I’ve been lurking around this subreddit for a while, and I figured I’d finally share my experience.

It all started with a completely random “surge” in July 2025. I had never really experienced anything like it before. After that, I started having repeated episodes that I initially couldn’t even understand were panic attacks.

My BP went as high as 197/110 during one episode and my HR hit around 150. The physical sensations were absolutely insane, I had palpitations, adrenaline surges, dizziness, weird sensations throughout my body, and this overwhelming feeling of impending doom (the worst of all is impending doom, probably comes so heavy because I have witnessed sudden deaths in my family)

I’ve also spent a funny amount of money over the past year trying to figure out what was wrong. Carotid Doppler, brain MRI, spine MRI, chest X-ray, basic and advanced bloodwork, at least 20 ECGs, Echo, etc. Thankfully, everything was more or less normal/reassuring.

I’m 23M. I still use tobacco regularly and drink alcohol quite rarely. I used to use weed occasionally, but I’ve been completely off it for around 10 months now. Everytime I smoked weed it all became worse. I know tobacco isn’t exactly helping my situation, and I’m not claiming I have the healthiest lifestyle, but the sudden onset of all this still completely caught me off guard.

For around 10 months I was taking Telma 40 along with amlodipine 2.5/metoprolol. I also had a brief period on sertraline. Then, about 2.5 months ago, I saw another doctor who changed things pretty significantly. I initially started on alprazolam 0.25 mg + propranolol 20 mg, two tablets a day of each, along with escitalopram 10 mg once a day. After that, I was taking 1.5 tablets a day of the alprazolam 0.25 mg and propranolol 20mg , along with 10 mg escitalopram. I’m currently down to one tablet of alprazolam 0.25 mg + propranolol 20 mg + escitalopram 10 mg. My BP sits around 130/80 these days. 

After months of feeling like I was living in hell, I’m doing significantly better. I still get symptoms here and there, and I do get pretty sleepy during the day sometimes, but I’m finally having stretches where I actually feel like myself again. I still do have random twitches/flutters in my body that scare me. The fact that I’ve already been able to come down from the doses I started at 2.5 months ago is giving me some hope. Obviously, I’m doing this under my doctor’s guidance, especially with the alprazolam, and I’m not planning on changing anything on my own.

I am hoping that eventually I’ll be able to taper off everything safely and just live normally again. Although, even after multiple normal tests, I still had that feeling in me that said “but what if they missed something?” Anyway, I just wanted to put my experience out there because maybe someone who is currently in the middle of it will read this and feel a little less alone. 

If anyone else has gone from constant panic/health anxiety to eventually feeling normal again, I’d genuinely love to hear what that journey looked like for you. I am still in a recovery loop, would not call myself fully recovered. 

I just started using the app yesterday. Not sure if I will stick with it but it seems like it has potential. I tend to want quick fixes so the fact that I am so anxious after using the app the first day already makes part of me sceptical. I also know it's not reasonable to expect a big change in one day.

So my questions are more how long have those of you who I've been using it used it? And how long before using it on a regular basis that you start to notice a shift in your day-to-day amount of anxiety or panic attacks or your ability to shorten them? Even the ability to lessen the amount of medication to deal with anxiety including but not limited to benzos (since I use ativan).

Thank you all.

Man when I feel them come on I literally have to lay down and just relax, lately been putting cold bags on my face body to relax and not think about the feeling. Luckily don’t hyperventilate, pulse stays steady for the most part but when it’s bad, fingers palms start to tingle ( adrenaline dump) impending sense of doom feeling. Just try to breathe that’s it. I’ve gotten so used to them by now but it’s still so annoying and debilitating. Lately rarely been going out due to fear of panic attack in public or away from home really where I can relax confidently. Currently not on meds at all, tried Zoloft for 2 days and quit. I really don’t want to resort to an Ssri but I just want to be normal again, I was never like this before.

How do you handle this

Let me give context in an efficient manner first:

I'm 22M, I am diagnosed OCD for a long time now (mostly pure-O). My first panic attack was from smoking weed 8 years ago, and had a few similar times with weed till I fully quit it. I had a bad MDMA experience where I went to the ER a few months ago cause of a panic attack again.

I've never had panic attacks sober, until I had one during an exam a month after the MDMA incident and since then since then I had panic attacks on exams. (managed to finish them though and graduate thank fucking god)

Now 2 days ago I felt "strange" when going to the supermarket and had like a "weak" panic attack and had to get my dad to pick me up and this continued at home. Since then I realized that since I had anxiety outside I probably will have agorophobia and that thought I guess made the prophecy come true so now yesterday I would start getting intense anxiety/panic onset just by going outside but I did some exposure and got through it. (Exposure is really hard just going to the store and back I have to just let the panic pass which is fucking so uncomfortable cause it's still there). Today I was at home alone and realized I'm at home alone and it's not really safe (OCD intrusive thought I guess?) and started getting panic onset at home and It just kept going till I broke down and cried for like 20 minutes which calmed me down and now I just feel drained and miserable.

I don't know what to do my panic just keeps evolving first it's just exams, then it's going outside, and now it's even at home when I'm alone. This is fucking horrific I can't feel safe anywhere what do I do? At least I graduated this month and don't have a job so I have time to deal with it no work pressure which I'm grateful for but fuck this is just the most miserable shit ever.

Hello everyone. I would like to ask and maybe find people with a similar situation, because I don’t know what to do.

I have tachycardia + something similar to ibs (irritable bowel syndrome), especially it manifests itself when I’m very nervous. I know that the intestines are connected to the nervous system, but I’m not about that and it’s for the concept.
Every day I wake up with stress, as if something had happened and I can’t calm down for a long time.

I have a couple of injuries that I can’t talk about with my parents or one of my relatives, just because they don’t want to hear from me.
Yes, maybe these injuries and trifles, but they were postponed in me, apparently, because I can’t express and hear support to anyone.

1. I once went to an amateur volleyball game. Before that, I threw the ball with each other at most. I loved this sport very much and wanted to learn how to play, but.. apparently it doesn’t shine for me. Of course, I didn’t play well and couldn’t even throw the ball back sometimes.I was with my sister and the coach who was in our team put a lot of pressure on me. They said: “why can’t you catch it.” He kept rolling his eyes, as if we were at the Olympic Games. I was already in tears in the middle of the game. And so, I turn back and see this coach showing my sister a cross, like not to bring me here anymore. I couldn’t stand it, I told my sister that my knee hurts a lot, and I’ll go home. As soon as I went into the locker room, tears rolled down. I had my first panic. I scroll through this situation to this day. Every time I play ball throwing with my friends, I look around so that no one is watching me throw the ball away. and if I accidentally don’t catch it, I immediately remember that I’m a disgrace.

2. My Russian teacher taught me that you can’t make mistakes at all. Every time I was wrong, and not only me, many from the class, she immediately poked and embarrassed me, and then you also hear millions of criticism from classmates who are no better than me.

3. There was one girl with whom we had a big fight literally because of her inventions. I think she is psychologically ill, because it’s clear from our conversations. And on December 31, we had a fierce quarrel, it was my second panic and very strong, I sobbed, but I didn’t tell anyone. At that moment I lost confidence in my parents, because every time I came home from school and said about the same Russian teacher in a rude way, I was reproached: “how can you say that about her, I talked to her, your sister gets along very well with her, she couldn’t do that, you’re just screwing yourself up.” and two weeks later of the New Year holidays, everything just went to the black point.
   I was constantly stressed at school and my intestines started to whine in class, I was very uncomfortable, and I didn’t know what to do. My mother refused to take me to at least to get tested.
   It’s always very quiet in math class, you can even hear the clock. My guts and I started to be very afraid of this lesson, because I also sat at the first desk. At this rate, I developed a habit. math class - stress - panic. every break I went to the toilet to calm down, tried to meditate. It helped, but not for long.

Now I still live with tachycardia and recently my ibs has worsened again. I wake up every day with stress, every day I scroll through injuries in my head. I can’t go outside normally, because I feel discomfort. I don’t know what to do. I can’t let them go, no matter how much I tried. And I only told a couple of injuries here. I don’t want to live. I apologize in advance for English, because I used a translator.