Pinned to the bed, every muscle clenched, I tried taking in huge gulps of air. It wasn’t enough: I couldn’t breathe. A vice tightened around my chest, heart hammering so violently it was making the bedsheets move. ‘Mum! Call an ambulance! I’m dying!’
Seventeen-year-old me was having the mother of all panic attacks. Although I didn’t know that was the case at the time – it felt more like a heart attack.
The night before had been spent in my local nightclub, in the company of that old charmer Jack Daniels. Downing gallons of the stuff had left me jittery the next day, a feeling worsened by the fact I was meant to be heading to the Reading Music Festival with a friend that afternoon: two days of Prodigy, the Beastie Boys and yet more alcohol.
The thought filled me with horror, but I couldn’t let my friend down. The clock ticked down; more restless anxiety as I pictured myself in a mosh pit. Then: boom! My nervous system slammed into fight-or-flight mode: pounding heart, pouring sweat, terror.
Panic attacks are often misunderstood, dismissed as nothing much. But imagine the dread you would feel at the sight of a tsunami, multiplied by the horror you might experience as your car headed over a cliff, and you’re approaching the feeling.
I didn’t go to the festival, but I didn’t recover quickly, either. The panic attack set off crippling anxiety that lasted for months, mainly because I dreaded having another one. I stopped socialising, stopped eating much and walked around feeling as though a boa constrictor was wrapped around my chest.
Even though I would rather not have done, I still had to leave the house – every weekday to attend sixth form college, every Saturday to the hotel where I worked as a waitress. It was hard to summon the strength to do these things, but I noticed that when I was studying or serving roast potatoes, the anxiety retreated.
Eventually, the boa constrictor who had taken up residence on my chest slunk away.
The panic attack set off crippling anxiety that lasted for months, mainly because I dreaded having another one, writes Clare Foges
I often wonder, though, how things might have played out if I was a teenager not in 1998 but in 2026. Doubtless my general anxiety levels would be worse today, since I would spend so much time on social media feeling miserably inadequate compared to all those shiny people on Instagram.
Once I had suffered the panic attack, I would have spent hours researching anxiety, probably finding an online community of people who defined themselves by their mental health condition. I might have felt a sense of belonging, as though I had found my tribe.
I would have come across well-meaning people or less well-meaning ‘sickfluencers’ instructing me on how I could easily claim for benefits like Personal Independence Payments (PIP). On receiving that money, I would have felt a sense of validation: I had been recognised by the state as An Anxious Person For Life. Would I have kept going to college? No. Kept my job? No. Gone to university? No.
Would I have felt that since I had been defined by this anxiety, I had better stay home? And would all that extra time and isolation have exacerbated the anxiety? Yes and yes.
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Britain crippled by anxiety: Record numbers are claiming disability benefits for being anxious
There are now around 185,000 young people (aged between 18 and 24) out of work due to ill health. The number almost doubled between 2012 and 2022. By July 2025, over 633,000 people were receiving PIP for anxiety and mood disorders.
This week Tony Blair’s think-tank called for the Government to pull ‘an emergency handbrake’ to slow the rise of claimants. It suggests that there are certain conditions – like anxiety and ADHD – that ‘in the vast majority of cases do not limit an individual’s ability to work, and the default presumption should be that these “non-work-limiting” conditions no longer attract cash benefits’.
This has provoked fury from some quarters: an assault on the most vulnerable! Learning disability charity Scope said ‘denying benefits will push people into deeper anxiety’.
The debate on welfare always seems to be split down the middle: those who think scroungers are bleeding the system dry; and those who say we should stick as we are (or pour more money in).
Both are wrong. A small minority do fool the system to pocket taxpayers’ cash, but there is also a huge grey area of people who are, truthfully, struggling with their mental health. The question is, how should they be supported? Is it compassionate to give them a ‘safety net’ which will probably be so yielding they will never climb out of it? Is it kind to lock them into a dependent identity for life? I would argue not.
If someone is in the grip of a mental health episode then of course they must be helped. But for those with milder depression, anxiety or ADHD, the benefits system is doing them no favours.
People need structure, purpose, face-to-face conversation, an incentive to get out there – not isolation, low expectations and a life communing with strangers online. It’s a fate I feel fortunate to have escaped.
Stop being so needy, J-Lo!
Jennifer Lopez has shared not one but three photos of herself in the gym, wearing a crop top
Jennifer Lopez has shared not one but three photos of herself in the gym, wearing a crop top to show off her amazing physique. We get it: your abs could crack a walnut, you’re a goddess.
But at 56, isn’t this behaviour a little needy? If it’s global attention she’s after, maybe she should try a radical display of modesty. J-Lo in a cosy jumper eating cake: now that might break the internet.
Like Mystic Meg, I’ve had a torrid time
(Mystic) Meghan of Montecito has shared a post on Instagram celebrating ‘Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius ending the hardest seven years of their lives on April 25’. She is a Leo, I’m a Taurus and truth be told, this strikes a chord. In the past seven years I’ve had two, three then four children, not a night of unbroken sleep and barely a second to myself. Meghan, I get it. Let us know what’s in store for the next seven.
Meghan Markle has shared a post on Instagram celebrating ‘Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius ending the hardest seven years of their lives on April 25’
Why this naked bike ride is nuts
London’s naked bike ride returns in June – and sexual abuse charity Project 90-10 is slating the mayor for failing to protect children. Quite right. Why should kids be exposed to bikers’, ahem, nuts and inner tubes? Isn’t the law clear? A flasher’s a flasher, whether they’re freewheeling or not.
Melania Trump has criticised Jimmy Kimmel for joking about her being ‘an expectant widow’ days before the Washington shooting. Calling out the Left-wing comic’s ‘violent rhetoric’, she proves herself to be a canny operator. She speaks out so seldomly that when she does it makes an impact.
