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.