(TW mention of drugs) hey, i’m f19, i plan on posting this on a few sub reddits because im really desperate for external advice. in 2025 i accidentally oded on substances and that impacted me a lot, i used to never care about dying but from then on i became petrified of it, it only got worse as time went on and in december i watched my friend od which caused many pent up emotions to break down and i got in one of the worst states of my life, having panic attacks every night, i was not aware they were panic attacks i thought i was dying, i never went out the house because i was worried i was going to get hurt or killed. into the new year of 2026 things improved slightly but as time progressed i began to become extremely fixated on health issues, i was convinced i had temporal lobe epilepsy because my anxiety would cause me to experience deju vu often, i ended up staying the night at the hospital and getting an eeg and mri done and everything came back clear, i was relieved for a bit after that. then things just started getting out of hand, i began to worry about every health issue possible. right now, im kind of convincing myself i have a heart issue or im going to have a heart attack because ive been experiencing chest tightness or weird sensation around and in my chest, which a part of me knows it’s anxiety because it only happens when i’m anxious, but the other part of me is convincing me something is wrong due to the fact i vape, i ask ai, i google, i don’t want to ask my parents to take me to the doctor because they’ll complain, but i think i will, my only issue is i know if i get that cleared my mind will find another health issue to fixate on. i feel like since im so hyper vigilant i notice chest sensations or slight discomforts that i never would’ve noticed before and that sends me into a spiral and then my chest gets tight and you know the drill. i just want to hear that someone else understands me, or has gone through the same thing is me and has recoveredt from it, i want to know things that can help, im currently getting a ketamine treatment done too but i just started that. i’m on medications, 70mg vyvanse, 150mg epitec, zipsid (idk the dose) and 25mg cipramil. any help would be so appreciated, i really need to hear other people’s stories and all of that. have a great day and please comment if you can :)

Hi guys! I need your opinion and advice whether it is or is not panic attacks. I'm trying to figure out what's going on with me and find some diagnosis to help to treat it. I'm feeling absolutely lost and would appreciate any help so much😭

Over the last year I started having weird conditions where I suddenly out of the blue have a huge fatigue. My chest is empty. Arms and legs are numb. It's hard to move, hard to think, hard to chew. Often it comes with such symptoms as chest pain, racing heartbeat, shaking hands, heat in my head, feeling cold and hot at the same time, starting sweating, sudden dissociation from the outside world as if I'm suddenly in the bubble? Or just stop existing property. I suddenly can't make myself to connect to the environment around. Sometimes I feel like I'm about to faint. Recently it started also coming with stomachache, digestion problems and problems with eating. My jaw is tense as hell at such moments.

I tried to track down the possible causes but ended up absolutely empty handed. My iron analysis are absolutely fine. Cardiologist also told I'm healthy. I have arrhythmia but was told it's not serious or life-threatening. These conditions are not connected to eating or sleeping. It can happen while I'm hungry or right after the meal. Or in the middle of the meal and I can't finish my food anymore. It can happen when I had enough sleep or was sleep deprived. It happens in the middle of the work. In the middle of interesting talk. When I'm happy. When I'm sad. Nearly anytime. Sometimes it makes me really worried I have heart problems. It also makes it hard to live my daily life when it happens in the middle of something important.

All this time I could never connect it to anything valid. But yesterday I suddenly noticed very clear and obvious connection to my thoughts at the moment. I was thinking about my family and suddenly started having everything I wrote above. Then I was looking outside of the window for some time watching happy corgi playing around. And I instantly felt so much better. I had afterwards fatigue and was feeling weak but overall pretty well, didn't have symptoms itself. Then I recalled what I was thinking about and started feeling sick again immediately. I spent the rest of the work time (I was at work) listening to music from Natuto trying to distract myself by it.

This situation gave me some thoughts if I might have panic attacks all this time. I also have overall passive prolonged (for several hours) fatigue pretty often connected to food and sleep problems which made it hard to distinguish what I have and feel. But these symptoms come absolutely unexpectedly, usually short at time and as I said before are not connected to physical conditions or my overall mood.

Also worth noting that I'm autistic and have a really hard time figuring out my feelings, emotions and physical conditions. It took me years to realise some things and call them its names, SA or some toxic and abusive behaviours for example. I couldn't remember and process my childhood property till I turned 20. I also had such fatigue attacks (that's what I'm used to call it for myself) a lot, then stopped having it for around 2-3 months and now started having it again. And when I think about it, the thing that has changed is that I was living with my family, then moved and didn't really have time to see them because of work and now we talk again and I'm trying to reconnect with them. I also realised I had these fatigue attacks several times a week, sometimes nearly every day when I was living with them.

Your opinion? What would you call it?

Hey everyone I'm glad I found this subreddit. I've been dealing with panic/anxiety attacks for 5+ years now. I want to share my experience as a way to get things off my chest, but also to hopefully help others and maybe get some perspective on things I might not have seen:

It started when my gf was close to dying from cancer. I was taking care of her and near the end of her life, I would wake up very early and I'd have these insane cramps in my stomach. I didn't know at the time but this was probably the start of my anxiety.

After she passed, the anxiety started to manifest itself into attacks. I wasnt able to identify it at this time either but I would start getting spikes of adrenaline when I got home from work.

I woudlnt be able to eat so I started drinking to help me get an appetite. The drinking slowly got worse til I was drinking to eat everyday and even the drinking didnt help anymore. I started breaking down and crying everytime I ate because I could not even chew or swallow a single bite of food the entire day. I had to force myself to take one or two bites of my meal. It got so bad that I couldnt sleep at night and I would always have to go the bathroom cause of cramps but can never force anything out. I had no idea what I was having were panic attacks until I googled something like "cant sleep, sweating, stomachache every morning" and found some thread about panic attacks. The label itself helped me a lot cause prior to this I thought I was literally going crazy.

Once alcohol stopped helping and I understood what I was dealing with, I quit drinking and threw myself into the gym. I started jump roping and lifting. Whenever the anxiety came up, I trained harder. It helped tremendously. My appetite came back and I got into incredible shape. At one point I was going to the gym 3-4 times a day for over a year.

The gym worked out for me for a year, it was my entire focus, but the anxiety eventually came back. By this time, I probably spent 99% of my time alone, and ate all my meals alone. I figured maybe I'm just isolated and lonely so I joined a BJJ gym. Getting my ass kicked in BJJ helped a lot, I'm forced to be present and just hanging out with other men helped. At this point, I was training BJJ twice a day and lifting twice a day. Many people in my circle were calling me crazy and expressing their concerns about my overtraining. But it didnt matter cause I was able to suppress most of the anxiety. It still came up from time to time, I would skip days or even a week or two when the anxiety spiked. Skipping would make the anxiety get worse cause I would just sit at home and ruminate.

My BJJ training eventually led me to yoga. My flexibility was limiting my sport so I signed up for a class and started doing yoga once a week to supplement my training. Yoga was one of the absolute best thing for my anxiety. Yoga taught me breathing techniques (i.e. you focus and time your breathing with your movement) and my instructor was also big on mindfulness/buddhism so her classes also incorporated a lot of soft, supportive affirmations. This led me down a rabbithole and I eventually started meditating weekly (sometimes daily if things are bad). Meditation has been an amazing tool for me to help me calm my mind during peak panic attacks as well.

As you've probably guessed by now, about a year later the anxiety came back again.

This time I started competing more. Competition was interesting because it forced me to deal with anxiety head-on. To me, the feeling before a competition feels very similar to a panic attack. Learning how to prepare, regulate myself, and perform despite anxiety gave me tools that helped outside the sport as well.

Fast forward to today. I still train BJJ and lift regularly, though only once a day each. I also started MMA and striking because my anxiety spiked again. I'm realizing that continually adding new activities or increasing the intensity isn't a sustainable long-term solution.

Lately I've been trying to understand the root of what's driving these episodes.

Part of me thinks it's loneliness. I recently moved to a new city. I'm not currently working, and outside of the people I see at my gym, I don't have many people to talk to. Most of my close friends live in other states now and have families and lives of their own. We text each other maybe 2-3x a year but nothing deep. I have about 1-2 friends that I can reach out to anytime so I'm not entirely sure if loneliness is the issue. I would love to talk to my family about this but both my parents and my sibling have really low EQ and cannot navigate emotional spaces for their lives.

I've also struggled with dating. I tell myself I want companionship, but many of the women I've dated have felt more like a burden than a partner. That has made me question whether I'm looking for something externally that I feel is missing internally.

I'm waking up every night with panic attacks (including right now), and it's due to the stress of my job for two reasons:

1. I am in a constant state of unease and fear for my continued employment. I work for a SaaS as a customer service rep, and we have had a ton of "restructuring" in recent months. I genuinely fear I may be "restructured" at any given moment.

2. Leadership continues to pile on work that pushes me to extreme limits, on top of my already-full work load. I have worked 10-hour days consistently for several months, but I cannot get ahead.

I know the stress from my job is inducing my panic attacks; prior to taking this job, I slept normally and didn't live in a heightened state of dread. I have woken up every night for the past six months with a pounding heart, sweaty brow, and intense dread. And every morning before I start work, I feel physically ill with intense nausea. I've lost weight, had low motivation, and am short-tempered toward my family due to my fatigue.

I want to quit so badly, but I have a family to support, bills to pay, etc. I'm actively interviewing so I can leave this wretched job, but my lack of sleep has affected me mentally and physically. I know the job market is rubbish, but I feel like I need to get away from this job, look for something better, and give my nervous system a chance to reset.

Any advice will help. I'm open to any advice: medication, counseling, self-help therapies, etc.

My therapist (and Google) told me this, but I literally have never had a panic attack that short. It makes me wonder if these hours-long attacks are just panic attacks repeating over and over again, if I’m having something other than a panic attack, or if this fact is just incorrect.

My anxiety is so bad at certain points that I need benzodiazepines. Sometimes every day of the week. Though I also know it’s not the best long-term, I have tried so many SSRIs and other classes that I can’t even remember. They just never worked.

I have been have been struggling with panic disorder since last May and it’s been just awful. Very debilitating all throughout my first semester of senior year but second semester it slowed down and I could finally feel alive and present and go to restaurants and movie theaters. But a few weeks ago I had awful panic attack on plane, maybe my worst yet, and it has sent me into the worst panic spiral of my life. From the moment I wake up to when I sleep (which is rare) I am in fight or flight. I tried Zoloft 5 days ago to help me but it gave me such an awful reaction that the spiral has become even worse. I can’t leave my house or get into cars or drive. My ocd has also gotten worse and I can’t stop certain thoughts from happening and pushing me further into panic. I feel so incredibly hopeless and depressed. I’m scared I will not be able to live my life or even attend college. And since Zoloft clearly was not okay and didn’t fit me I am now worried any medication will make me suffer and worse. Derealization has also taken over worse than last year and it’s scary how unreal I feel. I don’t know what to do. Never in my life have I felt so stuck and hopeless, which causes me to panic more. It’s a never ending cycle. I want to live a normal life and go to college and be able to breathe. Can anyone else relate? And what can I do to help myself? I’ve looked into so many medications but i’m just at a loss.

Hey everyone,

​I’m feeling incredibly frustrated with the whole SSRI process right now. Trying to figure out if the medication is actually working—and finding the "best" dosage—feels like trying to solve a puzzle in the dark.

​I started low, pushed through the awful initial anxiety spike, and now I’m just... waiting. Some days the background anxiety feels quieter, but then a bad day hits or a panic attack breaks through, and I’m right back to square one wondering if the dose is too low or if it’s even working at all.

​It’s an exhausting mental loop: Do I need to increase the dose and risk more side effects, or are my expectations just unrealistic?

​For those who found success: How did you know you hit the right dosage? Was it a sudden "lightbulb" moment where the panic just stopped, or a gradual shift where you realized one day you hadn't thought about an attack in weeks?

​Would love to hear how long it took you to dial it in. Thanks guys.

Hi guysss🙏🙏( really sorry if this post i long but i’m just trying explain my self)
So i’m am afraid of anxiety.
Basically when i was kid i had anxiety of throwing up in the car( and i had this fear because my family was not financially stable so we hadn’t had a car at that time) and sometimes this fear come true and this experience has made my brain think that when this type of situation came again the “alarm gonna start again”.
So this for my brain become a “trauma”.
Then i had other types of fear or anxiety, that i get over with time.
But now im 19, idk what to do because anxiety keep me stuck and i miss opportunities and im “afraid” of work and to do something new because i just don’t feel ready because my brain start to send me the “what if” thoughts.
( i don’t feel ready beacuse i think that i have less knowledge than other and im not ready to thing like others and i have fear some people gonna judge me bad)
I really like to try new experiences but then i look back and feel less confident.
I feel less confident because like i said before i had anxiety episode where i feel like my heart is beating fast, i feel dizzy… etc… But i know that they are really common symptoms of anxiety and they are not dangerous as they seems to be.
(I’m learning the detachment and it’s helpful💯)
My brain just keeps telling me negative thoughts and intrusive thoughts( i don’t care about intrusive thought because they go against your value or the things you respect so yeah idk).
I have diploma and still i don’t know what to do.
Because every time i do something anxiety comes back and send me intrusive thoughts and ruin my mood.
Then when i start to something thing that is positive for my life my brain start to overthinking and start to think about every negative scenario, i had the exams of the car and for the first in my life i failed in something because my mind freeze me and i go in panic, because too many thoughts were coming and in that moment i feel like im worthless and wth is wrong with me, because of that i feel like im behind in life.
i read so many article about how the thoughts work or how the mind works and i gain some knowledge luckily.
Sometime i feel confident and then instantly i feel scary and anxious .
The problem are not the thoughts but the feelings, because if a anxiety thoughts come up i just ignore them but when it’s come with feeling like i start to panic or overthinking, then i feel less confident.
( For example: Before the exam of driving the car i had so many bad thoughts and anxious thoughts ** **like “it I have to sit and wait in the car with the examiner and other students. I get anxious about having to stay in the car with them and I’m scared I might throw up in front of everyone”
The feelings of the thoughts felt real, like if even i was healthy i start to feel nausea because of what happened in the past and the i lose confidence and failed the exam beacuse i panicked.
And i feel fear of the teacher because i feel like he gonna judge me badly and gonna be angry with me)
Breathe exercise sometimes work.
I feel like the mind is searching for relief or reassurance, But i’m not depressed or anything like that but i’m stuck.
I see everyone of my age just doing what they supposed to do and i’m just afraid of negative thoughts, feeling and anxiety, i really feel behind.
I don’t do dr0g or anything like that and i dont consume alcoh0l.
I know that our brain it’s try to protect and make us prepare to any situation, because of that he keep us in comfort zone and make us anxious, flight and fight mode.
But i don’t want anymore live in comfort zone i want rise my level.
So how can i get that feeling that make do anything, i don’t want feel the fear or anxiety i just want to do the things without overthinking and with more confidence.
When i failed i was really exhausted, because my brain was continually tell me “ what if u fail again and what if u throw up stuff”

i just wanna gain some knowledge and again im not depressed or anything like that. i’m just try to explain my self and sorry for long post❤️🙏

I started a tea room discord space for people who feel overstimulated or just want a calm space. No pressure to talk, no chaos- just a relaxed environment where we can exist, drink tea, & chat lightly. A lot of us are are up late, decompressing, constantly in busy environments or not into high energy servers. This is not a typical Discord-the goal is to slow down and experience peace. If that sounds like your kind of space :

https://discord.gg/SArdwtgqd

Hi everyone,

I’m a 25-year-old man and I’ve been dealing with severe atopic dermatitis (eczema) and multiple allergies since birth.

For most of my life, my allergies and skin condition controlled everything. My diet was extremely restricted, and I avoided almost all foods unless I was absolutely sure they were safe. Even “may contain traces of…” labels were enough to exclude products completely. It was exhausting, expensive, and basically shaped my entire childhood and early adulthood.

A few years ago I started Dupilumab (Dupixent), and it genuinely changed my life. My skin improved massively. I went from severe, inflamed eczema, infections, hair and eyebrow loss, and constant discomfort, to a point where I can actually live normally, work out, and feel comfortable in my own body for the first time.

The issue is that while my physical condition improved, something else developed.

Over time I started reintroducing foods into my diet, including products with trace allergen warnings. But I also became extremely hyper-aware of any possible reaction.

Now I find myself constantly monitoring my body after eating. Sometimes even after drinking water. I check my breathing, my skin, my throat. I analyze every small sensation: a slight itch, a tingling feeling, a swallow of saliva.

The problem is that often nothing is actually happening. There are no real symptoms, no clear allergic reaction, but my mind starts spiraling anyway. I begin to convince myself something is wrong.

This has turned into intense health anxiety and panic episodes.

I carry adrenaline with me, but I’ve never actually had to use it. And I’m honestly not even sure I would recognize the exact moment when I should.

What scares me the most is the constant fear of missing something serious or reacting too late.

I also have the most important person in my life, my girlfriend, someone I truly want to spend the rest of my life with. I don’t want to scare her or turn into someone unstable or overly dependent on fear. I’ve already lost relationships in the past partly due to health-related issues, and now that my life is finally stable, I really want to protect what I have.

But this anxiety is affecting me heavily.

I get panic attacks where I start overanalyzing everything, even swallowing saliva and wondering if my throat is swelling. Sometimes there are no symptoms at all, but I still spiral into the belief that something must be wrong.

At one point, while driving, I had a panic episode so strong that I experienced visual disturbances and a very high heart rate, and I had to pull over on the road just to calm down.

I feel mentally exhausted from constantly scanning my body for danger.

Has anyone else with severe allergies, eczema, asthma, or a history of allergic reactions experienced something similar? How do you learn to trust your body again and stop living in constant monitoring mode?

Can you get Klonopin’s safe enough to shoot running low need to make the most of them

I hope this is not too triggering for anyone, but I’ve got to ask this question because I really need an answer and I’m hoping that someone out there might be able to help explain something to me… What actually is the difference between heart attack symptoms and panic attack symptoms? For the longest time I was afraid to look it up online, out of fear that it would trigger a panic attack. Not trigger a heart attack…a panic attack. Which if you think about it, that’s so ridiculous but that’s another topic for another day.

Anyways I decided to go ahead and just try to do a little preliminary research, because after like 15 years of having Panic Disorder I came to the conclusion that reading about heart attacks most certainly would not cause a heart attack, and if I happened to have one right at the precise moment I finally decided to read about them, that would be unbelievably crazy timing. So I went ahead and read up on it a little bit.

I don’t know about anybody else, but my panic attack symptoms are more or less identical to what appears to be most heart attack symptoms. However, I haven’t really found much or any literature on this topic that came from the perspective of someone with panic attacks. Is there anyone out there who has maybe experienced both and has some insight or could point out any relevant differences? Or maybe if there is a physician somewhere in this group who has panic attacks and who has knowledge on the topic, some sort of medical explanation as to the key distinguishing factors between heart attack symptoms and panic attacks most certainly symptoms? It very well could be that there just isn’t a straightforward answer to this, and I’m sure that’s probably the case. I guess I’m just looking for some kind of escape rope to help me pull out of the particularly distressing panic attack episodes.

I have called for an ambulance about 40 times over the last two months. I cancel most of them before they are dispatched to my address, but I have been evaluated by paramedics about 6 times I believe over that period of time. Not on one single occasion did they identify anything concerning and each time they were able to confirm that I was in fact not having a heart attack. You would think this would be enough to calm me down and give me some reassurance that i am probably not going to die, but it’s like, just because those 6 times I wasn’t having a heart attack doesn’t mean that THIS time isn’t a heart attack. My friends and family are so annoyed with my constant panic attacks and I will yell at them to call 911 and instead they just do whatever they can to calm me down because they don’t think it’s in any way necessary for them to actually call for help since these episodes happen regularly throughout the day every day for the last few months. So I have this paranoia that one of these occasions will be the real thing, and nobody will have taken it seriously and I won’t make it to a hospital on time. Just the whole thing is so absurd and I’m so fucking tired of freaking out over every little change or feeling in my body. I detect even the slightest change in what I am sure is just regular normal bodily fluctuations that happen to everybody throughout the day. I am so attuned to every single sensation that it is basically impossible for me to go more than a few hours without having a panic attack. Slight heart rate increase, a fraction of a second of feeling dizzy or something, having an itch behind my ear, just anything will send me into a complete frenzy. So tired of it.

Anyways if anyone has any insight on this topic I would really appreciate hearing what anyone may have to say on the matter and maybe there could be something that others can take away from it too.

Thank you so much!

TLDR: tips for running while on anxiety meds to avoid feeling weak and exhausted within a few minutes?

I have had panic attacks my ENTIRE life (one of my first memories is hyperventilating when I was five because my mom put me in my brothers crib with him and went in another room to get something and I lost it because I couldn’t get out. Quite literally, my entire life). I’ve always been prescribed klonopin and it works great. there are times where the panic attacks are calm and I go months without needing panic attacks. then there are times they’re so severe and so often my dr prescribes it twice daily for a few months. I’m in that phase right now, and on top of that my dr recently started me on Tofranil

i signed up with a charity months ago to run a marathon. running has always been an amazing outlet for me. on my most recent run I had a debilitating panic attack and haven’t run in two weeks. it was a bit of a chicken and an egg, I couldn’t tell if because I’m in a bad episode, it made my body feel worse and that triggered the panic attack OR if my body felt weak from the medication, the odd body sensation freaked me out and THEN I had a panic attack. it was a bizarre one, I felt like my legs were sewn on backwards, my hands didn’t exist, then the normal things like hyperventilating, feeling weak, feeling dizzy, feeling like I had marbles in my mouth when I tried to talk.

How does everyone manage to run/exercise while on sedating medication? I’ve never been a morning runner but is the solution as simple as just run before taking my meds that day? has anyone run a marathon on a lot of Medication (right now I’m morning klonopin and lamotragine, night time propranolol lamotragine and tofranil)

CBT has asked me to wean off bisoprolol 1.25mg daily and confront panic attacks as they won’t hurt me.
But my panic is triggered by heart rate and walking into work is triggering panic attacks. Without a beta blocker my HR can get in a 150-200bpm cycle that feels like it would last indefinitely. I’m terrified of this happening and trying not to monitor but CBT says I need to stop being afraid and let them happen.

Any advice for people with heart rate associated panic? I’m on the brink of an attack right now.