For years Manhattan Poet Joel Oppenheimer, now 47, took exactly the same route from his Greenwich Village apartment to his local bar, the Lion's Head. One day he tried a more circuitous route, walking along different streets. Midway to the bar he broke out in a cold sweat, suffering from heart palpitations, jelly legs and vertigo. "I had no control over my body," he said. "It was total panic."
Diagnosis: agoraphobia, the most common and disabling of all the phobias, one that may afflict as many as 2.5 million...
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