Hi and a big welcome John;
It takes courage to post on the forum, so well done on taking steps to ask for help.
Triggering pre existing conditions to worsen is common for illicit drugs. Seeking support outside legal avenues to ease symptoms can be a huge temptation, but as you've experienced, it's not worth the effort.
Anxiety/panic are biological responses in the brain to long term stress. Approaching the disorder is similar to attending to an illness in another organ; rest, treatment and addressing the cause.
In this respect, advice/treatment from your GP and a referral to a psychologist for talking therapy can help you firstly understand what anxiety is, identify the cause and then finding ways to cope until recovery's in sight.
It can be a slow process, but well worth the journey I can assure you. I say this from lived experience, a few years down the track from a very scary breakdown; anxiety/panic was an everyday event where at times, I survived moment to moment living in fear.
One word of advice; FEAR is the enemy. This emotion triggers the 'Primal' part of the brain into a fight, flight or freeze response that's directly responsible for survival of the species. Levels of adrenaline when feeling at risk will spike and the brain decides whether running away, fighting or freezing is the best way to survive the incident.
When you see an animal in the grip of a lion's mouth, notice it's limp and doesn't struggle. This is the way the brain prepares the animal for death. (Freeze) Hormones flood the brain to make death as painless as possible.
When humans experience this, we try to rationalise it as being weak and are the cause, but the truth is we have no power to control this very normal response.
I'll keep an eye out for you over the next few days. If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask or write whatever makes you feel better. If it helps, cruising the site for threads that might interest you is a good option also.
Looking forward to hearing from you...
Kind thoughts;
Sez
