The Worst Panic Attack in History...

by Hannahbal
(Nottingham)

...was my first panic attack. I was on a train home from a weekend visiting my friend in Liverpool. I was going back to uni where I was miserable and had no friends. I was sitting down and suddenly became aware of a strange feeling rushing through my body, my hands felt like prickly rubber gloves, I stared at them but didn't recognise them. My breath became laboured and I stood up, feeling a rush through my whole body, as my brain ran at a thousand miles an hour. Pure fear coursed through me. Luckily the train had pulled into a station (St Helens, a place I had never been to and knew nothing about.) I staggered off the train, my breathing ragged and my whole body on fire with a strange prickling, my hands were shaking and it felt as though beetles were crawling under my skin across my whole body. I thought I was about to die. I walked out into the street and there was a man in a hi-vis jacket, I think some kind of workman, and I approached him and managed to say "Where's the nearest hospital?" By some incredible stroke of luck, there was a walk-in centre just across the car park. After I got in I walked up and down, unable to sit down or speak as the panic attack coursed through my body. My lips were set in a strange grimace. My mind was out of touch with my body, it went zooming up into space and tears rolled down my cheeks. My hands had somehow siezed into claws, I was unable to move them properly, they were like lobsters hands. I know now this was the adrenaline. I stammered to the lady at the desk that I thought I had taken a drug overdose (MDMA and cocaine had been consumed that weekend, along with Fluoxetine for my depression. I hope I don't lose your sympathy for having taken drugs, I had no idea it would have caused me to have this horrible experience, and I haven't touched them since.) They took me in an ambulance to the hospital nearby and did an ECG which was fine, and after a few hours I was allowed to go. I felt drained, spaced out and incredibly low afterwards. The whole thing spanned about 3 hours. It was the worst experience of my life.