Personal Essay

Addiction, Sobriety, and Panic Attacks

Was this the most difficult part of overcoming my addictions?

Benya Clark
Exploring Sobriety
Published in
4 min readDec 1, 2021

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In the past five years, I’ve overcome two major addictions: drinking and smoking cigarettes. If you’re familiar with my blog, you already know that I’ve written about both subjects extensively. (I like to write a short post about sobriety nearly every day.)

Despite writing about addiction and sobriety so often, there’s one subject that I almost never mention, even though it was one of the hardest parts of quitting both alcohol and cigarettes: Panic attacks.

My History of Panic Attacks

I had my first panic attack at a very young age, long before I ever started drinking or smoking regularly. I think I was only in middle school, although it’s so long ago that I can’t even remember for sure. What I do remember, quite vividly, is that I was watching Tim Burton’s movie Mars Attacks!

In case you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a totally shlocky alien invasion movie, meant to be pure comedy. Although there’s gore, it really isn’t meant to come across as a horror movie at all. Yet, something about it triggered a sudden, overwhelming panic attack in me. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I became all too familiar…

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Benya Clark
Exploring Sobriety

I’m a lawyer turned writer from North Carolina. I write about sobriety, mental health, and more. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter at exploringsobriety.com.