No, you can't really think straight, so you better fly the night before if you're headed to a meeting and you need drugs to fly. Next time you're on a plane look around you at takeoff and every time there's significant turbulence. You will see people sweating, clenching fists, etc. When you know the signs, they're really easy to spot. The worst thing for me, almost as bad as the anxiety itself, was having to hear my brother rip on me to no end about it. What are brothers for, I guess?
I would definitely give my brother shit if he were in the same situation. -And I would expect he would me. I flew to Austin last year and had a 50 year old woman sitting next to me. She warned me in advance that she was a "bad flyer". She grabbed my arm several times in fear. She was sweet and I talked her through it. Her way of handling it was to talk incessantly. Normally this would be obnoxious but she needed a friendly ear. Turned out her son was some tech-dude and I met him at the terminal. He gave me passes to a tech fair going on near my hotel. I went, thinking serendipity had struck and that I'd get to meet all sorts of interesting people. -It sucked. My only reward was being a good samaritan. -Man could she talk though.