Arachnophobe Liz Nicholls braves her worst nightmare to take part in new research aimed at helping people cope with anxiety disorders

Spiders have always posed a threat to me. Which is a ridiculous statement, really, seeing as we live in a country where, except for the odd homicidal hedgehog, there is very little wildlife out to get you.

And, while I count my blessings I wasn’t born somewhere like Borneo or Iraq (an Army friend told me a story about the screeching, poisonous, jumping camel spider, which made my blood run cold), it is a fear that limits my life and millions of others.

When my best friend moved to Australia and asked me to visit, the panic started scuttling about in my mind.

If I see a house spider, I scream like the housewife in a Tom and Jerry cartoon until someone comes to remove it (unhelpfully, I won’t kill anything).

I have been known to accost neighbours, wearing nothing more than a towel and a terrified grimace, in the middle of the night.

This is all very embarrassing to admit, but trainee clinical psychologist Mareike Suesse, who is carrying out a drug trial to help arachnophobes, has heard it all before.

“The way your anxiety escalates when confronted with spiders has the effect of undermining your confidence,” says Mareike.

“The reason your anxiety remains high, although you have been into the situations which frighten you a large number of times, is because people often believe avoiding a spider has prevented a catastrophe of some kind.

“What you need to do is confront yourself with images of spiders or real spiders for long enough to let you have a chance to discover that your fears are not true.”

Mareike, 27, who works for the Oxfordshire health service and is studying for her doctorate at Oxford University, is pursuing a noble cause.

Along with clinical research psychologist Dr Andrea Reinecke, she is interested in finding out how a single dose of the antibiotic cycloserine can help treat people with emotional problems such as anxiety disorders.

Fear of spiders is so common (an estimated seven per cent of the population, the majority women, with all but a handful of this study’s participants being female) that it was a logical choice for an experiment.

They want 40 healthy arachnophobes to take part in testing the tuberculosis medicine with benefits.

I am one of those arachnophobes. Which is how I find myself at the stunning Warneford Psychiatric Hospital like a fretful Little Miss Muffet. Aside from being worried I might not be sane enough to be allowed out again, my first and most urgent question is: “You’re not going to whip a spider out and lob it at me, are you?”.

“This is what many people ask me, and I’d never do that: it would be unethical and unhelpful!” reassures Mareike.

“Obviously, the fear is so strong and so ingrained, that many participants are desperate to avoid some aversion therapy, like on I’m A Celebrity.

“We never do anything that makes anyone uncomfortable and this is not about evil white-coated psychologists throwing spiders at you.”

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Phew. After I pop my pill, and go through some questions and health check, we start what’s called “augmented CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy)”. We discuss the fight or flight response – those heart-pumping, stomach-lurching, sweaty reactions which probably proved useful for our prehistoric ancestors surviving sabre-toothed tigers and other dangerous beasts.

“We examine those spiky thoughts (“it’s going to run at me!”, “I’m going to freak out if I touch it!”) that make the prospect of encountering a spider so terrifying, compared to, say, the considerably more verminous mice I have been catching and releasing from my house lately.

The logic and the liberating prospect of trying to conquer my paralysing fear start to click.

Next, there is a screen of different spider pictures to study. The waves of disgust surge at first glance of the arachnids, some shiny, glistening and spindly, some dense and furry. But they are only pictures and challenging myself to stare at them, miraculously, proves Mareike’s theory that confronting disgust helps blast it away, short-circuiting the learned anxiety curve associated with any fear.

Later that day, I catch sight of a big, leggy thing in the bath and bravely venture towards it with a cup.

It turns out to be a daddy longlegs, but I feel victorious nonetheless. I even find the idea of touching a tank of large spiders doable, and creepy crawlies around the home no biggie. This is significant progress for me.

“Phobias can be incredibly limiting, and, although they’re sometimes considered funny, they’re not for the people suffering them,” adds Mareike.

“If you’re constantly scanning the room for spiders, limiting where you live, travel or how you behave, it can be very stressful.

“The good news is that phobias are so easy to treat.

“Everyone we’ve seen so far has improved a lot.”

Cycloserine, which is the subject of several clinical trials, has been found to speed up the learning process and, after Mareike’s results are published and added to the evidence, could become a useful tool in treating anxiety for the NHS.

After my second screen spider session, which is like a strange gaming session, I feel enlightened and possibly mentally “augmented”, similar to the effects of the 5:2 diet but without the murderous hunger rage. I ask Mareike if she is asked to dish the drug out at all and whether she’s tried it herself and she says yes and no, respectively.

“I used to call for my boyfriend to get rid of spiders in the house and be looking for them everywhere,” she says.

“But this process means I am comfortable handing spiders now.

“But I have not taken the drug: I am not allowed to get high on my own supply!”

Fifty per cent of the participants in this study have been given a placebo, and I won’t find out which I got until the end of the study in ten months.

I imagine I’ll feel a right pillock if I got a placebo, but, if the therapy works, why question it?

Now, off to the nearest insect house!

 

How it works...

THE study uses cycloserine, an antibiotic which has been used to treat tuberculosis for the past two decades.
But it has also been found to improve cognitive function by improving connections between the synapses in the brain.
Cognitive behavioural therapy is also known as talking therapy and, while it does not get to the root cause of problems, it helps people understand how they think and their subsequent reactions in order to cope better.
Medics believe phobias, like the fear of spiders, usually develop during childhood and can be linked to a negative experience or learned through fears held by others, such as parents.
More participants are needed. To take part in the study, email mareike.suesse@ hmc.ox.ac.uk