... and of course, please don't give up, period. The thread about my personal experience is here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x7273537but it occurs to me that people who don't have celiac sprue are also going through this problem. And I wish I could put on a godlike tone and say, "This is the solution to all your problems," but the best I can do is (are?) a few mild suggestions. I can still shoot for the godlike tone if you like, though.:)
My story, in a nutshell, is that I was also having intractable digestive problems. Searching around on the internet I found that wheat was a likely suspect. (I got a lot of help from DUers, by the way, especially as I recall supernova.) I gave up wheat and the digestive problems went away and, more surprisingly (at least to me), so did my anxiety disorder. I'm still not absolutely sure I'm celiac, but to be on the safe side I gave up barley and oats as well and have been almost irritatingly happy ever since.
Now, you'll notice that no doctor figures into this story. My dad is a medical doctor and my sister is a psychiatrist. I was born with a very serious birth defect and so I was under a pediatrician's watchful care for my entire early childhood. At Penn I lost a lot of weight and a doctor at Student Health told me I was anorexic. (She told me to gain 10 lbs in a month, I did, and that was the end of that diagnosis.) When I came home I saw an internalist who told me I had flat feet but as to celiac sprue, it never came up. So I guess what I'm saying to you is that you may have some underlying condition causing your anxiety disorder, and you may have a lot of difficulty getting a diagnosis. This is not to say that you should give up on doctors, but you do have to be ready to take a large part in finding your own solution.
One thing a doctor can do for you, any doctor and not just psychiatrists, is give you a prescription for an SSRI (Paxil, Zoloft, Luvox, the artist formerly known as Prozac, etc.). They aren't ultimate solutions no matter how much the drug companies would like people to think they are, but they really help. I was on Paxil at one time and Luvox at another and they both helped clarify my thinking lots. They both also knocked me on my butt making me want to sleep 12 hours a day and both made me impotent, not surprising as these are known side effects also reinforcing the effects of celiac sprue. So I quit medications twice, but that doesn't mean that they aren't helpful.
Celiac sprue is considered quite rare, but wheat sensitivity and gluten sensitivity are probably considerably more common. The "probably" is in there because I can't find a lot in the way of medical research on them. Celiac sprue has a lot of unfortunate side effects, but the big one as far as the mind and emotions are concerned is vitamin B12 malabsorption. I mention it because I run into a lot of people who seem to have the same kind of anxieties I did and wonder whether they might also have some issues with B12. (Here's the Merck Manual Online:
http://www.mercksource.com/pp/us/cns/cns_merckmanual_frameset.jsp Just type in "malabsorption" in either search box; unfortunately the link always comes back as frameset.jsp wherever you go there or I would have just given the specific page link.)
Also consider food allergies or other sensitivities as a possible source for your anxiety disorder. Here I'm completely out of my depth and can only suggest that you see an allergist. Similarly, if you suspect you may be celiac (more likely if you have Italian or Irish heritage), the recommended approach is to go to a doctor and have them run the celiac panel blood test. If this indicates you're celiac, they'll want to biopsy your small intestine. Me, I'm already convinced that I have it and am not going this route, but only because it also requires you to keep eating gluten and I think I've had enough damage already. However, I don't advise anyone to do it my way; going the medical route is always safest.
If you think you'd like to explore gluten-free living (say you just have piles of money and don't know what to do with it:)) feel free to drop me a PM and I can offer a lot of suggestions. It can be very expensive, especially if you're intent on eating the same kind of things you ate before. (Eg, decent tasting gluten-free pasta costs a bomb.) Please do not just try to cut out gluten and live off nuts and berries or, you know, boxes of 10X sugar. (Oh wait, that's just me.) If you want to try gluten-free living but can't afford the expensive alternatives, know that you can live a long, happy life substituting inexpensive brown rice for most of your starch needs. If you're dying for sandwiches, Aldi (and practically everybody else) sells soft corn tortillas; I use them as my bread substitute and am very happy with them.
Forgive my blithering. I just held an informal memorial for a friend who died a year ago. He had an intractable anxiety disorder, and unfortunately self-medicated with vodka and cigarettes. He wound up in a homeless shelter a hundred-odd miles from here and when he died nobody even cared enough to tell me. I had looked him up to tell him about celiac sprue and that maybe there was an explanation for his problems, maybe a solution, maybe he could restart his life. Instead I found an obituary. He was 44. Maybe he had celiac sprue. Maybe he could have been helped. Maybe he could have been an attorney again. I'll never know.
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