T2....I will chime in if you don't mind.
I think Spitfire is on the right course with his commentary and I commend him that he was able to get through it with laughing at it. I think anything you can do to help face it and not let it best you, is incredibly brave and if you can do it without drugs all the better.
Mine was not brought on by drugs, but I would say a combination of stress and poor sleeping habits. I had suffered a TIA (slight stroke, that goes away after 20 minutes) five years ago and for some odd reason, I didn't really change my lifestyle after it and almost three years after my TIA, I had a panic attack, while delivering a seminar. My fear of having another TIA and not being able to speak gripped me in front of that class and I had my full first attack. Two weeks later, while attending a seminar out of town, I had a second, for no apparent reason. It took everything in me, not to just drive to the closest hospital, as I was convinced this must be what it is like to have a breakdown.
One of the most frustrating parts of having a panic attack, is trying to get those closest to you to understand what you are going through. When you try and explain it, they give you "we all have anxiety once in ahwile" or "we all get nervous" or "try not to think about it" comments. Try not to think about it? This attack grips your mind so hard, that there is no "not thinking about it" it is real to you, your chest tightens, your bladdar feels like it is about to let go and you wonder if you are not going to have a heart attack in the next minute. There is no, "not thinking about it" when you are in the moment. For me it was compounded by the fact, that I am in sales and a salesman won't last long if he is so fearful about having a panic attack in front of a customer, that he doesn't want to see his clients. How was I going to support my familly? How embarassing would it be for my wife trying to explain to family and friends, that dear old Dad appears to be on the verge of a breakdown? I remember all of these thoughts racnig through my head one night on the way home from work and bar none that was my lowest point.
I did look at a number of things to rectify my situation. I went to a few counselling sessions with a therapist which were fine, there was no "ah, hah" moment if you will, but it was good to talk to someone. I started reading up on the Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and it certainly seemed to have its merits, but at the time I wasn't sure that I could get my mind to rewire its train of thought.
I had purhcased a number of self help books over the years, that I had never read, just kept them on the shelf. I have a good life, great wife, two healthy kids, good career, fantastic support network but even with all of this I would have my moments of being hard on myself, so I had purchased a few books over the years, but just never got around to reading them. That night, I grabbed one and sure enough it had a chapter on Anxiety, Stress, and Panic Attacks. I read the one chapter and without question it changed my life and got the pendulum swinging the other way for me. The book is called Full Catastrophe Living and is based on an eight week stress reduction course put on at a university in the Boston area by Jon Kabat Zinn. Zinn's claim to fame, is bringing "mindfullness" into your ever day life and essentially mindfullness is just being in the moment. A little Zen like? For sure, but at the point that I was at, I would try anything.
In this chapter Zinn says that one of the biggest learning moments that all of the particpants got out of his program was that "you are not your thoughts". A thought that pops into your head, does not define who you are. He likened it to the ocean. The waves on top are what your mind is like when it is busy and filled with anxiety, but the bigger body of water is what lies beneath the service of the waves and it is much more calm. For us this is breathing from your stomach. Knowing that I was "not my thoughts" was my rallying point of "okay, I am not going crazy, now that we got that out of the way, let's get to work on this."
When you think back to your attacks, I am sure they start with shortness of breath, because your mind is over riding your breathing. In the case of mindfullness, it is not about trying to eliminate these thoughts from coming into your mind, but accepting them as a thought, letting them go and getting back to your breathing. I can't begin to explain to you fully why this works, but it did for me...not overnight mind you, but as I continued to read this book and work on my mindfullness (which includes some meditation) my life has improved drastically for the better, not just cause my panic attacks have ceased, but this also allowed me to notice a lot more little things in life, that I was missing before. When I walk my daughter to her class, I am looking at her youthful walk, not multi tasking in my head, about the first three things I need to do, when I get to the office.
I am not saying this book, will be the cure for you, but it is just one more option to consider.
I don't believe I will ever be free of what happened to me, but I also realize that I needed this to get me off the path that I was on, which surely was not going to have a happy ending. As a once sage person said to me "sometimes you need to fall off a ladder" to wake yourself up. I fully believe I needed this to change my life for the better.
Good luck in your quest and feel free to pm me if you ever have any questions or want to bounce something off of me. Take care.
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