{"id":2062,"date":"2009-12-16T09:00:27","date_gmt":"2009-12-16T09:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/2009\/12\/giving-up-my-flask-panic-valiu.html"},"modified":"2009-12-16T09:00:27","modified_gmt":"2009-12-16T09:00:27","slug":"giving-up-my-flask-panic-valiu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/12\/giving-up-my-flask-panic-valiu.html","title":{"rendered":"Giving Up My Flask: Panic, Valium, and Vodka"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"panic<\/span>
\nMy friend Priscilla Warner<\/a> wrote the following piece for the site, Drinking Diaries<\/a>. I thought her words would be helpful to anyone tempted to self-medicate anxiety with booze. You can get to her piece by clicking here. I’ve excerpted below.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

I suffered my first panic attack when I was a fifteen-year-old waitress at the Brown University cafeteria. As I stood behind a counter dishing out peas, I felt an electrical current tear through my body. My heart raced, skipped beats, and flopped around in my chest. My lungs tightened up so fast that I was breathless. Or so I thought.<\/p>\n

I was actually breathing too quickly. I began to hyperventilate. My throat closed up, my body trembled, my arms grew rigid and my fingertips tingled. I thought I was dying.<\/p>\n

But I managed to get home, curl up in my parents’ bed, and watched dazed as a family physician paid a house call, examined me and announced that I was “just a little bit nervous.”<\/p>\n

Was I ever.<\/p>\n

He wrote me a prescription for a tranquilizer, and I carried the pills with me everywhere, on high alert for the next attack. Now that I’d been prescribed a drug, my condition was official: I was a freak.<\/p>\n

I knew that for sure.<\/p>\n

None of my teenaged friends had a defective central nervous system that reared up and exploded, catching them completely off-guard, turning them into a quivering mess.<\/p>\n

Back in 1968, no one ever used the term panic attack. Nobody was in rehab, or at least admitting it. A few kids were messed up enough to disappear, leaving town for places unknown. But I was normal enough to stick it out. Or try to, as I played the role of a mentally healthy adolescent.<\/p>\n

I didn’t have panic attacks every day. And I didn’t take Valium all the time. I never talked to my family or any of my friends about the fact that I faced death on dozens of occasions when the all-too familiar symptoms of an attack – tightening lungs, a pounding heart – snuck up and clobbered me.<\/p>\n

To continue reading Priscilla’s story, click here.<\/a><\/p>\n

Follow Priscilla’s journey from panic to peace at http:\/\/priscillawarner.wordpress.com.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do you mix alcohol with sedatives?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anxiety","category-mental-health"],"yoast_head":"\nGiving Up My Flask: Panic, Valium, and Vodka - Beyond Blue<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/12\/giving-up-my-flask-panic-valiu.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Giving Up My Flask: Panic, Valium, and Vodka - Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Do you mix alcohol with sedatives?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/12\/giving-up-my-flask-panic-valiu.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-12-16T09:00:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/files\/import\/imgs\/panic%20alcoholism2.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Beyond Blue\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Giving Up My Flask: Panic, Valium, and Vodka - Beyond Blue","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/12\/giving-up-my-flask-panic-valiu.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Giving Up My Flask: Panic, Valium, and Vodka - Beyond Blue","og_description":"Do you mix alcohol with sedatives?","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/12\/giving-up-my-flask-panic-valiu.html","og_site_name":"Beyond Blue","article_published_time":"2009-12-16T09:00:27+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/files\/import\/imgs\/panic%20alcoholism2.jpg"}],"author":"Beyond Blue","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/12\/giving-up-my-flask-panic-valiu.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/12\/giving-up-my-flask-panic-valiu.html","name":"Giving Up My Flask: Panic, Valium, and Vodka - Beyond Blue","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/12\/giving-up-my-flask-panic-valiu.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/12\/giving-up-my-flask-panic-valiu.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/files\/import\/imgs\/panic%20alcoholism2.jpg","datePublished":"2009-12-16T09:00:27+00:00","dateModified":"2009-12-16T09:00:27+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#\/schema\/person\/47318cdf8063cc052eccff0c99db4e75"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/12\/giving-up-my-flask-panic-valiu.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/12\/giving-up-my-flask-panic-valiu.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/12\/giving-up-my-flask-panic-valiu.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/files\/import\/imgs\/panic%20alcoholism2.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondblue\/files\/import\/imgs\/panic%20alcoholism2.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/2009\/12\/giving-up-my-flask-panic-valiu.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Giving Up My Flask: Panic, Valium, and Vodka"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondblue\/","name":"Beyond Blue","description":"Beliefnet Voices - Therese J. 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