SCARY STUFF
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Democratic presidential front-runner Howard Dean offered more details this week on psychological counseling he underwent for anxiety attacks suffered in the 1980s - and revealed that he had a panic attack the day he took over as governor of Vermont 13 years ago.
Reacting to news of Gov. Richard Snelling's death in August 1991, Dean told People magazine, "I hyperventilated and I started hyperventilating and I thought, You better stop that or you won't be much good to anybody."
The panic attack was understandable, Dean said. "To suddenly get told that you have responsibility for 600,000 people — it provokes a little anxiety."
Dean's history of anxiety attacks goes back to the early 1980s, when he said he sought counseling for the problem.
"I was just anxious and I didn't know why," the Democratic front-runner explained.
Of the counseling sessions, Dean said: "It wasn't easy. You've got to work and you've got to uncover things that matter to you. And of course, we talked a lot about my father and all that other stuff."
Dean eventually traced the cause of his distress to the premature death of his brother, who disappeared while exploring Laos in 1974.
The top Democrat denied that his treatment involved any anti-anxiety drugs, but admitted that he sometimes still has to take "stuff" to get to sleep at night.
"You know, once in a while, I take stuff for sleep," Dean told People. "That makes sense."
He explained: "Anti-anxiety drugs and sleep drugs were essentially the same thing when I was practicing [medicine]. And my experience was whenever I took a sleeping pill, there would be rebound insomnia and so I didn't like to take them."
The leading Democrat said he doesn't expect a repeat of the hyperventilation episode if he wins the presidency.
"I think everybody has a little anxiety when they approach a job like that," he told People. "But I think that over my life, I've made hard decisions about people who could die if I made the wrong decision. ...
"The key to making tough decisions is to make it, not sit around and agonize about it," Dean said.