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It took a long time but I've finally graduated. After spending 30 of my 55 years with crippling anxiety, I've segued to the next level. Obsessive-compulsive disorder. Sort of like getting your master's in anxiety.

I don't spend hours washing my hands or checking the stove to see if it's turned off. I don't have any life-altering routines that take me two or three hours to get out the door.

It's not as overt as that. It's mostly inner turmoil, but I've become so anxious about my anxiety that it's now classed as an obsession.

Growing up watching my mother and various uncles avoid subways, elevators and crowds possibly started me down this path. Years of sitting on aisles and running out of restaurants, theatres, meetings — anywhere I felt trapped — have built my faulty neural pathways into expressways.

I now spend so much of my time stressing about my health that it is sapping me. Sleep is foreign. Officially OC disorder. That's what the shrink says and I think he's finally got it right.

It means a different type of medication, although it's still unclear how well it is working. The doctor also suggested getting caffeine out of my diet and getting more and better sleep (as if).

For most people, the holiday season is a wonderful time. Gather with friends. Eat mounds of food. Laugh. Enjoy.

It's different for me. I dread the holidays because I worry about dying and ruining it for my family forever more. Not that dying at any other time is preferable, but in my world, I have dying handicapped.

Previous shrinks have had me face the problem head on. Tackle your fears with fitness. You will feel so much better.

One of them talked me into a running program. I faithfully ran for years so I could stare down death. It got me very fit. But it never had that calming effect they said it would. I didn't sleep any better. I wasn't mellow. At the end of each run I would breathe a sigh of relief and congratulate myself on not dying.

I continued to run and then one day I felt an unusual pain on my left side. I stopped; it stopped. I started; it started. Some testing later, I was diagnosed with blockage in one artery — not worthy of anything other than cholesterol and blood pressure medication.

"Run a marathon if you want," the doctors said. "It's just something we'll monitor."

To me, it was death firing a warning shot over my bow.

When asked how I'm doing, I never say "great" or "fabulous." My usual response is "okay." I don't want people standing around at my funeral looking sombre and saying, "I talked to him an hour before he died and he said he was great."

I've heard it said that the coward dies 1,000 deaths and the hero dies but one. So what do you call the person who has died at least 100,000 deaths in his mind?

Every little twinge, ache, lump, bump or hiccup spikes my adrenalin and I panic. Heart attacks — I've had thousands. Cancer of the lungs, brain, testicles, hair — I've had them all. Strokes — once a day at least. Alzheimer's — I forget how many times I've had that.

I've even made life decisions based on my anxiety. I became self-employed 20 years ago to allow myself to control my environment even more. It worked and I ran a successful business before selling it two years ago.

In a strange twist, I feel much less internal torment in the confines of the hustling, bustling, impersonal city. My anxiety and newly minted obsession come to the fore in cottage country. I say I don't like the mosquitoes, snakes, slow pace and lack of a Starbucks, and I don't, but lurking in the background is the reality that a hospital is distant and I feel uncomfortable when I get too far out of my comfort zone.

The anxiety, however, hasn't dulled me into only looking inward like many self-obsessed people. If anything, I am hyperaware of my surroundings at all times. I see. I observe. I opine, all with a keen eye. I guess there are a few benefits from this straitjacket that life is not allowing me to wriggle out of.

When asked more than five years ago by a former shrink whether I thought I would still be around in five years, I answered, "No."

If I were asked the same question now, five years the wiser, I would give a definite "maybe." I guess that rates as making headway.

I don't feel like I'm going to improve that much. My outlook on the future could be classed as pessimistically optimistic. I'm thinking that if I can avoid ending my days wrapped in bubble pack, curled up in a fetal position and sucking my thumb because I'm too scared to live, then I will have done well. Anything better than that is a bonus.

Brad Furlott lives in Toronto.