Posted by torachan on November 27, 2007, at 17:49:59
In reply to I agree with Pstrait, posted by Racer on November 27, 2007, at 7:59:09
I found your explanation of your past experimentation with drugs and alcohol, and your deep conviction that an underlying disorder has haunted you for quite some time to be eerily similar to my own situation. I'm in my mid thirties now, being treated for primary anxiety and its consequential cousin depression with benzos, a current trial of buspar, and possibly another experiment with an SSRI, but since my childhood I've known as only one can know that something was amiss with my social behavior. I was extremely shy around strangers and reluctant in public places, yet quite gregarious, if not clownish around my friends. It seems to me I've always overcompensated in my social behavior by being too reliant on the attention of others in order to mask my own insecurities and anxious underpinnings. Instead of being self-secure and confident in who I really was, I would put on a mask and perform to the audience of my 'friends', all the while preventing any genuine, revealing interaction with them.
When I hit my mid adolescence, a slightly older 'mentor' introduced drugs to me--hashish/grass--and along with the already embraced alcohol, and some LSD, mushrooms, and the occasional mysterious pill mixed in (probably amphetamines in retrospect, perhaps barbituates), I was propelled down a path that was perhaps inevitable though not at all beneficial. As time passed approaching adulthood, school work and the reality of my future life were deeply entrenched as both annoying afterthoughts. There was no turning back, but then my underlying problems forced their way to the surface as reality could no longer be ignored. I withdrew from life in my early twenties, experienced some situational depression, and my hidden anxiety burst to the scene in the form of PANIC ATTACKS.
It's impossible for me to put into words the agony, despair, and terror a good old-fashioned panic attack can instill in one's mind. Not to discount the torment of depression, but I'd take a dose of it over panic attacks any day of the week. The only other mental illness I fear more would be schizophrenia. Anyways, I discovered benzos--lifesavers in some respects but not all--and life goes on in some form or another.
poster:torachan
thread:797256
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20071125/msgs/797347.html