My friend Stacy of JurgenNation.com just reposted an entry about her experience with panic attacks.   Although I cannot hold a candle to what she experiences, I had a story to relate in a comment that became too long for a comment, so I just decided to write about it.

I didn’t even know at the time that what I was experiencing had a name; I had had quite a few moments in high school where I would suddenly get extremely hyped, very nervous, shaky, and unable to control my senses, but it would go away eventually and I’d shake it off.

That was, until senior year, last period of the day, band rehearsal, and I suddenly felt very nauseous, very ill, and excused myself to the bathroom.   It went downhill from there.  Every sensation I would feel would seem to double back on me and cause yet another, stronger one to take its place.   My panics are always health-related — I’m sure I’m going to die.  Heart attack, usually.   I thought it a pretty crappy place to die, surrounded by 1960s era tiled walls and the all-familiar smell of school bathrooms, that beautiful funk of industrial cleanser and teenagers who can’t aim for beans.

A dear close friend, bless him, came and found me in the men’s room and drove me home and stayed with me as I got worse and worse.   Eventually my parents arrived home and called 911.  I felt so silly but I couldn’t get up off the floor by then, heart pounding, sweating buckets, mind spinning, speech slurring.  I remember the technicians tending to me and lifting my big hulk off the floor and out the door and into the idling ambulance.

A 95mph ride 30 miles north to the hospital amid rocking IV bags and tubes and my heart still trying to escape and run amok in the fields surrounding us.   I remember suddenly having to pee so badly I ended up convincing a dubious responder that getting a bottle to do it on the ride, right now, was imperative.   At the time it seemed so incredibly ironic — here I was, dying (or so I thought), and suddenly my body insisted on taking a leak.   Someone was laughing at me, I swear.

The bustle of an E.R.   EKG.   Little strips of paper with my heartbeats captured for posterity.   Docs poking and frowning and shaking their heads over bushed eyebrows and clipboard wielded like swords.    Flabbergasted sighs.   “There’s nothing wrong with him!” as if I was a fruitloop.  By then I was calmer, the monster was leaving.   I kept telling my mother, “I know it was real, it happened!  I swear.   It was awful.”  She believed me, bewildered though she was.

I was worn down.  Tired.   All I wanted to do was sleep, to forget for awhile that I had endured it.   “Panic attack,” came the final thought from the doctor shortly before I was released back to normal society.    He said it with the demeanor of someone holding a dirty gym sock, as if it was all in my head.   Well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t, jackass, but would you like to trade?

Research on my own later — hrm, maybe this isn’t so uncommon.   Signs that pointed to what I had been doing wrong — too much caffeine, too little sleep, too much stress, heavy class load (9 classes, 7:30 am till 3:30pm with hours of practice afterwards).    I had simply pushed myself beyond and the whole of me gave up and said, “Fine!   Screw you.”

I still get them.   They’re not as frequent nor as awful because now I know and I can usually talk myself out or at least keep busy with something, anything, until the sensation passes.    I am my own best therapist when nothing else will listen.   I always fear that they’ll escalate again into something terrible, but so far, the beast has stayed at bay.   I have a feeling that he’ll always be there, waiting for the opportunity to snatch again, but for now, he is tamed.    And I am calm.

I’ve always had a huge problem — I am chronically plagued by the Munchies.

I’m not talking about needing to legitimately eat, I’m speaking of that feeling you get that says, “I’m not hungry, but I desperately want to be chewing on something…anything…”

Well, ok, maybe you don’t get it.   I have to assume not everyone does, because some of you are thin as a rail from simply intaking only what you must and that’s it.   Trust me, this is not an affliction that you want.   You are, in the nicest way possible, a lucky bastard.

It’s probably the hardest non-exercise-related item that holds me back from being fit and trim.    I used to think, “Hey, I just like the taste/texture/smell of food, ok?   Some people like books, some like movies…well, I’m just a goddamned FOODIE.   No problem, right?  They have a whole freaking TV network just for me!”

Turns out it’s a HUGE problem because it means at any point in the day I may get a fantastic urge to shove something in my gob for a snack.    The problem is that the resulting caloric intake is far beyond what I should be ingesting and couple that with a sedentary job and bad exercise schedule (until recently), you end up looking — like me.   Overweight and far too many squeezy parts.    Good if you’re a teddy bear, not so much if you’re a 32-year-old guy.

Here’s the really frustrating part about this — eating something?   Yeah, it only solves the sensation for awhile.    Immediately, certainly, and then for a bit more, but it drops off after awhile and I’m back where I started.    The only tried and true way, besides willpower to stop it, is to eat until I am stuffed full — at that point, something else kicks in and stops the sensation and I go back to normal, albeit feeling like a whale because I’ve just ate when I didn’t have to.

It’s much easier to ignore if my defenses are strong — when I’m well-slept, not stressed or pressured, have had good exercise, love from my family, and generally feel good about myself.     Step on any of those or trod on many and it becomes easier and easier for me to fail to resist the urge and instead solve it by grabbing something to munch on and moving on.      Thus, when work has hammered me down into the ground and I’m working insane hours, it’s been a long week of only 4-5 hours/night sleep, or any other factors, I gain weight.    And it’s almost entirely the fault of this sensation.

That’s not to say I’m not the person in control, because I am.   I have no one to blame but my own failures.     It does mean, however, that I have to constantly work on trying to figure out the best way to A) prevent it from happening in the first place and B) how to mitigate it when the munchies DO hit me full-force.

I think the first battle is identifying it, which I’ve done and tried to elaborate on with this post.    Secondly, it’s finding and defining activities or mental exercises to avoid giving in to the sensations.    I know exercise helps, but I can’t always burst into “Ab Crunchers for Dummies” during a 3pm meeting at work.    I need to build up my defenses in other ways to make this work.

Then maybe one day I can battle the Munchies every time….and win.

Arms and legs flail in various directions, flesh trying desperately to keep up with the random direction changes that the routine demands.  Huffing and puffing like a senior in desperate need of a fresh oxygen tank, he tries in vain to copy the motions of the ripped samples bouncing on the TV screen in front of him.

“One, two, three, fuck, five, six…” he counts, trying desperately to keep from bursting into laughter or tears at the effort required and the strange contortions required by the leader.

“Dig within you!” screams the hulking mass of rippling muscle and sweat to the camera while bouncing through another routine at warp speed.     Eyes roll as he thrusts his over-sized bulk into the pattern of the exercise.    He is certain that, if seen by anyone else in the world, the resulting screams and mass exodus would clear the town in short order.     Thankfully, here in the basement, he is only judged by the technology that surrounds him and the unyielding concrete beneath his feet.

“Working out” — what a misnomer.   If it was phrased to be something like, “torture session”, or “sweating party” or even the gentle yet purposeful, “moving your ass brigade” it would make him feel better; unfortunately, modern culture and pop media try to make the activity sound like something that everyone enjoys and does when they are bored because, why not?   It’s working out!    We’re happy when things work out, so why not us?

The activity is a love-hate relationship, being both beneficial to his plump countenance and beating back the effects of a sit-on-your-bum job but also making him feel like the lowest of fools for even trying and completely ridiculous in the conflagrations required to even start to bring about meaningful changes in his body.   “Thin-bodied bastards,” he mumbles as he gazes at the abs of the contracted muscle currently twitching on the screen while hardly getting damp.   “Must be nice.”

This is what, day 3?   5?   8?    He can’t remember, but he’s noticing some differences — there’s always some that come along.    The routines become a bit easier, the puffing of his lungs reduces, he recovers quicker from complete exhaustion.   But the clumsiness is still present, the need to find a way to tell his body to go, “HERE, HERE, and HERE” all at the same time and — god forbid! — in rhythm.   A dancer’s legs, arms…body, he did not inherit.   Ballet never looked as grotesque as it would if he attempted Swan Lake.

He stops briefly as the mentor yells out, “One more set!”

“You must be fucking joking,” he says, incredulously.   He stands there for a minute.   And then, steeling himself, he throws out his fists and kicks high into the air and misses, but keeps going, in the hopes that it’s making a long-term difference….somehow.