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Lost in the Overeaters Anonymous Wilderness

I’ve explained how food is my addiction — an uncool addiction at that. I’ve written about how Overeaters Anonymous (OA) was my salvation from that addiction. And I’ve told you I’ve been living the 12 Steps of Recovery.

Now it’s time to tell you about my summer of going astray, and how I don’t completely regret it.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:63kyrMgKo0M0qvrDVtD4yN]

I’ve kept my eating clean most of the time, though I’ve gotten sloppy in spots. I’ve eaten many meals outside the home and away from the little scale I use to weigh out my portions. I’m sure some of those meals have exceeded the limit I’m supposed to be living by. Meanwhile, all the vegetables in my diet have left my Crohn’s Disease–scarred insides irritable.

My bigger failure, though, is that I haven’t gone to an OA meeting or spoken to my sponsor in months. For all I know, he decided he was no longer my sponsor a long time ago.

This turn of events isn’t about laziness and a broken will. It’s about discontent.

A while ago, I started to get annoyed by parts of the program. I didn’t feel like I was getting much use from calling a sponsor every day at the same time. That’s probably because I wasn’t being honest about the number of meetings I was attending or what I was eating. I was eating cleanly, but not according to the exact menu I gave the sponsor each morning. That’s technically a no-no.

I got sick of the meetings because it would be the same people saying the same things, over and over.

It started to feel like a cult to me. So I rebelled.

I’ve thought about calling my sponsor and asking for another chance, but I never get around to it. Part of me doesn’t want the second chance. Sponsorship is an important tool of recovery, a guide to coach you along and get you past moments of weakness. But some sponsors seem to let their role go to their heads and demand a lot more control over your life than they should be entitled to. Or so I’ve told myself.

And OA has its fiefdoms, just like any other group. There are the newbies, the people who can’t get it together, and the gurus who seem to have figured it all out. Or so I’ve told myself.

You know how it is when you’re frustrated with something: You zero in on all the negative elements and develop memory loss when it comes to all the things that worked.

So here I am, frustrated. But I’m also making excuses not to do the things I really need to be doing for real recovery. Maybe that’s really what this post is about — coming clean about my sins and resolving to get over myself and get my program back on track.

I don’t totally regret any of this. Four years after attending my first OA meeting and trying to do the program exactly as instructed by others, I’m still in a much better place than when I was sneaking around every day binging on everything in sight. Life is good. I’ve simply reached a point where my program needs a big overhaul.

Maybe I’ll call the sponsor today.

Food Coma

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Time to Make Music Again

When asked what I want for my birthday, I usually say nothing. I don’t want people spending money on me, and I don’t want to be greedy. But this time, with my 42nd birthday only days away, I asked the family for something specific: an acoustic-electric guitar.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:3t8Id5r985SAZ9o5EGrUtk]

I used to play guitar, though I was never very good at it. When I had a band and was writing music, I sang and wrote lyrics. I couldn’t really sing, mind you, but I could write lyrics, and that’s all that mattered. With the guitar, I’d stand in the middle of the basement in the old house in Revere and make noise — out of tune, no attention whatsoever to proper technique. I just made sounds that spoke to what I was feeling. I had an Ibanez strat model Sean Marley gave me one Christmas. Desperate for money to pay bills one year, I sold it. That remains one of the biggest regrets of my life.

So here I am, 20 years later, about to turn 42, and I want to play again. This time I want to learn how to play the instrument properly and write music that goes with the written words I hammer out daily.

There are several reasons the desire has returned. The biggest is that one day a few months ago, my therapist told me that no man should die with his music still inside of him. That line hit me more than anything he’s said to me in the last year, because unlike his suggestions that I quit coffee and do yoga every morning, something deep within me knew he was right on this one.

Though I stopped being in a band and singing in the mid-1990s, my passion for music has never abated. I write a lot about my love of metal music, but I like a lot of folk, too. That’s Erin’s influence for sure. On our wedding anniversary three years ago, we went to the Newport Folks Festival, and I walked away as a fan of the Avett Brothers, The Decemberists and Gillian Welch. It was one of those life-changing days.

I also approach the posts in this blog like songs. They’re meant to be timeless and stike an emotional chord. I put older posts on my Facebook and Twitter streams every day because to me it’s kind of like being a DJ. I’m playing a collection of songs repeatedly, like any good DJ does.

I also think making music would be another effective tool to fight my addictive behavior. If a guitar were lying around, there are many days where I’d pick it up instead of my laptop.

Call it a midlife crisis urge, if you will. To me, it’s just part of my never-ending push to become a better man than I am now.

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It’s the End of American Dominance, and I Feel Fine

America is a nation in economic decline. But that reality isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

My friend Larry Walsh said on Facebook yesterday:

What neither Obama or Romney is telling us is the world we’ve known for the past 70 years is over and not coming back. Both parties are trying to control the decline of the U.S. standard of living long enough to avoid having to take responsibility. Pathetic.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:4e9eGQYsOiBcftrWXwsVco]

It’s an interesting statement that has some truth to it. Most people already know the era of American economic domination is over, but we’re addicted to the idea that we’re number one. And like good addicts, we’re masters of denial.

When I was a kid, I was full of insecurities. Insecurity over my parent’s divorce, my brother’s death, my illnesses and my lack of popularity at school. But I always took some comfort in the fact that no matter how shitty life could be, I was still an American. Therefore, I was still a higher form of life than someone in my predicament who was living in France, Mexico, Saudi Arabia or some war-torn land like Afghanistan.

Back then we Americans felt pretty good about ourselves, because Ronald Reagan told us we should. I always thought that was Reagan’s best quality — lifting our sense of self-worth and destiny, no matter how messy our personal lives were. Fast-forward 30 years and all the folks who idolize the ghost of Reagan like a god are  grousing that President Obama is presiding over the decline of America. But the truth is that America’s slide started long before Obama took office.

That’s right: America is sliding from the pedestal is sat upon since the end of World War II. The oil crisis and inflation of the 1970s couldn’t knock it over. So what gives?

I have my theories, which may or may not be accurate. I think, as Larry suggested, that we’ve been clinging to the false notion that we can restore America to its past glory. But I don’t think it’s that America has lost its ability to compete and shine. It’s simply the fact that technology has made the world a smaller place and the Internet has empowered people from around the world in unprecedented ways. You could say it’s leveled the global playing field.

That may mean that we don’t get to be number one anymore. But so what?

Personally, I’m happier in the face of our national decline. I have my shit together in ways I could only dream of in the 1980s. I have family and friends I adore. I see people conducting themselves with valor in the face of adversity every day. And nationality has nothing to do with it. It’s about personal will, heart and faith.

I see fellow Americans shining at everyday life. And I see friends from around the world doing the same.

Are we Americans going to have to work harder for our slice of the pie in the years to come? Perhaps. But, really now, have we ever gotten anywhere without busting our balls every day? If you’re independently wealthy maybe you have. But most people I know have never had it easy.

Larry’s right: The world we’ve known for 70 years is gone and isn’t coming back. Presidential candidates will never tell you that because their profession is to tell you exactly what you want to hear. So it’s up to us to face reality and get over it.

Fuck being the number-one nation on Earth. Let’s focus on being better human beings regardless of nationality.

I’ve never been much of a Billy Joel fan. But he once sang a lyric that’s always resonated with me: “The good old days weren’t always good, and tomorrow’s not as bad as it seems.”

Ain’t that the truth?

US Flaf

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Stoned and Panicked on the Interstate

The memory was buried until yesterday, and frankly I’d have been happy had it stayed buried. Funny thing about suppressed memories — they spill out during the damndest moments, like a drive down I-95 in Maine.

We were returning from a family camping trip near Old Orchard Beach yesterday, and as I drove the camper south, my stare caught the north-bound lanes.

Sometime in the summer of 1991, Sean Marley, a couple others and I sped north into Maine around midnight. We were in my beat-up 1981 Mercury Marque, and Sean was driving. I was in the back, about to have a panic attack thanks to my decision to read a newspaper after smoking weed.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:4Gp4DfwR7mvPlHDz64ubfJ]

I can’t remember if Sean was high, but I do remember him being in the midst of some fucked-up sleeping experiments. One phase of the experiment involved him sleeping in a different room of his house each night, the goal being to break himself of the comfort you get from going to the same familiar bed at the end of each day. Another part of the experiment involved not sleeping at all for multiple days.

He was pretty gone at that point and kept chanting “Jesuses penises” over and over. The more he did it, the more unhinged I became. My uneasiness was based on four things:

  • I was paranoid from the weed.
  • It was dark, lonely and scary on that highway — probably because I was stoned and paranoid.
  • Sean was driving my car like an asshole, which had already suffered a smash in the rear from a hit-and-run driver a month before.
  • There was a newspaper in the back seat.

News about scary world events used to trigger my anxiety back then, and this was just after the first Gulf War. A headline in the paper said something about Saddam Hussein having come closer to getting a nuclear bomb than anyone has previously thought. I spent the next week worrying that my corner of the world would go up in a mushroom cloud, courtesy of an evil dictator pissed off over all the bombs we dropped on his country a few months before.

It’s kind of amusing that the headline set me off, given that we would learn 12 years later there were no weapons of mass destruction.

But at that moment in the middle of the night, it seemed like an imminent threat. In reality, the more imminent threat was of the car sliding off the road and into a tree.

Three years later, the sleep and drug experiments caught up with Sean, and he had a breakdown. Two years after that, he died by his own hand, another victim of depression.

I would be done with marijuana within two years of that night, but I’d spend the following decade and a half living with a more muted but persistent depression and continuing bouts of anxiety and panic. I would occasionally lean on pills (prescribed for back pain) and alcohol to numb the fear. More often than not, I would simply shove a massive amount of food down my throat.

But I survived and eventually got well. Now I can travel at all hours and not freak out over it. I might get tired and annoyed, but I don’t get scared. In a way, you could say I’ve come full circle, traveling that same stretch of road clean and sober, hauling a camper with a Chevy Tahoe full of family.

But that old memory still bothers me a little, because it shows how unhinged two close friends were slowly becoming.

Bill and Sean

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OCD and Facebook Scrabble Don’t Mix

I’ve always avoided all those Facebook games, but I recently decided to give Scrabble a shot. I’m a professional wordsmith, so I figured what the hell. I can kick a few asses and feel good about my word wizardry. But I’m the one getting my ass kicked, in more ways than one.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:0N7yGNvc6Oy2bAb4gM8euG]

I have six games going and I’m getting beat to shit in all but one of them. I have my excuses, for sure. I keep getting stuck with letters I can’t work with. I also question the sanity of those who decided what qualifies as a legitimate word.  Most proper nouns are rejected, but the random name will make it through. I see my opponents getting by with a lot of abbreviated words, but I can’t catch a break. Asshat isn’t a legitimate word in the Scrabble dictionary. I cry bullshit. Also, who decided oi is a word?

Here’s the real problem, though: The game triggers the part of my OCD that can’t leave well enough alone. If someone sends me a Scrabble request, I have to respond immediately. No saving my turn for later. I’ve discovered that two of my opponents have the same problem. Two seconds after I make my move, there’s another Scrabble request from the person I just made a move against. Making matters worse, they’re good. Too good. They drop 78-point words on the board like it’s nothing. Bastards.

I’ll keep playing for a little while longer, but then I think I’ll have to delete the Scrabble app forever. It’s too big a trigger for me.

If I were winning more often, I’d no doubt feel differently. But then I’d probably become even more compulsive about the game.

That being the case, losing is probably a winning strategy for me.

Facebook Scrabble

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Nikki Sixx, Michael Jackson and Pedophiles, Part 2

Last year, Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx created a Twitter shitstorm when he opined about Michael Jackson being an alleged pedophile. At the time, I wrote a blog post about it being a fascinating case study in human nature. This week marks the third anniversary of Jackson’s death, and the case study has taken an interesting turn.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:1S3Bc6pVYOmzad7d1WiQO7]

I knew something was up when my post from last year started getting a ton of traffic. I also started getting fresh comments on the post, all of it defending Jackson and panning Mötley Crüe’s chief songwriter. So I explored Google and found another interesting Twitter exchange, this time between Jackson’s daughter, Paris, and Sixx.

Jackson sent him this tweet: “Heyy quick question dude – and this is coming from a huge fan of motley crue – but why do u feel the need to hate on talented ppl [people]?”

To which Sixx replied: “Hello parisJackson. My snarky humor and sarcasm sometimes gets the best of me. I sincerely apologize to you and your family. God Bless.”

According to published reports, she accepted his apology and he invited her to come on his radio show. “If ya ever wanna come on SixxSense and talk about what Your working on would love [to] have you on,” he tweeted.

I had forgotten about my post from last year, so I went back and read it. It mostly stands the test of time in terms of how I feel about the subject. I think Jackson did a lot of good in his life but that the cloud hanging over him was hard to dismiss.

True, he was never convicted of being a pedophile, but the reports of what went on in his home still make me uneasy.

Watching a childhood friend become a pedophile definitely colored my reaction to the Sixx-Jackson controversy. But I fully admit that I’m basing my views on all the things that were reported in the media. For all I know, everything that happened behind closed doors was harmless. The media has a long history of getting it wrong.

I still find it curious how the masses were ready to tear Jackson down at the time of the allegations yet conveniently forgot about all them when he died. I guess we all suffer from varying degrees of hypocrisy.

One thing’s for certain: Nikki Sixx seems to have had a change of heart — at least in how he chose to give his opinion on the King of Pop.

I’m glad Paris Jackson challenged Sixx the way she did. And I’m glad he apologized.

Nikkie Sixx

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I’m Not a Guru, a Doctor or a Cult Leader

I’ve been getting an increase in messages asking me for advice on how to deal with family challenges and addiction. Whenever that happens, I start to get a little scared. Not for me, but for you.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:5SLCI3OVaP4x2VWiMroDst]

One of my relatives recently suggested I shouldn’t be telling people what to do, that I am not a doctor or a drug counselor. She’s right, but I was also a bit floored by that because that’s not what I see myself doing. I simply write about my own experiences and how I deal with them — successfully or not. I tell you how I live, but my goal isn’t how to tell you how you should live.

Despite that, I often get messages asking for very specific advice on how to deal with certain problems. I appreciate the faith you put in me, but I need you all to remember a few things:

  • I’m not a guru. If your goal is to be more like me, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I’m just a flawed human like you, trying 24/7 to make my way through life without hurting myself or others. True, I’m better at that than I used to be. But no two people are the same, and you have to find your own way. If my posts help you do that, I’m glad. But if I’m your only source, you got problems, because I still screw up every day.
  • I’m not a doctor. If I were, I’d probably be in jail for killing patients. Not on purpose, but because I have no idea what it takes to be a doctor. I know what I need in a doctor and have written about that, and I know what medications work for me and don’t. But only a real doctor can tell you what you need. Trust me, I’m not that guy.
  • I’m not a cult leader. When people come to me for advice like I’m some Jedi master, I start to worry about cult leader syndrome, that if I’m not careful, with both feet planted on the ground, I’ll start to believe what people say about me having all this wisdom and insight. People who get high on the advice seekers end up starting cults the way Charles Manson. If you’re looking for direction in life, my posts might give you some ideas. But my way is never the way.

If you have questions for me, please continue to ask away. Just don’t expect the answers to your problems.

That said, Erin and I are building a resources section in this blog, where we’ll offer a collection of links for everything from dealing with children’s issues to addiction. Those links will take you to the real experts. We’re hoping to launch that section very soon. I’ll keep you posted.

Charles Manson

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Will E-Cigs Get Me Over Smoking?

Update: July 26, 2012: I’ve been leaning on my crutch like a motherfucker during a trip to Las Vegas. But I haven’t touched the real thing or drank, which is progress.

I’ve been using electronic cigarettes lately. Why, you ask? Let me try to explain.

When I’m in the mood to feel sorry for myself because I can’t do things I’m addicted to, I’ll throw up my hands and ask myself, “What else is there if I can’t drink, smoke, eat flour and sugar and all that other shit?” I’m particularly prone to getting this way when life pushes me outside my comfort zone.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:1wPhx62DRpvULqckrdWlIt]

Life of late has been very good, but it’s also been very fast and exhausting. One big event after the next, lots of mileage on the car plus all the typical pressures we all experience as parents and spouses. A few weeks ago, I started feeling the pressure to the point where I seriously considered resuming the smoking habit.

Why would I do something so stupid, especially after all the trouble I got into with my wife the last time I was busted?

A question like that ignores the most fundamental truth about addictive behavior: When the urge builds up, it becomes a relentless, physical ache. At that point, the brain’s wiring gets all coiled and tangled, and it tightens until you find a way to untangle it. In moments like that, consequences don’t compute.

But as I get older, I refuse to give in so easily. Especially with the smoking, because as bad habits go, it’s probably the worst. That said, the most recent urges got so bad that I turned to e-cigs.

Here’s how they work:

  • The white part that looks like tobacco rolled in white paper is actually a battery.
  • The “flavor cartridge” looks like a filter and is filled with water and flavoring (tobacco, cherry, coffee, chocolate, etc.). You can purchase them with various amounts of nicotine, from the full amount found in a cigarette down to nothing. I’m using them with no nicotine.
  • When you drag off it and inhale, it feels just like smoking, only you’re inhaling water vapor. No smoke, no tar, no cancer-causing carcinogens. And no odor or ashes.
  • The batteries recharge when you screw ’em onto a charger that plugs into the USB port of your laptop, car charger or plug adapter.
  • Each “filter” lasts for about 200 puffs, roughly the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes.

Costs vary. I bought the standard starter kit for $75, which included two batteries, a charger and a couple boxes of cartridges, which seem to be lasting me a long time. I was never a pack-a-day smoker. In fact, I was probably a five-a-day smoker at my worst, which probably has you pack-a-day addicts laughing your heads off. Thing is, I had to have those five. Anyway, my cartridge refills should last a long while.

The hope is that once I’ve inhaled vapor sans nicotine for a while, I will grow bored with it and stop. That’s always been the good thing with me and smoking. When I start back up, I get bored after a while and stop. And that’s with the nicotine.

When I’m done with this experiment, I’ll probably keep one battery in a drawer and give away the other along with what’s left of the cartridges.

Wish me luck, and stay tuned for updates.

For those who want to try it as an alternative to cigarettes, there are a lot of places to find them. Most gas stations with mini marts sell the disposable kind, and most malls have them for sale at kiosks along the main walkways. Online, there are tons of options. Here’s a pretty good list of different brands.

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Zombies Are Addicts, Too

Zombies have become the new American superhero, revered in countless Facebook memes and magazine articles. Now we have real people eating other real people.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:714tlsBfatWBEomrcZmz7i]

I normally wouldn’t touch a topic like this, because zombies are a work of fiction. But lately people have been trying hard to will the fiction to life. We have one guy eating the face off a homeless man and another guy eating his buddy’s heart and brain. Somewhere in the news coverage, we started hearing of bath salts, a synthetic drug that turns users into zombies, not the stuff you put in a bath.

I get it. All these reports of cannibalistic behavior make the zombie apocalypse talk too easy to pass up.

But what’s more interesting to me than the zombie jokes is an article about cannibalism as an addictive, obsessive behavior. Though I’m a guy who suffers from an addictive, obsessive personality, I’m still trying to wrap my head around how someone could get addicted to eating their own kind. Huffington Post scribe David Moye wrote an enlightening article on the subject.

In it, he interviews Karen Hylen, primary therapist at Summit Malibu Treatment Center in California. Hylen said that although cannibalism has historically been for survival or religious purposes, recent cases have been caused by addiction or mental illness.

“People who have engaged in this act report feelings of euphoria or get a ‘high’ by performing the action to completion,” she told The Huffington Post. “These individuals have psychopathic tendencies and are generally not psychotic. They know exactly what they are doing.”

According to Hylen, cannibalism starts out as just a fantasy, but when the fantasy is acted on, “the pleasure center of the brain becomes activated and large amounts of dopamine are released — similar to what happens when someone ingests a drug like cocaine.”

The result is similar to those of other addictive behaviors. The addictive needs to experience that pleasure again and repeats the activity, from the hunt to the gruesome end, “just as a cocaine addict becomes addicted to the process of cutting up lines before they ingest the drug itself,” said Hylen.

Addiction and obsessive-compulsive disorders can be damn scary in the random ways they choose to manifest themselves.  If you’re a drug addict who cleans up, you’re called an inspiration. If you’re a cannibal who cleans up, you still go to jail and get called a freak. That’s as it should be, of course.

I’ll just consider myself lucky because my personality latched on to junk food, tobacco and alcohol. It’s easy to gorge on that stuff without having to murder someone.

Those binges have turned me into a zombie many times before. But I was a more acceptable kind of zombie.

There’s a bright side to everything. Even a zombie apocalypse.

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Grief Management Put to Music

Weeks after a loved one dies and we’ve allowed ourselves to fall apart, we have to make a choice: Stay in a fetal position, hidden from the world, or stand up and move forward. This is a little tribute to someone who made the latter choice.

Mood music:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/48842027″ iframe=”true” /]

I don’t know Ian Clark very well. We’re connected on Facebook, and I’m very fond of his mom’s band, The 360s (he plays drums in that band and is guitarist/vocalist in a band called Razors in the Night). But I sure as hell know what he’s going through.

A few weeks ago, he lost his best friend and cousin, James Morrill. I’ve watched his family grieve in their Facebook posts, and I can’t help but remember when my brother died unexpectedly in 1984 and my best friend followed suit nearly 13 years later. My friend’s death had a particularly damaging effect on me because that was a suicide. After he passed, I spent the next two years viciously binge-eating my way to 280 pounds of uselessness. Badly depressed, I hid from the world, staying indoors watching Star Trek reruns instead of staying connected with other friends.

You could say I chose to stay in the fetal position.

Since his moment of heartbreak, Ian has plowed ahead with his music and has honored his cousin by writing a song — the one featured as today’s mood music.

So far, I’d say he’s decided to move forward. It inspires me.

I hope he keeps doing what he’s doing — channeling his feelings into the music. Music is one of the best therapies in times of grief. And when you’re writing it, you have the chance to help others make it through their own trials.