I know exactly what you mean about that sudden adrenaline feeling. I get it too, even now in old age. I believe it's due to mild sleep apnoea in my case. I sleep alone these days, but have always been told in the past I have fairly frequent periods of apnoea in my sleep. However, I've noticed this is more likely to happen on nights when I'm a bit anxious about something. I don't mean in a state of frantic, nailbiting anxiety. It can just be an underlying unease about something going on in my life, or that's going to happen the next day.
I think people sometimes misunderstand the concept of anxiety. While it's true that some people manifest as clearly over-anxious, many more of us don't. With us, it's a bit like that swan simile. You know - the one about the swan sailing along serenely with unruffled feathers, with all that frantic activity below the water-line to keep it afloat.
I can't say I ever permanently beat my sleep anxiety problems - not during the course of my working life anyway. They mainly cleared up when I retired from paid employment, which took away the pressure to get a so-called "good night's sleep" (which is actually a bit of a myth). It was more a question of managing the problem, and the intermittent tiny doses of antihistamines did the trick for me.
I never consulted a doctor about it as, like you, I didn't want to take seriously addictive medications and knew that females couldn't be referred to a sleep lab for apnoea investigations. If you consult a doctor about any sleep problems there's no way you'll come out of his/her office without a prescription for sleeping pills! That's not to say it's not worth trying though. As a male, you stand a much better chance than a female of being referred to a sleep lab, where you can be checked for sleep apnoea. And you don't have to take the medication or even fill the prescription, do you?
Concerning sleep apnoea - it's not always a serious problem. Most of us have occasional periods of apnoea. A sleep study will establish how serious this is on the basis of how frequent and how long the periods are. It will also rule out one possible cause for these sensations you're having.
There really isn't an easy answer to this kind of problem, unless it turns out that you have severe sleep apnoea, in which case you'll be given a CPAP machine - which will in turn require a lot of work on your part in getting used to it. Antihistamines were the only solution for me. Incidentally, I'd like to stress that the doses I took were minute - I was cutting the lowest-dose pills in halves and quarters. When I told my then-GP how much I was taking about 20 years ago she nearly fell off her chair laughing, and said: "That's practically homeopathy!" She said it was completely impossible that such a dose could have any impact on my sleep. I'm actually inclined to agree. Sometimes I'd wake up after a good night's sleep only to find half a tiny blue pill still sitting on the kitchen worktop, after I'd forgotten to take it.
Never underestimate the power of the mind! But keep that appointment with your doctor anyway. I can see you're seeking a fix rather than management, so I think it's inevitable that you'll end up on sleeping pills anyway. However, there's nothing to stop you taking them the same way as I took the antihistamines. Just take them on nights when it's most important that you get a good night's sleep, but never on more than two consecutive nights and always with at least four clear nights in between. This will stave off addiction for quite a few years.