DON'T PANIC

I have been anxiety-ridden, and I have been panic-stricken. Two very different things. Back in the 1970s, panic disorder hadn’t yet appeared in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Psychiatric Disorders (or DSM, for those in the know), and it was actually my therapist who said she thought I was “just” having a nervous breakdown, which was kind of a relief because I was afraid I might be dying, or have brain damage from the recreational drugs I’d taken, or that maybe I was going crazy. Because people do go crazy, right? Maybe I had crossed that invisible divide from sane to insane, who’s to say? And then she, my therapist, said she’d be surprised if I wasn’t having a nervous breakdown considering all I’d been through. But that’s a different story. 

People tend to confuse panic attacks with anxiety attacks. They think they’re having a panic attack when in reality they’re just having a really bad day and feeling stressed out. Typically panic attacks come out of the blue, unrelated to anything going on that day. Symptoms might include a galloping heartbeat, shortness of breath, and sweating palms, none of which happened to me. My panic attacks were different. Mine always felt like I was coming on to LSD. I know that because that’s exactly how I felt when I WAS coming on to LSD.  My first attack came on so suddenly I thought, “Wait a minute, did I drop a hit of acid and forget all about it?”  

I probably had a couple dozen panic attacks over the course of two decades, which works out to about one a month. When they came on, I tended to run outside wherever I happened to be while inexplicably holding onto the top of my head as if to keep my brains in, then pace or run amok until it passed. Or, I would drive to the Cedars Sinai emergency room, park my car nearby and then sit, just in case. One time, I actually went inside and made it as far as an examination room where a doctor warned me that he could admit me to a psych ward on a mandatory 72-hour hold, but since I’d left my daughter with a neighbor, there was no way I could submit to that. So instead he gave me an Ativan, a prescription for more, and sent me on my way. I did start taking Ativan, as needed, and that sometimes worked, other times not, for one thing because in my panic I couldn’t remember if I’d taken one, or at the other extreme, how many I’d taken.

My last panic attack was about 20 years after the first one, and I’d pretty much grown used to them. I knew, logically, that they would pass, but still, while in the throes of one, I always thought “Nope, this one’s different.” In this particular case I happened to be in Africa on a photo safari with my friend Joani. I had decided that I was no longer going to wait for the right man to come along to complete me. I was a professional woman, finally a certified court reporter, and I was going to travel on my own and just generally have a fabulous life as a single mother. By this time my daughter was a teenager and I was able to leave her under the watchful eye of a close friend, and so off I went to Africa.

Our first day in Nairobi is a story in itself, but in a nutshell, on our first outing we come close to being attacked by a lion—at least that’s the way I remember it—and then that evening, along with a dozen jolly geologists that invite us to dinner, in a restaurant aptly named The Carnivore, we feast on an array of exotic meats followed by maybe one too many nightcaps in the hotel bar.

Close to midnight, back in our room, I lie down on my bed, Joani falls fast asleep on hers, and then, wouldn’t you know, I feel a panic attack coming on. SHIT! I decide I’ll try to journal my way thru it. After all, I know what it is, and I’m determined to get a grip on it before it gets out of hand. So I go into the bathroom, close the door, lower the toilet lid to use as a desk, take a seat on the floor, and begin writing. I write about how I know it’s a panic attack and that I’ll get thru it, but it just keeps accelerating, getting worse and worse until it’s hopeless, it’s out of control, and there I am alone in that tiny bathroom, an emotional, physical, and psychological mess. At around 3:30 a.m. I decide, “That’s it, I’m going home! As soon as the sun comes up I’m heading to the airport to jump on the first plane I can get to LAX where I’ll catch a cab to the emergency room!” 

I’m afraid to take an Ativan because I’ve had so much to drink but eventually I do, then lie down on the bed again to wait for said sun to rise, and: I have a vision. I have a vision of everyone I know, in fact, and impossibly, everyone I’ve ever known—relatives, exes, teachers, coworkers, friends, even the kids of friends—as if we’re skydiving and they‘re all holding hands in a circle around me, and I can feel each of them beaming pure love at me and saying in so many words, without words, “It’s okay, we love you, and we’re not going to let anything happen to you.” And just like that—poof!—my panic attack dissipates.

So I don’t go home, I actually get a couple hours of sleep, and when Joani wakes up, I tell her all about my “vision” and she’s like “Oh my god, it’s a miracle!” because we’ve both been reading a book called “Reflections on the Course in Miracles” in which Marianne Williamson describes a miracle as simply a shift in perception from fear to love. And that’s exactly what had happened!

So Joani and I pretty much skip hand in hand thru the next two weeks of safari. Good friend that she is, she just picks right up on my excitement, and we bond even more tightly over having gone thru something so extraordinary together. I think we must be radiating a special vibration wherever we go as people—those in our group and even those in the villages we visit—seem to gravitate toward us. Now I don’t want to leave at all; in fact, I want to stay longer.

On our last day, we’re out by the pool killing time before our flight home. I’m lounging on a deck chair and Joani is in the water making her way around the edge of the pool, then paddles over to me and says, “Barbara, you won’t believe this! Those two girls over there,” and she points to a couple of young women at the other end of the pool, ”I just overheard them talking, and one of them had a panic attack last night! She called the concierge and they had her breathing into a paper bag and now she’s planning on leaving even though they just got here.” 

I make my way over to this stranger and, briefly but emphatically, share my own experience. I say, ”Don’t leave, stick it out, you’ll have a great time,” give her an Ativan, my address, and ask her to keep in touch. Two weeks later I’m back in L.A. and I get a postcard from her: “Thanks so much for your advice. You were right. I stayed and had the time of my life!”

So that was that. Kind of miraculous on a couple counts, I think. But there’s more. As I mentioned, that was my LAST panic attack. That was 1992, and I have not had another one, not even a hint of one! A relief to be sure, but I can’t help wondering: Where’d they go?