Twenty-seven years.

Andrew Meldrum started having panic attacks in 1986, before panic attacks were even considered a thing. He was twenty-two, fronting a successful band, playing the best venues in the region, and convinced he could accomplish anything he put his mind to. Then, at his own birthday party, an invisible beast knocked him flat and spent the next twenty-seven years lighting him up.

Andrew calls it the Panic Dragon. And like most people who suffer from panic disorder, he spent years and thousands of dollars waiting for a cavalry that never came. Doctors ran tests and found nothing. Therapists searched for triggers and childhood trauma but never handed him a plan for what to do when the dragon showed up. His world kept shrinking: restaurants, family gatherings, even his own driveway became battlegrounds.

Eventually Andrew realized it was just him and the dragon in the arena. So, he picked up his sword and shield and taught himself to use them. Through years of small victories, painful setbacks, and relentless experimentation, he developed sensible solutions that reprograms the body's false alarms, a way to prepare for panic before it strikes rather than merely react after it does.

His last panic attack was December 19, 2012. After 9,855 days of war, the dragon was dead.

Andrew Meldrum is the author of Slaying the Panic Dragon: Sensible Solutions to Eliminate Panic. He is not a doctor or a therapist, and he'll be the first to tell you that's exactly the point. He's a survivor who came out the other side better for the battle, and he now equips audiences, guides, and fellow fighters with the tools he wishes someone had handed him in 1986.

He approaches heavy subjects with whimsy and a well-timed joke, because mental health is heavy enough without the speaker piling on. Audiences leave Andy's talks with two things: real hope, and a real plan that works.

Andrew and Yvette reside in Middle Tennessee.