Lemondrop

Over at The Frisky, my pal Sara Benincasa posted a personal essay about her long-time battle with panic attacks. Now Sara is a fully functioning comedian and performer and, in fact, has a book coming out about her struggles. But as a fellow stand-up comic who's learned to cope with an anxiety disorder, it's a topic close to me, too. Sure, we're both still a tad "off" but these days, we attribute it to "artistic genius." Ahem.

In any case, Sara's post inspired me to share my 10-year struggle with panic attacks: How I learned what was wrong with me, how I weathered it, and how I now live my life without medication, semi-successfully!

Around age 21, I had scored a wonderful boyfriend whom I was pretty serious with. He'd successfully managed Type I diabetes since the age of 4. I often stayed the night, and one morning woke up to him convulsing and foaming at the mouth. He was having a diabetic seizure -- and I had no clue what to do. I frantically called 911 and fumbled through his fridge, looking for insulin and needles, ready to do something drastic if it took EMS too long to arrive. I didn't know that he didn't need insulin -- he needed sugar. Luckily, I simply stayed put, although it was terrifying to just stand there, unable to help. It haunted me to find out that nearly acting on my good intentions could have killed my boyfriend.

He recovered within two days, which is right around the time I had my first attack.

The First Time
A day or two after my boyfriend went to the hospital, I remember sitting outside of a cafe with some friends, sipping an iced chai and talking about music. It was a gorgeous day, and I was relaxed, but the conversation suddenly started to sound hollow and distant, as though my friends were at the end of a long hallway. I had the acute sensation of floating away.

My heartbeat became rapid, and tingling numbness stretched up from my fingertips to my shoulders. I felt like I couldn't think and clearly had a curious look on my face. "Are you OK?" asked one of my friends. I thought I was fainting ... or dying. Then everything came back into focus, I brushed it off, and assured everyone I was fine. "That was weird," I said, and immediately got the hell out of there. Little did I know this was about to become part of my life for the next four years.

Falling Down the Rabbit Hole
Slowly but surely a potent mix of symptoms like shortness of breath, numbness and weakness in my arms began to manifest every day. I could be doing something as mundane as shopping for groceries when I'd feel overwhelmed with the sensation and the fear that I was blacking out in the middle of the store. The atmosphere would become surreal -- lights looked brighter, time moved slower -- and during episodes like this I would lose my grip (literally and figuratively) on whatever I was holding, be it canned peas or a jar of pickles. Clean up in aisle two!

I'd shake it off, but then the fear of not knowing when or where I'd experience this feeling again became an omnipresent fear. I began to think these spells meant only one thing: that I was dying.

Instead, more quirks emerged.

When my face inexplicably turned bright red during a pretty normal meal, I nearly flipped the table over staggering to the bathroom to splash water on my face and brace for impact. I still don't know what happened, but it was enough to convince me that I now had deadly food allergies -- even though it's pretty unheard of to die from eating kale. As my attacks worsened, the list of foods that terrified me was embarrassingly long and nonsensical. But the only intolerance that could be verified by an allergist? Cat dander.

Managing in Public
Being alone scared me, but hanging out in a big group presented its own can of panicky worms. As a result, I rarely hung out with friends unless I could manage to get pretty drunk. I began to display weird tics -- I would casually check my pulse every couple minutes and constantly rub my throat as though I were helping to push air down my esophagus and into my lungs, which I feared were going to collapse.

I also had more textbook symptoms, like trouble sleeping and night tears. I would bolt upright in bed after drifting off nearly every night. Clawing at the air and gasping for breath became the norm, and I often resorted to putting myself into a red wine coma so I could actually get some rest.

Since I didn't know what was wrong with me, I really thought my body had gone haywire. I went to the emergency room more times than I'd like to admit -- each time an attack came on, it felt like I was having a heart attack. One summer I spent a four-day period of 90-degree July weather wearing a heart monitor under my clothing, only to have the EKG test come back negative for defects. This was the first time a doctor suggested I was suffering from anxiety and panic disorder.

Screw you, I thought. It made no sense to me, and I felt like my health problems were being negated by the medical system. I got second, third and fourth opinions over a four-year time span. I wasn't ready to accept that diagnosis.

Hitting Rock Bottom
Living your life like this every day is lonely. You feel like you're crazy even though the symptoms of panic and anxiety are very real. I would only update my friends and parents on the good parts of my life and quietly forge on with the knowledge that I was either living with a disease that would confound modern medicine, or ... that I was a nut job. Neither thought was very comforting.

When my parents came to visit, my behavior was noticeably more odd than the last time. When they'd say goodbye at night and head back to their hotel, I'd start crying, convinced that, this time, I was dying for real. I developed terrible abdominal pain and endured a battery of tests and ultrasounds looking for Crohn's disease, or worse.

The idea that I really was terminally ill sent me into the lowest low I had ever experienced so far -- I was an emotional train wreck and clung to my parents like a kid. I kept collapsing onto the floor, sobbing, certain that I was terribly sick. When the results came back negative, there was no rejoicing. I was tapped out, and I knew that the fact that there was nothing wrong with my body meant that this was coming from my head. That's when I decided to get help.

Begging for Help
The emotional floodgates opened. And this time when I described in great detail just how awful I felt, and the doctor said, "It sounds like you've been suffering from anxiety and depression," I listened to her. She gave me literature about panic and anxiety which read like someone had been documenting my life for the past four years. I had every symptom and then some. She started me on Zoloft immediately, gave me resources for counseling, and we scheduled a checkup one month later to see how the combo was working.

Four weeks went by, and my brain finally felt like it was on vacation from itself. I was functioning without panic -- or the omnipresent fear that it would come back. All in all, I stayed on Zoloft for a year and a half. During that time, the drug gave me confidence to deal with the imbalance in my brain, even if I didn't feel like "myself." I got educated about panic and anxiety disorder and decided it was time to start doing something that really scared me: talking to people about it.

Performance, Anxiety
Before I'd become terrified to be around others, I'd always wanted to be a comedian. Incredibly, I was taking improv comedy classes in Chicago during the height of my attacks. Even though I was passionate about it, the drive to perform was quickly extinguished while I was having frequent attacks. How could I commit to a life on stage when I was worried about blacking out in the grocery store?

With my problems in check for the time being, I took a tentative step back in that direction, and much to my delight, found the conversational nature of stand-up -- and the penchant for self-deprecation -- was an amazing outlet. I could make light of the problems that had been weighing me down for years.

Getting on stage, all by myself, empowered me to face fears that were legitimate, which felt really good. Yes, I was having palpitations and felt like blacking out before my name was called, but this was appropriate anxiety for once. For the first time in six years, I felt like I could conquer the world.

With the help of my doctor, I slowly dialed down the Zoloft, which I found had been suppressing the good and the bad emotions. I knew there was something bigger and more exciting waiting to get out of me, so -- armed with pamphlets, websites and breathing tricks, should I suddenly backslide into my old ways -- I went drug-free. Most helpfully, I'd come clean to friends and family about what I was suffering from.

Now I'm 31 and, for the most part, panic-free. I still have weird quirks -- there's food I won't eat, I limit my intake of booze and caffeine because both can throw me off-balance, but I chalk it up to little idiosyncrasies that anyone who deals with stress has. And it's been years since my disorder has made me trigger-happy enough to dial 911 on this strange self I don't recognize.


Brooke Van Poppelen is a NYC based comedian and writer who manages her issues by living in a city full of people who are much crazier than her by a long shot. She can be seen performing at New York's UCB Theater with Janeane Garofalo, Arden Myrin, Andrea Rosen, and Giulia Rozzi.