I should preface this by saying that when I was in my early teens I was having panic attacks before I went to sleep about the thought of dying. At the time, I didn’t realize what they were. My mom took me to a therapist and I was placed on Fluoxetine and after awhile they seemed to disappear. I would still get hung up on things from time to time, but it wasn’t debilitating like the panic attacks were - it was just a low level anxiety. 

Fast forward 20 years later and I’m now in my early 30’s. Two Friday’s ago I stopped smoking cigarettes cold turkey and all hell broke lose. For four days straight I was riding a constant anxiety with peaks of panic attacks. 

Finally, I went to Urgent Care and they gave me hydroxyzine to calm me down and I saw my primary last week who prescribed Zoloft.

Obviously the Zoloft is going to take a while to kick in, but I am still pretty consistently anxious. It’s not nearly as bad as it was last week, but I’m bummed that I now have to manage this out of nowhere. It’s so hard - and I know you all know this so I don’t even need to elaborate. 

It’s crazy to me that it was lying below the surface for 20 years. Has anyone else experienced anything similar?