So, slogged through the crack of dawn meetings, and had a fuck all anxiety spike towards the end of the second one (thanks management for putting me in a position I am not qualified for!) and fuck if it didn’t turn into a full on spiral. That hasn’t happened in, fuck IDK, years. Went kinda like this:

Smart Brain (SB): Damn, anxiety sucks and hoo boy, this is not fun today.
Dumb Brain (DB): Or, we’re dying.
SB: No, what we are feeling is the physical manifestation of anxiety, it is an icky adrenaline spike, it sucks, but It. Is. Anxiety. Probably with a side order of slight dehydration, because we’re perpetually a little dehydrated.
DB. PROBABLY DYING.
SB: FFS, we can breathe fine, our lips aren’t blue, our face isn’t grey, we have no pain in our back, arms, chest, anywhere, it’s shitty assed anxiety.
DB: DEFINITELY DYING.
SB: Jesus fucking christ.

Drank a bunch of water, whipped out the meditation app, 5 minutes of deep breathing tamped things down a bit. (Yo, dumb brain, breathing exercises tend to not stop imminent death.) Got to lunch, did yoga, also helped a little. Then I remembered: I have diazapam. Not sketchy shit bought in the alley behind the bar, but actually properly prescribed to me by a doctor diazapam. Prescribed for anxiety.

Granted, it was prescribed in the context of dental appointments and I tried it twice and discovered that diazapam + nitrous oxide = vomiting, so the little bottle has just languished in the cabinet.

I am not one to self medicate like this, but I decided to take a half tablet at lunch. I mean, hell, it was prescribed to me FOR ANXIETY. Figured if it didn’t do shit, no harm, if it wiped me out, I could call out of the last couple hours of the day, and best case scenario, it could maybe stop my body & brain from fight or flight mode.

Holy shit, it worked. Kicked in pretty quick – felt a little floaty for a moment or two when I stood up to go back to work, but not at all incapacitated, not “high”, was able to work through the last hour and a half of the day (early start, thankfully early finish) and then took a snooze with the LilyMonster once I’d logged off for the day and woke up feeing SO MUCH BETTER.

It’s like it just reset everything. Felt fine the rest of the evening, had a decent nights sleep, and woke up this morning feeling totally NORMAL.

Hopefully it will be quite a while before I have another day like yesterday, but knowing there is a solution in the cabinet, hell, that helps.