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A Little Bitter

The author on three of the 12 Steps he keeps tripping over.

Mood music for this post: “A Little Bitter” by Alice in Chains:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3qpF9xUTT0&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Of the 12 Steps of Recovery, there are three  I keep tripping over:

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

To be fair to myself,  Step 10 isn’t a huge problem. No one is better at taking personal inventory and focusing on all my vulnerabilities than me. Promptly admit it? All the time. That’s why I have this blog.

The problem is that I have a tough time taking the other two steps, particularly the part about making amends to those I’ve harmed.

The pastor at my church, Father Nason, once joked that those who have trouble making amends suffer from Irish Alzheimer’s disease: They forget everything but the grudges.

I’d like to think I don’t hold grudges. I know there are people I have forgiven for the past, and I’ve tried to ask for forgiveness when it’s called for.

But I admit to some confusion over just who I’ve harmed and what they need from me. With that confusion comes a little bitterness.

Let me make a list of those I think I’ve harmed and see how I’ve really done at making amends:

The Marley family. As I’ve mentioned, the family of my late friend Sean Marley — the mother and sister, in particular — hate my guts because I revealed too much about his suicide in a column I wrote shortly after it happened. I don’t blame them for being angry. I did a lot of stupid things back then. My intentions weren’t bad, but the results were. I took their raw wounds and ripped them open even wider.

So here I am again, admitting it.

I’ve tried to make amends over the years, but I’ve gotten silence from the Marleys along the way. So there are a few damaged relationships that will stay that way for now.

I guess this is a case where trying to make amends would indeed be harmful to others.

My Mother: This one is so complicated I wouldn’t know where to start untangling the mess. I’ve hurt her big-time, along with a lot of other people from that side of the family.

I won’t get into the tit-for-tat, but the biggest problem is that we both have OCD and hers triggers mine. We just can’t get along these days, though we have made a few attempts to move on,. But the bullshit keeps getting in the way. I’ve long since forgiven her for things that happened in the past. But making amends for the more recent stuff is proving more elusive at this point.

My addictions: In this case, I’m the one I’ve harmed by engaging in slow-motion self-destructiveness. I’ve been forgiven for this a thousand times over by my wife, church and friends.

I need to make amends with myself on this one, which means making peace with the fact I have to permanently abstain from compulsive overeating and alcohol. It’s not easy because having to abstain makes me bitter sometimes. Not so much in terms of the food because I was happy to shake that devil, but the wine is something else. Not being able to have any really sucks sometimes, especially when I’m traveling. But I have no choice.

I know the coffee and Red Bull are replacement addictions and, though they don’t make my life unmanageable like the other stuff did, I know that from a physical health standpoint I’m going to have to dial it way back at some point. This makes me a little bitter, too.

Or you could say playing whack-a-mole with addictive behavior makes me bitter.

The good thing about bitterness is that the taste never lasts. Eventually I’ll find the solution to what keeps me from succeeding with those three steps.

It may take years, but the whole process is for life anyway.


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Pieces of Mind

This happens every time I have a week of travel.

By the time Sunday rolls around, I reach a point in the afternoon where I sit in the chair by the living room window as my brain cracks into pieces. I feel a buzz, even though I’m sober. I feel some bloat, even though my eating has been clean.

Mood music: “Ace of Spades” by Motorhead:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxJwP0izGgc&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

I feel like a wheel that’s spinning so fast that it looks like it’s completely still.

I feel the need to go into hyper-active mode, even though that’s the last thing I should be doing today.

It’s been a good day. Good Mass this morning, a fun Lego run with the kids this afternoon, and the weather is spectacular.

But I’m preoccupied.

I’ve gotten to do a lot of writing the last two weeks and now I’m looking at a week where there will be a lot more editing than writing. Deadline for the May print edition of CSO Magazine is coming up soon and I got a week behind while I was in California. There are guest columns to edit and post, and a book proposal to tweak.

During the RSA security conference, an editor for a security book publisher approached me about writing a book. But my idea veers too far from their normal content, and I’m doing some tweaking to fuse my idea with some of what they’re looking for.

If it doesn’t come together, so be it. But until then, I’m going to preoccupy myself with ways to come up with something they can sell.

One way or another, the book is going to get written. It’s in my head and will scrape the inside of my skull until I let it out.

Then there’s Source Boston, one of my favorite annual security conferences, which is coming up the week after next.

My want is to work the conference hard each day and write a lot of articles from it, but that aint happening because Sean and Duncan are on school vacation that week. It’s also Sean’s birthday and there will be a kid’s party to help pull off somewhere in there.

It’ll all work out fine. It always does. But planning how to balance the work thing with family has always been a challenge for me.

In the end, Sean’s birthday will win out. It’s more important than the other thing. Wife and kids come first.

All these things are examples of me obsessing about things beyond my mortal ability to control.

I manage that instinct a hell of a lot better than I used to, but it never fully disappears.

The fear-anxiety part did disappear, and that’s made each day a gift.

But lying around care-free? Not gonna happen unless I fall asleep.

Ah, the life of a control freak.

As long as I keep it from becoming a control freak-out, it’s all good.

Welcome to my world.

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The Priest Who Came Clean

I’ve met many priests, some good and some not-so-good. People criticize priests because they’re athiests or they’re angry about the sex abuse scandal. Father Dennis Nason made a believer out of me by coming clean about his own sins.

You would have to be sick in the head NOT to be outraged by the sex abuse, and especially of the cover-up. In the end, though, people forget that priests are human, with all the sin-making embedded into their genetic code just like the rest of us.

When a priest is able to lay his own flaws bare for all to see, I think it takes an extra level of courage, since there has to be a lot of pressure around the lofty standards they are held to.

Father Nason rose to the occasion.

I met Father Nason about 11 years ago. He took over our parish, All Saints, when several other churches were closed down and consolidated into the All Saints Community.

He had a lot of angry people on his hands. One’s church becomes home, and when you close it and force them to go someplace else, trouble is inevitable.

Then the priest sex abuse scandal burst open like an infected sore, shaking the Faith of a lot of people like never before.

I started going to All Saints regularly in 2001, the year my oldest son was born. It would be another five years before I chose to convert, but by then the church had become a source of comfort at a time where my mental health was starting to snap off the rails.

At one point over the summer, Father Nason vanished. Few knew why.

Then at one Mass, the deacon read an open letter from him.

In the letter, Father Nason revealed that he was in rehab for alcoholism. It would be several months before he emerged from rehab, and while he was there the sex abuse scandal really began to explode. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks also happened around that time, and people’s souls were tested like never before.

Once he did emerge from rehab to rejoin his parish, there was a new sparkle in his eyes. It was like a weight had been lifted. Then another weight dropped on him. It turns out one of the priests in our parish was one of those sexual predators we had read about in the papers.

Something like that would test the sobriety of anyone forced to come in and deal with the mess. Father Nason met it head on.

He was angry with his archdiocese over the fact that pedophile priests had been enabled for all those years; cases swept under the rug like dust. You could hear the anger in his voice and see it in his eyes. He would rage about it in more than one Homily.

His reaction is a big reason I stuck with the church instead of bolting.

Around that time we also had trouble hanging onto the other priests. One left after less than two months, apparently freaked out by the amount of work this parish demanded of him.

Through it all, Father Nason kept it together and brought his parish through the storm.

I don’t always see eye to eye with him. Sometimes I think his administration is disorganized and that his Homilies are all over the place; though when he nails it, he really nails it.

But those are trivial things. When he came clean about his addiction, it hit me deep in the core. At the time, my own addictions were bubbling in my skull and preparing to wipe out what was left of my soul. I just didn’t know it at the time.

His honesty kept me going. And now that I’ve spent the last few years getting control of my own addictive behavior, I have a much better appreciation for what he went through.

This post isn’t meant to put him on a pedestal. He is only human, after all, and he sometimes misses the mark like the rest of us.

It IS meant to thank him for the time he came clean, inspiring me to do the same.

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Lessons from ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’

Me and the kids are watching Tim Burton’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” for movie night. I like this version about as equally as the 1971 Gene Wilder classic, which we watched a few weeks ago.

Mood music:
[spotify:track:36znenHji82rUYJTgfkc4Z]

 

That viewing actually inspired me to write down a post. I’m rewriting it here, because I’m having the same reaction to the newer film as I did the old one…

The author watched Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for the first time since cleaning up from a binge eating disorder. What a trip.

Yesterday the rain was coming down sideways, so the Brenner clan decided to put in a DVD of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It’s still a great movie, but since my main troubles with addictive behavior stem from flour and sugar, which I gave up on Oct. 1, 2008, watching it this time was kind of weird.

Weird because I didn’t sneak out of the house afterward to buy $20 worth of candy to stuff down my throat on the 3-minute drive from the gas station back to the house. I just went to fill the cars with gas and buy a loaf of bread and some Red Bull.

The scene in the film which best fits a mind unhinged is where they are traveling the chocolate river on a boat.

Looking at the characters in the movie really reminded me of the multiple personalities I can have as an addict. Those kids were punks as individuals and got what they deserved.

Now, for a little fun, let’s squish them all into one, multi-personality monster and see what we get. By the time we finish, you’ll get a pretty good idea of what one person is like when their addictions run wild.

Charlie Bucket: This is the good side of the soul, the part that wants to be honest and do the right thing. For me, this side won out in the end — well, for now, at least — but being the quiet, well-behaved kid, he’s always in danger of being pushed to the back of the line by these wretched children:

Violet Beauregarde: The third kid to find one of Wonka’s elusive Golden Tickets, this little scamp is a compulsive gum chewer. That compulsion gets the better of her and she blows up into a giant blueberry. Been there, done that.

Augustus Gloop: The Deadly Sin of Gluttony personified, this poor kid is encouraged to eat like a slob by his parents, who are just as devoted to their own binging habits. Hell, his old man eats the top of a microphone and doesn’t seem to notice. The kid takes it too far by shoving his bloated face in Wonka’s chocolate river.

Mike Teavee: I know this kid. He lives for TV, especially the violent programs where a lot of bullets are flying. His parents sit there and let him indulge. Now blend him with Augustus and Violet and you get a kid who sits in front of the tube shoving all kinds of junk down his throat.

Veruca Salt: This kid is so selfish and mean that you want to spill tears of joy when she goes down the garbage chute with the rest of the rotten eggs. I like to think of her as the glue that holds the rest of the beast together. The other kids make up the guts of the poor soul who is owned by his or her addictions. Veruca is the skin.

What makes the movie so great is that Charlie comes out on top. It’s a dream of most people to have the good triumph over evil.

In this movie it does.

In my own life, it has.

But I have to be on guard at all times because, contrary to what Wonka says at the end of the movie, the guy who gets everything he wants DOES NOT live happily ever after.

You’re always seconds away from letting Veruca or Violet back out.

The good news is that if you are truly serious about being well, there’s no shortage of loving souls who will stick with you and keep you on the path to Heaven.

You might loop back through Hell a few times along the way, but you’ll end up in the better place if you keep working at it.

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Sticking it to Kids Who Are Different

The author on why the school sports mentality is leaving kids who are “different” in the dust.

Mood music for this post: “Mandocello” by Cheap Trick:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kH6H8wzfl4&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how schools tend to deal with kids who are different. Kids like the one I used to be.

The school we send our kids to, a private Parochial school, is wonderful on many levels. My favorite thing about it is the other families who send their kids there. Many people who have become dear friends. Most importantly, the kids are getting a daily dose of God there, which is something Erin and I care deeply about.

But I see something there that bothers me. But it’s something that’s a problem in a lot of schools.

It’s the sports mentality. The idea that the ONLY way to measure a kid’s potential is by how he or she does in sports.

My children are not much into sports. Both are more focused on art, science (especially Sean) and music (Duncan’s passion).

Some might call that different. And because sports is such a huge deal in their school, I don’t think their talents are being put to the test as they should be.

There’s practically no music program to speak of. Sure, someone comes in to teach the kids songs and put on a musical performance each spring (though that teacher was cut loose for this year because of budget woes), but there’s nothing more than that. This is where Duncan misses out.

Last year, Erin pitched the idea of a “Mad Scientist” program for kids who love science. The program would cost the school nothing and the principal expressed interest. But then it went nowhere. Kids like Sean lose out on this one.

But the sports. Oh, how the school is passionate about its sports. The teams win big. And that is encouraged at all costs, even if it means only a quarter of the kids on a team get to play while those who “aren’t good enough” spend all their time on the bench.

The goal is to win. If you’re not good enough to make that happen, you take a seat. Not the best way to challenge kids to reach their full potential, even if their potential doesn’t look like much to judgmental, competitive eyes.

This isn’t just a problem where my kids go to school. Everywhere you look, it’s all about the sports. The football team. The softball team. The hockey team. The basketball team.

Sure, sports are important. Sports bring out the best in many children, and can be as important an outlet for troubled kids as music was and still is for me.

The problem is that sports isn’t for everyone. And a kid should never be set adrift because sports isn’t their outlet. Yet that’s what happens.

I feel strongly about this because as a troubled child, I was often dismissed by educators as a troublemaker who was on the road to nowhere.

Some wonderful teachers did note my affinity for art and encouraged me on that score. And for a kid going through a lot, that encouragement kept me going.

But in junior and high school, the sports thing kept me in a box. I sucked at every sport out there. I was different. And so I was tossed into the group of so-called C-students, the ones who had a tendency to come up short and some of whom were trouble.

Other talents, like writing, lay dormant until after high school. Giving a kid guidance on writing is never done with the same zeal as encouraging kids with sports.

Now for what really burns me: A lot of children with mental disorders — I was one of them — tend to get dumped into the troublemaker bucket. Talents that can help them build character and find direction are not nurtured. Being good at a sport is really their only hope.

I call that failing kids who are different.

Educators should focus like a laser beam on those differences; not as a problem to complain about, but as something to cherish.

It’s those differences that make each kid special and beautiful, even if it means they have trouble focusing or sitting still in their chair. Or sucks at sports.

That’s one of the things I like about the Montessori concept. I’m going to borrow this description from Wikipedia, because it works in this case:

The Montessori method is an educational approach to children based on the research and experiences of Italian physician and educator Maria Montessoriwhich happened in the process of her experimental observation of young children given freedom in an environment prepared with materials designed for their self-directed learning activity.

The method itself aims to duplicate this experimental observation of children to bring about, sustain and support their true natural way of being. It arose essentially from Dr. Montessori’s discovery of what she referred to as “the child’s true normal nature.”

Applying this method involves the teacher in viewing the child as having an inner natural guidance for his or her own perfect self-directed development. The role of the teacher (sometimes called director, directress, or guide) is therefore to watch over the environment to remove any obstacles that would interfere with this natural development. The teacher’s role of observation sometimes includes experimental interactions with children, commonly referred to as “lessons,” to resolve misbehavior or to show how to use the various self-teaching materials that are provided in the environment for the children’s free use.

I don’t think this is a perfect concept. I think kids also need to be taught boundaries and to play by a certain level of rules, and the Montessori concept unfiltered can be a problem in that regard.

But boy, it sure is good for the kids who are different. Not bad, not even troubled. Just different.

This post will piss some people off. I don’t care.

No education is perfect. No teacher or principal is perfect. Nor should we expect them to be. At my kids’ school there’s an abundance of love for every kid, and I adore many of the teachers there.

Most of them are doing their best with dwindling resources.

But as a kid whose path was littered with minefields, I know that the cookie-cutter approach to education leaves a lot of good kids in the dust.

Sports should never be the be all end all in determining a child’s power to shine.

If the sports is all a school cares about, it will ultimately fail.

God made us all complex and loves us all, even though we don’t fit nice and tidy into perfect little boxes.

We could learn a thing or two from that.

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Scenes from the Airport

The author finds airport amusement where he once found hell. Here’s what happens.

Mood music for this post: “Learn to Fly” by Foo Fighters:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VQ_3sBZEm0&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

I sit here at 6:23 a.m. San Francisco time, sitting at the gate for a flight home in an hour. Considering what I just passed through, I got here pretty quickly and calmly.

Let’s back up.

When I got here, the TSA line was as long as I’ve ever seen. Directly ahead of me in line were 40 or so tweens headed on a trip to Gettysburg and Washington D.C.

Finding MY food was more trouble than I expected, but I found what I needed. I also found some coffee that was made following my friend Ken White’s recipe.

A few minutes later, I found a Peet’s Coffee stand and things immediately started looking up. I tossed the “White” blend in the trash and got my rocket fuel.

All things considered, I’m in a chipper mood. I keep thinking of airport disaster movies and it makes me laugh. I find myself searching Youtube for some Lynard Skynard videos. Some of you might remember that half that band went down in a plane crash. That’s how my gallows humor works.

I have plenty of reasons to be happy. I’m going home to my family, who I miss. Our security conference was a smashing success. And each night here I caught up with many of the cool people I’m connected with on Twitter.

The weather has also been pretty brilliant, though strangely cooler than it was back home this week.

But there are other reasons to feel this way.

For one thing, I stuck to my plan of recovery and kept my strict alcohol-flour-sugar-free eating program intact. I also didn’t feel the edge around people drinking booze that I felt on the last trip.

I wasn’t perfect. I drank A LOT of caffeine, even by my standards, and smoked more cigars than I normally do. Maybe that’s why I didn’t feel the edge around the liquor.

Ah, addictions. You put two of them down and three more pop up.

But when I think of how much I’ve polluted myself on past trips over the years, this is pretty good behavior.

There’s actually an even bigger reason I’m in a good mood: Trips through airports used to terrify me. It was one of the top freak-out items on my OCD-anxiety itinerary. I’d live the weeks leading up to a trip worrying about whether the plane will drop from the sky. Long lines would send my blood pressure soaring until my head was ready to go supernova.

Sitting on the plane for five or more hours was pure hell because closed-in spaces triggered anxiety attacks, the kind where you have trouble breathing and you see spots in your vision.

I would get home and collapse from the exhaustion.

So here we are, years after I started the therapy and found the 12 Steps of recovery. Oh yeah, and Prozac.

The TSA line doesn’t freak me out anymore. I chatted easily with the fellow overseeing the traveling tweens and with a couple of the kids. All the kids were actually very well behaved and polite.

Being on a plane now brings me peace. I look out the window and see how vast and amazing this country is. If the weather is gray, the pilot will fly us above it to a sky of blue.

photo-by-mbshane

Maybe I’ll get some sleep. Maybe I’ll listen to my music or read, or some of each.

Then I’ll land in Boston and get a ride home from a good friend.

Then I’ll see my wife and kids, who I’m eager to see again.

I was talking to a good friend at a meet-up last night — Ed Bellis, chief information security officer for Orbitz — and he asked me if I ever return to the darker feelings of my past.

Sure I do. Managing a mental disorder and its related addictions is hard work and you never stop feeling the ups and downs of life. Nor should you.

I still feel anger and even a little fear sometimes. But instead of those things controlling me, they are now more minor occurrences.

I still get tired. And with addiction, you’re always half a second away from potentially slipping on your darkest habits.

And I definitely go through a day here or week there where depression sets in. That’s normal.

But I told him — truthfully — that there are some things about the old me that will never and can never return.

I can’t see ever having the anxiety attacks and fear I used to have, though I suppose anything is possible.  I’ve seen too many of the things I missed to ever turn back. Even if I lapse back into periods of anxiety (I hope not!) there’s no turning back.

My eyes have been opened to a whole new world and going back to the dark room — which is something I used to crave — is now one of those things I’d dread instead.

Another friend, Jen Leggio (@mediaphyter on Twitter), asked me how I manage to write something new in this blog every day while maintaining the writing load I carry on the work side.

My answer is simple:

Back when fear, anxiety and depression led me to binge eat and spend 80 hours a week working out of fear that I might not please everyone (Man, that was fucking dumb), I was constantly wiped out. I would sleep all the way through my weekends.

As a result, writing was hard and stressful.

Now that I’ve learned to get out of my own way, writing comes easily, whether it’s here or in the security realm. I can write a lot more because I don’t feel the least bit of stress about it. I love it, so I do it.

The other thing I chalk it up to is Faith. As my Faith in God deepens, I realize that the things I used to freak out over are trivial items that I can’t take with me into the next life. So getting worked up about them seems pointless.

I know there’s always the chance I can slip backwards. Indeed, setbacks are a natural part of recovery. I like to call those moments growing pains.

But yeah, in the big picture, I’m one grateful SOB.

Now to board the plane. I’m in the middle of my annual reading of Helter Skelter, so I guess I’ll do that until I happily pass out.

End music: “Times Like These” by Foo Fighters:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhzmNRtIp8k&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

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Like Father, Like Son

The author finds that OCD behavior runs strong among the men in his family.

It’s been said that certain crosses run in the family. Addictive behavior. Depression.

Yesterday my father had three long stents inserted into his leg. Apparently the entire leg was full of blockages. He eats compulsively, and this contributes to the problem. In 1998 he had quadruple bypass surgery, but the bad eating continued.

He’s always been able to bolt down the food. That trait was passed down to my brain, where it mixed with OCD, depression and other nasty byproducts.

I put my binge-eating addiction down well over a year ago and embraced a 12-Step program through OA, just like you do if you’re kicking alcohol or narcotics.

But OA isn’t my father’s style. Never has been. Never will be.

I’d like to think I’m doing better than my father when it comes to taking care of myself. I kicked binge eating and alcohol, am maintaining a 65-pound weight loss without doing all the stupid things I used to do to stay thin.

But I’m no dummy. I know this family inheritance is still with me.

With addictive personalities, it’s always something. I’m completely addicted to caffeine, including Red Bull. Yesterday I drank two of them in the afternoon, after a morning of swilling the coffee. Then there’s the fact that I like cigars.

I don’t fret about it much because it beats the hell out of the addictions I put down; the ones that had made my life completely unmanageable and hurt the people around me in a variety of ways. And any addict will tell you it’s always going to be a struggle where you put down one thing and pick up another so you don’t go back to that first item. That’s a cross we bear for life, and the goal is to keep working to be better than the demons.

I also know there will come a time where I have to put away the cigars and cut back on the caffeine.

My life is Blessed beyond belief. It took many years to beat down the compulsive eating addiction. Longer still because it’s harder to acknowledge a food addiction than it is to come clean about something like alcoholism. No disrespect toward my friends who are recovering from alcoholism. I love them and am proud of what they’ve accomplished. I’m just saying that in our culture, some addictions are more glamorous than others. Binge eating is anything but glamorous.

Of course, any addict knows that their behavior is never glamorous behind closed doors, whatever the poison. Locked up alone with the demon, it’s a world of filth, shame and sickness.

I can’t say that my father has an addictive personality. I’m not in a position to judge him. I only know that he can put away the food, and the results have been bad.

He’s been through a lot in his life and still managed to be a kind, generous soul. I hope he sticks around for many years to come. But it’s not up to me.

I’ve noticed something else recently: Sean, my oldest child, is displaying OCD characteristics. When the boy gets into something, be it a computer game or Legos — especially Legos — he goes in deep and lets the activity consume him. In other words, he approaches these things compulsively.

The good news is that he’s otherwise much healthier than I was at his age. And he’s smarter than I ever was.

He also has another powerful advantage I didn’t have.

I’ve been far down the road he’s traveling and picked up a lot of coping skills along the way. Those skills have made all the difference.

And I can pass them on to him.

This makes me happier than you could possibly imagine.

 

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The Short, Strange History of Skeptic Slang

The author is tells the story of his 2 years as lead singer of a little-known band called Skeptic Slang.

I avoided this for as long as I could. I don’t like to admit that I used to sing in a band. For one thing, my singing really sucked. For another, the band never went anywhere.

But some pictures of me from around that time have been unearthed, and people are starting to talk.

Here’s the picture of me with hair halfway down my back, in the center:

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I’m bald now, but I still have all that hair on my back. Erin doesn’t mind, so neither do I.

The other thing that has sparked curiosity is this poem I found in an old foot locker last month. It was written by a long-lost friend, Joy Affannato, before she married my best friend, Sean Marley:

“Blessed and Black Clad, Dedicated to Bill Brenner”

Clad in black

with a black-lined heart

like the charred edges

of our burnt society

Gathering the ash

to sift through and find

some satiating solution.

…A poet

with a doctrite of humanity

But, no one really has the answers:

Every question is relevant

And using words of metaphor

he transforms the WRITTEN WORD

At the bottom left of the page she scrawled the logo for Skeptic Slang.

So ok, then. Let’s talk about this band.

Members:

Bill Brenner: Vocals

Chris Casey: Guitar

Elias Andrinopolous: Bass

Joe Gentile: Drums

We got together in the spring of 1992. It started as me and Chris. We’d sit in my basement and write songs, thinking we were the shit. I was going through my chip-in-the shoulder angry phase and was writing all kinds of lyrics about how much I hated my mother and hated that my brother was dead.

There was the song “Knife,” with this jolly refrain: “Knife… You’re my best friend.”

The songs about my mother were called “Tunnel Vision” and “You’re Dead” The song I wrote about my brother was called “Rest.”

Let’s fast-forward for a second: I should point out that today I do not carry a knife and I don’t hate my mother. I love her, despite our inability to get along.

Back to the past: Chris and I were smoking buddies with a lot of the same anger at life. We were a natural fit. Then Elias came along; a peaceful, friendly soul who was in many ways the opposite of me. Joe joined later, but he was older than the rest of us and was in and out of the band.

At the time, I was also working at the legendary Rockit Records, and being a musician was sort of an unspoken bonus.

We went out and bought a bunch of gear at Daddy’s Junky Music on Route 1 in Peabody: Amps, a mixing board, PA system, monitors. We didn’t know how to use any of it, and we were on a payment plan as if we had purchased a new car together.

But it looked cool and made us loud in the bomb shelter beneath the garage that we practiced in. This was in the house in Lynnfield, where I lived from late 1992 to late-1995.

We wrote a lot of songs and practiced. And practiced. And practiced. Elias was the least experienced on his instrument, but quickly became the best musician of us all. I was the worst. I couldn’t sing to save my life.

But I could write lyrics, and that was all that was required.

When it was time for a break, we’d go out into the woods and smoke pot. In fact, the last time I smoked pot was with them. I stopped when I started dating Erin.

We played a couple acoustic sets along the way at Roosevelts, a hang-out in Salem. We did a couple performances at North Shore Community College in Lynn.

Then we did a battle of the bands event, and it was a disaster.

Elias’ bass was way out of tune as we launched into the opening song. Instead of just rolling with it, we panicked. it was all hell from there.

We retreated to the bunker and did more writing and practicing. Those songs would never be played live. Joe had a kid and had less and less time for the band. Chris burned out and left. After awhile it was just be and Elias. We tried to keep it going with a new guitarist, who played wonderfully but could never settle on anything. We kicked him out, and Elias and I continued on for awhile longer.

Then it just sort of stopped.

But I’ll tell you what: That band, bad as we were — or I was, anyway — was a Godsend. I was going through a lot of depression back then and clashed with everyone.

The band gave me an outlet to vent those emotions. It couldn’t save me from my addictions, but it saved me from my worst instincts, one of which was to go out and destroy things, whether that meant kicking a dent into the side of my dark-blue 1985 Monte Carlo or throwing stuff around in my father’s warehouse.

It wasn’t meant to last, but it was there when I needed it most.

After the band disintegrated, the music store bought back all the gear, Elias went on to study classical guitar and I went frantically forward in my pursuit of a career in journalism.

A tape of our songs is probably kicking around somewhere. Someday it will surface.

We’ll listen and have a good laugh. Not at the guitar, drums and bass, which were very good. But at the rest of the package.

To Chris, Elias and Joe: Thanks for the memories.

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Red Bull Blues

The author learns once again that when he puts one addiction down, he picks up another.

I realized something awhile back. I guess I already knew, but this just made it crystal clear for me.

I was at the airport, en route to Santa Clara, California. There was no Starbucks nearby. My other choices were Dunkin’ Donuts or coffee served at a breakfast place across the way.

Certain that both choices would fall far short of the kick I get from Starbucks, Peets or one of the other high-grade coffee providers, I went with a can of Red Bull.

My latest addiction.

I never thought I would start drinking this stuff. But here’s how it happened:

During the 2010 RSA security conference, I was feeling a bit edgy because living through a conference without enjoying all the free booze was something I was still adjusting to, even though I’ve been sober and abstinent from binge eating for quite some time. On the show floor, the Threatpost “clubhouse” had a fridge stalked with free soft drinks, including Red Bull.

Free caffeine in a can. And there’s a sugar-free version, which helps, since I gave up flour and sugar for the binge eating problem.

Drinking it removed the edge, and having a can in my hand instead of a coffee cup somehow made it easier to exist around all the people with beer, wine and stronger cocktails in their hands.

Game over.

Since then, I’ve been drinking at least one every afternoon or evening. Erin said she was getting annoyed finding random empty Red Bull cans around the house and in my car.

The funny thing is, she used to express it the same way when she found evidence of an eating binge under the car seats. Guilt bags, she called them.

Now they’re empty Red Bull cans.

And thus we have another example of what I call playing your addictions like a piano. You pound on one key until it breaks into pieces. You realize it was stupid to do that and you stop it. Then you do the same thing to another key further down the board. The process repeats until you’ve smashed every key on the piano.

Then you find another piano and repeat the process.  It’s a kind of purgatory addicts live in.

Am I angry about picking up an addiction to Red Bull?

A little.

It pisses me off that I can’t picture myself without SOMETHING in my hand to somehow fill the soul hole. Over time that hole has gotten a lot smaller, allowing me to put down the most destructive addictions. But there’s just enough of a chasm left that other, smaller addictions come into play.

Here’s what I’m going to do about it:

NOTHING.

For now, anyway.

That’s because I have to focus on Priority-One of my recovery program, which is to stay away from the addictions that crushed me and made my life unmanageable.

Those addictions were binge eating and, as a smaller byproduct, wine.

If the caffeine helps me stay away from those things and allows me to keep my life manageable, that’s how it must be.

Update: Last week I was in San Francisco again for RSA Conference 2012. Red Bull was available everywhere I went. Much of the time I drank it from a glass, which threw people for a loop. A lot of folks never see the stuff out of the can, and are surprised to see that it looks like lightly-carbonated whiskey or beer.

I was the sober man in rooms packed with the pleasantly buzzed. But, holding my glass of Red Bull, I really felt like part of the crowd.

Fucked up, I know. But there it is.

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Easter Morning

No real message about overcoming OCD, depression and addiction. I’ll get back to that tomorrow. Today, just a quick Happy Easter to you all.

All is well here. We experienced a brilliant Easter Vigil Mass last night.

Not even my starting in on the wrong reading could have spoiled it. I helped out with this year’s RCIA group, so seeing them Baptized was particularly special for me.

The kids got up at 5:30 a.m. all excited for their Easter baskets. We sent them back to bed for another hour.

Above: drawings Sean made for us for Easter.

Later we take the kids to Mass, then hang out before going to the in-laws for dinner. Somewhere in there, I’ll have a cigar (my Lenten sacrifice).

Tomorrow I head to California for another security event.

No anxiety. No fear. Just Blessings all around.