"For 3 months I woke up at 1:30 A.M. every night in a fetal position praying,'Lord, just kill me now!'' -Jon, 40, SYSTEMS ANALYST      When          Panic       Attacks THESE ARE ANXIOUS TIMES, CHARACTERIZED BY A NERVOUS UPTICK OF DEPRESSION, ANXIETY DISORDER, PANIC ATTACKS.   THE CAUSES AREN'T GOING AWAY SOON, BUT YOU DON'T HAVE TO LIVE WITH THE SYMPTOMS By Mike Zimmerman   MIND/BODY......WHEN PANIC ATTACKS I know what death feels like      I knew it that day I was slumped over the hood of my car at a Jersey rest stop--my heart thumping like a speedbag, my body soaked and shaking, my lips and fingers numb--and I still know it now. No peace. No tunnels. No bright lights. Just that knowledege, waiting for my heart to stop pounding, to stop period.      As the ambulance approched, the situation grew surreal. My extremities mutated into petrified claws. I held up those twisted, frozen fingers, asking What the hell is Happening to me? But I couldn't speak. My mouth had stiffened to a straw hole--Sylvester after Tweety feeds him some alum. Stroke? Heart attack? Anueurysm? I was collecting them all.        Despite my condition, the EMT's didn't seem the least impressed. They shoved tubes up my nose. Breath slowly, concentrate, they said.      When my gurney wheels hit the tiles at Morristown Memorial, I could finally breath normally. My hands and feet were my own once again. I could move my mouth even though I didn't feel like saying much.      Two hours later, as I shuffled through the sliding doors and back to reality a free and "health" man, I must have looked like Marty Feldman after a lightning strike. The Doctor told me I'd hyperventilated from a combination of hangover, fatigue, and caffeine. Not unusual. The Paralysis in my face and hands came from servere overbreathing. But now I was fine, he said. What he didn't tell me was that I'd has a panic attack.      I'd just coughed up initation dues for a club that is more extensive than I'd ever imagined. And membership is on the rise: In a Men's Health Web poll, 20 percent of those who responded listed anxiety/panic attacks as an adverse health effect of the September 11 tragedies. "Anxiety has soared," says Sandra Ceren, Ph.D, a clinical psyshologist in California. "That's a big problem for people prone to panic attacks."      No one wants to join this club. But roughly 2.4 million people in any given year are shanghaied into membership by a buildup of stress, anxiety, uncertainty, and in the end, ignorance. For perspective, imagine the combined populations of Boston, Denver, San Francisco, and Washinton, D.C., simultaneously freaking out.       Who in the world doesn't have stress? We've constantly pounded with information from all sides: Do this at work, don't do this at home, eat this, don't drink that, and-oh-yeah-watch CNN three times a day to make sure you're up-to-date on the latest domestic security risks. No wonder panic attacks have gone mainstream.      Tony Soprano get's in grand style. They were played for laughs in a episode of Undeclared. And maybe you've used the term as a synonym for a total stress-out. But was it panic attack? Maybe so.....