Fear of Flying

I am not a good flyer. I'm actually a really bad one these days-- completely anxious, terrified, and doped up on tranquilizers. I haven't had one in awhile, but I have occasionally had a full blown "JESUS CHRIST, I NEED TO GET OFF THIS THING!!!!!" panic attack several times in the past. The thing is, though, that I've flown probably over 100 times in the past, including many long flights overseas, and didn't have a problem. My fear of flying seems to only have occurred in the past five years or so.

Recently I flew back east and while fending off another panic attack, I began to think about my fear of flying and how it's one of the more common fears out there and how there's a good chance that I'm not the only one freaking out. Here's what I came up with:

Okay, say you're on a flight of about 100 people. I'd say that maybe 3/4's of them are perfectly fine and happy, or at least as fine and happy as one can be on a plane flight. That means that maybe a quarter of the people on the plane aren't as fine and happy as the others and are struggling a bit on the plane. A good many of those people are dealing with it through the simple usage of tranquilizers (something shared by many in the plane who are not freaking out) and a few on top of that are using some sort of mental practice/act they learned from somebody (deep breathing techniques, constant thought about puppies) to calm themselves down. Which leaves us with maybe five (?) at the most (least?) who are having full blown, heart pounding, "GET ME OFF THIS THING" panic attacks and are having them throughout most of the flight. So while you're walking up and down the aisle or avoiding the random stranger whose too fat for their seat, just think that there's a slight chance they could be praying to their God at that very moment.

This got me wondering about Flight Attendants and how many times they have to deal with a passenger who is freaking the shit out at various times during a flight. Like they try to get off the flight before it takes off or thinks they're having a heart attack or some other example of bad, bad mental shit going down. Once a flight? Every once in awhile? Once a year? Never? Are Flight Attendants trained in calming people down? Is there anything they can do? Anything they should do? After all, other passengers on a plane are probably not thrilled with sitting nearby a passenger who is screaming out loud about death and crashes. I always wondered if Flight Attendants had valium somewhere on the plane that they whip out for freaked out passengers but was told they didn't for the somewhat logical reason that it could easily lead to law suits if things go down.

Either way, I still hate flying.