For as long as I can remember I have had an anxiety disorder – even as a little kid. It is an illness that has tormented me for many years. It has made living a normal life a huge challenge and robbed me of many things that normal people get to experience.

Anxiety is an illness that I would not wish on my worst enemy. It is a disorder that can strike at any time, even when you don’t expect it. It strikes in the form of anxiety attacks – or panic attacks, as some people call them.

Panic Attacks – What Are They?

The idea of a panic attack is foreign to most people (as it should be). It’s a difficult thing to describe, but I do know of a way to explain it so that it should make sense.

Most people have heard of the fight or flight response. It’s a survival system that’s hard-wired in our bodies that kicks in when something that threatens our well-being suddenly and unexpectedly happens. When the fight or flight response kicks in, a huge surge of adrenaline shoots through our bodies, our heart rate speeds up, and our breathing becomes rapid and shallow. In an instant the body prepares itself to either fight for its life or flee at top speed from whatever threat it is facing.

This is essentially what a panic attack is. It is the fight or flight response kicking in – except it kicks in when it should not. It even kicks in during times that are extremely inconvenient – like when I took the SAT exam. Thanks to the lovely panic attack I had during the SAT, I ended up with a score so embarrassingly low that I’m not even going to mention it.

Early Childhood

I was always a very anxious and nervous child, but for the most part I was okay until I started elementary school. That’s when the panic attacks started.

For many years I didn’t even know that I was experiencing panic attacks because of how they manifested in my body. I would be sitting in class, and then a very strong feeling of anxiety would wash over me. I can remember having a very strong feeling of being trapped, like I just needed to escape immediately. My stomach would then constrict in a very painful cramp. And sometimes those cramps would last for hours. As you can imagine, it wasn’t exactly an ideal situation for learning and making good grades.

I didn’t realize that my anxiety was causing the cramping. I just thought there was something wrong with my stomach. Being a little kid, I just knew to tell my parents that my stomach hurt. My parents dutifully took me to the doctors to have me checked out. The docs put me through a number of tests for my stomach, but never found anything.

Dealing with all of the anxiety caused my grades to plummet. I consider myself to be a relatively intelligent person. It’s just sometimes hard to concentrate on what your teacher is saying when you are having a full-blown anxiety attack.

I somehow managed to survive (I say that literally) public school. My anxiety got worse over the years, and I ended up missing a lot of school, but I still somehow made it to graduation.

Adult Life

I tried going to college, but it didn’t work out too well for the first couple of years. It was like a replay of my high school years – anxiety attacks in class with painful stomach cramps.

I did, however, discover something that allowed me to continue earning college credits and to eventually graduate – distance study courses. Although online college courses are now common, back in my day – when the internet was still very new – they didn’t exist. But I discovered their predecessor – correspondence courses for college credit. Bet you didn’t even know they existed.

Distance learning has been around for much longer than most realize. The University of London pioneered the practice in the late 1800s when the British empire spanned the globe and there was a need to educate its subjects living in other countries.

I completed the majority of my course requirements this way and graduated with a BS in sociology from The University of the State of New York.

After graduating, I found employment. I found it much easier to work a job than I ever did going to school. If I ever feel anxious at work, I can excuse myself for a few minutes and hide out in the restroom. This usually works to stop my panic attacks.

My Descent Into Alcoholism

Many who suffer with anxiety disorders also have problems with depression, and I was no different. For some reason the two often go together. Some days I would feel anxious, and other days I would feel depressed. Rarely did I ever feel entirely okay.

I discovered in my mid-twenties that I could calm my anxiety by drinking a little alcohol. And that’s exactly what I started doing. Every evening after work I would have a glass of wine to relax. And then I slowly started building up a tolerance. In no time one glass became two, and after a while I realized I was addicted to alcohol. In an effort to calm my anxiety, I had become an alcoholic. In a way I had traded one problem for another.

My alcoholism lasted about 12 years and I was finally able to give it up. Alcohol addiction is very powerful, and quitting was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I’ve now been sober for about 10 months, and I don’t think I’ll ever have another sip of the stuff again.

I don’t think I ever could have stropped drinking, however, if I hadn’t found a way (finally!) to calm my anxiety and depression down to a manageable level. I discovered ayahuasca.

Ayahuasca

I first read about ayahuasca one day in a magazine while awaiting my turn at the dentist’s office. I had never heard of it before. I went home that day and looked it up on the internet – and was totally blown away by what I discovered.

I read where many people claimed to be completely cured of depression, anxiety, and a host of other issues by using the powerful psychedelic brew the indigenous people of the Amazon Jungle have used for thousands of years.

Having nothing to lose, I flew to the Jungle and worked with ayahuasca and another psychedelic, San Pedro. The results were astonishing. Although I am not cured of depression and anxiety, my symptoms now aren’t anywhere near as bad as they used to be.

I’ve already written about my experience using ayahuasca on Steemit, so I won’t go into detail on that. Here is a link to the account of my ayahuasca adventures if you are interested in reading about it:

https://steemit.com/psychology/@sabot/i-treated-my-depression-with-ayahuasca-in-the-amazon-jungle

Going Forward

As I just mentioned, I’m still not completely cured. Sometimes it takes using ayahuasca several times to get things under control. I plan on making another trip to use ayahuasca sometime in the future. I’m also considering trying another kind of psychedelic with powerful healing properties – Ibogaine. There are many Ibogaine retreats in Central America to choose from.

Anxiety is not something I or anyone else has to live with. Unfortunately, it does require traveling to another country to get treatment. I’m just thankful that such treatment exists. I’m optimistic that one day I can be 100% free of the anxiety and depression that has tormented me for so long.