7.11.2026 happy to report things have been starting to look a bit brighter lately. i have not really had many panic attacks lately—i started taking propranolol and it’s been enormously helpful. i think once i am back from europe i will feel unstoppable. i do worry about having terrible panic attacks while im there but it will one way or another be totally fine. 5.7.2026 i’m about to go to my last big work event of events season (that directly involves my team anyway). when i get through this day i will breathe the biggest sigh of relief. i can’t wait to take a bubble bath and order delivery and never move again 4.29.26 a bit of good progress! i had a major work event yesterday that i’d been dreading and it went very smoothly. i started to have panic symptoms at the very beginning (racing heart, nausea, hot feeling up and down the backs of my arms, tingling iron-y tongue) but i could feel the prozac blocking them from escalating. that sweet sweet chemical shield is what ive been missing. it’s helping me regain confidence that its chemically impossible to panic again which is genuinely what i need. so happy to report a bit of progress. i am still struggling with other areas. i am scared to drink coffee still, as it tends to increase my anxiety. scared to smoke cigarettes right now as the nicotine can increase my anxiety. scared of weed and alcohol and being impaired. another weird one is i’m scared of remembering times i’ve done hallucinogens. i have this unfounded anxiety thought that i somehow permanently broke my brain by doing them and that the drugs are still somewhere in my body and can be retriggered somehow. literally scared to tell my therapist that one bc i feel like it sounds humiliatingly crazy, but am also scared to tell him in case he says “oh that’s true actually” because i would freak out. still trying to take it one day at a time. i’m gaining some confidence but am still feeling fragile. i’ve been procrastinating switching from prozac to lexapro because while i haven’t felt perfectly better yet on prozac, i have reached some improvement and somewhat-stability and im scared of losing it. i am hoping lexapro will help more but you never know and im worried about making things worse. ————————————————————————— first day hi all. flounder is finding me at a strange time in my life. i am a lifelong anxiety haver but i will sometimes go through periods where it is more debilitating than others for a few months or so at a time. i haven’t been leaving the house much besides work which i have just been freaking out over all the time. i’m beyond exhausted. i hope to one day read these entries when this is all a distant memory and i am feeling stable and chill again ✌️ it all began in february when i had a terrible weed panic attack while dog sitting. they were french bulldogs so their faces became so scary (which is so funny to say now but at the time felt uhhhh not great). i tasted iron and my tongue tingled and got this hot feeling up and down the backs of my arms and my heart was thumping like a cornered rabbit’s. nothing helped—my body was convinced it was going to die. i thought surely id just need to wait it out, that sobriety would anchor me. but i woke the next day to find i’d sailed out to seas deeper than my chain. and all at once i was adrift. the panic attacks became constant—it was like i’d suddenly remembered it was possible to have them, and forgotten why i ever felt safe. if you can have a panic attack at any given moment, well, what’s stopping you? i immediately tried to increase my prozac—SLOWEST MEDICATION EVERRRRRRR. my grandma could’ve walked to timbuktu faster than this medication helped me feel calmer (feel free to picture me as one of the little boys from The Sandlot saying this). and it sucks extra because it’s one of those “it gets worse before it gets better” meds that actually increases your anxiety at first. i was so paranoid and depressed for weeks and am just now at the six week mark feeling like it’s maybe helping a little. all of this is to say: if you feel happy or even normal and capable today, cherish it because id kill for an ounce of chill. i dont want to have a rabbit heart i want to have a NORMAL HUMAN HEART that beats normal and not fifty million times per minute. surely this can’t be good for me and im gonna die early. i have a running joke with myself that im going to die of heart disease at age 50 on christmas day. i’ve always hated christmas but thats a confession for another time. 4/22 just got through my first work meeting since panic attacks started without panicking. super stoked!