[kach22i]

A friend of mine went to the hospital twice last week, said he thought he was going to die.

They upped his dosage of meds that he has been on, told me he doesn't like being on them.

I shared my story of walking home from work in 2008 and a block away from home the pressure built up and I thought I was having a heart attack, felt like I was on the bottom of the ocean. In that same month I recall my heart racing for no reason and out of control and suffering occasional nose bleeds.

My solution wasn't drugs, it was getting off drugs - namely caffeine America's most popular additive drug if you don't count sugar.

Caffeine in headache medicine, caffeine in coffee, it seemed to be in more things than not.

I knocked out the three or four cups of coffee a day, down to 1/2 cup in the morning.

I also changed my diet and began exercising resulting in release of some healthy endorphins that lower stress.

My friend is 2-3 cups a day, and cannot stop thinking about things at night, plus smokes three cigars a day. One cigar in the morning, one at mid-day, and one in the evening.

I told him about melatonin as a sleeping aid, he's tried it before.

He works long hours in sales, and doesn't exercise mostly because of an injured shoulder years ago in martial arts. I suggested a morning walk with some arm rolling exercises thrown in.

Coffee
Exercise
Sleep aids
Healthier diet
Cigars
He does not drink booze - used to too much

The biggest thing I see is the cigars. Cigars temporally relax you, but I think there is a slingshot effect where stress is merely delayed only to come back even harder and more compressed. Like the stress is diverted and stored, only to explode at the least opportune and unexpected moment.

I mentioned mediation and yoga to him, two things I have not tried but have read about. I don't see him getting into theses things anymore than I would.

I told him how I lowered my cigar intake, I use the same 80/20 rule as for my diet. Good boy 80% of the time, and indulged 20% of the time. Cigars are only for weekends now, I smoke my pipe during the week which is about 1/4 the nicotine by my best guess.

Here is the rub, none of the doctors he's seen have mentioned exercise, getting off caffeine and stop smoking so many cigars.............they just seem to want him to take more prescription drugs.

He claims that he's told all of his doctors about the no exercise, the coffee and the 3-cigars a day but they don't bat an eye over it.

Maybe they assume most patients are not going to change, so they take they shortest route - drugs?

I've read that 1 out of four or so Americans are on some kind of anxiety medicine, are we that stressed out or are we being pushed prescription drugs?

What are the alternatives?

I took my own route, but that may not be for everyone including my friend. It takes a lot of work, time and discipline to do what I did. And it didn't happen over night.