italianfx,
SS + gomad, imo. I'm serious.

Anxiety is the worst. I started getting it early this year after I did something dumb that lead to me thinking I was having a heart attack. The same feelings I had while I thought I was going to die have been reoccurring since then, but less often as time goes on. So frustrating when I have to just randomly get up from hanging out with friends and sit outside because I'm having a panic attack. I've taken two meds for it, one was generic xanax and the other was similar (forgot the name) but had a heavier sedative effect. Didn't really like to take either and I've just been dealing with it.

I struggled with depression 6ish years ago, when I was freshman in college. I was medicated for a short period of time and sought help, and learned ways to cope with and deal with it. Depression will always be with me, but I feel like, most of the time, I am able to control and handle it by channeling it into positive energy. It took me many years to learn how to do this, though, and every once in a while I have to fight that battle again. I recently went through a bad break-up and had my depression return for a few months. It took me a bit, but I eventually gained control over it again. Most people I know now would describe me as extremely optimistic, outgoing and happy. I like it that way.

Anxiety is the killer for me. I have struggled with irrational anxiety my whole life. My mother is the same way. When I was in HS I'd often wake up at 3 AM to her downstairs doing the bills because she was afraid something would go wrong this month and we wouldn't be able to pay them off. She's a completely rational and sane person otherwise, just gripped by irrational fears from time to time.

Maybe it's just being a young mid 20s male, but I take this to the extreme sometimes. If there is a 0.5 % chance something terrible can happen to me, then I will worry about it endlessly. I've heard it described as "circular thinking." You start at a low level of anxiety and then keep analyzing and over-analyzing the situation until you've built it up to some severe, life-altering event. You then graduate from circular thinking to "catastrophic thinking." The worst part of it all is when I do this I KNOW I'm being irrational, but I can't help it. This can sometimes lead to panic or anxiety attacks.

As I've aged I've gotten a huge amount of control over this, but it still gets me from time to time, albeit very rarely. It usually only happens now if I'm in a general period of high stress. Example: the other day after my exam I convinced myself I had forgotten to put my anonymous grading # on the exam before I turned it in. I know I did and sitting here now I'm 100 % I did. However, I kept doubting myself until I escalated the situation into a near anxiety meltdown. I feel like this will be with me the rest of my life, but I learn to control it and ignore it more and more the older I get.

None of the things you talk about address your problems.

I know. Maybe you'll get miraculously lucky in the right spots and things will change for the better. But you don't think you will. You'll probably break down again. Because bad **** happens. And **** don't stop, ever. There's no pity in this world for the people who cry to themselves over their regrets.

You don't have to be special, or even average. People are flawed. When you approach the world with a friendly attitude, and people see that you have good intentions and just want to have fun and do ****, they'll be responsive. And when they judge you and **** you and shoot you down, your life will just have to be better without them anyway.

If it helps, take the place you live in, burn it/sell it/move out, quit your job, pack up all your ****, and just leave. It doesn't matter where you go, or what you do, or what you believe, or whether you're right or wrong.

What's the difference if you can't look yourself in the mirror and love and respect yourself?

Everyone experiences loneliness, rejection, betrayal, some much worse than others, and some handle it better than others. Every single one of us is destined to die. When you compromise your values, when you lie to others and yourself, when you live like a bitch and say tomorrow things are going to be easier, you're never even giving yourself a chance to really live

"I'd rather die like a man than live like a coward"

<3 Jeff
I'm amazed at how many of us have been prescribed drugs.

First let me say there are DEFINITELY many people who need them. Absolutely. And they do help.

But I think docs give them out too easily. I've turned down more Rxs from doctors than I'd like to recount. Doc asks me how I'm doing, I say I've been having a stressful 2 weeks and dealing with anxiety and next thing you know he's shoving Xanax in my hand. Jeez man, it's just been a couple weeks. It happens to all of us.

+1. Western medicine is just jamming pills in your face-hole.

never had depression, but i've dealing with anxiety for over 10 years now - started right before finals my first year of law school (what a surprise; come to think of it, many lawyers have mental issues). anyways, i ****ing hate it. it's so debiliating. for me it's specific situations: tall buildings, tunnels (though not subway tunnels), airplanes, pretty much any driving that's not on flat land: mountains, tall bridges, etc. i've gotten better at dealing with it, though i mostly just avoid situations that cause me anxiety. was on paxil a few years and got off of it because i felt it it had done all that it could.

to anyone who doesn't have severe anxiety, it can sound silly. but for someone with it, it can cause an overwhelming feeling of dread in certain situations and they become hypersensitive to every little thing at the moment.

anyways, i hate it. it's a bitch to get rid of - if it's even possible to get rid of it. so i just try to "manage" it, but mostly i just end up avoiding situations, which lowers my quality of life to be honest. exercise helps a little but not much. what helps mostly is doing the same thing over and over. like if i haven't flown in months, i get anxious when i have to fly. but if i just flew an hour ago and am catching a connection, then the 2nd flight is a piece of cake and i usually actually enjoy it. also therapy helps just because it gives me a chance to realize what assumptions my brain makes about a situation that causes me the feeling of dread. eating better, sleeping better hasn't done much for my anxiety. breathing works great. by the time i get to the 6th or 7th deep breath, my mind has shifted its focus to something else and my heart is more calm.

Yes, blame the entirity of western medicine for the fact that family doctors get crappy mental health training.

oh man getting that anxious on a flight must suckkkk. I get a little anxious but it's not that big of a deal and I know deep down I'm being irrational.

I wasn't talking about a family doctor.

My girlfriend goes to chinese herbal doctors and I'm kind of sceptical about them too. It's pretty expensive and to boot it tastes like crap when you have to ingest oral liquid. Drink....vomit.....drink....vomit.

If marijuana, is what you're speaking of, the same thing has happened to me!
What is the cause for this, is there a relation between smoking marijuana (I've only done it three of four times) and anxiety?

When it comes to the topic in general, the best way to fight depression is to become employed, sleep well, exercise outside regardless of the season (breathing fresh cold air provides great tranquility), drink lots of green tea, eat lots of fruits and vegetables and read something that interests you.

The past year has not been so bright for me. I got into a physical fight with my dad, I've been smoking cigarettes for 2 years (but ive quit for a month so far, so wish me luck), I've had anxiety attacks all throughout spring and summer due to the combination of emotional stress and possibly, smoking THC amongst friends and getting a bad trip. I've been kicked out of a very good university.

Now Im smoke free since a month and a half. I have a job. I havent had a girlfriend for over a year now, which emotionally gets me down at times..I mean Im a good looking guy and im romantic yet when it comes to seducing a girl I FAIL lol Come this spring, Im applying to a new program at a decent university, all in hopes of turning my life around so that I for the first time in my life become someone who loves who he is.

I experienced my first panic/anxiety attack when i was 20. I was a heavy pot smoker, all day every day with out fail. I planned to smoke for the rest of my life. I was in America on holiday and had been eating fast food for every meal, ( it was the only thing within a walkable distance because I didnt have a car), and was just stressing out about certain things in my life. I went to a friends house and took one hit from a bong. This is when my life changed. All of a sudden I felt as though the world was caving in, (I had never felt this before, even though i had 'greened' out for being to high), I felt as thought I was loosing my mind and that my heart was going to stop, even though it was beating furiously. Everything was blurry and I couldnt see, I was scared to go to sleep because I thought I wouldnt wake up. I begged my friend to take me to the hospital, he had some medical training and said i was fine he checked my pulse etc.

Eventually I came down and for about a month or so I felt like my entire body chemistry had changed, mentally I didnt feel like the same person. Not in an insane way, I just felt discombobulated. It took months for this to disappear. Ive had probably two hits of pot in 5 years and suffered extreme anxiety because of it. I just cant touch it anymore.

From then on I had constant mild anxiety, when ever i was flying, traveling and many other situations. It was almost always controllable and it never affected me to much. I then went to Canada and was just living an unhealthy lifestyle partying every night eating fast food every meal and just being a general pile. I was with a vegietarian friend, he suggested I tried to not eat meat for 2 weeks. After two weeks I had more energy, felt more lively and my anxiety disappeared. It was because of this I maintained a meatless diet to this day. Id do anythign to make it go away and it seemed like small scarifice at the time for such a major issue in my life. I still partied because, well sh*t I still wanted to get laid. Im not trying to convert any one but a change in diet is better then almost any medicine for anxiety. Whether its vegitarianism or just a healthier meat diet, free of fast food and other crappy meals.

Fast forward 3 years, I was was hungover and had a big night out, the anxiety had subsided mostly. I went out skateboarding in extreme heat with out eating. I started to throw up so I got in a car and went home this is when I had another panic attack accept this one put me in the ER. They hooked me up to all kinds of heart machines and tested me for heart pulpitations etc, I told them I have Anxiety/Panic attacks. They didnt listen because I told them I hadnt being diagnosed with them by a doctor but I know my body and I know when things arent right. I was eventually discharged after 2 bags of saline. From then on I experienced anxiety every time I drank. I still do 80% of the time.

To everyone else it seems like a normal hangover to me the sky is falling, I feel like im going to have a heart attack, im dizzy and generally feel like im going to loose my mind and die right there on the floor. I just try to sleep it off. The sick thing is I know im having anxiety and I start to think about the word Anxiety and it makes things even worse. Sleep is my medicine.

I to am guilty of letting my mind run away with things and making things worse. I read that Anxiety causes your deepest fears to come out, so if you are most fearful of having a heart attack, you will feel the actual symptoms of a heart attack, this is because your glands excrete adrenaline and the more you worry, the more adrenaline it produces. Thus the dizzyness and wanting to laydown. But your heart is racing so hard its hard to lay down and sleep it off. The only way to stop this is to tell yourself to calm down. Knowing what my body was doing and the reason it was doing this actually brought me a lot of calmness and made things almost subside immediatley. Knowing im not going to die because of anxiety is soothing.

I refuse to take drugs for this as i'm a very stubborn person, I would rather try figure things out for myself instead of blanketing whatever issues it is I have by using the band aid of xanax or anything like this to tie me over. Im not having a go at anyone for doing this, its just my way of doing things. I dont want to risk becoming dependent of a chemical based drug. I dont like any fom of drugs, I wont even take tylenol for a headache i'd rather just ride it out. Its just how I am.

Anyways its just my 2 cents. I wouldnt wish this on anyone as it can be so debilitating. It heartbreaking that something so mentally excruciating cant be seen or felt by anyone else, only fellow sufferers can relate.

It was interesting to read other peoples experiences and to know the only one suffering this, I looke forward to reading more.

i've always been an anxious person but had never really experienced panic attacks... one day i dropped acid, had a panic attack, and my threshold for experiencing them became basically nonexistent and i was having several a week. yes, this sounds bad, but right now i haven't had one in several months and i wouldn't change a thing that happened.

what it ended up doing was forcing me to face a few realities in my life and a few realities about the way i viewed the world that were incredibly unhealthy and harmful. to me when i'm having a panic attack my body is telling me there is something terribly wrong about the way i'm thinking about things. if i wanted to overcome it, i'd have to stop running and making excuses. i had to come face to face with reality for the first time in my life.

that's what it is really - it's not a disease or an illness. it's a catalyst to a better life. but you have to be willing to listen to it and work with it and eventually come to love it for what it's trying to tell you.

these are a few things i think have really helped me:
1. i became very well-informed about it. i read basically everything there was to read on it, from the religious/spiritual side to the medical/psychiatric side. there's so much incredibly good material on overcoming these things it's silly not to have your bookcase decked out with books on anxiety and depression.

2. eastern religion, buddhism, meditation, mindfulness, etc. etc. are all SOOOOO invaluable. i feel so incredibly fortunate to live in a place and time where i could find out about this stuff. tommy angelo's site, and particularly his book recommendations, are great places to start: http://tommyangelo.com/meditation_101.html Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn is an amazing book that's geared more towards the application of mindfulness in the midst of physical or mental illness. the others are great too but might be a bit more esoteric.

3. be open-minded and not particularly stubborn. i think this one is really overlooked as a necessary characteristic to have in curing anxiety and depression, but the long and short of it is: anxiety and depression come ONLY from thoughts, and if you're very set in your ways you'll never break negative thought patterns. question EVERYTHING. it's mind-boggling how close-minded some people are and how fervently they cling to anxious and depressing thought patterns. many people also have a very ingrained self-image of themselves as a worrisome or anxious or shy person without really realizing it. it's something that's constantly operating beneath the surface but is overwhelmingly powerful.

it's an ego thing really. people have this image of themselves as an immovable object, and they become so accustomed to thinking in certain patterns and engaging in certain behaviors that they're afraid they will cease to exist if they change. but for a lot of people overcoming mental illness requires an EXTREMELY drastic overhaul of the way they view the world, almost to the point where the person that goes in is unrecognizable to the person that comes out. but we die every moment of every day. when you walk in a room and sit down, like it or not you are a different person than the person that walked through the door. there are similarities between the two, and we are trained to hang onto these similarities, but fundamentally they are two separate entities. personally i can scarcely believe the person i was 3 years ago - hateful, arrogant, spiteful, depressed, anxious. it seems very distant now and i don't know how it all happened exactly, but i'm very relieved i was able to give it all up.

4. be PASSIONATE about it, right now in this very moment! if that means leaving your house at 3am to go do something that you haven't been able to do in months, then just go do it. every single second of every day is an opportunity to overcome obstacles and push yourself further than you ever have before. if you freak out, you freak out. if you die, you die. but you'll be doing something remarkable and meaningful.

like others have said i could write volumes on this, but that's an overview of what i feel are some of the more important things.