So were you on all these medications prior to this episode? And by all these medications I mean trazodone, Clonazepam, basically everything but the Lexapro?Lurker here. A few months ago I mixed weed, adderall and mdma all in one night. Mood wasn't right, and all of a sudden I became extremely paranoid and then had my first panic attack ever. I wanted to throw myself in front of a car because it was so bad. I then started to not believe anything was real, questioned reality and said some really dumb shit to close people around me.
Afterwards, I experienced depression for about 2-3 weeks that eventually resolved itself. What I was left with was severe anxiety, and an exacerbation of my OCD, which I didn't even know I had. For 2 months, I lurked on these forums, and tried to do everything to "fix" the issue. Taking ashwaganda, I kept exercising a ton, taking supplements, and I believe that my healthy lifestyle was slowly but surely fixing the issue. Every morning my anxiety would be really bad and then got better by around 6:00 PM.
I eventually realized that mornings were bad because of heigtened coritisol levels that dissipated through the day. I eventually got a pysch and got onto buspar, which helped, but the progress was slow. 2 months later I was going through personal issues and eventually went a couple of days without sleep. This is what messed me up.
The insomnia I had for two days made my anxiety worse causing MORE panic attacks, and I ended in the ER a couple times. I had a ton of brain fog, severr anxiety, depersonlization, extreme guilt and shame, you name it. I talked to my psych and they put me on lexapro almost immediately starting at 5mg the first two weeks and then 10mg. After 4 weeks, today is the first day where I've felt completely normal. I had to use klonopin for the first few weeks to bridge over, and I'm still combating insomnia with trazadone. But I see a light at the end of the tunnel. It's only been 4 weeks since I started lexapro, and before this I had never in my life been on any type of serious mediciation.
With other people who have tried Paxil or Lexapro, I would recommend trying this route as well if you have insurance and access. I've been researching quite a bit, and finally decided on trying an SSRI which did help me.
In my observations, if you're a person thats dispositioned to high anxiety, the initial panic attack can change your serotonin re-uptake, and cause heightened anxiety and panic. Once you have your first panic attack, you're going to have more unless you address the symptoms. I'm not discounting the people who fixed this without SSRIs, as I was also doing this. But it seems like Lexapro sped up that process considerably. I feel like I still have a long way to go, but I haven't felt this normal since before I experienced that disastrous night.
TLDR:
I developed a panic disoder. I treated it with an SSRI, its been 4 weeks and today was the first day since that day where I felt normal. Also, sleep is VERY important in recovery. Please prioritize your sleep.
Where is your evidence that panic attacks affect serotonin reuptake?