What's This ??? Afraid Of A Pill ???

It's pretty common, some call it being a mediphobe. The "real" name is "Pharmacaphobia"

Both are good names, but mediphobe sounds friendlier. :)

Picture this, and perhaps it will ring true in your situation, too: You are scared, sincerely frightened that you are dying, you go to your doctor, he/she sympathetically scribbles out a prescription for you, hands it to you, and sends you on your "not so merry way".

You've just bravely gone to the drugstore to get the prescription filled, and with it lying on the seat next to you on the drive home, you glance over at it several times, perhaps with positive thoughts of the "cure" you've been waiting for. The relief you've been craving for!

Now you are at home. You are beginning to wonder, a few questions have popped up in your mind.

What EXACTLY does "3x's Daily" mean ???
Will this have a bad reaction with the Advil I took last night?
How is this going to make me feel?
What if I start to really panic while taking it?
What if I'm allergic to it? Nobody's home to see me pass out!
What if the pharmacist put the wrong pill in the bottle, what if he read the scribbles wrong and gave me heart medicine instead of panic medicine ???

So, you wait until a more "safe" time to take the first pill. Perhaps your husband, wife, children, boyfriend, girlfriend, mother, father, etc, is home and you aren't quite as frightened anymore.

With a little more thinking you decide to start this new medicine on a new day, surely the next morning you will be ready, and then everything will be much easier, you think.

Next morning, your thoughts race and your heart pounds and you find yourself panicking and unable to take the pill. You might even have it sitting on the table in front of you right beside a big glass of water. You look at it, you look nervously away from it. You think about writing a letter so that if anyone finds you passed out on the floor, they'll know what medicine you took that did it to you. You begin hyperventilating, and before things get worse ...

You get a sudden rush of willpower. You grab the pill, you swallow, drinking the ENTIRE glass of water, of course, just in case it needs ALOT of fluid to dissolve in and you sit there calmly for, oh, maybe three minutes.

And then, you find yourself panicking. Not just that general anxiety stuff you experience every day, no, no ... this is much worse. This, you know as the heat crawls up your back, is going to be a FULL BLOWN PANIC ATTACK!

Well, you do one of several things. Call your doctor. Call your pharmacist. Or, call you spouse or a friend to come and save you. You are absolutely certain that the pill you just stuck in your mouth is now working it's way through your system in an effort to kill you.

You might go through this cycle every time your doctor prescribes a new medicine. Every time you take an aspirin, antacid, or even perhaps while spraying Solarcaine on your sunburn.

You aren't alone. It is so common for panic disorder sufferers, and even non PD sufferers to experience this. Even me, (imagine that!) I've been through this same thing for seven years! It has never really gotten any easier until I took the particular medicine a few times and realized it wouldn't kill me.

It is part of the reason why I doubt the validity of people worrying that panic sufferers will get addicted to benzos. (sorry, too hard to actually spell out completely) Everytime I stick a xanax in my mouth, I worry about it. Funny, because the xanax is supposed to make me worry less ... right?

Okay ... I'm a Mediphobe. What Next?.... Read On