There were also dreadful, pouncing, seizures of anxiety. ...

There were also dreadful, pouncing, seizures of anxiety. One bright day on a walk through the woods with my dog I heard a flock of Canada geese honking high above the trees ablaze with foilage; ordinarily a sight and sound that would have exhilarated me, the flight of birds caused me to stop, riveted with fear, and I stood stranded there, helpless, shivering, aware for the first time that I had been stricken by no mere pangs of withdrawal but by a serious illness whose name and actuality I was able finally to acknowledge. Going home, I couldn't rid my mind of the line of Baudelaire's, dredged up from the distant past, that for several days had been skittering around at the edge of my consciousness: 'I have felt the wind of the wing of madness'.

from William Styron, Darkness Visible