The first time I had a panic attack, I thought I was dying.
Not in a poetic sense. Literally.
There was vomiting. Diarrhea. Trembling. Dizziness so intense I couldn’t stand.
I remember lying on the cold bathroom floor of a hotel room in China, soaked in sweat, barely conscious,
my heart beating like a war drum in my chest. I was alone. On a business trip. And I was terrified.
It wasn’t food poisoning. I knew that.
It wasn’t a virus.
It was something else—something deeper. Something I couldn’t explain.
All night I lay there in a kind of chaos I didn’t yet have a name for. And I remember thinking, with a kind
of horrifying clarity:
If someone gave me poison right now to make this stop, I’d drink it.
That’s what a panic attack can do.
It takes over your entire system.
It convinces you that death might be better than whatever is happening inside your body.
I’m a combat veteran. I’ve been in life-threatening situations. I’ve seen death,
But nothing prepared me for this.
Because panic doesn’t come from outside.
It comes from the inside—and it’s harder to outrun.
After that first attack, the anxiety didn’t leave. It followed me home. It crept into meetings, into dinners,
into moments of silence. It took up residence in my nervous system.
Eventually, a psychiatrist prescribed Clonazepam.
He told me it was for emergencies only.
But “emergencies” have a way of expanding when you’re living in constant fear.
Clonazepam worked.
The first time I took it, I felt something I hadn’t felt in years: relief.
The noise quieted. My body softened. I could breathe.
It didn’t feel like medication.
It felt like mercy.
But here’s the truth: what brings you back to life once can end up taking over that life completely.
Within weeks, the pill that was meant for “occasional use” became routine.
Not because I abused it. Not because I wanted to escape.
But because it worked—until it didn’t.
That’s the danger no one really talks about:
These medications are meant to interrupt an emergency.
But when you start taking them every day, they begin to create one.
I wasn’t just taking Clonazepam to stop panic.
I was taking it to avoid the panic I’d feel when the drug wore off.
My brain had been trained to depend on it.
And I’m not alone in this.
Many psychiatrists know the risks. They warn you: “This drug is addictive.”
But then they normalize the habit.
They say:
“It’s okay for now.”
“We’ll taper later.”
“You’re going through a lot.”
And they’re not wrong.
We are going through a lot.
But the pill doesn’t treat the trauma.
It just makes it quieter.
Until it doesn’t.
In time, my dosage increased.
And when I tried to cut back, the anxiety was worse than ever.
It wasn’t just a return of symptoms—it was withdrawal.
My body had stopped knowing how to self-regulate.
And here’s the paradox:
Clonazepam worked perfectly in the short term.
But long-term, it made me more anxious, more fragile, more dependent.
I wasn’t healing.
I was surviving.
Barely.
It wasn’t until I finally entered real trauma therapy—and later, began writing my novel Dog—that things
started to shift.
The therapy gave me insight.
The writing gave me voice.
Together, they gave me back a sense of authorship over my own story.
Because that’s the thing about trauma: it doesn’t just injure your mind.
It steals your narrative.
And healing, I’ve come to believe, is about reclaiming that narrative—word by word, memory by memory.
There are moments when medication is necessary.
When panic hits like a tidal wave, when your whole system is hijacked, a pill can save your life.
But we need to stop pretending that what helps in an emergency should become a lifestyle.
We need to stop confusing sedation with healing.
And we need to stop expecting pills to do the work that only truth, connection, and expression can do.
Because I’ve lived both.
The silence that medication brings.
And the clarity that comes after the silence fades.
And I can tell you this:
Relief is not the same as recovery.
Control is not the same as healing.
And the pill that stays after the panic ends…
might be the one thing standing in your way.
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Previously Pblished on Mad in America and is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock
