This is interesting to me.
I know my anxiety and panic just about disappeared when I stopped drinking. (If you read my old posts here, I always sound like I'm about to have a heart attack.) I think this was because I had a pretty comfortable life and so nearly all of my anxiety was based on getting caught drinking at inappropriate times and losing that life. (It was a kind of a circle I got caught in. The more I drank the more likely I was to get caught so I worried about it and then drank because I was worried and then was even MORE likely to get caught which made me really more worried.)
I don't really get panic now as much as a vague worry about my future. Did I make too much damage? Will I have to change locations? Things like that.
I think my problem now is more anger.
Now it sounds like you and I have the some problem because I too try to "will it away". That never works for me. In fact, it's like the drinking circle. I get angry at myself for being angry when I don't have to be. Then I'm twice as angry!
Like you I have a lot of time on my hands. I'm on sabbatical from my work and I'm living in a sober house, but it means that I have to keep busy. I'm a person who likes a schedule. Without one I have a lot of time to find things to be angry about.
These are times when I have to remember God (my higher power). So I try to remember him several times a day with prayer. And even so, if I find I am so caught up with something that I simply cannot sit down, I go out and walk and pray the rosary. (Or sometimes, now that it is nicer out, I change and have a run. I haven't run for years. There's no way to be angry when you can't breathe I have discovered.)
I know my solution perhaps involves a lot of thinking about God (and is maybe too Catholic!) but it works for me. Even in the cold I went out and walked. I am telling you, there is no way to stay angry when you are trying to pray the rosary while walking in a Minnesota snow storm!
Some people have suggested that perhaps there is a psychiatric problem. That I wouldn't know, but for me I know it is too difficult to trying NOT to feel something, it is about my state of mind always. If I am in a good state of mind I find I am angry less and when I am, it is easier for me to trust God to help me make a change. So I don't know about drugs and teas and things, but I do know that the more I seek God, the better things seem.
Pax,
Dietrich