So I went on slowtwitch.com and searched on "swim panic"

Spent several evenings reading the threads that turned up as a result of that search. Quite useful. The main things I took away from it were to a) try and breathe out more completely with my face in the water and b) maybe experiment with how I am rotating my body.

Knowing my breathing was not working well, was not timed well, and was not providing me with as much oxygen as I needed was obvious. Having an idea for how to improve that is not hard. Actually putting that into action was iffy though. Perhaps I got lucky though because I stumbled on something that worked well enough for me.

Old:

1. Throw head up to the left while pulling left arm back.
2. Gulp air as left arm comes over.
3. Left hand enters, head faces straight down and locks there.
4. Hold breath (mostly) until blasting it out just prior to step 1.

New:

1. Turn head left and keep chin close to left shoulder and rotate body until mouth comes out of the water by the time left hand is farthest back.
2. Breathe in and recover left arm.
3. Breathe out through nose moderately as right arm pulls back and left arm enters.
4. Pause exhale at mid stroke.
5. Breathe out through nose moderately as left arm pulls. Head begins turning left again.

The big change is almost continuous exhale starting as soon as a new breath was taken in. Also the head is almost constantly in motion. Before I was trying to keep eyes on the bottom of the pool too much.

Right now I'm breathing every stroke, and only on the left. I tried applying what I learned to the right side, but I need to start from scratch there. Just wasn't getting my face out of the water enough.

This is enough that I can swim more than 25 yards at a time now. More practice will help reinforce the good stuff. Once I'm getting enough air and it is fairly automatic I can start working on other technique. Right now it is still iffy enough that if I divide my attention it falls apart really fast.