This will be a brief (depending on what you consider to be brief) story about my struggle with cardiophobia. To those of you that have never heard of cardiophobia and are unsure of what it is, it is basically fear of your own heart. Not being afraid of your heart but having panic attacks and extreme anxiety because of the irrational fear that your heart might stop at any moment. A quick google search though provided with this definition ''Cardiophobia is the fear of the heart or heart disease. People with a family history or prior personal history of heart problems or diseases are more likely to develop this phobia.'' Now the last part of that definition is very interesting because I have no family history of heart problems,Have had my heart monitored for 5 straight days while being in the hospital for a separate eye injury, had at least 4-5 EKG's and every single one has come back negative. So in other words my heart is in perfectly fine condition and this is what makes my personal experience with cardiophobia extremely irrational.It started at around age 18. In high school i did not drink or use drugs until finally smoking weed for the first time as a senior,graduating soon after i began to smoke weed from morning to night and my alcohol intake would also increase slowly.Once the abuse of alcohol and marijuana became a daily (as long as we had money) habit. We then started to experiment with other drugs, and our reasoning for trying them was ''just to try some thing new,just some thing different for tonight'' So we tried cocaine 3-4 times, ecstasy also about 3-4 times, and a few other prescription pills but we would always go right back to the marijuana and alcohol. This was until one of my friends ( well i considered him a friend at the time, now that i reflect back i saw that he never had my best intention in mind and everything he did stemmed from selfish motives) said that we should do some crystal meth. Now i knew that this ''friend'' used to be very heavily addicted to meth, but me being young dumb and naive believed that he,myself and our social circle would be able to do it and quit, returning back to alcohol and marijuana use. Well we all know how this story usually turns out, I convinced myself that i would try it once and quit but the high felt so amazing that I immediately thought ''I do not care what negative effects this has on me i need this drug'' it made me feel invincible. This is the ironic part because after being hooked on meth for about 3 months i decided to google the effects of the drug on the body. This was either the best or worse decision i have ever made,I still don't know which one. The reason i say this is because when i googled the effects the only one that stood out to me was increased heart rate and possible heart attack/problems. From that point on every time i did meth i would feel extremely anxious and would never be able to enjoy the drug convincing me that i needed to quit. So if i had not decided to google the dangers of meth that day who knows how much longer i would have been hooked on it, but the downside is that same google search resulted in my condition of cardiophobia. I deal with this condition every single day and night. It makes it hard to exercise because my heart rate goes up and makes it hard to relax in social situations because instead of letting loose and just being myself I am having this battle in my head, a combination of fear and other emotions that i cant even describe.This caused me to begin drinking even more and taking xanax when i could find it because whenever one of those 2 substances is in my body my cardiophobia ceases to exist.I might sleep like a baby that night after having a fun night lacking all fear but when i wake up the battle starts again.But it may not be obvious to a lot of people that I suffer from anxiety especially the 160,000 youtube subscribers i once had (before youtube decided to terminate my account for a video i uploaded over 2 years ago). On my channel I would do tons of live streams and appear very comfortable on camera and even when i watched the playback i could no notice any anxiety, why? because i did not have any. 99% of the time i did a live stream or a video where i would appear on cam doing commentary i would either have xanax,alcohol or sometimes both in my system. This is actually the first time I am publicly admitting to having this condition, i have always tried to hide it from everyone except for a few close family members and friends.Alcohol and xanax do help but they are only a short term solution. I have gotten over this condition before by staying sober for 30 days ( which felt like a living hell at first) meditating,forcing myself to exercise and eating right. I know how to cure myself but I am a human and i have my flaws so on the days where my cardiophobia is really really bad I usually take that short walk to the liquor store for some booze so i can at least get some work done online. But something happened recently that has lit a fire under my ass like never before. I do not care how bad it gets i refuse to live the rest of my life this way and i am going to use the tools that have worked for me in the past to work for me again.If any of you have a similar story feel free to leave the link in my comment section and i will be sure to check them out. At the time of me writing this i would say my anxiety/cardiophobia level is at about a 5.5/10 so it is manageable. I just wanted to finally share my story and thank you for your time. P.S. I actually did a painting titled ''STROKE OF MIDNIGHT'' to express my cardiophobia in a creative way and here it is.
