I take illegal drugs for inspiration

How long did your panic disorder last? How'd you get it into resolved? What therapies did you pursue, how long did they take, and how well did they work?

I developed PD after making the idiotic decision to work (at a Wall Street job) through a flu-- not a cold, but actual influenza-- taking only 2 days off. Stupid macho trader bullshit I tried to pull at 24. So I didn't recover properly and ended up developing a respiratory infection that intermittently made breathing difficult: hence, panic attacks. At the same time, two very close friends (a little bit too deep into psychedelics) were having nervous breakdowns at the same time and even though I wasn't using, I started worrying that it might happen to me, because I was dealing with their bullshit every day. Which meant that the panic attacks became self-reinforcing; because I saw mental illness in my daily life, I thought I might develop it. Of course, that didn't happen because, even though it feels otherwise, panic disorder is not "going crazy". I think panic disorder is actually more like a much less severe cousin of epilepsy (an acute, intermittent, and highly treatable physical problem) than chronic mental illness, but that's anther rant.

I don't have full-on panic attacks at this point, but I still have low-level anxiety attacks (the kind that normal people get once a decade or so, which are rough but NOT panic attacks) on a 1-2 per day frequency.

It was a fascinating experience, but a deeply negative one. It doesn't help that most people think of panic attacks as the punchline to a joke. Sometimes I feel the need to say, "No, you didn't actually have a 'panic attack' when you saw Lady Gaga wear the meat-dress." This must be what people with real insomnia feel when idiots write Facebook statuses like "farmville at 2:30 am. i'm such an insomniac lol".

What has actually stayed with me is the incompetence of the U.S. medical system. The experience of being neglected in a time of (perceived) exigent emergency is jarring. More scarring than the attacks themselves (during a panic attack, you don't write many memories, and this is a good thing) was how much medical incompetence and don't-give-a-shit attitude I experienced when I was sick with this "mystery" health problem (the respiratory infection and panic disorder onset happened at the same time) that turned out, thankfully, not to be that serious. I'm terrified of what it will be like in a few decades (fingers crossed) when I have to deal with real, serious health problems-- I hope the system is less broken, by then.

I generally think the "meditation sickness" is more scare than substance, without much evidence for a causative link, but I think it's possible in certain circumstances. For example, I've heard of inexperienced people (i.e. people who've taken one hatha yoga class) going on week-long retreats and having negative experiences (including temporary psychosis and anxiety disorders) but that's not what I'm talking about. That's about as irresponsible as for an overweight person who can barely walk a mile to try out for a marathon.

I think that a lot of "meditation sickness" comes from people who are prodromal of some sort of psychological crisis and (because of their increasingly difficult mental state) become interested in altering their consciousness, and that the psychotic break was not caused by the meditation but would have happened anyway. I can't prove that, but it's been my suspicion for a long time. For those who might argue that meditation is therefore bunk because some people who meditate end up getting frank mental illness anyway, my counterpoint would be that it's foolish to expect that a novice meditator can meditate his way out of a potentially physical mental illness; he needs medical help.

What is very dangerous is when people try to use meditation or yoga in lieu of other well-tested, scientific medical treatment, which some New Age types believe in even though most actual meditators and yogis advise strongly against it. I talked to a very accomplished yoga teacher about using meditation to treat panic disorder (didn't want to use benzos) and he said, "Meditate, but see a doctor and take his advice. You can't meditate your way out of this, right now, any more than a person with heart disease can meditate out of that."

For what it's worth I have spent a great deal of time in the company of such people. Perhaps it's the case that the majority are simply living in a deluded drug-addled mist, and certainly a great many are hedonists first and last, and would be happy to admit it.

The thing is though, I see a lot of false enlightenment everywhere. There are whole swathes of people who would consider themselves spiritual for one reason or another but don't seem the least bit capable of critical thinking, open mindedness, introspection or subtlety. Ultimately, dogmatic ideology has stunted more people's personal development than drugs ever will. Not to mention the billions murdered over the centuries.

Yet in any community you will find deeply thoughtful individuals who have clearly gained and grown a great deal from their experiences and beliefs. For this reason I cannot bring myself to write any tool of potential enlightenment off, no matter what the behaviour of the average user, or if it comes in the form of scripture or white powder.

What about Euler[1] for example? (I don't think he used drugs though)

Anyway, I agree with your comment in the sense that intelligence, talent or success are not mutually exclusive with drugs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonhard_Euler

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2545731/Drugs-like-LS...

From the article:

"When they were interviewed again 14 months later 58 per cent rated the experience among the five most personally meaningful of their lives and 64 per cent said it had increased their well-being."