I moved to Manhattan in 1996, and suddenly I could be as paranoid as I wanted. While my native California – with its temperate weather, healthy people and incomparable Mexican food – had frustrated my ambitions in ways I couldn't pinpoint, New York had all its obstacles right where I could see them, shoved in my face, all day. Just going down the block for a newspaper felt like an accomplishment that I could brag about years later. There's something liberating about being openly, proudly anxious.

I think a lot of people have discovered that since Sept. 11.

We now have a berthing place for all the paranoia and anxiety that otherwise floats around unmoored. Military recruitment stations are being flooded with volunteers. Journalists are writing with real feeling about actual things, instead of just getting into a cheap dress, plastering on make-up, grinding their hips and cranking out another one about Gary Condit.

And if you don't think some survivalist in Montana is in his bunker right now, cracking open a can of fruit cocktail and smugly toasting all the friends and ex-wives who abandoned him to his "delusions," then you have a far too generous view of dangerous loners.

But nothing illustrates this point better than your friends and mine – the neurotics.

Sure, terrorism hasn't cured anyone long-term for panic disorders. And if you've always been a hypochondriac, or suffered trauma from losing a loved one to disease, you probably can give the Latin name for the anthrax bacteria (bacillus anthracis) more readily than you can recall your children's hair color.

But a few anxiety patients have become less preoccupied by their personal issues.

"Some get their problems put into perspective," said Cynthia Turk, the associate director of the adult anxiety clinic at Temple University. Terrorism also presents people with a problem they can act upon, she added. Sure, the other kids picked on you in high school. But that was 20 years ago. Now we're at war. Do something.

More to the point, some people are staying away from therapy altogether because the current danger matches their level of trepidation. The definition of sanity has shifted. Three months ago, if you were afraid to get on an airplane, you needed help. But now, hey, tap the keg, join the party.

This could explain why Dr. Reid Wilson – a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine – has gotten virtually no new patients in his private practice since Sept. 11 who want to overcome their fear of flying.

"I think this is because people's fears are justified," said Wilson, author of the book "Don't Panic: Taking Control of Anxiety Attacks." Admittedly, he added, there has been a lot more activity on the Web site he directs, www.anxieties.com. Some people may think they have a problem. They just don't want to be cured of it.

And that's reasonable. Anxiety has helped keep people alive for millions of years.

Consider Turk's point: When the airplanes hit the World Trade Center, some brave souls managed to push their fear aside and bullishly continue working in the face of danger. Those people are dead now. But those with a fear of heights, fire or crashes got out, and lived.

We just need a degree of anxiety that doesn't incapacitate us. We need to take the reassurances, but warily; obey authority – sensibly. Consider this passage from a press release that recently turned up on the U.S. Postal Service's Web site, describing how anthrax is treatable if caught early:

"Treatment with antibiotics beginning one day after exposure has been shown to provide significant protection against death in tests with monkeys, especially when combined with active immunization. Penicillin, doxycycline, ciproflaxin, are all effective against most strains of the diseas. Penicillin is the drug of choice for naturally ocurring anthrax."

It's well-informed and authoritative, and yes, reassuring. But equally worth noting is that it contains two spelling errors.

Two of them.