Experiences - Anxiety Attacks?

[johno.]

Swim has been smoking weed for about 2 years on and off, and nearly every day for the past 2 - 3 months. He is also a frequent user of MDMA and ecstasy pills (on average once every 2 weeks for the past year).

Last week he was smoking with a few friends. Nice chilled out environment, no worries at all. All of a sudden he started freaking out for no reason, and felt discomfort around where his heart is. He couldn't determine whether it was muscular or the actual heart was playing up. He was sweating like he just came out of a pool, twitching like crazy and feeling extremely light headed. His friends suggested it was all in his head, but this did not calm him down at all. He continued to get more and more scared, and the more he thought about it the worse the effects got.

This continued for around 20 minutes, then he decided to get up and go for a walk. As soon as he stood up he felt as if he was going to faint, and freaked out like never before. He walked outside and collapsed. All he can remember is seeing the ground come up to meet him, then getting up with his best friend saying "do you know what u were just doing!?!?".

According to his friend, he collapsed on the ground and had a seizure for around 30 seconds. After he came to he walked inside and sat down again, still feeling the same effects as before. However, he went and laid down in the car and slowly began to feel normal again.

Two days later he had to attend a course with around 20 people in the class. They were all waiting in a small room before the course started, and swim began to freak out again, not as bad as the other night, but bad enough to have to leave the room and go for a walk. Discomfort around the heart once again.

Two days after this swim was feeling fine. 100% actually. He decided to have a smoke. 10 mins after his first cone, the same thing happened all over again, except he didn't have a seizure this time.

It is now the next day, and he has been feeling discomfort around his heart all day. It is like an aching deep inside. When he is thinking about the feeling, he starts freaking out and gets really scared that something is going to happen to him. However, if he doesn't think about it, he doesn't feel it. Even when he starts to think about it, it takes around 5 mins for the feeling to actually kick in again. This makes him think it is all in his head.

He has come to the conclusion that he is having anxiety attacks. Would this be correct? He will be making a doctors appointment for next week, and is not afraid to reveal any information about himself. He would just like to know if anyone has experienced something similar or knows anything about this sort of thing.

Lastly, swim WILL NOT be smoking weed or doing any other drugs any time soon, if not forever. So please don't post saying "The best thing to do is stop". He knows this. He has stopped. Cheers.