Had a mild panic attack today. first one since 1999. I couldn’t believe it. what was it? not a month ago that I had read that story about Jeff tweedy having them and how fucked up he is over it. I thought I was done with it. hadn't had one in over five years. thought I cured myself. We were high up on the 58th floor of some building on Madison Ave negotiating a deal for my new apt with my realtor who represented me, and the realtors who represented the owner of the building I was buying into. the owner had hesitancy about me moving in because I was a singer in a rock band. the owner and the realtors representing them were all from Japan and they all spoke with thick Japanese accents. I could tell they only understood about half if that of what we were saying. my realtor is a young hip Hispanic street kid from the Bronx. I have been through eight different New York realtors and he was the best and brightest I found. So here we all are and I'm holding a check for gobs of money that I'm more than ready to hand over for the apartment of my dreams – at least the only one I can actually afford – and they are not ready to quite take the check because they are worried that I am a musician and may keep people up with my music and God knows what else. only in New York. Any other city in America and that check would have already been cashed.

They are being very polite but asking me all these questions in these thick Japanese accents: ‘you musician right’ ‘yes.’ ‘you play loud music in apartment late at night?’ ‘no...’ I say. ‘look man, he plays music in a studio, not in the apartment. I can assure you of that.’ my realtor responds. ‘you have lots of parties in apartment? With drugs and loud music?’ they ask in these crazy accents right out of Saturday night live. ‘man you be buggin here chief,’ my Hispanic realtor responds. ‘my man here is a rock star, yes. And he wants to move into your clients apartment and he has a check here to show his good faith. he will not cause a disturbance in your clients apartment. We can assure you of that Mr. Furomoto.’ ‘yes, we understand what you say, but we watch MTV. We know what rock stars do. many girls and parties in apartment. Not good for apartment or other tenants.’

I lost track of the conversation. I hadn't eaten and had maybe three or four cups of coffee and an orange juice a few hours earlier. It was about four in the afternoon. Granted it could be the one meal a day plan, the fact that I had been in the city walking my ass off for six days and still was homeless, and it certainly could be too much coffee. But there was something else, beyond the caffeine jitters. This was like the old panicky feeling of dread that I used to get. shortness of breath, heat beating fast and this extreme and intense feeling of fear all over my body. I looked out the window at the skyscrapers that surrounded us and realized that I was stuck up on the 58th floor of this building and all I could think of was getting to the elevator as fast as possible to get outside. i tried to breathe. I tried to focus my attention on the matters at hand. I watched everyone talking in the room and as far as I know I could have been speaking as well, but I was too focused on how much dread and fear and panic I was feeling and how I had to get outside.

There are three things that flood into your mind when you have a panic attack or whatever these things are. One, get outside and get on solid ground. Two, am I going to die? I feel like I am going to die. fuck, I think I'm going to die. and three, I need something to calm down. Maybe a valium. Maybe some water. Fuck I have to slow my heart down. Your skin crawls with fear. Your eyes start batting faster. Your breathing slows. Your heart beats faster. You are afraid to breathe. You are afraid to move. You feel as though you are about to jump out of your skin. I start arranging everything neatly on the conference table in front of me like some psycho. You are afraid you might say something or do something rash like jump out of a window or run screaming down the hallway to the elevator. For me it helps to think of my mom or some other loved ones. Think of mom. Think of Cleopatra and how she used to calm me down. Think of Madelyn. Think of Little Tree. Think of playing football with Beaver. Keep breathing. Don't forget to breathe. I try to listen to the conversation but they are all in slow motion now. I am alone in this glass bubble of panic and dread and they are all talking and moving around but I cannot hear a thing anyone is saying. all I can think of is getting downstairs and outside or getting to a hospital before I die. it is looking back quite a hilarious predicament.

If I had to guess I would say that the adrenals are off and are firing too much adrenaline into the system. could be stress. Could be the pregnenelone throwing off the endocrine system. I know the drill. Quit brain supplements and smart nutrients which means I will be slower but calmer, double up on the b vitamins, quit the caffeine = ugh!, detox the liver, more calcium and magnesium throughout day and night. 

Walking into the elevator tonight, and there was this girl in there. rather overweight but pretty. Plump. Now of course the first thing that goes through my mind is the fact that she is a girl, I am a guy, and that “overweight rather plump girl” is on my list of conquests to achieve before I get married along with “hotel room housekeeper,” “hot airline stewardess,” and “college football cheerleading squad.” Now its not as if I haven't already achieved “overweight rather plump girl.” I mean, lets be honest, like most guys, well lets just say that we all have our skeletons in the closet and a man will do some crazy things in the name of sex. I often found in high school and college that the overweight girls, for lack of a better term, were always the first to have sex back then. They never held back in that department. I don't know why that is, but I have my theories.

Recently read an interview with Jeff tweedy from wilco. He is suffering from these panic attacks where sometimes he has to go to the hospital. I wanted to reach through the magazine and tell him what to do about them. I had them some time ago. They really are as horrifying as people say. One minute everything is fine and the next minute you feel like you are about to die and you don't know why. you just know about you're about to die. its quite insane and no matter how many times you tell yourself that its all in your mind (which its not) it doesn’t seem to help. [in fact it isn't in your mind at all – more like all over your skin --- a feeling of pure terror is the best way to describe it.] You still feel as though you are about to die and you have to get outside into the open and sometimes you feel like you just have to get to a hospital to ‘feel safe.’ I couldn’t even go in elevators or movie theatres for a while. so I can totally relate to how Jeff is feeling.

Crazy Liz had them a long time ago. I remember back in the day we always used to have to drive her to the hospital because she was freaking out over it. too many pills I thought. She was a pill freak and that can definitely mess you up if you don't know how to ride it. Eventually she went on prescription meds for it. more pills. I never liked the idea of trying to cure illnesses through drugs once I started studying drugs and the like. A lot of times they lead to worse problems than you started off with. I always took a nutritional approach to anything that I ever got. Whenever I get sick I just start fasting. I know that sounds crazy but for me it works. the first step. I might stop eating entirely for three to fourteen days and just let my body get back to its most natural place. I haven't fasted now since oct of 2002. so maybe its about time again. But I feel great so who knows. but its just a good thing to do in general for your health and for keeping a good weight as well.

anyway, when I got the panic attack thing I went to a lot of doctors and they recommended tons of pills and medicines. None of which I took. I asked for blood work and they wouldn’t even prescribe blood work, insisting that it was mental and not physical. Idiots of course. Mental is still physical. Since the brain is in the body and the nervous system, of which this is an ailment of, is also in the body, but don't go trying to tell the average doctor this. anyway I'm sure I've written about this before so I'll chill on the details. But suffice it to say that I did rid myself of the panic attacks or whatever they were on my own without any medicines or drugs. And the way I did it was through eating only whole foods, tons of green foods, and massive doses of B vitamins. I was taking four b 50s per day at one point and as long as I kept that high does in my system, I was free from them. if I tapered my dose down the panic attacks would come back a little. So I knew I needed to get the levels of b vits back up in my system. eventually my nerve endings grew back again and were healthy and I could stop taking the b vitamins. This was years ago and I've never had them again.