I agree, many Doctors are way to quick to medicate, solving nothing, only covering the problem with another.
Caffeine, Nicotine, Ephedrine, or Psydo-Ephedirne constrict blood flow and increase blood pressure and heart rate. Witch trigger anxiety. This can be noted by continual sweating and being jittery.
Everyone has anxiety at some point in there life. When I was going to college full time and flying cargo full time I use to get pains in my chest that I thought was a heart attack. I backed off the caffeine and learned some stress reduction techniques. Try not to worry about things out of your control and take charge of the little things that eat your lunch every day. Try and reduce stressors in you life that are not relevant to the current mission. Address some issues right away so they don’t loom over you like some pending doom.
Also try and get some sleep, and even a half-hour nap during the day. Eat a well balance diet and get some excersize. You don’t have to join a gym but just go out of your way to get some extra steps in during the day.
Also have a time of the day that is just for you. An hour or so before you go to bed, read a book for pleasure. This does not include the POH or a JEPP book. Get a book on something that you enjoy, outdoors, cars, fantasy, etc, and decompress a tad before you nod off to sleep.
The checkrides, training, hurry up and wait never ends in aviation.
Good luck. I would take the advice above and go back to the Doctor and tell him you were not comfortable with the idea of taking the meds and you tossed them out. Tell him you have tried implementing habit changes and so far you are happy with the results. MED records can be hellish to overcome. Nothing is worth sacrificing your health for, so if the self-therapy does not help, you may have to seek another avenue. But in any event, inside or outside aviation, meds are a bad thing to start to be dependent on.
Good luck.
Mark
TC
. If it wasn't jerking off 10-12 times a week I'd be a wreck.
