Disclaimer: The following letter (to myself), is quite depressing and it talks about a few triggering subjects like Substance Abuse, Panic Attacks and Anxiety in general. If that's not something you'd like to read, feel free to go away.
Dear Self,
Well, not even a day since this blog is up, and already the second post. I am amazed by my dedication (sarcastic voice). I wanted to log how my relationship with anxiety and panic attacks started. Straight to the heavy stuff we go.
It all started around 2017, maybe 2018. I was 17. Now, 17-year-old Zack was quite different from today’s Zack. He used to be a bit more fearless. A bit more… well, free. Not necessarily happy, but free. He didn’t have to worry about every single little thing around him. That being said, he was quite the depressed bitch.
Since he turned 14, his relationship with alcohol (and drugs, for that matter) was something else.
We would go out with a group of friends every Friday. The same friends, and we would drink. We would have tons to drink. It was always the same routine: go to the park next to the abandoned factory, buy a bottle of Absolut or Tanqueray from the convenience store (that wouldn’t check IDs), grab a few styrofoam cups, ice cubes, and start the deed. It didn’t matter if it was winter or summer, cold or hot—always styrofoam cups, ice cubes, and a bottle of cheapish hard liquor.
Now, most of the time, my friends (except the ones with the same “problems”) would have a cup or two to enjoy themselves, but I wanted more. They would lace their drink with Cola or Fanta or whatever else was available to tame the burning from the 40% alcohol gasoline we were drinking, but I wanted it straight. My excuse? It tasted better. Did it actually taste better? Nah. It was burning my soul, but I didn’t care—I just wanted to get drunk as fast as possible to run away from all my thoughts or all my “problems” (what I thought were problems at the time).
A few cups a night turned into a bottle for me and a bottle for the rest, every time we went out. No excuses.
I am quite lucky because, contrary to some of my friends, I was controlling my body like magic. Yes, I’ve been wasted multiple times, but never to the point where I’d faint or throw up. It was like I was always keeping the perfect balance—just a few milliliters away from alcohol poisoning every time, and yet, I was happy. At least temporarily happy, so it was good enough for me.
Then, a year or so later, I discovered weed. And man, let me tell you—weed is plain awesome. It made me creative. It made me happy. It made me actually want to watch movies and series (something I usually avoided because of ADHD). It even made me draw! Who? Me (someone who couldn’t hold a pencil and draw a straight line, ever). So, while experimenting with it, I thought to myself: this is better than alcohol. My ADHD allows me to stay relatively coherent even if I’m stoned to the moon, and I don’t have the nasty hangovers that alcohol gives you. Sounds like a win-win.
And then it started. First, a few times a month. Then, a few times a week. Then, a few times a day. But I was happy.
I still remember a morning when my parents left to do chores outside the house, and I had hidden a gram of weed inside my guitar. As soon as the door closed, I ran to grab it and put it in a bootleg bong I made from a plastic bottle and aluminum foil. I put on Spotify, full blast, to this banger of a song: Speedy Ortiz - No Below. And I was living like I was actually Chloe fucking Price.1
Now, I know what you’re saying to yourself (if anybody even reads this)—where the fuck were his parents? Well, they were there. They tried their best. I did my best also to hide all this. So, I can’t blame them for this part, at least.
Americans celebrate their 16th birthdays like it’s the most important year of their lives, but for me, the most important year was 17. One year to go. One year, and I’d be free. College, here I come! Freedom, here I go! My mood was better, I could do stuff and have fun—hell, I didn’t even need that much weed or alcohol to stay functional. Things weren’t going great, but they were going okay.
I vividly remember the day. It was sometime in September or October. The last year of school had just started. I skipped most of my classes because I was going abroad anyway, so I didn’t care about the national finals—I was living the dream. A teenager with unlimited time to do unlimitedly stupid things. Clueless about what was about to happen.
That day, I probably skipped the first three or four hours and only went to school for English class. I always loved English. All the kids would turn the class into mayhem, but not me. I wasn’t a nerd—quite the opposite, actually—but I had done all that in secondary school. I couldn’t care less about causing chaos in class or making the teacher mad as hell. So instead, I paid attention, and we even chatted about things outside of school.
Our English teacher was pretty cool, honestly. She was quite young for a teacher, so you could have a non-boomer conversation with her pretty easily.
After finishing English (and probably a bit of Economics and Computer Science), I took the school bus home, already planning to get my weekly weed allowance from a classmate who was dealing. He was one of those people I’d normally hate hanging out with—pretty alpha male, with an annoying, over-masculine vibe—but hey, as long as he supplied me with the devil’s lettuce, he might as well have been Martin Shkreli2; I wouldn’t have given a shit.
It was probably around 17:00 or 18:00 when we agreed to meet in a neighborhood a few blocks (about 2.5 km) away from where I lived. When I arrived, I saw him standing there. We said hi to each other and proceeded with the trade. A ten-euro note in my right hand exchanged for a gram of weed in the other. I said thanks and was about to head to the bus stop to go home, like I had done many times before. But this time, he stopped me.
“Hey, wait! I’ve got a nice idea if you’re down for it.”
“Uh, sure. What’s the idea?” I replied.
He explained that he had plans to go somewhere else after, but before that, maybe we could go to a nearby park and light one together. Just to have a good time before we both went back to our own things.
Startled by the offer, I agreed. I mean, smoking alone is fun, but even with someone you don’t really care about, it’s always slightly funnier.
We arrived at the park, and he rolled the first joint. Now, I might have been a rookie when it came to joint sizes, but that was big. Comically big.
Looking at it, an intimidating feeling showered my brain, but I dismissed it, saying, heh, whatever, I’ve probably done as much weed in one go before.
He finished rolling, lit it, took a drag, and then offered it to me.
The moment I took a drag, I immediately started coughing like a maniac. The amount of weed and tobacco in this thing was just beyond anything.
He started making fun of me for coughing, and I replied by calling him an ass or whatever, then took a second drag.
The gates of hell opened wide.
Within moments of THC hitting my bloodstream, a weird and unfamiliar feeling started flooding my entire body. Something like pins and needles. This time, though, I was scared shitless. Panic started taking over me. I was shaking.
The guy sitting next to me saw me and asked,
“Hey, you okay?”
I said yes, trying to downplay what was happening, although it was a bit difficult to hide. My whole face had probably turned white.
A few moments later, still in turmoil internally, I couldn’t hold back and said,
“Hey, yeah, I’m not feeling that well.”
He tried to downplay it. He said I was fine and that we should walk to the convenience store a few meters away to grab some water. So we did.
I finished the entire bottle in a sec. My stomach wasn’t ready for half a liter of water in three seconds. Still in this state—dazed, panicked, and with my body feeling the weirdest it ever had—I made a request to him.
“You mind staying for a while till I calm down?”
Well, my request was executively ignored.
“Nah, mate, you’re fine, honestly. I gotta go.”
Couldn’t fight it at the moment, so I said, “Sure, I’ll go home.”
“Yeah, do that,” he replied.
Within moments, he quickly fled. But now, where was home?
Well, I knew, kinda—but I was in an unfamiliar neighborhood. I knew roughly where it was, but I couldn’t think clearly. So I started walking.
I could have taken a taxi or a bus, but honestly, I wanted some cold air to hit my face. The panic was not only becoming worse, but it was literally overtaking me. So I started walking in the direction I thought my house would be.
A few moments in, the panic was so big I couldn’t control it anymore.
I literally stopped a guy passing by and told him,
“Hey, I don’t feel that well, could you help me?”
Well, that was also a mistake. The guy, in his late 50s, asked me:
“What’s wrong, young man?”
“Yeah, I smoked some pot, and I ain’t having it.”
“Ah, don’t worry, kiddo, I do it all the time. You’re just freaking out.”
“Yeah, that’s probably it. Thanks.” and continued walking.
To this day, I don’t know if it was just panic or something else that rewired my brain, but while walking alone towards home for the next 1.5 km, I probably experienced the weirdest thing ever.
Images rushing through my eyes.
Whatever I would think of would become an image that I could see. Like I was going blind for a few seconds, and then—boom!—in an instant, reality was back.
I’m not exaggerating. It was like my brain was lagging in real life.
Because of this, two or three times, drivers honked at me because they had almost run me over. I apologized every time, but I really didn’t see them until the last possible second. My eyes were seeing my thoughts, not the real world.
Long story short, I arrived home (not sure how—I don’t even remember the last few meters to my house).
My dad was sitting in the living room watching football, and thankfully, he was way too busy to look at me because he would have seen what a mess I was. I just said, “Good evening, I’m going straight to bed, I’m really tired,” and rushed to my room.
Locked the door.
Went under 3–4 blankets and stayed there motionless, trying to comprehend what had happened. I kept saying to myself that I needed to sleep it off.
So I did. I put a video on my phone and fell asleep.
The next morning, everything was normal.
Didn’t give it much thought. Discarded it as a one-time incident.
But in reality, as I learned soon, the floodgates had opened.
A couple of months passed since the “Incident.” I hadn’t touched pot because I was scared shitless that something like that could happen again, but other than that, the days went fine. I was preparing for my departure in August—away from home, to a new country. Still a few months to go, I kept saying to myself.
One Monday evening, I was sitting in my room soldering a PCB for a small electronics project I wanted to make.
“And done!” I said to myself after the last connection was soldered.
I clapped my hands to clear them from anything that might have gotten on them while working on the PCB, then grabbed a cup of water next to me to rehydrate. The moment I stopped drinking, my heart sank.
You see, I was convinced that clapping my hands after I finished somehow made a piece of solder fly into the cup of water I had just drunk from—and that I had swallowed it. Did I feel anything in my mouth? No. Did the water taste different? No. But I was convinced.
So, I panicked. I started Googling all the symptoms of lead poisoning, and minute by minute, sure enough, I started feeling all of them. I tried to play the logic game with myself.
“You are fucking fine, Zack. If something had fallen into the cup, you would have felt it.”
“You are just panicking. Relax.”
But nah. Adrenaline was winning. Nothing I could have said to myself could make it stop. So, it had to be the lead.
Survival mode activated, and I slowly approached my mom, who was sitting on the couch watching a late-night TV program.
“Ah, Mom, I’m not feeling very good.”
“Huh? What’s wrong?”
Stuttering my words and not feeling comfortable sharing everything with my mom, I tried to explain what had happened. Instead of concern or at least some kind of reassurance, she got angry. Inside, I felt horrible. I was convinced I was dying, and now I had to fight my mom too.
Moments later, the initial “fighting” subsided, and she said in an upset tone:
“Okay, let’s go to the hospital.”
I didn’t understand what I had done wrong. I didn’t understand why she was angry. I felt like I was dying, and not only did she not seem concerned, but I was also being treated like a misbehaving dog (pun intended).
Before we rushed to the hospital3, I asked her:
“Can you call the Poison Center? Maybe they know what we should do.”
So, she called. She explained the situation. The guy on the phone didn’t even know what solder was and just said, “He’s probably fine, just ask him to drink lots of milk.”
Yeah, like that’s what I needed to hear. For real, though—what did I want to hear?
My mom relayed the information, and I told her the guy seemed clueless and I was still worried.
My mom, angrily again:
“Okay, then let’s go to the hospital if you don’t trust him.”
Like the hospital would be some kind of severe punishment…
The good thing is that despite my dad being a complete asshole usually, every time it was something related to our health, he genuinely got worried. So, he convinced my mom that maybe it was a good idea—even if it was nothing—to have somebody check me out, just so I could relax. So, I guess… kudos, Dad?!
We arrived at the public hospital that was open for after-hours in my city, but we were met with a humongous queue. We took a queue number and waited for about half an hour. I was getting numb from head to toe. My mom seemed a bit calmer now—actually worried, even. So, I asked her:
“How long are we gonna wait?”
“Yeah, the queue is huge, I dunno.”
Dad jumped into the conversation:
“Let’s go to the private clinic next to our house. Insurance covers it.”
“Yeah, let’s do that,” my mom replied, desperate to get it over with.
I nodded in agreement.
When we arrived at the private clinic, within almost five minutes, a GP was looking at me. She asked what had happened. I explained.
She performed an ECG—it came out fine, except for my pulse, which was sky-high. I was convinced she didn’t know what she was doing, that she would just downplay it. Like I knew everything, and everybody else didn’t. Like everyone was against me.
She gave me a pill and asked me to keep it under my tongue. I did as she said. They didn’t tell me what it was. Moments later, the panic subsided.
“So, I gave him a tranquilizer just so he can sleep tonight. But I don’t see anything alarming or anything that would indicate something’s wrong with him.”
Well there fucking is. My brain.
We left, arrived home, and I went to sleep.
The next day, the anxiety and worry reached the same levels again. The tranquilizer was long gone from my system. I couldn’t handle it, so I pushed my parents to take me back.
And we did.
The GP that saw me this time said:
“There is nothing wrong with him again, but it’s clinic policy—if a patient comes twice with the same complaint within 2-3 days, we need to keep him for observation.”
So, I got an overnight stay. More tranquilizers and a bit of awful hospital food later, the next day came, and I was discharged. But before we left, the doctor from yesterday referred me to a neurologist.
(Nobody thought a psychiatrist would be applicable?)
Before we took our stuff and left, we waited for the neurologist. He arrived, and I almost burst out laughing internally.
This 70-year-old guy (who should have probably retired years ago) came to see me.
He asked my mom to leave so we could be alone in the room.
“Hey kid, what’s up? Why so anxious?”
“You tell me, never had this before…” (Almost said sarcastically.)
“Do Mom and Dad hit you?”
“Uhm, what? No!”
“Well, I had to ask. Guys can get anxiety from that.”
“No offense, but the reason I came here is I thought I swallowed lead.”
“Well, and you haven’t. Otherwise, you’d already be dead. So why worry?”
Jesus, I thought to myself—this is the most Luben conversation I could have imagined having with a doctor.
“Yeah, I shouldn’t worry. You’re right.”
“Do you have friends?”
“I do.”
“Then I don’t get it—why would you be having panic attacks?”
I felt like I was in a sitcom.
“Yeah, I dunno. Maybe I just got stressed. I shouldn’t have.”
“Well, I’ll prescribe you some ~Lexotanil~ Bromazepam. You can take half of it if you ever experience this again. But you’re honestly fine.”
“Sure, thanks, I guess.”
He left the room and went to talk with my mom. I felt like the universe was pulling a joke on me. I couldn’t trust any of the doctors. I couldn’t trust my parents. Nobody was taking me seriously—like I had done something wrong.
So, I tried to calm myself down in the following days, with moderate success. My grandma had undergone leg surgery that same week, so my mom suggested we visit her—to help take my mind off things.
During the car ride, I was almost silent.
Then, I noticed something I hadn’t while in the hospital. My brain was slower than usual. Like there was a barrier. I can’t really describe the feeling—the closest comparison would be some kind of brain fog.
For me, that was like completely losing my mind.
I have ADHD. I always have. My brain is used to running at 200 km/h, and right now, it felt like somebody pulled the handbrake.
That not only didn’t calm me down—it made me panic even harder.
We arrived at the clinic where my grandma was recovering. We said hi and started talking with her about anything.
Meanwhile, my mind kept being bothered by the apparent lack of speed. I excused myself from the room, leaving my mom and grandma talking. In the corridor, I started crying. Not because I was in pain. Not because I was anxious. But because of how miserable that feeling was.
It kept going like this for a week until my mental capacity was restored to “normal.”
And honestly, that’s how it all started.
Ever since then, panic attacks (mainly related to my health) began. Every few months (usually every 6-7 months), an attack would come. It would end up with me calling the doctor or the hospital, saying I was dying, I was having a stroke, I was having X, I swallowed Y—and each time, it felt more real than the last.
After every attack, there would be a couple of days where my mental capacity would slow down—or at least feel like it did—which made me miserable. I wouldn’t want to eat, wouldn’t want to do anything, just sit on my bed or by my computer and let the day pass.
I tried getting help, trying many therapists, different doctors. Nothing seemed to work. I am still stuck in this cycle of panic attacks and mental fog every few months. It feels like a prison sentence, with no end in sight.
I still don’t know how to manage them. But sometimes, I think this is all justified. That I kinda deserved this because of the abuse I’ve put my body over the years.
But yeah.
Maybe this is just how things are now. Maybe some things break and never really go back to how they were. Or maybe, one day, this will all just be a distant memory—something that happened, but no longer defines me. I don’t know. But for now, I wake up, I keep moving, and I try. Because what else is there to do? Just try.
Kind Regards,
Zack
Chloe Price is a fictional character and the deuteragonist of the game Life is Strange, there is a scene in Life Is Strange: Beyond the Storm, where Chloe wakes up and starts smoking weed while listening to the referenced song. ↩︎
Martin Shkreli is an American investor. Shkreli was convicted of lying to investors and cheating them out of millions of dollars in two failed hedge funds he operated. Shkreli was CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals — later Vyera — when it raised the price of Daraprim (HIV Drug) from $13.50 to $750 per pill after obtaining exclusive rights to the decades-old drug. ↩︎
For my Western European Friends, where i used to live you didn’t have to call beforehand to go to the Public Hospital’s ER. You could just show up and a doctor would see you. The queues are a bit longer but usually it works. Otherwise, if you had the money private clinics also accept anyone as long as you could afford it or if your insurance covered it. ↩︎
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