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Boredom: An OCD Case’s Worst Friend

Last year I wrote about how boredom is one of the most dangerous things an addict can encounter. It’s equally true for someone with OCD.

Mood music:

The mood music today is especially fitting for the topic. Like the addict who is bored, the OCD case who is bored gets an itch and restlessness that causes you to search and destroy.

I’m a street walking cheetah
with a heart full of napalm
I’m a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb
I am a world’s forgotten boy
The one who searches and destroys

The opening lyrics apply. For the OCD sufferer, the heart full of napalm is the uneasy, anxious feeling that comes over you in the absence of activity. It makes you search and destroy — in my case, I search for things to worry about. The root of the problem is an OCD sufferer’s inability to live in the present.

This shouldn’t surprise readers of this blog. I’ve described it before. OCD is very much about worry spinning out of control. If it’s something routine, like sending an editor a flawless story, it’ll eat away at a lot of precious time. I used to write a story, read it back aloud, polish it, read it aloud again, then I’d still be afraid to file it for fear that it wasn’t absolutely perfect. I got home late many nights and lost a lot of sleep because of it.

When it was about health, I’d make myself sick for real by fixating too hard on what MIGHT happen. That’s when the anxiety attacks would come. In 1991, after a colonoscopy to monitor the Crohn’s Disease, I was informed that my colon was covered with hundreds of polyps — more scar tissue than polyps, but something that had to be kept an eye on. I was advised to get a colonoscopy every year to ensure it didn’t morph into colon cancer unnoticed. Good advice. So I let more than eight years pass before a bout of bleeding forced me to get one. Until then, I wasted a lot of time in fear that every stomach cramp, however small, was colon cancer. I’d spin it in my head repeatedly, rationalizing why I shouldn’t get the test. Just following doctor’s orders in the first place would have saved me a lot of over-thinking. That was clear when I had the test and found out everything was fine.

I can remember being a kid, always daydreaming about the future: what I’d look like and how cool my life would be if I were thinner, the clothes I would wear, the girls I would date and the music I would write.

As I sat in my basement pondering such greatness, I’d be binge eating, drinking and smoking and wasting the moment.

I’ve spent too much time thinking about plenty of other things. It ages you.

Boredom is a major troublemaker because left with nothing to do, you start thinking about everything that can possibly go wrong with your life. I would get into the negative thinking described above during the busiest of times. You can imagine, then, what happens inside my head when I’m bored.

It leads to the addictive behavior I described in “Boredom: An Addicts Worst Friend.”

I’m better at living in the present than I used to be.  But I still make sure I’m busy at all times. The alternative ain’t pretty..

Besides, there’s joy to be had in the kind of tired you feel after a day lived well.

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The Brady Bunch Offended Me

Sherwood Schwartz, creator of “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch,” has died at age 94. Naturally, I’m remembering how I hated “The Brady Bunch” for giving me a fake picture of family life.

Mood music:

I hated “The Brady Bunch” because it made me so angry that my own family was never like that. But then no one’s family is really like that.

I did like the movie adaptations that came out in the 1990s because the films mocked the feel of the original series. You had the family living in the 1990s but acting like they were in the 1970s. Some elements of the family were modernized, though: Alice the housekeeper and Sam the butcher get it on at one point.

When Mike asks Sam what he’s doing there in his robe in the middle of the night, rummaging through the fridge, Sam says, “Oh, just delivering some meat.”

Obviously, Schwartz’s point was to create the perfect picture of family, not because it reflected reality, but because it would be nice if it were reality.

Now that the chip on my shoulder has been filled in by time, experience and hopefully a little wisdom, I see “The Brady Bunch” as a nice idea, however unrealistic. In fact, the escape from reality was a welcome relief to a lot of people whose families were miserable and ugly. A little relief helps you regroup and carry on.

My problem is that I’ve always had a tendency to overthink these things.

I never took issue with “Gilligan’s Island.” As absurd as the show was, I’ve always liked the theme of people with nothing in common getting thrown together — forced to become a new family of sorts in order to survive.

I admit without shame that my favorite episode is the one with the Japanese sub pilot who didn’t realize the war was over; the one who complained that the Chinese stole the idea for water torture from Japan.

Despite how the younger, angrier version of me felt, the older me believes Schwartz did a lot of good for a society that tends to stew in its own, stinking, cynical juices.

Rest in peace. I hope you find the folks in Heaven to be something like the characters you created.


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A Happy Memory From A Difficult Time

It’s sometime in October 2008. I’ve just given given up flour and sugar to get control over a binge-eating addiction.

Mood music:

I’m irritable and sick, going through all the aches and pains that surface when toxins start to drip from the pores.

I’m coming up the stairs from work, anxious to get all the chores that await me over with.

I open the door to find Duncan sitting in his chair at the kitchen table.

He’s wearing a bib and a bowl of soup is in front of him. It’s button soup, he tells me. He made it in school (Pre-K) after being read the book of the same name, in which “Daisy tricks her stingy Uncle Scrooge into making enough soup for the whole town–using just one button.”

“Daddy, have some button soup. It’s on your diet!” Duncan says as I come into the room.

He’s got that big, gaping smile of his, excited as hell because in the magic of the classroom, he discovered something his Daddy could eat. He knows his father needs encouragement, and he’s eager to deliver.

When you really become serious about kicking addictions, God puts the right people in front of you to make the cold turkey period a little more bearable. I truly believe that.

It’s the Grace that helps you move those one, two or three steps at a time.

On that gray, gloomy afternoon, Duncan was there.

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OCD and Crohn’s Disease Linked?

A fellow OCD chronicler sent me two articles suggesting a link between OCD and Crohn’s Disease. I have both and several people have asked if I see connections between the two. This is my attempt at an answer.

Mood music:

From the beginning, I’ve tied the two diseases together in my journey. At various times, one disease has played off the other, sending me to the depths of insanity. Both certainly contributed to my developing a binge-eating disorder and other kinds of addictive, self-destructive behavior.

During the childhood Crohn’s flare ups, a wire was inserted through my neck and chest to send nutrients to my stomach. That way, the lower digestive zone could have time to rest and heal. Not being allowed food or drink when all the other kids on my floor were getting their breakfast, lunch and dinner fucked with my head and led to binge eating as the addiction I would battle most. Getting junk to binge on was a major obsession, one of the loudest OCD triggers of all.

Whenever I would feel sorry for myself, I pictured an enemy holding a voodoo doll of me, stabbing it in the gut repeatedly with a needle. Was the Crohn’s holding the doll, making it do the same motions over and over again?

One article suggests something like that. It’s in Psychosomatics,
The Journal of Consultation and Liaison Psychiatry under the title “Abrupt-Onset Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) in a Child With Crohn’s Disease.” It starts with a letter to the editor, which says in part:

Johnny, a 9-year-old boy with Crohn’s Disease, experienced the abrupt onset of intrusive, ego-dystonic,sexualized obsessions (fears that he would lift up the shirtsof random women to feel their breasts) which resulted in long nightly confessions to his mother. He was also overly scrupulous and worried that “the mistakes I’ve made” would result in harm to his family and friends. 

The authors respond with this:

Patients with inflammatory bowel disease are frequently describedas obsessive, rigid, and compulsive. Burke et al. found that OC symptoms in childhood IBD did not differ significantly fromthose found in children with cystic fibrosis, suggesting thatsymptoms were related to the demands of chronic medical illness,rather than IBD itself. The pathogenesis of IBD is not fully understood; it may be related to an abnormal mucosal immune system or specific defects in cellular and humoral immunity.

The other article is in The Scientist under the title “Equations that Spell Disaster.” It starts with a portrait of Hurricane Katrina. The storm’s landfall and the aftermath was the perfect calamity because it hit an area loaded with vulnerabilities: weak infrastructure, poor lines of communication, and a dysfunctional emergency rescue system.

“These conditions coalesced to produce one of the worst human catastrophes in recent US history,” the article said. “In a similar way, complex diseases result from a series of events that may not amount to much when considered one by one, but together, coalesce into a perfect storm that spells disaster for a particular organ or system.”

Is that how it went down for me? Perhaps.

But for me, the scientific evidence is beside the point. The things that have happened to me can’t be erased, but it’s more important at this stage of my life to walk away from the wreckage a better man with a better appreciation for the life I have, warts and all. All that matters is the present and the future. The past is something you can’t change, so me obsessing about how I got the way I am is pointless.

There used to be a place for that. When I first started going to a therapist on the long path to an OCD diagnosis, I spent all my time picking through the wreckage of where I came from in search of answers. It was important to do so. But once I found myself, there was no longer much reason to stick around.

So why am I bringing it up here? Because the articles are useful to those just beginning to deal with one of these diseases.

The science can’t change my past, nor should it.

But it can lead to better treatments for people going forward.

OCD Diaries

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Up Your Bucket

I’ve been enjoying a local band called Up Your Bucket of late. For someone who uses hard rock and metal as a coping tool, this stuff hits me where I live. The raw, loud, dirty nature of it goes to show — once again — that Boston’s music scene is among the best.

I won’t attempt to describe them. I’ll just show you a couple videos from a show they did July 4.

I’m a fan of the guitarist on the right, Eric Russell, who is in another local band I like called The 360s. Erin and I are going to see the latter band Friday night.

I first saw Up Your Bucket in January, during the Joe “Zippo” Kelley benefit show. Truth be told, I didn’t think much of them that night. I liked the sound, but I was impatiently waiting for Pop Gun and The Neighborhoods.

I can’t even remember when I started to listen. I think I was curious because I’ve since gotten familiar with the individual band members on Facebook. I’m also always looking for fresh, local rock to put in this blog.

I can no longer deny it: They are growing on me like a cancer. And I’m perfectly happy about it.

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R.I.P. Betty Ford

Former first lady Betty Ford has died at age 93. I wanted to honor her here, because her honesty and bravery about her own battles with substance abuse went far in smashing the stigma attached to addiction.

ABC News said it best in its obituary:

She lived in the White House in an era during which she was expected to simply serve tea and host luncheons but instead, she fought for women’s rights and spoke openly about her battle with breast cancer.

She was best known for her willingness to go public about her dependency on prescription medication and alcohol — and her determination to help others with the same problem.

There’s still a lot of work to be done. Stigmas still surround mental illness and there’s still much people don’t understand about addictive behavior.

But thanks to Betty, we are in a much better place.

PHOTO: President Gerald Ford and First Lady Betty Ford share a happy moment as they hug each other in the White House's Oval Office, Washington DC, December 6, 1974.

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A Lesson About Life From Roy Blount

I went with Erin to Concord, N.H. last night to hear a talk from writer and humorist Roy Blount Jr. Some of you might recognize the name from the NPR news/comedy quiz show, Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! 

Mood music:

Truth be told, Erin is a bigger fan than I am. But I enjoyed his talk. Especially when he offered advice to a guy in the audience who sought advice for his son, an aspiring writer.

Blount’s advice went something like this:

Go see something of the world. Experiences are more important to a writer than a big degree in writing. In fact, he seemed to discourage the man’s son from going to a university in search of what he needs.

Also see: Writing to Save My Life

Instead, he should experience life among the commoners, Blount said. The kid could get a job as a hair dresser and learn more that way, he suggested.

That kind of comment feeds my personal bias, because for years I’ve been telling college kids that the only way to be a good writer is to experience the world.

I didn’t pursue a journalism degree in college. I was an English major, which amuses the hell out of people who have heard me talk. In school, I spent more time in the newsroom of the college paper than in the classroom. I learned how to be a journalist by diving in and being a reporter. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing, mind you, but covering campus politics and life in general was a better education than learning about the reverse pyramid style of news writing.

After college I wrote for and edited several weekly papers. Immersing myself in the experiences of those doing the living and dying in places like Stoneham and Lynn was crucial. I covered drug overdoses, drownings, political dog fights. And I slowly realized that the more detail I could cram in about a person’s struggles, the more valuable the writing.

I learned a lot less about people in the four and a half years I spent as night editor at The Eagle-Tribune. That paper has been on the front lines of some huge stories, including the drowning of four kids in the Merrimack River in 2002, the Malden Mills inferno of 1995, and 9-11-01. A number of Merrimack Valley residents were on the doomed planes that morning.

Huge as those things were (though Malden Mills was before my time there), I wasn’t the one out there interviewing people. I waited for stuff to come into the newsroom, and that stunted my growth. It didn’t have to be that way, but I was too self absorbed to do the things that mattered.

When I left there in 2004 and started writing about information security, the world was cracked open in front of me. I started talking to people from around the globe about things that were a pretty big deal compared to what I was used to: Data security breaches, government security activities, etc. I did learn this much from the Eagle-Tribune, though:

It’s not enough to just write about the technology and legalese. There’s always a human experience to be found behind the machinery.

I’ve had my fair share of personal life, death and adversity to build on as well, but the great thing about journalism is that it’s largely a study of other people — people you might not otherwise identify with.

My thanks to Blount for the reminder.

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Sean’s OCD Education

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.”

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Does This Post Offend You?

This is a first: I was re-posting a piece of content on Facebook and got this push back: “This message contains blocked content that has previously been flagged as abusive or spammy. Let us know if you think this is an error.”

Mood music:

The post was about some old elementary school pictures that show the year-to-year effect of the Prednisone I took for Crohn’s Disease. In the post, I express gratitude for the support I got from classmates back then. I do mention one kid in the photos who grew up to be a convicted pedophile, but that’s been a matter of public record for many years now.

So I’m curious as to who got offended and why. I make no apologies for the post. Those who find it offensive are free to defriend me on Facebook or block my news feed. No one HAS to read what I write.

But people do get set off for different reasons, and I don’t want to be a trigger for someone else’s pain. Sometimes it can’t be helped, but it’s something I want to avoid as much as possible.

So have a look at the post and tell me what’s abusive or spammy about it:

A Boy’s Life on Prednisone: A Class Photo History

Posted on June 6, 2011

I’ve mentioned before that I had to take a lot of this nasty drug called Prednisone as a kid, and how the side effects were almost as bad as the Crohn’s Disease flare-upsthe drug was meant to snuff out.

Well, my old elementary school friend Myles Lynch posted some class pics on Facebook that show the physical impact. Looking at them brings back memories good and bad.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQPJYnr48yU&w=584&h=463]

Let’s start with first grade, before the disease surfaced. I’m dead-center in the back row, looking like a normal kid:

By the time the second-grade class photo is taken, I’ve been diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease and I’ve spent six weeks in the hospital. The results of the Prednisone on my face are pretty clear. I’m second from left in the back row:

By the time the third-grade pic is taken, I’ve been through my second flare-up and six-week hospital stay. I’m in the back row, two kids to the right of the teacher, Ms. Cole:

I’m not in the fourth-grade class picture, because as the photo is being taken, I’m in the middle of a third six-week hospital stay for another flare-up. The disease usually struck sometime between Halloween and Thanksgiving. This time, it waited until spring.

By fifth grade I’m back in the class photo, and I’ve been off Prednisone for a while. You can see it in my face, back row, far right:

There are a few things worth noting about the other kids in these pictures. First, look to the kid at the far left in the front row of the last image. That’s Mark Hedgecock, one of my best friends during childhood. Last time I checked about 10 months ago, he was a thrice-convicted sex-offender living on the streets of Boston. I have a hard time accepting that he’s a pedophile, because to me that’s one of the worst crimes a person can commit. But he too is an addict who doesn’t want to be that way, so I try hard to look at him in a forgiving way. I’ll let you know if I ever get there.

The other kids have had their own challenges and joys in life. I’ve kept in touch with some of them. But here’s the important thing: Back then, when we were a small, close-knit community, before the puberty-driven bullying of middle school, these kids did all they could to make me feel better. When I was in the hospital they would send hand-made get-well cards. When I’d get out of the hospital, they would give me a warm, cheerful welcome back.

Those acts of kindness are something I will never forget.

The pictures also remind me a lot of what life was like in the hospital. Those hospital wards were like little communities, where the young patients would try to find ways to pass the time. We shared each other’s toys and watched the same TV shows. I always seemed to be the only Crohn’s patient on a floor full of kids with Cystic Fibrosis. Treatment for that disease was nothing like it is today, and many of the friends I made in the hospital died before they got to adulthood.

I lost a lot of blood back then, because I had a colon full of holes. But compared to my lost friends, I got off lucky.

I owe that to God and all the helpers he put in my path.

Whenever I’m having a bad day and I start to get cranky and impatient with people, I try to think back to those days. Doing so makes me remember how blessed I am, and how I should stop wasting time on hard feelings and earn that blessing by spending my life as one of those helpers.

I’ve been walking past Children’s Hospital these days on the way into the neighboring hospital my father has been in since suffering a stroke last week, and the memories come flooding back of the time when I was a frequent resident there. And seeing my father, with his eye patch and slackened mouth, makes me remember the things he used to do to keep me going.

During one stay, I was obsessed with getting a talking View-Master, where you put in these paper disks and look through a view lens at the scenes that blow up larger than life on a screen inside the gadget. The taking variety was all the rage in 1979, and I bellowed about it like the spoiled brat I was. You get very spoiled and miserable to be around when everyone is tending to your every need.

My father got me the talking View-Master, and bought me a new Star Wars action figure each week, followed by a trip to Friendly’s for ice cream on those occasions where I was allowed to have it.

The more emotional variety of affection was something he always struggled with, though in his way, he was doing all he could to show his love.

Amazing, the things that come back to you after looking at a few childhood pictures.

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My Changes, Your Frustration

Recovery over addiction, fear and anxiety has been a miraculous, beautiful thing. I thank God every day. But when a man changes, a whole new set of problems arise.

The changes have been especially challenging for Erin. I’ll let her explain it from her perspective in a future guest post, but I can tell you this much: It’s a confusing, frustrating thing when your spouse acts one way for a bunch of years and then, suddenly or not so suddenly, ceases to be the person you married.

I’d like to think I’m still the guy she married in the most fundamental ways. My heart and most of my passions haven’t really changed. But as the priest who married us said: “You marry the person you think you know, then spend the rest of your life getting to know each other.”

As far as that goes, I’ve been a moving target, tough to nail down.

I hated traveling. Now I like it.

I was terrified of any activities that required leaving the house outside of work hours. Now I’ve filled my time to the brim with involvement in one group or another.

I used to eat everything I could get my hands on. Now my diet is pretty buttoned down.

I used to clam up during arguments. Now I argue back. Only I do it in fits and starts. Inconsistencies in how I argue? That alone must make her wish she had a gun sometimes. Or at least a sturdy, metal ladle.

I used to be a neat freak. Everything had to be just so. Now I leave stuff lying around the house.

I forget to take a shower sometimes. But I’ve always had that habit. Some things never change.

Sounds like a frustrating ball of slime and nails, doesn’t it?

Well, it is. But I’ve put a lot of work into finding the middle speed. Just because I CAN do all the things that used to scare me doesn’t mean I should. I’ve also tried hard to be better at conversation. On that I remain inconsistent to the point of madness.

But despite all that, we love each other. When love is real and you recognize that it takes constant care and feeding to keep growing, you do whatever it takes to stay on top of it. You fail once in awhile anyway, but you get up and try again.

And by the Grace of God, the love endures.

I say all this because I know someone whose husband is working on all the issues I’ve had to work on. She’s probably wondering how the hell she’s going to get through this.

Like I said, that’s a story Erin will have to tell. I only know how I feel and what I’m willing to do.

I also know there can be a lot of happiness between those periods of frustration.

So don’t worry about it too much. The biggest obstacle is the fear of change. Once you put that behind you, anything and everything is possible.

That too can be bad. But it can also be very, very good.