Posted this in r/PanicAttacks, but thought some would be interested in hearing about my experiences. 

Background: 25 year old white male, very fit and healthy. I consider myself to be high functioning and successful. I’m a father, officer (won’t explain further, volunteer FF and also a part time university student. This is what happened to me in short version:

2008 - smoked weed and bad tripped. Had a terrible experience, felt like I was dying.
Two weeks later, I’m in class in grade 8 and I start noticing things around me are super weird, dreamlike. I start feeling detached from myself and feel like I’m heavily drugged. I leave class and go into a full block panic attack. Feeling dizzy, faint, dissociated, terrified. It was the worst feeling of all time. I thought death was imminent. 
These episodes began arising frequently. I saw many doctors and counsellors who said this was anxiety and panic disorder. I suffered from this nevertheless.
Was prescribed SSRI’s eventually. Was terrified of medication and side effects so only took a quarter of my prescribed dosage. Felt horrible at first but eventually helped maybe? Panic and anxiety seemed to dissipate for a year until I stopped cold turkey. 
^ this whole recap was about 3-4 years worth of time.

I started getting good at dealing with my panic and anxiety. However, I was always a hypochondriac and this got worse in 2014. For a few years I was constantly convinced I had cancers or HIV. Went doctor shopping, rushed myself to ER with fears of having cancer (I know, doesn’t make sense). Otherwise, my panic attacks were uncommon and I just dealt with them.

They seemed to go away from 2016-2018.

In the last few years I have become anxious again. I have over a decade of experience now, so I am efficient at stopping them, but the anxiety persists (especially medical anxiety). I sometimes have terrible panic attacks, but I deal with it. 

My most notable panic symptoms: 
Déréalisation, depersonalization, dissociation, feeling faint/dizzy, feeling like my brain is being seized (I almost describe it as what I imagine a seizure would feel like), numbness, sweating, shivers, intense fear of death, feeling impending doom.

Sometimes I don’t have attacks, but I will randomly have episodes of depersonalization and dissociation. I’m good at dealing with that, but it seems they can happen without my panic attacks. Can be very disruptive to my life. 

I also sometimes get brain zaps or shivers. These scare the shit out of me. I hate sensations in my brain, head or back of my neck. It’s by far my scariest of symptoms. 

I’m doing fine, I’m generally happy. Just wanted to share my history and my experiences.