about becoming a woman. For me it was about just becoming okay again.
In high school, I channeled my anxiety into an eating disorder. Anorexia, with its counting of calories—the busyness of all that math in my head—became a wonderful place to focus my fear. Then when I was seventeen I discovered drugs and alcohol. That was the real solution.
Drugs and alcohol were the best thing that ever happened to me. For the first time, I was okay to be on the planet and completely comfortable in my own skin. Weed made my brain a playground, a new earth to be explored. Liquor, beer, and wine gave me the peace of mind I’d always sought. Psychedelics allowed me to connect with other human beings in a way where I could finally address the question of What is going on here? MDMA was union with these human beings in spite of the not knowing. Amphetamines kept me skinny and made me untouchable to sadness. Benzos and opiates made me impervious to the world.
I found new best friends in my substances that could protect me from my thoughts. The world became a magical place, not lonely or fearful or harsh. With my friends by my side, nobody could touch me. But then the anxiety found its way around the drugs and alcohol. Or, in the case of psychedelics and weed, it began reminding me that not only did I not know what was going on but what was going on might be more dark than benevolent. For the first time, I started getting panic attacks.
My first panic attack came shortly after I got an abortion at twenty-one. I had grown up in a household that was very liberal: socially and politically. I didn’t have any hang-ups around abortion. So when I found out I was pregnant, like two days after a missed period, I called Planned Parenthood very casually.
I wanted the thing out of me as soon as possible. I had gotten pregnant by a blunt-smoking kid who ripped the sleeves off his T-shirts to make tank tops that showed his nipples. I wasn’t having this kid’s baby. He asked me if I would mind if he took acid on the day of the abortion.
I remember my friend Anna driving me to Planned Parenthood. I remember not being scared. I remember declining counseling. Why would I need counseling? I remember lying down on what looked like a gynecologist’s table. I remember complimenting the doctor on her earrings and talking about Maine, then being administered some kind of drug. I remember going to space.
I remember coming to in a room filled with fifteen or so other women, some of them crying, some of them vomiting. I remember feeling sick and nauseous, but most of all I remember feeling fear about the sickness and nausea.
I remember getting in the car with Anna. It felt like the first time I had ever allowed myself to be vulnerable. I remember not wanting to tell any of the girls in my college house what had happened. I remember them all going out that night. I remember smoking weed and getting drunk by myself and then suddenly seeing a vision of myself going to hell. I remember not knowing where the fear had come from. I didn’t even believe in hell. But the fear was there, not intellectual, but coming from someplace else. I remember seeing darkness. I remember feeling like I had crossed over a line that I could never cross back over.
A few weeks later, I went to dinner with the kid who got me pregnant and his mother. I remember her talking. I remember having food in my mouth. Suddenly, I felt like I could not swallow my food. I was scared that if I swallowed my food I would choke. I didn’t know what was happening. Had I forgotten how to swallow? I wasn’t sure whether to spit out the food into a napkin or keep trying to swallow. Then, in addition to being unable to swallow, I forgot how to breathe. This was my first panic attack.
Over the next few years, the panic attacks became more and more frequent. The symptoms included various combinations of dizziness, adrenaline surges, suffocation, rapid heartbeat, and the worst, a feeling of hyperreality, where people looked like plastic versions of themselves. My drinking escalated in an attempt to manage this thing that was happening to me. I didn’t know that what I was experiencing were panic attacks. I just