Got Through the Holidays!

Well! The usual blend for Christmas - stressful, happy, peaceful, contentious. No great miseries and a good amount of fun, so I call it successful. Hopefully I'll find a day to take down the decorations this week!

Today was the kicker, though - I had a panic attack on the freeway, the first one I'd had in a while. I had commuted long distances daily on crowded freeways for several years, a few years ago, and after a while I just could not cope. In my disbelief over this "weakness" I continued commuting until I manifested all kinds of physical and psychological symptoms, and really have not ever gotten over this. I gather that this was just about literally my neuroreceptors burning out from the stress hormones. It took this period in my life to recognize that the tendency to anxiety issues on both sides of my family actually applied to me, too. I've avoided freeway driving since, especially into the city.

But this panic attack today caught me by surprise. I'd driven into the city twice last week as well as yesterday, and I was fine, though it was a little tiring. Today, I started to notice a stressed state of mind before I left - mostly manifesting as anger leaking out onto available issues, but I could tell that it was related to the anticipation of driving. While driving I had a short burst of despair/depression that I was able to connect to the freeway trigger, but it was brief. I was just telling myself a few minutes after that, that because I could observe these things, I should be OK as long as I didn't drive this distance more than two days a week, when the traffic started to slow and close in, and that's when I just completely lost my hat and freaked right the hell out. Wow.

I got home in fits and starts and a long stop in a bookstore. I took a 'nice cup of tea' there because I know that black tea reduces the cortisol levels in the bloodstream. Got home eventually, but was still feeling pretty clenched up (could not swallow!) until I downed that old standby, the .25 mg of xanax. I have extraordinarily conflicted feelings about the xanax. On one hand, it has been a godsend the last couple of years once I got over my initial reluctance to take anything, because I have not found relaxation techniques I have used in the past to be at all effective. It would have helped me through the Bad Commuting period of my life if I had been willing, though it also might have prolonged it. But I hate - hate! HATE! the idea that I go running for a chemical remedy, even in tiny controlled doses. I'm not even sure it's the chemical I object to - because it does stop the cycle of stress damage; in that sense it's not much different than taking a 'nice cup of tea.' (More effective though!) It's the idea that I am, in any sense whatsoever, dependent on a "drug" to control my state of mind. (Though xanax is addictive, I'm not worried about that kind of dependency. I've hoarded forty .5 mg pills over the last year and a half without making much of a dent in them; physical dependency is clearly not a problem I have.) Maybe I'm making too big a deal, but OK, let me just register my opinion on this thing: I don't like it, damn it.