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Diary of a Thumb Sucker

My son Duncan sucks his thumb. No big deal, but since he’s going to be eight soon, he’s coming around to the realization that it’s probably time to stop. There’s just one problem.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/TraSBSNfpCg

Much of the time, he’s not aware that he’s doing it, which can make quitting all the more difficult.

Duncan usually does it when he’s tired or feeling insecure. It’s the latter part I worry about most.

This is one of the many challenges of parenting this loving, witty and all-around beautiful boy.

As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve had Duncan evaluated in recent months and have learned he fits all the textbook symptoms of ADHD. He’s still too young for an accurate diagnosis, but we’ve blasted full steam ahead at getting him the help he needs.

He goes to a therapist and loves it. As she talks to him, he gets to make cool things: A pink lizard he made out of beads, for example. He does a lot of writing and drawing exercises, and is slowly learning a lot about himself. He’s also beginning to learn a bunch of coping tools for anger, insecurity and focus.

When school resumes, he’ll be getting help with his fine-motor skills, which will make him better able to express himself through art and writing.

The boy has come a long way since the start of the year, and we’re very proud of him.

This makes me especially happy, because he’s learning things now that I only started to learn after I brushed up against multiple emotional breakdowns and spiraled into addictive pursuits.

Maybe, just maybe, Duncan will be the Brenner who breaks the cycle of mental illness that has a deep history in the family.

Right now, it’s like we’re watching him in his own personal springtime, where his abilities are starting to sprout and bloom. His sun is rising.

There’s still a way to go, of course, and to me his thumb sucking illustrates that. A lot of insecure thoughts continue to swirl around in his head. He sucks his thumb to sooth himself, just like I did with binge eating. I know that after developing coping tools, it takes a long time to master them. Hell, I’m still trying to master them.

The other part of the challenge is that we still don’t have a rock solid diagnosis.

Duncan’s doctor says his ADHD-like symptoms could also be the very beginnings of something much different — bipolar disorder, depression, maybe even OCD like his old man.

I’ve always had the fear that my kids would inherit my defects. I don’t worry nearly as much now, though.

Duncan may have his struggles. Everybody has their struggles. Tell me you’ve never had a wave of depression or been addicted to something and I’ll tell you you’re full of shit.

But Duncan is not me. He’s his own person. And so far, his childhood has been much different than mine was.

He also has a phenomenal mother. Between her strength and goodness and the skills I’ve picked up on the road to recovery, he’s going to do just fine.

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Stuff My Kids Say: Summer Edition

I’ve said it before: When life gets you down and it’s hard to get back up, the best medicine is often the things you hear from children. My kids prove it all the time. Here are fresh examples.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/V1DOcke51iM

–Duncan, after listening to a couple minutes of the 360s song “Deadpan Superstar,” which I have playing on my laptop: “Why the heck would anyone write about a dust pan superstar?”

–Sean and Duncan have replaced high-fives with “high butts,” where they jump in the air and crash butts.

–I now say the following before each sentence directed at the kids: “Thanks in advance for not whining.” It works half of the time.

–Erin is making me and the kids pay 50 cents whenever we leave a light on. Now the runts are teaming up to blame me for every light left on.

–Sean just informed me that he “Just released something nasty from my nasty spot.” Yeah. Nasty indeed.

–I get home and the kids delight in telling me how Erin had to put money in the curse jar for saying a bad word. I ask for hints on what the word was and get this in response: Duncan: “She said d-a-m-m-i-t.” Sean: “You forgot the M, stupid.”

–Sean: “I’m doing this (chore) under protest.” My response: “Aint it grand to live in a country where you can protest without getting shot?”

–My kids get some sensitivity training, Def Leppard style.http://lnkd.in/eP97HE

–Says Sean: “Little Red Riding Hood was a stupid little girl who should have been eaten by a wolf. They made a PG-13 movie about her.”

–The kids requested Cheap Trick for the ride to see Dad and Thin Lizzy for the ride home. My rock n roll child corruption program proceeds apace.

–Sean get’s an education about OCD:

The setting: Our living room, where Sean and Duncan are folding laundry under my supervision. I’m nagging at the kids to get the job done. No getting distracted, I tell them. No complaining. Just get the chore done.

Sean: “Dad, is this your OCD acting up?”

Me: “What do you mean?”

Sean: “You insisting that we get this done right now. Are you having an OCD moment?”

Me: “No. If I were having an OCD moment, I’d get off this couch and finish folding the laundry myself, and I’d be crazy over it because I had to jump in and do it. In this case, I’m making you guys finish the job, and I’m nagging because you two will get distracted otherwise. Then I’ll have to keep staring at the pile of clothes on the floor.”

Sean: “I wish you were having an OCD moment.”

–“Not Christianary.” Sean’s term for doing or saying something that’s naughty.

–Me: “Sean, stop picking on your brother.” Sean: “But Dad, I haven’t picked on him for…minutes.”

OCD Diaries

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Brain to Body: Drop Dead

I drove two hours yesterday to participate in a security event at Dartmouth and drove back this morning. A great experience, but I’ve gotten little done since then. I really hate inactivity.

I like to cram as much as I can into each day, and I like to throw everything I have into my job. But all I can do is sit in this chair, trying to motivate myself to move, pounding head be damned.

But I really can’t move. I think my brain has told the rest of me to drop dead.

Still, I’ve found that there’s a lot I can do in this paralyzed position:

–I can help the kids do their summer workbooks

–I can help Sean with his latest writing project

–I can chat with two old friends on Facebook

So it’s not a total waste. I’d even say that’s time well spent.

I just wish I could bust out a security blog post. But nothing is striking me today.

So I’m doing something I think will give me a second wind. I’m making a music playlist. Let’s see how this works:

http://youtu.be/umeZtszNShk

http://youtu.be/p5sRQ2jqV8Y

OCD Diaries

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I Talk To Myself. So What?

I talk to myself all the time. Sometimes I get caught, and it embarrasses me. But over the years, the habit has served its purpose.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/IKpEoRlcHfA

I know I look ridiculous when I do it. Maybe I even look a little crazy, though much less so since the invention of the Bluetooth ear device. One morning in New York City, I was walking down a street chuckling over all the people with Bluetooth devices in their ears, looking dead ahead while flapping their lips.

“I’m cooler than they are,” I thought to myself. “I don’t need a funny-looking thing in my ear to talk to myself.”

I’m the type who will talk to myself loudly while walking around in public. I’ve gotten stared at plenty of times for that. I’ve also been known to read news articles back aloud to myself, whether they’re articles I wrote or was editing.

Past colleagues have gone nuts over the habit, especially the editors I worked with at The Eagle-Tribune.

What do I talk to myself about? Usually I’m planning all the things I have to do during the day ahead. Or, after work, I’ll list all the important tasks I took care of that day. Back when my OCD, fear, anxiety and depression burned out of control I would talk aloud to myself about all kinds of worries. Those conversations would go in endless circles and wipe me out.

I know I look like the crazy guy on the street when I do this. But I can’t help myself.

But it’s better than it used to be.

For one thing, I don’t read stories I’m writing or editing back to myself aloud anymore. I did that because I lacked confidence in my writing and editing abilities, and was terrified of turning in work that was less than perfect. I still turned in a lot of crap, so in hindsight I wasted a lot of time.

Now I read it back silently with metal music blaring in my headphones. It’s a lot more fun that way.

People who talk to themselves are usually considered crazy. I think of Crazy Mike of Haverhill and a lot of characters I used to know in Revere. But they are usually harmless. They’re so wrapped up in the conversations they have with themselves that they don’t notice the people around them. They’ve never bothered me. I do feel for them, because I’m sure some of it is loneliness. No one else will talk to them. It’s tragic, really.

I’ve always been more fortunate. Even when I’ve weirded people out, they still talk to me.

As annoying as it can be to others, I think talking to yourself is actually one of the sanest things you can do. It can be painful when taken to excess. I speak from experience. But it’s also a good way to clear the mind of cluttering thoughts.

It’s like everything else in my OCD-infested world. I’m forever trying to figure out how much is too much or just enough to keep my brain working.

If that means I’m still crazy, so be it. I’m in good company, at least.

OCD Diaries

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Hitting Bottom and Staying There

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about hitting bottom. Specifically, after I hit bottom, how long did it take for things to start looking up? I got bad news for those craving the quick fix.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/yUSn0u2GIjE

The first point worth making is that I didn’t hit one bottom like you usually see in the movies, where the addict falls so low that the clouds part and they see the light in huge, dramatic fashion. Reality is slower than that — and more boring.

I didn’t just hit one bottom. I hit a series of bottoms. And I stayed down there for a while each time before I even considered pulling myself up.

One crash was a couple months after my best friend took his life. I was binge eating with more zeal than ever, and I don’t think I cared at that point if my heart gave out. I was too crushed to care much about anything.

I had just been handed the job of editor for the Lynn Sunday Post, a paper that was already dying. I would be its pallbearer. The job included double duty as a writer for North Shore Sunday. I worked 16-hour days, six days a week.

Work was all I had at that point. Erin and I were engaged (realizing life is too short, I proposed a month after Sean died), but I was still trying to please my masters, so work came first. On Sundays, my only day off, I was sleeping through the entire day.

By the summer of 1997, I realized I had to push back or end up in an institution somewhere. Fortunately, my boss at the time saw that I was physically deteriorating and stepped in.

In December 1998, I was 285 pounds and collapsing under the weight. My father was too, and wound up getting quadruple bypass surgery. That was another slap in the face to warn me that I had to clean up. I lost 100 pounds, though I did it through unhealthy means that would blow up in my face several years later.

In late 2001 I realized that I was never going to please the managing editor I worked for at The Eagle-Tribune. He was forcing me to be the type of manager I didn’t want to be — an asshole. So I told him I was going higher up the food chain to get reassigned. And that’s what I did. They put me back in the night editor’s chair, which helped for a short time.

By late 2004 I was out of The Eagle-Tribune and in a job I loved. But I was putting enormous pressure on myself and the physical toll was showing. All my personality ticks were in overdrive: the obsession with cleanliness. The paranoia over my kids’ safety. A growing sense of fear that kept me indoors a lot.

That was probably the deepest bottom to date, the one that made me realize I needed to get help from a therapist; help that led to my OCD diagnosis.

The next bottom was in late 2006, when I had developed many of the mental health tools I use today. But my brain chemistry was such a mess I couldn’t get past the fear and anxiety attacks. That’s when I decided to try medication, which has worked far better than I ever thought possible.

The last bottom was in the summer of 2008. I was finally finding some mental stability, but I surrendered to the binge eating during therapy and was back up to 260 pounds. And it was hurting my health in a big way. I kept waking up in the middle of the night, choking on stomach acid. I couldn’t find clothes that would fit me. I was getting depressed again.

And so I started checking out OA and by October was headlong into my 12-Step Program of Recovery.

All these events were bottoms. And I lingered there for weeks and months at a time.

There are reasons the bottoming-out process takes a long time:

1. You usually fall to the bottom slowly, so slowly that you don’t notice the movement.

2. Once you crash to the floor, you become so out of sorts that you don’t realize you’re in hell. It’s just another shitty day, followed by another, and then another, and then another.

3. It’s usually those around you who realize you’ve arrived in a bad place. But you’ve been causing them so much pain for so long that they don’t even realize it immediately.

Once you hit the bottom, the depression and self-destructive behavior intensifies.

http://youtu.be/zBEo5ZGGsO4

Then you wake up one morning and decide you’re so sick of life that something has to change. And you start making changes.

The changes end up taking a long time, too.

That’s probably not what you wanted to hear. But it does get better.

OCD Diaries

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Killed By Fear (Doctor Phobia and the C Word)

The Fredstock 2 benefit concert Erin and I went to Friday night hit me where I live for another reason besides a love of music: The event was also about raising awareness about colorectal cancer. I’m a high-risk case.

Mood music:

I never knew Fred Ciampi, the man the benefit is named for. He passed away this winter from colorectal cancer, and the benefit was also meant to help out his wife, Claudia DeHaven Ciampi-Biddle. (Donations can still be made by writing to Claudia@snowlionyoga.com. Please put Fredstock Donation in the subject.)

When I saw his picture, my first thought was, “Man, he was young.” In fact, he died just shy of his 40th birthday.

The other thing that came to mind was that it could just as easily be me in the obituary. The childhood Crohn’s Disease that reduced my colon to a tube of scar tissue also left me at a much higher risk for colon cancer.

It’s something I’ve had to live with since 1990, when I got a letter from my then-doctor recommending I get regular colonoscopies to monitor for possible colon cancer. As a 20-year-old I balked. You never really worry about cancer at that age. But I had the test anyway.

It was a good thing I did.

They found hundreds of polyps throughout the colon. These weren’t — and aren’t — the type of polyps that they typically worry about. These are more like skin tags. Specifically, they are part of the scar tissue.

The doctor was pretty stern with me. “You can’t wait five years between colonoscopies,” he told me. “This stuff can be dangerous.”

Naturally, I went eight years before the next one, and in those years I did some of the most vicious binge eating of my life. Each year that passed made me more fearful of what was going on inside.

I got the test done in 1999 because of some bleeding. Everything was fine, and I’ve done much better at getting a colonoscopy every other year to keep an eye on things. So far, so good, though I’m about a year overdue for the next one. I better make that call this week.

Perhaps I’m a fatalistic personality, but I won’t be a bit surprised if colon cancer is found in me at some point. I haven’t had a Chrohn’s attack since 1986 and I know my luck could run out sooner or later.

But I don’t really fear it like I used to. I figure I get the test frequently enough that anything they find will be at an early and treatable stage.

If I’ve learned anything from all this, it’s that fear and embarrassment is the deadliest risk of all.

People are too embarrassed to get a colonoscopy because of how the procedure is done. No one has to know about it except their doctor and maybe a couple family members. But they avoid the test anyway because they still find it embarrassing. Then they end up dying of colon cancer a few years later. Not in every case, but in many.

Embarrassment is a powerful thing. It keeps a person from seeing things as they really are and keeps them from facing their demons.

It’s not always bad to be embarrassed. God put the emotion in us for a reason. If we’re a jerk to someone or we get caught doing something unethical, we should feel shame.

But we shouldn’t feel shame over an illness and shouldn’t be embarrassed about getting help, whether it’s for colon trouble or the mental illness and addiction at the heart of this blog.

I’m not saying Fred was like that. Like I said, I never knew him.

But I know a thing or two about fear, shame and embarrassment.

Don’t let those things keep you from letting the professionals help you.

OCD Diaries

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Facebook Changed My Social Dysfunction

Going to see The 360s last night drove home an interesting point for me: The Facebook world and the real world are indeed two different places. And it may have made my social dysfunction worse.

Mood music:

First, I want to thank The 360s for a great show last night. When I leave a show with my ears ringing, feeling like I’ve been kicked in the gut, I know I’ve had a good, healthy dose of rock n roll. I need that sort of thing every day.

Here’s what was weird for me, and it’s nobody’s fault, really. Heck, it’s not even necessarily a bad thing: I’m connected with all the band members on Facebook. Seeing their status updates every day makes me feel like I really know them. But in person, we’re strangers.

I approached the band members, who looked at me puzzled, trying to figure out who I was. Once I introduced myself, they knew who the strange guy in front of them was and they were very friendly. Some of them read this blog, but in real life, in a dark club, I don’t really resemble the cartoon logo people associate me with. And outside of Facebook, we’ve never really talked to each other in a room.

And so I come off as the typical hanger-on at rock shows, the guy in the room who sucks up to the band so he can tell people he knows them. That’s not my goal, but I can see how I might come off that way. I can be a real train wreck sometimes.

In a way it’s kind of cool, because it goes to show that you can’t replace the real world with something found in cyberspace.

That’s actually a relief, because I sometimes worry that if I get too good at the social media thing, I’ll forget how to function when face-to-face with someone.

Actually, let me correct that: I’ve never really understood how to function when face to face. And that brings me to the main point of this post.

Even though I can comfortably give a talk in front of an audience and share my most embarrassing truths in writing, I remain socially dysfunctional.

I lose the ability to distinguish what I see in the people I share a room with from people I share a Facebook page with. So, once off Facebook and back in the real world, I forget how I should act around people.

I’ve gotten better at this stuff since crawling out of the black hole that is OCD and addiction. But I suppose I’ll always be fighting the battle at some level. And that’s OK.

My social awkwardness didn’t get in the way of what was a great night out with my wife. I had fun, and look forward to the next concert. I also didn’t need to feed my addictive side with binge eating or booze to get through the night. That’s some pretty good progress.

I just need to work on my real-world people skills. But then doesn’t everybody?

OCD Diaries

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Prayers For A Friend and His Wife

Dave Lewis, a good friend from the information security community, posted this yesterday: “My wife, Diana, was diagnosed with leukemia today.”

Mood music:

Many of you know Dave (@gattaca on Twitter) as founder of the Liquidmatrix Security Digest. He is also senior security analyst at AMD and someone who works tirelessly to promote events that make security professionals smarter and better.

I’m asking those who read this to keep Dave, Diana and their young daughter in your prayers.

I’ve been through plenty of rough stuff in my life — we all have — but no matter how many body blows a person has absorbed, something like this is going to be overwhelming.

I wish Diana a quick recovery.

Dave’s a strong soul, and I know he’ll do all the right things to pull the family through.

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You CAN Revisit Your Past (A Trip to Revere)

Erin had an audio conference to record Thursday morning, so to ensure a quiet house, I put the kids in the car and went to Revere Beach, the scene of my tumultuous, painful, angry yet beautiful upbringing.

I’ve written a lot about Revere in this blog. How could I avoid it? But I’ve been short on photos to show you. I fixed that problem with this latest journey back in time. Sean and Duncan had a field day picking up shells and jumping in the water — things I took for granted at their age.

The most striking thing about visiting my old home is that as a whole, Revere Beach is a far more beautiful place than I remember growing up. Part of it is because there was a massive renovation of the beachfront in the 1990s. Pavilion roofs ripped off in the Blizzard of 1978 were replaced, sidewalks were extended to the entire length of the beach and, most importantly, the Deer island sewage treatment plant has cleaned up the ocean considerably.

Here’s the rocks behind Carey Circle, just footsteps from my front door. I used to hide here during moments of anger and depression, chain smoking Marlboro Reds:

The house on the right is where Sean Marley grew up. My house was two doors down. During my teenage years, I spent more time in the Marley house than I did in my own. The house on the left is where Sean moved in after he and Joy got married. It’s also the house where his life ended:

My house, dead center, as seen from Pines Road, across the street:

A lot of dead jelly fish used to wash up on the beach. Here’s the private part of the beach, where the bored among us would blow up the dead fish with firecrackers and, on the fourth of July, the bigger explosives.

 This is the first house after Carey Circle, where the Lynnway becomes Revere Beach Boulevard. Me and my siblings used to hang out in this house in the 1970s and play with the kids who lived there. Their father allegedly had ties to the mob and, sometime in 1978 or 1979, he was gunned down in the kitchen. It was believed to be haunted after that, but I never really took that seriously. The house did creep me out, though:

The trip ended with lunch at Kelley’s.

A good trip, I’d say.

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Nikki Sixx, Michael Jackson and Pedophiles

Motley Crue-Sixx A.M. bassist Nikki Sixx created a shitstorm yesterday when he opined about Michael Jackson being a pedophile. Since a childhood friend grew up to be one, I have a few thoughts on the matter.

Mood music:

It all started with Sixx sending off a few tweets about how Michael Jackson was a child rapist. A lot of angry comments on his Facebook page followed, with some suggesting Sixx was drinking and drugging again. To that, he replied:

10 YEARS SOBER,FATHER OF 4,MULTIPLE BUSINESSES,SUCCESSFUL IN ALL MY VENTURES ( MOTLEY,SIXX AM,SIXX SENSE,PHOTOGRAPHER & ROYAL UNDERGROUND.) HOW DARE YOU INSULT ME BY SAYING I AM ON DRUGS OR DRINKING FOR HAVING AN OPINION ABOUT A CREEP FUCK WHO IN MY OPINION RAPED CHILDREN. LAST I CHECKED WERE IN AMERICA, AND I AM NKKI SIXX OF MOTLEY CRUE AND DONT TAKE ORDERS FROM NOBODY. READ MY BOOKS,LISTEN TO THE LYRICS.

So, a couple of points:

–Those familiar with this blog know I’m a huge Motley Crue fan and that Nikki Sixx’s openness about his demons inspired me to out my own demons in this blog.

–Despite my love for the band, I don’t agree with everything they do.

Now that I got that out of the way…

This whole back and forth has been a fascinating case study in human nature. I find it amusing that people were tearing Michael Jackson down in the last decade of his life because of his alleged pedophilia, yet, when he died, everyone magically forgot that stuff and acted as if Jesus Himself had been crucified again.

We do that a lot when famous, tarnished figures die. We play up the good stuff they did and conveniently forget the bad stuff. Or, at least, we minimize the latter as some unfortunate little interlude between the acts of greatness. Richard Nixon comes to mind.

Michael Jackson was human. He did a lot of good from a musical and charitable level. But he had a sickness. How deeply that involved pedophilia I really don’t know. I only know the charges he faced.

Nikki Sixx is human. He used to be a drug addict with all the selfish, destructive, hurtful behavior that goes with it. He’s written about that period of his life at great length and with deep honesty.

I know I’m human. I’ve done a lot of good things and a lot of stupid things. You can read about both here.

We all have opinions some will inevitably find offensive. But we have things like Twitter and Facebook now. We can just fart out our thoughts and send ’em out for the world to see. That makes it a far different world from the one many of us grew up in. Our filter is off. Or, you could say, the safety is off our shotgun mouths.

Personally, I wasn’t offended by Sixx’s comments. I essentially agree with him.

But I also think something like pedophilia is more complicated than the more clear-cut outrages. It’s a sickness, an addictive behavior. I thank my lucky stars that my addictions were based on binge-eating, alcohol and the pills I used to take for chronic back pain.

Sixx’s behavior manifested itself in heroin and a variety of other substances.

Fate could have sent our addictions in a much more evil direction.

I’ve done a lot of soul searching about this because of the childhood friend who went on to be a thrice-convicted pedophile. His record is on the Internet for all to see. I guess I kept his name out at first because, believing as I do that NOBODY is beyond redemption, I wanted to give him a chance to get on with his life.

That was my mood when I wrote The Pedophile, Part 1.

Then I saw him friending scores of teenage girls from remote parts of the globe on Facebook and my heart and mood hardened. So I wrote this follow-up.

I revealed his name in part 3 because, after some thinking, I realized that once convicted, and once you become a high-level sex offender, your right to privacy is gone. You are a danger and people need to know you lurk the streets.

Bottom line for me: Addictive behavior takes control of a person and makes them do things they know to be wrong. But when you’re caught in the vice grip, you do it anyway. You are essentially possessed by the devil.

But even though we all get a shot at redemption, certain behaviors are simply too dangerous to be tolerated.

A pedophile preys on innocent children.

The only solution to that is to throw them in the slammer.

I think that the pedophile I once knew even understands that.

OCD Diaries