started. I uneasily sat back down; feeling utterly bewildered and still on edge. My friend leant over, wide eyed and looking terrified "Ed are you ok? What happened?!" Again I could barely string together a sentence "I...I don't know."

From then on something felt a miss in my day to day life. A sense of safety had been taken from within myself and it never fully returned. When I first looked back on these events I couldn't see the pattern of what was occuring and how my fears and worries were building up over time. I simply buried my head in a fog of cannabis in a bid to blank out the emotions, fears and worries. Thankfully now, in a sober frame of mind; I have managed to piece things together. It seemed apparent that whenever I had a joint too close to when I would go to bed, I would have extreme difficulty in falling asleep. With most people i've spoken to over the years, getting high helps them sleep (even though it often seemed to rob me of any recollection of my dreams and I would wake up feeling like a zombie). I soon found that being high was a hinderance in falling asleep - my mind felt over stimulated and I couldn't relax or switch off; leaving me tossing and turning for hours on end. In the eerie silence of my dark bedroom, with a mind racing and nerves frayed, I started feeling my heart beating. It became a fixation; a normal bodily function that soon began to make me fear for my own safety. I remembered how my heart pounded when I had my first panic attack and I was waiting for it to happen again. I felt like I was living on borrowed time and every night I felt confronted by all my irrational worries that could be blotted out during the day by keeping busy and distracted. At night there was nothing to see or hear - I was alone with my thoughts and it felt like a waking nightmare.

My legs used to fidget constantly under the duvet as a means to distract myself, but it never helped divert my attention from worries worries about my heart. The act of going to bed started to become something I feared. I was on edge every night and this was yet another removal of a sense of safety in my life - my mind, my body, my bedroom and my bed. These were all things I took for granted in yesteryears and now I could not find any refuge or stability. Fatigue soon took it's toll on me - going to bed every night with my mind racing with a relentless barrage of negativity and paranoia. I started convincing myself if I stopped moving and twitching my legs continuously that I'd have a heart attack. Not a scrap of logic in that thought process is there? Yet if I did try to sleep without doing that repetitive movement all I felt was my heart; I fixated on it entirely and it unnerved me because I was tired, worked up and had been smoking therefore my heart rate felt faster and stronger than normal. I kept harking back to my first panic attack. At this time I didn't even know what a panic attack was. I assumed that smoking was killing me slowly but surely and that i'd wind up having a heart attack like my dad did. I had wanted to quit smoking weed for so long. I knew it made me lazy, indifferent and selfish. But I couldn't remain free from it's shackles long term and this pained me; making me feel weak and helpless to a self destructive addiction.

As time went on I started feeling nervous when I had friends around my house; it often became too much and I just wanted everyone to leave. I used to hang out with these guys every single day - we'd blaze from 6pm till midnight and my room was often hotboxed which started giving me chest tightness, heavyness and general discomfort. At first I associated the chest discomfort with the smokey room. With that conclusion in my mind I used to open the windows to let all the smoke dissipate and it often helped. But as time wore on I started practicing safety behaviour - methods of convincing yourself danger is present in certain locations or situations and attempting to make it "safe" to reduce anxiety by avoidance or specific actions or checks to ensure you feel safe in your environment. This in itself is a bad practice to engage in and will actually make your anxiety last longer because you start associating danger with certain aspects in life or certain locations. In reality it's our mindest we have to alter and not our past times or locations.

After a time I started getting the aching in my chest a lot more severely and with unnerving regularity. I didn't understand this constant worrying and fear was causing the tight chest sensations. Mind over matter - an overused and cliched motto perhaps. Yet when you have anxiety you are living this motto day in day out without realizing what negative effects your worries and fears are having on your body - physical effects; pains, aches and unnerving sensations. As a means to make my environment safe I asked my friends to leave; this happened regularly over the course of the next year after my first panic attack. Asking friends to leave was much the same feeling as when you're out with a group of people and tell them that you're leaving. It felt very awkward, and for me, being a worrier, I fixated on finding the right moment to tell them to leave before actually uttering a word. Often, when the discomfort and tension within me got too intense I literally blurted out the same phrase: "Is it all good if you guys go? I'm not feeling too good". Time after time I said this to the group and in doing so felt an over burdening sense of guilt. This, piled ontop of my worries, fears and anxiety often didn't help the situation. I convinced myself I'd spoiled their evening and would spend the next hour or so wondering what they'd be up to, missing them, craving their company and at the same time feeling somewhat relieved they've left me to my own devices. After the group had left I instantly felt like my old self again. I'd immediately stand up and open all the windows to ensure the smoke cleared out of my room as soon as possible.Then i'd sit back down and start my swaying from side to side routine as I find it a very relaxing movement and it's been a tick of mine for as long as I can remember. Even with all this relief the chest pains would often persist regardless of how at ease I started to feel. I linked the pains to smoking weed - not to the fact I was clearly building up anxiety and it was gnawing away at me and showing physical symptoms that my body wasn't coping well with the stress.

About a year later I had another panic attack in almost the exact same situation as before. I was sat in my room with a (different) friend watching a show and smoking a joint. I had just picked up a quarter of weed and was looking forward to relaxing for the rest of the week. I always took the most pride in my first joint rolled from a new stash, and also the first joint of the evening. After sparking up and inhaling I felt the instant relief as the cotton bud sensation started to fill up behind my sinuses and in my brain. I exhaled with a smile on my face as reality began to distance itself. But the feeling of being high started feeling more intense...it wasn't in my head though. It was building from within and I felt like something terrible was about to occur. At first I felt like pins and needles were overwhelming my chest. Within an instant my vision felt off, everything seemed surreal and in that instant I wished I was sober because I was reacting to the situation with clouded judgement and intense emotion. Before I had time to remember the previous panic attack or rationalize the situation, the surge of absolute panic exploded inside my body and brain. I sat bolt upright, eyes widening and my body rigid with tension. My heart started to slam against my rib cage.

[raggamuffin]

I stubbed out my joint and opened the window and told my friend I wasn't feeling too good. He was somewhat peeved as he'd only been at my house 15 minutes or so. I apologized and told him I think he should leave. I followed him downstairs, heart pounding, vision feeling off and all my senses felt so riled up, I thought once again that I was about to die. When Jack left I frantically walked into the kitchen. All the while terrified of what i'd say to my parents; I was stoned, on edge and in desparate need of help. As I stormed into the kitchen I told my parents I felt like something was wrong with my heart. My dad is a heart attack survivor and so throughout my time as a smoker that fear lingered in my head. He quit smoking after he had the heart attack and that was in his 40's. So realistically this wasn't going to be a heart attack. But try rationalizing anything when you are in the midst of a panic attack and hyperventilating, it's quite a feat I can tell you.

The pains felt like they were increasing in intensity. My parents were obviously very concerned but they were telling me that it wasn't going to be a heart attack. I wasn't comforted by their words at all. I clutched my chest whilst they did their utmost to reassure me and calm me down. Unfortunately words of comfort are all that can really be done for a person during a panic attack. If you're at an early stage in anxiety when you don't understand panic attacks or the physical discomfort anxiety can cause - reassurance is utterly worthless. Outsiders no doubt feel helpless when someone is having a panic attack. It must be a terrifying sight to behold and hard to comprehend and remain logical during moments where a person is wide eyed with absolute fear; convinced they're going to die. These situations are so intense that someone may well believe the person having a panic attack is actually dying. The difficulty in calming someone during a panic attack are over shadowed by the burden of trying to understand and aid in the day to day life of someone with an anxiety disorder; where everyday they feel like death is around the next corner - convinced that cancer, or a deadly illness is causing the pains and discomfort that punishes and torments the body every hour of every day.

My mum rang our local Dr's Surgery's out of hours line and asked for a call-back from a GP. I walked out into the garden, my hand clutching my chest the whole time. Nothing seemed real, I was close to tears and was positive I was at death's door. Aimlessly pacing up and down the garden in a trance of overwhelming trepidation. I was waiting to die; expecting that moment when my heart would give out on me and I'd collapse in a heap on the ground. Needless to say this predicted moment failed to occur; yet with each passing moment I remained alive, I felt more on edge. The clock was ticking and it was only a matter of time before my world ended...but when? Why did it have to be me? Logic was a stranger to this situation - I was running purely on dread and despair. I had no incling that adding secondary fears and worries to symptoms conjured by my body as a reaction to excess stress would make matters worse - all I fathomed from this hellish situation was that I was in pain and utterly convinced my time was up. Strange how this was exactly how I felt during my first panic attack. This time however, the attack didn't have the courtesy of lasting a mere minute or two. This was looming overhead for over an hour without any remorse.

When the GP called me back my mum came out into the garden holding the phone. I was happy and at the same time I was scared to try and explain the situation I was in. Nevertheless I explained everything as hurridly and in as much detail as possible. At first he said he'd be happy to visit me and check me over. My immediate answer was no. I outright refused for a Dr to come visit me. I was stoned and he'd know, he'd do tests and then he'd know I was a stoner and then my parents would be angry and upset. So I blurted it all out; describing the past 12 months in brief, focusing on key points - the cannabis, the fear, the worry, the symptoms and pains I was getting day in day out. This resulted in him advising me that what I was experiencing wasn't a heart attack and it sounded like it was a panic attack. This was the first time i'd heard that term. I couldn't relate the diagnosis with my situation. He couldn't know; he wasn't here...and yet I refused to let him visit me to perform the tests and provide a diagnosis that I might believe. I was a victim of my own paranoia and failed to find any comfort or truth in what he said.

Thankfully he continually re-assured me of the facts around panic attacks and anxiety until I started to calm down somewhat. I was so grateful to him and yet this insight was only a tiny corner piece in the anxiety puzzle. I still had no proof that it was anxiety causing this, there were still many questions swirling around my mind and medical reassurance didn't block out all my worries. I wanted immediate answers and relief to the situation I was in and so many people suffering with anxiety desire the same immediate relief. But in reality anxiety is brought about from either serious trauma or a long period of stress and worry building up. In either case these situations can't be undone instantly and this was something I simply could not fathom. The information the GP had provided was a foundation to the knowledge I gradually built up about anxiety; yet I failed to realize it's significance until much later in my journey. After the call had finished I walked back inside. I was still on edge and even though i'd been bestowed with a medical professionals assistance I felt scared and alone in this matter. Once inside I spoke to my parents (who had been listening in on the conversation on another phone). They were obviously deeply disappointed in me. I had kept me being a stoner from them for 7 years, there were times I was convinced they must have known and yet they never admitted it. Over the course of 7 years they had asked me 2 times about smoking weed. The first occasion was at a time when I never even smoked weed. I came home very tired from work; my dad picked me up from the bus stop. Turned out I had forgotten my parents were going out that evening and my dad angrily asked, "Are you stoned or something? Why did you forget?" My dad is never confrontational or angry without due cause, so this seemed like a strange outburst. It left me feeling concerned, guilty and upset. The second time the subject arose was at a time when I was a stoner. It was during summer when I often had to keep my window open due to the heat. The odour was always a worry to me. Many times after having friends over and seeing them out the front door i'd walk back to my room and the overpowering smell of weed stunk out the whole house. However it was my neighbours who had said to my parents that there were some funny smells coming from my room. My mum confronted me about it when I was in my room smoking with friends. At times like these I always had incense burning and I'd stub out the joint, get up, walk promptly over to the door (because they always knocked before entering). When she asked me about it, she looked to my friends and back to me with a sarcastic smile. I simply said it was the scent of some new incense I had that was cannabis scented. I could see in her eyes the doubt and yet there was no anger or discontent. She simply left the room and I turned to my friends, relieved and laughing about the matter. However, for all my charades, the cards were now on the table and I confronted my parents with the truth.

I'm sure in the back of their minds they knew, but I kept the details very brief on the subject. Confessing I smoked it and that it was causing me to feel like this and that I would stop immediately. The tightness in my chest continued throughout the entire evening, but I was determined to put a stop to it all. I flushed away all my weed and threw every single piece of smoking paraphernalia in the bin. I gravely swore to never let this happen again. This gesture was my means of taking control of an utterly uncontrollable evening. I was upset and disappointed at myself and this spelt a 6 month abstinence from cannabis and smoking. Unfortunately I foolishly took it up once again but since then I have been smoke free for 15 months. There have still been times when I miss being stoned. I have tried ingesting weed by cooking and eating it after around a year of not smoking it. I tried this method twice in the space of a few days. Both times resulted in dreadful chest discomfort, paranoia, fear and heightened anxiety. Thus I concluded that I simply couldn't get high from cannabis anymore. It was too risky and it no longer made me feel calm or at ease. I can't recall exactly how long i've now been free from cannabis. But i'm glad to see the back of it.

[raggamuffin]

Alas the next morning I made the classic mistake - fixation on symptoms. My chest ache started up again not long after I woke up. So what did I do? I Googled symptoms - this is the second biggest mistake to make when you have any form of anxiety related symptoms and a tip you MUST take heed of is this. If you simply cannot refrain from using Google to look up symptoms make sure you do the following; insert the word anxiety before any symptom description. This will, I assure you, help you to piece together the symptoms and start to realize how anxiety can literally cause any symptom imaginable. Let me show you the sheer scale of symptoms:

http://www.anxietyzone.com/index.php?topic=17050.0

Not only are there almost countless symptoms, but I felt the vast majority of these. They would chop and change, pass and go, every hour of ever day. I went through this for over 2.5 years feeling pains that could last anywhere from a fraction of a second (often the most intense ones) to days or even months. I was living in a state of constant paranoia, worry and terror and these emotions are what kept the anxiety and the pains going. For those of you who have got this far, you might think this has been slightly embellished - I guarantee you it is not and I truly wish it had not been this bad. Anxiety consumes your life entirely as day by day you are robbed you of a sense of safety. It crashes against your mind and body day in day out, like the rough sea against the cliffs; slowly but surely you are eroded and worn down - life becomes bleak and empty. This sense of safety that is erradicated is a sense of harmony and balance within yourself. Imagine walking down a dark alleyway at night. Whilst walking see a gang of people, drunk and shouting ahead of you. They are in your way and you know you will have to walk past them to get where you need to be. This realization and perception of danger will kick in your fight or flight response. This instinctual part of the brain prepares you to fight or flee from a situation where your mind realizes there is danger. This mechanism results in adrenaline filled blood pumping around your body. Directed to the muscles in your chest wall to protect vital organs from impact (the cause of chest pains) and to your limbs to fight or flee. Your sense become more attuned and you are ready to spring into action. This process takes seconds to occur and is entirely instinctual. You walk past the gang and this will be the height of the adrenaline buzz where you will no doubt feel slightly off, maybe even dizzy and will feel your hear thumping in your chest. Thankfully you walk past the gang without any issue and carry on to your destination. What happens then? The rush and disorientation you feel gradually subsides; you start to feel calm and relieved and probably smile or laugh to yourself for being so silly.

That is how the fight or flight response should work - it reacts instantly and will maintain this heightened state until the perceived danger has gone. Now what happens when you have a panic attack or pain or symptom you can't see but only feel? The danger cannot be seen, it is simply felt and it's within yourself. This makes your body scan for any possible solution or cause to the problem. Often by this point you're overrun with fear and worry; a feeling of absolute dread; one that convinces you that you are going to die or are critically ill. The fight or flight response deals with danger, but death? This is the fight or flight response tenfold over. You start to feel on edge constantly in your day to day life because you don't have the knowledge about anxiety. You can't accept that anxiety and worries and negativity cause real life pain. With this inability to rationalize the symptoms you might become a complete hypochondriac and obsess over symptoms all day because they remain all day at the forefront of your mind. The symptoms in the link above are pains and feelings that I felt the majority of. They came and went every hour of every day. Sometimes lasting weeks or months without remorse. Chopping and changing from one pain to another, from one intensity to another. Yet I could not stop myself from fixating on them, visiting the Dr or hospital multiple times. Convincing myself each and every time that something sinister, such a disease was waiting to be diagnosed. With each passing day going through this emotional hell I became more withdrawn from reality and lost in a nightmarish world of terror, fear and paranoia. Your body never gets a chance to rest and so you fight or flight response kicks in multiple times a day. This excess of adrenaline in your muscles starts to make you feel fatigued. Your body will start to send out signals to literally say to you "Stop putting me through so much stress and worry". This will make you feel aches and pains; your bodies way of asking you to address this issue and allow it to rest and repair itself. However, a person with heightened anxiety, especially around symptoms won't understand this or accept that feeling anxious could cause a pain. Mind over matter - it's literally that simple. You cannot add secondary worries and stress onto an overstressed body when it makes you ache or feel pain. By doing so you end up where me and thousands of others find themselves; a vicious cycle anxiety consisting of:

Worry -> Pain -> Fear of pain -> More Worry -> More Pain

Day in day out; a constant cycle of anxiety and pain. This is what I was catapulted into. A quick Google search the morning after my panic attack took me on a voyage of terror. Not long after searching did I start over reading about heart attacks. And there it was, I thought to myself - the cause of my pains. Maybe not a heart attack; maybe heart disease or a heart that will fail at any given moment. The chest pains escalated and within days of this fixation I started feeling left arm pains, shoulder pains and neck pains. I simply couldn't understand that this was my anxiety having a field day. I was fixated on heart attacks - read the symptoms daily. Is it any surprise that my body started reacting to this fear with pain? The pains located precisely in locations I was terrified of having pain in because it would conclude in me having a heart attack. This again reemphasises the motto - mind over matter. If you convince yourself of something and focus on it so intently, it can occur. This is especially true with fears about issues in your body. The moments when you're truly engaged in work, having fun etc are often the moments when the pains and symptoms have dulled or disappeared entirely. They will be back of course, but you can't fear the future or fixate on the what if's or worries. If only i'd realized that sooner and not 2.5 years later...

At the time I couldn't accept it - I wouldn't. So one evening when the pain had continued for about 2 weeks I told my mum that I needed to go to hospital. As we drove to the hospital I felt the same feelings; intense crushing chest pain, shortness of breath, strange issues with my vision and of course a thumping heart. For brief moments during the journey the pains seemed to disappear - but it never lasted long enough. I had the air con on - blasting in my face. Trying to focus on my breathing. But it didn't seem to help, nothing helped; I was going to die. I was so sure of it. It sounds foolish doesn't it? Melodramatic? Yet try and imagine this - being absolutely convinced that you will die at any given moment; a fear of death and disease at the forefront of your mind for 2.5 years without relent. Day in day out. From the moment you wake up an overwhelming cloud of utter despair and fear. The fatigue, both mentally and physically is utterly unbearable and my body reacted daily to show me that it simply couldn't cope with the stress and worry. Yet I added more and more worry to each passing moment when I was in pain. There were times I simply wanted to give up, times I screamed and shouted for people to simply understand and help me and many a time when I just broke down in tears because I felt so utterly secluded from everyone around me, and above all; the person I used to be.

[raggamuffin]

As we neared the hospital I felt the sense of impending doom overwhelm me. Every time this happened my mind went blank. I couldn't remember the last time it happened, or even recall that it had ever happoened before. In those moments there is nothing but a feeling that everything is going to end; that your world is going to crumble down infront of your own eyes, even typing about this now is making me well up inside emotionally. I asked mum to drop me off outside the hospital. She complained, but I pleaded; screaming and on the verge of tears - I couldn't spend any longer in the car. As I got out the car, I couldn't find my footing and felt utterly off balance and clambered as frantically as I could to the ER entrance. When I got in and saw there was a queue in front of me my heart sank. Yet the sinking feeling didn't stop, it somehow escalated further as I felt the fear once again take over. I was in sensory overload - the bright fluorescent lights, the people, the smell of the hospital. It all became too much, my eyes were frantically darting around my surroundings, I started to wheeze and hyperventilate and then came such an intense chest pain. It felt like someone had hit a hammer against my chest; I clutched my chest, let out a terrified scream and collapsed on the floor. I was immediately helped up and put in a wheelchair. I was still conscious but I couldn't make head nor tail of what was happening. The nurse who wheeled me to a ward asked my to describe my symptoms. She had to repeat herself several times before it sunk in and I tried to describe what was happening - but nothing made sense. Even in a hospital where I could be treated I felt totally unsafe and scared. I was taken to a bed and given the usual checks - blood work, urine, ECG/EKG to check my heart. They ran over my symptoms with me in detail and I waited for the Dr to come. My mum found me and we started talking. I went in full detail about how I'd been feeling the past years, and the full extent of the drug use. She was disappointed but she was glad I was honest. It felt like such a burden had been lifted. Carrying this double life of being a stoner around my parents was horrid. Letting people use my home to smoke drugs in for years on end just so I could have friends. I felt sickened with my behaviour, felt like a bad son, a complete failure and it struck me just how much of my life I had wasted smoking weed.

Shortly after our conversation had finished the Dr arrived and went over the results. She said to me that everything loked fine and that it was probably anxiety and that I should look into therapy or medication. With that I was sent on my way. As we drove home at around 11pm I felt utterly lost. I told my mum rather meakly "But my chest still hurts..." When we got home my mum and my dad told me I had a clean bill of health and that it should stop my worrying. Yet it didn't, I wasn't convinced and I was still in pain constantly. "Probably anxiety"...probably? Didn't she know? Was there something they missed? Should I have asked for more tests? Why didn't I ask to be refered to a cardiologist? With that the fear ramped up yet again and the pains along with it. This is how anxiety gets you. The slightest fear or worry will often turn into full blown obsession, panic and fear. This is how I lived the next 2.5 years of my life. Every single hour of every single day. With every pain and symptom came more worries and fears. More Googling in a bid to find out what was wrong with me. I became more and more reclusive. My friends had given up visiting me within an instant after I told them all I was no longer smoking weed and they couldn't smoke it at mine anymore. It hurt a lot to realize how little our supposed "friendships" meant. I tried visiting them at their homes, but they continued as normal with their chronic smoking. Leaving me in a room thick with smoke and me struggling to breath. I couldn't do it and it felt like they could care less about my comfort and well being as they never cared to phone me to come round my house. This was now my life and I hated it and needless to say my quality of life was shattered.

I was utterly obsessed with finding an overnight cure. I thought to myself that these panic attacks came out the blue and so therefore I must be able to get back to my old self. The problem was I didin't realize that anxiety and panic attacks come about after stressful events. In my case it was a build up of stress and worry over an extended period of time. I was told time after time that the symptoms I posted on the forum in fear for my life were normal and caused by anxiety. It took 2.5 years to finally realize this and fully accept it. I had several sessions of CBT at a time when I understood anxiety and needed a little extra help and now I have come to terms with who I am and what my body is doing. I still get daily pains and they are a chore to put up with. But I do not allow myself to fear them because that is your own worst enemy. These were caused by fears and worries in the first place so piling additional secondary fears ontop of an overstressed body is simply allowing the pains to muscle in further into your life. I let the pains come and go and that is key. You can't fight the pains and you certainly can't fear them. All these negative emotions do is serve to frustrate your mind and body further. Prolonging symptoms and often upping the intensity of such pains. So you have to practice apathy. At first this seems like a pointless and futile exercise; almost as if you're lying to yourself. But the real lie is the one you've been living since you've had anxiety. Day in and day out you lie to yourself, you lie to logic and to reason. You convince yourself that complete myths and fairytales about hidden diseases are causing the aches and pains. Yet time after time the tests come back negative, the Dr's say it's anxiety, but still you can't accept the truth. One day it will click; for me I forced myself to accept anxiety. Didn't believe it at first, but, as with drinking coffee (which I first hated when I tried), I made myself practice it, again and again. This way you untrain the instinctual side of your brain from reacting to aches, pains and other situations first. You tell yourself STOP when you feel the fear building. You rationalize the situation constantly until you calm down. You regain control you feel anxiety took from you.

As time went by I changed my life around slowly but surely. I started to see people on the forum in the same position I was years ago. Utterly lost, feeling helpless and convinced death was around the corner. I have made sure I try and help and inform as many people as I encounter on how to start overcoming anxiety. I still have a long road ahead of me but I feel stronger for it. Anxiety makes you feel so helpless and weak. You often convince yourself you are a coward for being scared and in pain so much. Yet what people don't realize is that we are all on the road to recovery; we're just at different steps along the way. Nobody who faces anxiety day in day out and wakes up the next morning is a coward, in fact we are brave and we will not allow anxiety to beat us. Often its the misconception that anxiety is in control of us when in reality we are in control of anxiety. It's through understanding and reading about anxiety that things start slotting into place. This is what therapy will address with people. Piecing together your trains of thought, working out the negative and unhelpful ways of thinking. When we're so self absorbed in an anxious world logic tends to be put aside. Yet the fear and worry we can overwhelm ourselves with on a daily basis - it doesn't exist. It's not a tangible, visible subtance. It is conjured within our own minds and therefore shouldn't be given as much influence as we bestow upon it.

Remove the fear and worry through understanding and knowledge. That is key. Everything else will help you along the way, such as eating healthily, removing processed sugars and junk food, exercising, getting enough daylight etc. They're the icing on the cake. But the real foundations is your mindset and digging yourself out of this self made hole that the worries and stresses have dug you into. It does take time, but there's no need to loose hope. I know how hopeless and fruitless life can feel; it literally feels like anxiety has built a wall around you and you can't find a way to break free. There's always a gate to the other side - remember, when you feel at your lowest the only way is up.

[u4ea]

How soon after you stopped smoking cannabis did you notice positive signs of the anxiety subsiding? Cannabis is notorious for causing panic attacks in users - many never had a panic attack in their life prior.

[raggamuffin]

Hard to tell, in the 6 months I first quit I didn't feel much improvement due to how much I was worrying about the pains and with new ones coming along monthly I was feeling worse. That's why I started up again I think. I assumed "things can't get any worse". THe first joint I had, I almost had a full on panic attack. But I carried on regardless. Even admitted to my parents before I bought the weed that I was going to try it again. They were upset and said "look what it did to you last time". They knew it'd turn into an addiction again, I said it wouldn't Sure enough it did.

It was about a year after quitting weed for good that things got better. I feel that's more down to learning about anxiety than being free from weed. I know it's a drug with many more negative than positive effects and breaking the mindset of viewing being stoned as a good thing was the drive for being able to quit.

Ed

[u4ea]

Hard to tell, in the 6 months I first quit I didn't feel much improvement due to how much I was worrying about the pains and with new ones coming along monthly I was feeling worse. That's why I started up again I think. I assumed "things can't get any worse". THe first joint I had, I almost had a full on panic attack. But I carried on regardless. Even admitted to my parents before I bought the weed that I was going to try it again. They were upset and said "look what it did to you last time". They knew it'd turn into an addiction again, I said it wouldn't Sure enough it did.

It was about a year after quitting weed for good that things got better. I feel that's more down to learning about anxiety than being free from weed. I know it's a drug with many more negative than positive effects and breaking the mindset of viewing being stoned as a good thing was the drive for being able to quit.

Ed

I'm on the fence about weed myself. I honestly feel it's exponentially safer than many of the synthetic drugs the big pharmaceutical push; but that's not to say it's without risk.

Thinking back, the first panic attack I ever experienced was as a teenager - right after smoking good weed. I never really thought much of it until years alter when anxiety became more obvious - at the time, I thought I just "freaked out" from smoking.

Did weed act as a "catalyst" for your anxiety manifestations? Maybe the 12 months it took for you to recover was your mind recovering from the cannabis exposure and simply just the stress of the ordeal itself?

Anyway, great post! And I'm not nit picking nor digging into your personal life; this just fascinates me, and helps me evaluate my own mind...

[raggamuffin]

I see where you're coming from. Compared to prescription drugs it's a whole lot safer. I have no doubt about that whatsoever. But as you said, when you get high from good weed. Now to me and my friends it was the chronic stuff, the stuff that got you really f**ked. But as I started feeling more anxious I moved away from potent skunk and preferred milder hash because the high was not so intense.

Problem is, much like meds, if you wind up relying on them it becomes a crutch and that assists no one. It only serves to hinder you. There's times i truly do miss weed. Hence why I tried eating it. But with health anxiety I know I could never smoke it. So I pondered getting a vapourizer. But that's an expensive investment for something I might not enjoy or just as easily; enjoy so much I start up being a full fledged stoner again.

So it's hard to know what to do. Managing stress levels is easier now I see the triggers. But I know the road to recovery is a long one. No no it's fine, I dind't thin you were nit picking at all. I understand where you're coming from. Weed can have amazing properties, but it's so often missused and that's when it starts eating away at you bit by bit.

Ed

[chasingdogma]

I totally get this. Anxiety sufferers.... particularly GAD sufferers need to be aware of what weed can do. My latest run in with the health anxiety demon began in July. A couple of months prior I had a really bad experience on eatables at a concert... I'd never tried those before and I was shocked at how paranoid and anxious I became... plus the worst thing about eatables is they have a long half-life so the feelings don't just disappear after an hour or so. I often wonder if the two experiences were connected.

[raggamuffin]

If you're nto used to weed then eating it and having it last so long could easily provoke anxiety which may last even after you're sober. When you're grounded in reality and you take a drug that warps or utterly removes normality you can either enjoy the experience and just go with it. Or you can feel panic, fear and paranoia and just wish for it to stop. But it's much like an anxiety symptom and the key to overcoming anxiety. You have to go with it, let the pains come and go. You can tense up and assume the worst and fear everything. Because that's how you make yourself feel worse.

Ed

[majesty]

This is exactly how my panic attacks started. Just in my cousins room smoking weed and then I just felt two electric shocks in my body and then my heart started pounding. I was so convinced that I was dying or having an asthma attack and called the ambulance.

If I could just replay that day. I wouldn't be going through this.

[raggamuffin]

It can be horrid when you have a panic attack when stoned because as much as you want to be in a sober state of mind you can't and this all adds to the terror and the fear and paranoia. Such events can often turn into full blown anxiety. I think people feel lost, they have no knowledge about what happened. I wish I had let the GP visit me when I had my second panic attack and just been persistent from the off about learning about anxiety. Instead of allowing my fears and worries make everything worse over the next 2.5 years.

Ed