No Time to Panic

What if the thing that makes you successful—the confidence that drives you, the perfectionism that defines your career—is also what keeps you living in fear? In No Time to Panic, journalist Matt Gutman, a war correspondent and national TV reporter, takes readers into a deeply personal investigation of the panic disorder that haunted him for decades. Through science, self-experimentation, and storytelling, Gutman argues that panic isn’t a defect—it’s a perfectly natural signal of our humanity. His core insight: panic is not a malfunction of the brain, but a misunderstood evolutionary tool.

Gutman’s book begins with an admission few want to make. Though he’s built a public persona of unwavering courage—dodging sniper fire in Afghanistan and hurricanes in the Bahamas—he confesses that broadcast calm masks crippling terror: panic attacks during live television. These are not mere jitters. They feel like dying—heart racing, lungs collapsing, memory erased under the heat of a camera’s gaze. After one catastrophic mistake during the Kobe Bryant crash coverage nearly derailed his career, Gutman realized he had a choice: hide or heal.

The Courageous Coward

At the heart of No Time to Panic lies the paradox Gutman calls “the courageous coward.” He can brave war zones and tornadoes but melts under studio lights. That juxtaposition drives his inquiry: why would a person who thrives in real danger crumble in perceived danger? The book’s journey blends memoir and science, tracing how evolutionary psychology, neurobiology, and modern therapy redefine fear not as pathology but adaptation.

Gutman delves into how panic mimics heart attacks—explaining why millions mistake their symptoms for cardiac distress. He interviews emergency personnel and evolutionary biologists, revealing that what feels lethal is often just the body’s alarm system misfiring. Panic, he learns, is a perfectly normal response to the fear of social rejection—the modern equivalent of being cast out of one’s tribe. Our ancestors feared expulsion more than predators; today, the same circuitry lights up when we fear embarrassment before others. The body’s twisted logic means a TV reporter feels mortal peril when a camera turns on.

Unmasking the Hidden Epidemic

Gutman exposes the quiet epidemic of panic disorder across professions. CEOs confess midnight collapses; actors and students share crippling dread. The book estimates half of Americans experience panic at least once, and millions are misdiagnosed in emergency rooms as heart attack patients. This secrecy fuels shame—a self-perpetuating cycle Gutman lived through. His story becomes a mirror for readers: panic isn’t rare weakness, it’s common chemistry.

The book oscillates between science and story. Gutman’s quest leads him to unconventional healers—from psychiatrists prescribing SSRIs to shamans offering frog toxins (the kambo ritual), breathwork, and psychedelic journeys. He tries pharmaceutical fixes (Paxil, Xanax, propranolol) but finds no cure. Each attempt reveals the limits of mainstream medicine: drugs treat symptoms but not meaning. Seeking something deeper, he explores hypnosis, ayahuasca, mushrooms, ketamine—each promising transcendence beyond fear. In these experiments, Gutman isn’t a tourist; he’s a desperate researcher searching for neural rewiring.

Science Meets Spirit

From evolutionary biologist Robert Sapolsky to psychiatrist Randy Nesse, Gutman discovers that anxiety was never meant to destroy us; it was designed to save us. Fear and worry helped our ancestors plan hunts, avoid predators, and maintain social bonds. But in modern life, our ancient alarm system has no lions to track—so it turns on us. The paradox of evolution means anxiety once adaptive now overfires in a world of cameras, Zoom calls, and social scrutiny.

Gutman reframes fear as “good panic.” The right kind of fear motivates survival and compassion. The wrong kind paralyzes. His goal becomes not eliminating panic but befriending it—learning its cues, accepting its inevitability. He embraces what anxiety researchers call “acceptance over avoidance” (similar to Jon Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness approach). When Gutman finally opens up publicly about his panic, he finds an unexpected cure: connection. Disclosure replaces shame with solidarity. Talking about panic becomes therapy.

A Research Journey Turned Human Story

Gutman conducts a crash course on the neurobiology of panic—the amygdala’s alarm system, the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal cascade, the hormonal symphony behind fight, flight, and freeze. He makes complex science relatable, comparing panic to “a blue screen of death” for the brain. Through metaphors and humor, he translates medical data into human experience: the body’s chaos isn’t madness—it’s miscommunication.

Ultimately, No Time to Panic insists that healing isn’t linear or pharmaceutical—it’s evolutionary, emotional, and social. After everything—from kambo burns to breathwork sobbing to psychedelic visions—Gutman learns that panic fades not through elimination but integration. Fear belongs in life’s ecosystem. The book ends with humility: there is no miracle cure, only good medicine—knowledge, breathing, crying, moving, and talking. This realization leads to his final lesson: panic is a teacher, not a tormentor.

Through his vulnerability and courage, Gutman transforms panic from private torture into universal conversation. For readers, the message is clear: you cannot conquer panic by fighting it. You conquer it by listening—and by remembering that fear, in all its adrenaline and absurdity, is simply proof that you are alive.

Gutman’s exploration of fear turns scientific history into self-discovery. He learns from Robert Sapolsky and Randy Nesse that fear is ancient—a biological inheritance older than dinosaurs. Dinosaurs felt fear when chased, but not anxiety about tomorrow’s asteroid. Humans, with complex brains, evolved worry: the capacity to fear imagined futures. This cognitive marvel helped us survive—and later caused us suffering. The same brain that invented fire also invented panic attacks.

From Lions to Likes

Sapolsky’s evolutionary model explains how adrenaline and cortisol evolved as survival chemicals. Early mammals who got scared quicker survived better. But we hijacked this system for abstract threats. Modern humans fear humiliation more than lions. Social anxiety—the fear of rejection—is panic’s modern form. Gutman connects this idea to his life: he fears choking on air before millions of viewers, not bullets. His panic is a relic of the tribe—the dread of being cast out under scrutiny.

Normalizing Panic

Nesse emphasizes that panic isn’t malfunction; it’s adaptive hypervigilance. The brain prefers false alarms to missed dangers. That’s why you can misinterpret public speaking as life-or-death: your biology would rather overreact than underreact. Gutman’s relief comes when he hears Nesse’s phrase, “This is perfectly normal.” His lifelong suffering suddenly becomes biology, not shame. Panic isn’t weakness—it’s evolution in overdrive.

When Evolution Overcompensates

Gutman explores maladaptation—the peacock’s plumage analogy. Anxiety, once useful, became flamboyant overreaction. Our evolution selected for worry because it saved lives during crises, but now it harms us. Sapolsky jokes that if evolution continued another ten thousand years, humans would all be Zen monks—anxiety evolved out. (He doubts it will.) Until then, panic remains the colorful tail we drag from our ancestors—a signal of vigilance that modern life misreads as disease.

Gutman’s conclusion reframes anxiety as destiny. Fear got us here; panic is our price for imagination. We need not cure evolution—we must coexist with it. For readers, this insight transforms dread from psychological failure into human heritage. Your anxiety is not alien—it’s Paleolithic DNA whispering, “Stay safe.”

Gutman turns panic into neuroscience made personal. His account of his first panic attack during a college thesis defense becomes a biology lesson. The trigger—a room full of professors—activated his amygdala, the brain’s smoke detector. Without conscious thought, the hypothalamus set off the fight-or-flight system, flooding his body with adrenaline. His heart raced, pupils dilated, digestion paused. He wasn’t weak; he was ancient.

Fight, Flight, Freeze

Gutman explains that humans respond to stress in three ways: fight, flight, or freeze. He experienced the second—flight—while stuck at the podium, unable to flee physically but desperate inside. He describes fainting as an evolutionary strategy too—our ancestors played dead to survive predators. Emotions, he shows, are history coded into physiology.

The Biology of False Alarms

Panic feels catastrophic because the body misclassifies social threats as mortal ones. The same hormones that helped cave dwellers outrun lions now surge when we open Zoom. Gutman’s metaphor of panic as a “blue screen of death” captures this malfunction: the brain crashes under excessive stimuli, then reboots. He cites neurological research showing that mapping even a fruit fly’s brain takes decades—human panic remains partly mysterious.

When Knowledge Heals

Learning how the spiral begins—trigger, adrenaline, misinterpretation—helped Gutman regain agency. Understanding biology doesn’t cure the problem, but it dissolves the stigma. Panic stops being moral failure and becomes chemical choreography. Like many modern mental-health approaches (see Judson Brewer’s Unwinding Anxiety), Gutman’s insight is that education itself is medicine.

His readers inherit both scientific literacy and self-compassion. You fear because you’re built to. Knowledge doesn’t erase adrenaline—but it lets you breathe through it, knowing your body is simply doing its job.

For decades, Gutman hid his panic like a shameful secret—scribbling indecipherable journal notes, masking meditation as naps, and popping pills in disguise. Then, one day, he told a stranger. On a Southwest flight, beside a woman named Cat, he confessed his disorder. Cat revealed that her daughter suffered chronic panic too. That conversation unraveled years of isolation. Disclosure, Gutman realized, was medicine.

Confession as Cure

Opening up initiates healing through connection. When Gutman later shared his secret with colleagues, friends, and bosses, he discovered sympathy instead of stigma. Millennials, he notes, talk about anxiety freely—his generation bottled it up. Psychologically, disclosure replaces secrecy with solidarity, converting fear into support. It’s why group therapy works: the cure lives in community.

The Vanishing of Stigma

Gutman discovers there are almost no panic support groups nationally—not even in Los Angeles. He interviews APA chief scientist Mitch Prinstein, who blames this scarcity on Freud’s legacy of shame and medical invisibility. Panic’s stigma endures because it’s invisible; society funds dentistry more than emotional hygiene. Gutman concludes that talking publicly about panic is activism. By naming it, you dismantle fear itself.

In our era of performative calm, Gutman’s courage makes vulnerability contagious. His confession models how speaking truth about mental illness doesn’t make you weaker—it makes you free.

After science and confession, Gutman seeks transcendence. His experiments with unconventional healing are as vivid as his war reporting. Unable to silence his panic with medication, he embarks on journeys with kambo frog poison, breathwork, ayahuasca, and ketamine. Each experience reads like investigative spirituality—a journalist studying his own soul.

Breath, Pain, and Release

In Venice, California, his friend Lane Jaffe leads a breathwork session that triggers uncontrollable sobbing. Gutman’s hands curl into “lobster claws” from hyperventilation, but what he feels is liberation—the emotional decompression of decades. Breath replaces adrenaline with catharsis. He learns from healers that pain isn’t an enemy; it’s a passage.

Psychedelic Lessons

His mushroom and ayahuasca sessions mix anthropology and therapy. Each medicine teaches something different—mushrooms whisper strength; ayahuasca digs grief from the gut; the Sonoran toad (5-MeO-DMT) forces surrender through tears. Later, guided ketamine therapy delivers ego death: he experiences “the full reality” of letting go. Across these journeys, Gutman moves from fighting fear to facing it—to dying mentally and waking whole.

Integration and Aftermath

The epiphany across all experiments is disarmingly human: healing doesn’t demand psychedelics—only surrender. Crying, breathing, and trusting are psychedelic acts themselves. Gutman’s experiences illustrate what modern psychology calls integration: combining insight with everyday life. Transformation isn’t found in the toxin or trip; it’s found in what you learn when you return.

For readers, the takeaway is clearer than any hallucination: to heal panic, venture inward, not away. All medicine begins where fear ends—honesty, tears, and patience.

When Gutman meets psychologist Michael Telch, he encounters the scientific counterpoint to psychedelics. Telch’s lab at the University of Texas specializes in panic disorder and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). There, Gutman takes a literal breath of fear—carbon dioxide challenges designed to trigger panic under controlled conditions. Watching himself survive it changes his relationship to fear forever.

Facing Fear by Design

Telch demonstrates that panic sufferers overestimate danger. In the lab, Gutman inhales CO₂. His body screams suffocation, but his mind remains intact. The lesson: panic feels deadly but isn’t. Telch’s “sledgehammer” CBT exposes patients to their phobias repeatedly until fear loses power. He teaches Gutman about avoidance and safety behaviors—the rituals (push-ups, “lucky” underwear, deep breaths) that trick the mind into escalating anxiety.

Learning to Laugh at Fear

Telch’s former patient Jake Becker embodies CBT’s triumph. Becker feared sweating in public until Telch surveyed hundreds of students, proving no one cares. Humor became his healing: “Here comes the Becker sweat gene!” Gutman learns that panic dissolves when you name it. Awareness and laughter—CBT’s pragmatic tools—replace superstition with confidence.

From Lab to Life

Ultimately, Gutman’s time with Telch shows that science and surrender can coexist. Evolution made fear inevitable; CBT makes it manageable. His late-onset panic after 18 months panic-free—at a stranger’s door—reminds him recovery isn’t perfection. Panic may return, but mastery means meeting it with humor, not horror. In that laughing acceptance, Gutman embodies Telch’s gold standard: knowledge without shame.

For readers, CBT offers an intellectual antidote to panic: face what you fear until you realize fear’s bluff.

The final chapter of Gutman’s journey turns acceptance into philosophy. Panic didn’t vanish—but his relationship with it transformed. After helping cover the Uvalde school shooting, Gutman realizes that empathy and resilience coexist. He resembles the actors and colleagues who’ve learned to live openly with their fears. Panic no longer defines him; it enriches his humanity.

The Art of Self-Compassion

Gutman expands his study into emotional regulation, connecting his insights with meditation advocate Dan Harris. Meditation, he learns, rewires the brain like gentle psychedelics: it’s the slow train toward neuroplasticity. Self-compassion replaces the drill sergeant in his mind. He forgives imperfection, transforming panic from enemy into teacher.

Cry, Move, and Breathe

The author adopts psychiatrist Ellen Vora’s mantra: crying is free therapy. Tears metabolize grief; laughter metabolizes absurdity. He learns that sadness isn’t pathology—it’s part of the “balanced breakfast of human experience.” Humans aren’t designed to be constantly happy; they’re designed to feel fully. After years of hiding pain, Gutman now lets it flow—whether through meditation, movement, or messy tears into airline napkins.

His story ends not with cure but coexistence. Panic becomes one note in life’s orchestra—a reminder that vulnerability connects us all. For readers, the message is powerfully ordinary: if fear is inevitable, so is hope. Healing isn’t about eliminating panic but living alongside it, laughing, crying, and breathing through it.