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From youngest child to oldest son: Anatomy of an identity crisis

When a sibling’s death turns the baby of the family into the oldest son, you get an identity crisis filled with anger and confusion.

As part of my treatment for OCD I’ve had to dig deep into my Revere past for clues on how I got this way. Recently, this huge piece of the puzzle presented itself.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:5QJ7GsolBcJP0tQnEZIU6i]

I’ve written at length about my brother Michael, who died of an asthma attack when I was 13. That experience will test any average kid, and I was no exception. The loss infused a deep reservoir of fear and anxiety in me that would bubble over many times over the years.

But something else happened that would make me feel strange and alone for a long time.

I started my life as the youngest of three kids, the proverbial baby of the family. Michael was the oldest, and in the Brenner family much has always been expected of the oldest son.

My father was the middle child of his generation, but he was the only son. My grandfather, who came off a boat from the former Soviet Union with all the typical old-school values, expected the world of my father. As my grandfather descended deep into old age and illness in the mid-1960s, my father became increasingly responsible for the family business.

Growing up, my older brother became the one my father leaned on the most. Michael was encouraged to chart his own course and was studying to be a plumber. But he was expected to help out with the family business and do a lot of the grunt work at home.

I was the baby, and a sick and spoiled one at that. I came along almost three years after my sister Wendi, and by age eight I was in and out of the hospital with dangerous flare ups of Crohn’s Disease. I got a lot of attention but nothing hard was expected of me. I was coddled and I got any toy I wanted.

The result was a lower-than-average maturity level for my age. At age 10 I acted like I was 5 sometimes. I would crawl into bed with my father for snuggles, just like a toddler might do.

During Christmas 1980 — the first after my parents’ divorce — I wanted it to look like Santa had come, even though I knew by that point that he didn’t really exist. I clung hard to the delusion, because my parents played Santa all the way up to their last Christmas as a couple, when I was nine. So on Christmas Eve 1980, I took all the gifts I had already opened and arranged them as if Santa had dropped them in my living room. I even wrote a “To Billy from Santa” note. Christmas morning I got up, went in the living room and expressed all the excitement of a kid who discovers that the jolly fat guy had come overnight.

My maturity level hadn’t changed much by the time I hit 13. I probably regressed even further right after my brother died. But as 1984 dragged on, I was slowly pulled into the role of oldest son.

All the stuff that was expected of my brother became expected of me, and I wasn’t mentally equipped to deal with it. My brother had a lot of street smarts that I lacked.

As I descended into my confusing and angry teen years, I would be sent on deliveries for the family business. I’d get flustered and lose my sense of direction. One time my father sent me to Chelsea for a package. It was 4:30 and the place I was going to was closing at 5. I got there at 5:10 and had to drive back to Saugus without a package. I felt humiliated and ashamed.

As I reached my 20s all that immaturity and feeling of inadequacy hardened into an angry rebellious streak. I started getting drunk and stoned a lot and would hide behind boxes in my father’s warehouse, chain-smoking cigarettes and binge eating while everyone else did the dirty work.

I spent three years hiding in a community college so I wouldn’t have to work. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, though I saw myself a poet and musician.

I try hard to remember the point where I started to finally act like the oldest son and accept responsibility for my life. There’s no single moment I can think of, though I trace the turning point to when Erin and I started dating in 1993.

I stayed selfish for many years after that, but I had at least found my career choice and work ethic. My work ethic would become excessive like a lot of other things in my life, but the feelings of inadequacy would linger.

Every time I got a raise or promotion, I’d call my father, eager to show him how I was moving up in the world and becoming the oldest son he always wanted.

He would ask how much the raise was and I’d tell him.

“That’s it?” he would ask.

Never, ever good enough, I thought bitterly.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come around to see and respect his point of view. Becoming a parent probably pushed me hard in that direction. I realized along the way that Dad was doing his best to teach me how to be a man and fly on my own.

He wanted me to understand the value of a dollar and a hard day’s work. He wanted me to understand what it was like to care about things other than myself.

Slowly but surely, I figured it out. Thanks, Dad.

Still, to this day, I still need to work at it.

All the confusion and anger over going from the baby to the oldest son has settled into gratitude. I have an amazing life and the inner piece that has always escaped me. I wish my brother was still here to corrupt his nephews, but in a sick sort of way, maybe his exit from the stage was required in order for me to have a chance.

That too might be delusional thinking, and make no mistake: I’d still give up a large percentage of my personal growth to have him around today.

But as this whole experience demonstrates, it’s not about me. Today I’m the oldest son and I think I’ve finally gotten the hang of it.

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A Personality Defect We All Share

When you hear about people with conflicting personalities, the image of an insane asylum patient comes to mind. If that were indeed the accurate picture, we would all be committed.

Mood music:

The truth is that we all have more than one personality. We can be one person in one group setting, then go to another group setting and become somebody else.

I don’t think that’s such a bad thing, either.

This all came up a couple weeks ago as I had coffee with my friend Audrey Clark, a Marblehead, Mass. native and singer-guitarist for The 360s. We were talking about how we can be at ease and talkative in a one-on-one setting or in a small group, then go off to another group setting — in this case, a crowded rock club where the lighting is dim or nonexistent and people don’t look like they do on Facebook.

For me the multiple personalities are something I treasure.

I consider my multiple personalities a strength, with a bunch of recovery tools rolled up into one happy mess.

On one side of my brain is the metal head. The guy who used to sing in a band and who to this day listens to all the hard-edged music he grew up on.

There’s the history nerd who has his work stations at work and home festooned with busts of historic figures, old news clippings and framed copies of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and Gettysburg Address and a variety of nautical artifacts. The guy who put his family in the station wagon last year and drove to Washington D.C.for a private tour of the White House West Wing (a friend works there).

There’s the security scribe who writes about the world of hackers, security vendors and government cybersecurity officials for CSOonline and CSO Magazine. On this one I actually have multiple personalities within multiple personalities.

Many of my friends in the security industry are a colorful mix of characters. Some are the hacking types who dress like rock stars and share my musical tastes. Others wear a suit and tie every day and work for multi-billion-dollar corporations and government agencies, and they often share my love for history. I float easily between both camps.

Then there’s the Catholic.

Faith is connected to everything I do. I live for God — or try to — and in all my other pursuits that’s what drives me. I’m active in my church community, getting up and doing readings at Mass and helping out with programs like RCIA. My personality is much different from that of my fellow parishioners, but we get on well, bound by a love for our families, children and God.

Finally and most importantly — I actually consider this central to my Faith journey — there’s the family man, the one who adores his wife and children and tries hard to make decisions that put them before work. I don’t always pull it off, but in the end, they are THE MOST IMPORTANT forces in my life. Well, God is, but my Faith does compel me to put family first. It’s complicated, I know, but I’m sure most of you understand.

All these things make for a challenging life. But I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Ever since I lifted the chains of depression, OCD, fear-anxiety and addiction off of me, I’ve loved all the jagged pieces of my life all the more.

So if you have multiple personalities, don’t hide them. Don’t run from them. Embrace them.

As long as those personalities aren’t dominated by the darker forces of human nature.

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A Clean Map to a Helpful OCD Diagnosis

I found a great article on Newsmax.com that describes OCD perfectly. It also helps the reader figure out what to do with a diagnosis. A lot of it is what I’ve already written about, but it’s less personalized. In this case, that’s good.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/vM2KI0Fs-fI

What follows are excerpts and how I relate…

OCD symptoms are usually associated with a condition of debilitating and disabling anxiety. It’s not easy to diagnose OCD and determine what causes OCD, as this condition does not have many clear-cut signs and symptoms.

They got that right. My condition used to be rooted in debilitating anxiety. Just this morning I wrote about how my anxiety would disable me in times of global economic uncertainty. But many times my trouble looks like other things. There are days when I develop a dense tunnel vision and can’t see the world around me because I’m so focused on one obsessive thought. That is OCD, but it is also a characteristic of ADHD. I also get scattered and lose my ability to focus. That’s an ADHD-like trait, too.

Obsessions and tell-tale OCD symptoms alone characterize this condition and help doctors diagnose it. OCD in children is characterized by an unexplained fear of germs and contamination, and children tend to wash their hands repeatedly.

In adults, OCD manifests in the form of repetitive and unwanted thoughts, and the obsession eventually becomes a thought pattern that is very tough to get rid of. These thoughts can be in the form of words or images and cause anxiety as well as distress. 

The question “Do I have OCD?” can be easily answered if you think you are someone who is in the habit of thinking excessively about one thing all the time. You neither have any power nor any control to neutralize these images and thoughts. 

OCD symptoms include uncontrolled checking of things, excessively monitoring things, repeating the same words silently, excessive cleanliness, an innate fear of diseases, injury, and illness, and repetitive, continuous body movements.

I like the descriptions, because I know all too well that they are accurate. So let’s say you have these symptoms. Now what?

My experience is that you have to start with therapy. Getting your memory shaken until all the skeletons fall out is a vital first step. You have to learn how you got this way and what the triggers are. Along the way, you’ll hopefully get an accurate diagnosis. But as stated above, that’s not always easy.

My diagnosis was slow in coming, though I always assumed I had what I had. When I first started getting help in 2004, that first therapist resisted giving me a diagnosis. For one thing, it was still way to early to pin an acronym on my demons.The therapist also hated diagnosing people because she felt a diagnosis was just a label that never tells the entire story.

My third therapist finally gave me a diagnosis in the spring of 2006.

I sat there in her office, staring at the floor as I told her about the old therapist’s dislike of labels.

“Well, do you have obsessive thoughts all the time?” she asked.

“Yup,” I said.

“Does it make you do compulsive things?” she asked.

“Yup,” I said. “I binge eat all the time even though I know it’ll eventually kill me. I just can’t stop.”

“Does it cause disorder in your life?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” I said. “Every day is an exhausting hell.”

“Well, then we may as well call it what it is,” she said.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

Was I misdiagnosed?

It really doesn’t matter. I had a problem that was destroying me from the inside out. Putting a label on it helped me because instead of smoke and shadows, I finally had a way to see my struggle in a more concrete fashion. It had finally taken a form. I could see it, therefore I could punch it. Punch it I did, repeatedly.

It always gets back up and I have to keep throwing punches. But it’s better than trying to swing at shadows.

It’s a tricky thing, because in plenty of cases people do get misdiagnosed and the results are damaging. It can lead to prescriptions that don’t get at the root problem, making you worse.

In my case, the diagnosis was accurate. The treatment turned out to be right on, at least.

I think it was more of a relief than cause for a deeper spiral into depression. Because I had something to call it, I could move on to the next phase of recovery.

I still had many bad days after that. Some of my worst days, in fact. It would still be another two years before I could bring my addictions to heel.

The anxiety attacks didn’t cease until I started taking Prozac in early 2007.

But slowly, I got better.

It would be stupid for me to tell you not to freak and backslide after getting a diagnosis. It can be a frightening thing.

The biggest fear is that everyone will define you if you go public. That didn’t happen to me. At work, I’m judged on how I do my job, not on my disease. Of course, the OCD sometimes fuels some of my best work, which makes that less of a problem. 

To me, the lesson is to not let a diagnosis be the excuse to live a less than worthwhile life and give in to your darker impulses.

Like anything else in life, you gotta make the best of it.

Obviously, that’s easier said than done.

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U.S. Loses, AAA Credit Rating. Mental Health Tested Next

For a lot of people with mental illness, world events can have a crushing effect on sanity. Especially when those events can have a direct effect on the personal finances.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/t2zqYC8xKwM

For me and my OCD, it used to be that way all the time. The recent financial crises, including the latest news about the U.S. losing its AAA credit rating, would have sent me into a sharp tailspin a few years ago. I would have been too numb to see straight or function. It sounds ridiculous, but that’s what the disease does to you.

When you have an out-of-control case of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), you latch onto all the things you can’t control and worry about them nonstop. Nothing feeds that devil like the cable news networks, especially when a story as grave as the debt is on the screen nonstop.

I’ve written before about the anxiety and fear I used to have over current events. I would think about all the things going on in the world over and over again, until it left me physically ill. I personally wanted to set everything right and control the shape of events, which of course is delusional, dangerous thinking.

So here I am, the morning after this:

(From The Washington Post) Standard & Poor’s announced Friday night that it has downgraded the U.S. credit rating for the first time, dealing a symbolic blow to the world’s economic superpower in what was a sharply worded critique of the American political system. Lowering the nation’s rating to one notch below AAA, the credit rating company said “political brinkmanship” in the debate over the debt had made the U.S. government’s ability to manage its finances “less stable, less effective and less predictable.” It said the bipartisan agreement reached this week to find at least $2.1 trillion in budget savings “fell short” of what was necessary to tame the nation’s debt over time and predicted that leaders would not be likely to achieve more savings in the future.

I’m shaking my head and I think I’ve lost all faith in the political establishment.

But I’m not depressed. Not even close.

I have my family, my ability to write and, most importantly, my faith. Jesus has my back, and that makes this economic stuff look a lot smaller.

But that’s where I am at. A lot of people still in the grip of mental illness will be hit hard by this latest piece of bad news. They will watch the news in fear and walk around in a stupor, just like I used to do.

I feel for them. But I also know they can get better, because I did.

Who knows, maybe something good will come of all this.

I reached a point where the fear and anxiety got so bad that I knew I had to confront it or go into a mental institution. There were catalysts: In 2005-06, fears of a bird flu pandemic and other potential calamities brought me so low that I finally started to contemplate the need for medication.

I went for it, and it helped dramatically.

If the loss of a AAA credit rating brings a few people to that point and they start getting the help they need, then in a very strange way, this latest blow to the U.S. economy will be a blessing in disguise.

That may sound ridiculous. But I guess you can only understand after being down the road I’ve traveled.

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When Playing It Safe Makes Things Worse

I had coffee with a friend from the security industry yesterday. I thought I was coming to offer feedback on something having to do with the profession. Then he told me about a mental-emotional problem.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:4DA95pyBe6QORPGvTEuMWQ]

He told me he had a bunch of medical tests and they discovered that a small corner of his brain doesn’t work as well as it should. The result is that his short-term memory frequently takes a dive.

There are far worse problems to have. But his main concern is that it’s keeping his career from going where he wants it to.

We went back and forth about whether he should make his condition public or whether he should pursue other medical options.

As I sipped my iced Starbucks it became clear that something else was going on.

His biggest problem, I discovered and told him, is that he’s held back by fear — fear of what might happen if his short-term memory acted up in the midst of a job he really wanted to be doing.

He admitted that his recent career moves have involved a lot of playing it safe, doing things where there’s the least opportunity for failure at the hands of his mental tick.

I’ve been down this road before. And you know what? Playing it safe never helps. In fact, it just makes things worse.

Several years ago, when it became clear to me that my brain didn’t work normally, fear engulfed me until my self esteem was reduced to an ash pile. I held back in my work as night editor of The Eagle-Tribune. I tried playing it safe, never going toe to toe during disagreements with other editors.

Then I decided that the solution was to get out of there and find something less stressful to do. I opted to go back to straight reporting and went to TechTarget. Fortunately, the job turned out to be far more challenging than I expected. I realized this right at the time I decided to tackle my mental illness head on.

Luckily, my boss was a nurturing soul who was willing to let me go for the throat and get better. Miraculously, my work didn’t suffer. In the years to come, in fact, my workmanship would get better.

Now I do a lot of stuff in my job that’s out of my comfort zone. I give talks in front of groups of people. I get on airplanes. I venture an opinion on topics that I know will draw heavy disagreement. I give my boss a hard time when I don’t agree about something.

A few years ago, the very idea of doing those things would have scared me into an emotional breakdown.

I’ve screwed up along the way. But I’m still here.

I do my job well enough, often enough. And the more I succeed, the more confident I get.

Had I played it safe because of the things that might have gone wrong because of my OCD and anxiety, I wouldn’t be doing what I love today.

It’s not worth worrying about the mistakes you might make. You WILL make mistakes. And most of the time, you’ll be the only one to notice.

When my kids worry about making mistakes, I play them some Def Leppard and remind them that a one-armed drummer makes mistakes, but that all you can hear is him driving the heartbeat of the song despite a missing limb.

He could have retired from music and that would have made his life worse.

But he took a chance and designed a drum kit that helped him get past his problem.

Call me overly idealistic. Tell me I’m blowing sunshine up your collective asses.

It’s what I believe. Because I’ve been down this road.

My life today is far from perfect. It can get messy at times.

But it beats the hell out of playing it safe.

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BlackHat, Defcon, BSides: Symptoms Of Withdrawl

Funny thing about how my brain works: I’m working from home, loving that Erin and the kids are right here with me. I’m getting a ton of work done, and the weather is perfect. But there’s a pull in the back of my brain, and it’s coming from Las Vegas.

Mood music (Despite my recent post about Vince Neil, I do like his cover of this Aerosmith classic):

http://youtu.be/_HHLWvfAPMA

I’ve mentioned before how I love going to security conferences. I like the feeling I get when I’m able to do a lot of writing about the proceedings. I like getting out of my familiar environment for a few days. I like seeing people face to face. This is all pretty normal. But I used to fear these events.

Because I lost the fear, I’ve come to like the travel to the point of greediness.

I did a lot of travel earlier in the year and it blew up in my face. More recently, I’ve been trying to discipline myself.

But the first week in August can be hell for anyone who has to stay home from Black Hat, Defcon and BSidesLV. If you use Twitter, there’s no escape. Everyone is tweeting nonstop about all the fun they’re having. I don’t fault them for this. They’re doing nothing wrong, and I’m glad they’re having a good time.

But I feel so disconnected and adrift. That’s my problem, of course. I have to work on it.

I don’t regret skipping Vegas. Not for a second. I need to find the middle speed between trying to do all the stuff I used to fear and keeping my feet where they belong, which is right here. Also, these events cut a little too close to my wedding anniversary, and I don’t want to miss that time with Erin. I’ve traveled during both kids’ birthdays and that was bad enough.

As you can see, I still have a lot of work to do.

And, truth is, this has been a great week. My days in the office have been productive and my work-at-home days have been the perfect mix between work and family. Kids grow up so fast. If I’m away too much, I’ll get home one of these days to find that they grew up and moved out. I am exactly where I belong at this moment in time.

But that little part of my brain is still twisted in a knot, jabbing at the rest of me and whispering in my ear about all the action I’m missing.

I’m embarrassed to admit it. But there it is.

I’ve been in this head space before. The last Vegas trip I made was in 2009, and in 2008 I missed the RSA conference in San Francisco. I felt twinges of regret, but life at home proceeded apace, and I quickly got over it.

This is simply how it is for someone with OCD. You usually obsess over all the things you can’t control. And sometimes, like this week, you obsess over the things you can control instead of simply being happy to be able to have that level of control.

That defines my struggle pretty well.

But it could be much worse. I could have a life at home that sucks so bad that I hit the road and stay there just to escape.

Instead, I am blessed with the home life I missed out on as a kid.

Despite that pull in the brain, I’m going to go savor what I have.

To all my friends in Vegas, keep the tweets coming. As rough as they can be on my fragile mind, I still like to see what’s going on from afar.

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Lesson Of The Debt Debate: We’re All Selfish Bastards

Those of us with addictive personalities are selfish. You could say we’re the most self-centered people on the planet. It’s ALL about us. But I’m starting to realize we’re not the only ones who fail to consider the greater good.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/jyb8pMsyPFw

I got to thinking about this stuff after reading the latest post in the “For Attribution” blog written by my friends Meredith Warren and Fred Van Magness. The post was about the vote to raise the debt ceiling, but what caught my attention most was this observation:

Wanting to watch the debt ceiling vote live last night without too much commentary from the talking heads, we tuned in to C-SPAN’s streaming online video about 10 minutes before votes were cast.

If you are familiar with C-SPAN’s coverage, you know that they fill time before major votes and press conferences taking calls from average voters from around the country.

These days, there are three different lines available – Democrat, Republican and Independent.

Sadly, based on what we heard, C-SPAN really only needed one line – Entitled.

A majority of callers – from all three lines – stated that their main concern about the debt ceiling debacle was that they wanted to make sure they received their “check,” whether it was Social Security or disability or something else. Very few called to say they were concerned about our country as a whole, or the future generations who would be paying the bill for those checks and all of the other debt that is continuing to grow by the second. 

What bothers us – and what the debt ceiling debate has laid bare to – is the way so many in America feel they are “entitled” to be taken care of by someone else. For some, it’s their government check. For others, it’s a re-election unmarred by a second debt ceiling debate (we’re looking at you, President Obama) and a way to go on summer vacation without having a thorny issue hanging over their heads.

For the most part, I agree with this. But it’s important to look at how this happened. The answers have more to do with human nature than political ideology.

I have a habit of comparing my grandparents’ generation to ours in this case. Living through the Great Depression and WW II had an impact. During the war, EVERYONE was called on to make sacrifices.

Fast-forward to the present. In the last decade we’ve fought two major wars, but our leaders have not asked for sacrifices at home. We’ve been encouraged to be selfish — spending money and enjoying our creature comforts. In this atmosphere, it’s hard to think past our own selfish interests.

Am I oversimplifying things? Probably. People like me would be selfish regardless of the sacrifices society may or may not make as a whole.

That selfishness usually leads us to do stupid things that make us feel shame. In the midst of that shame, we lie. That sort of behavior can overwhelm us, no matter how much we want to be better people.

When we’re at our worst, politics have nothing to to with it.

In my recovery from mental illness and addiction, I’ve grown somewhat more apathetic about government and politics. Maybe apathy is the wrong word, because I still pay close attention to the debates and the platforms, and I always vote. To prove how conflicted my mind can be, I vote for Democrats and Republicans every time. I guess that makes me an Independent.

But I’ve learned that the best change we can have is the change within ourselves. A friend I used to work with had a screensaver that said “Be the change.” I always loved that saying. We have little control over what happens in Washington. We vote for change all the time, then, when the new guys come in, we see all the same bullshit we got sick of when the old guys were in charge.

Look at the last two elections. We voted for change in 2008. Then our selfish sides kicked in and we voted for the other guys in 2010 because that change wasn’t coming fast enough. What we got was this messy debate about the debt and a deal to raise the debt ceiling that will prove fruitless. Why? Because it’s like the rest of the legislation you get in a selfish society: No one is asked to make sacrifices to bring in the revenue needed to pay down the debt. That’s our fault, because we tell our leaders to fix the problems, but to keep the filthy sausage making off our front lawn.

Because we’re selfish bastards. All of us.

And yet I still have hope. I see people changing themselves all the time. Addicts clean up. People with mental illness get help. Not everyone, of course. But the changes I’ve witnessed in people are golden.

When you decide to change yourself, something wonderful happens: You meet other people who have gone from shattered lives to rebirth.

And when you go through that kind of change, you become a lot more helpful to society.

Still selfish? Perhaps. But we try to break the cycle through more acts of selflessness, like community service.

Inch by inch, we become a little less selfish. And when you’re in a room full of people like us, you’ll find Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives, Socialists and those who would be perfectly fine with no government at all.

But we don’t really talk about that stuff. Because we’ve found that it doesn’t really matter when we’re spending so much time trying to make ourselves a little better than we were.

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My Name Is Bill. I’m Addicted To Stuff

Given all I’ve written about my recovery from addictive behavior, you’re probably wondering why I’ve dragged you back into this dark room. The simple answer is that my fight is far from over.

Mood music:

This post is the opening salvo of what will be a weekly series on the 12 Steps of Recovery and how they apply to me.

Since the start of the year I’ve been focusing more intently on the AA Big Book and how all the steps work. I’ve mentioned the steps many times here, but I’ve only touched the surface. As part of my own work on recovery, I need to go deeper. Much deeper.

There’s still so much misunderstanding of what addictive behavior is, what defines out-of-control behavior vs. simply enjoying something a little too much. I realized how much work was left on this score when an acquaintance wrote me the following message:

First, he questioned the short “about” blurb you see at the end of each post:

“Welcome to THE OCD DIARIES, the blog that kicks fear, anxiety, depression and addiction in the teeth. It’s written by Bill Brenner, a man who went through hell, saw the light and lived to tell about it.”

To that, he said:

With anxiety and depression I certainly understand, but when I think serious addictions I was thinking some sort of drug abuse – in fact heroin is what popped into my head. Alcohol also a possibility… but binge eating? Come on man. Everyone has a hard time knowing when to say when to junk food, Shit, I gotta throw it in the trash sometimes so I don’t eat it all.

The key line in that statement is that “Everyone has a hard time knowing when to say when.” Very true.

Everyone struggles with something.

Everyone struggles with relationships. Everyone looks for comfort in certain behaviors: Eating, drinking, smoking, sex, spending, Web surfing, music, exercise, mountain climbing, gum-chewing, TV.

Just about everyone struggles with the difference between having enough of the items I just listed and not knowing when it’s enough. People eat too much all the time and casually make note of it. People get drunk and the headache they wake up with the next morning tells them they went too far.

There’s a tight parallel when it comes to mental illness, the main focus of this blog. Everyone struggles with times of depression, anxiety, mental fatigue, personality conflicts. Those very things are what usually drives a person to addictive behavior. The mental struggles eat a hole in your soul and you spend much of your time trying to fill it with stuff.

It’s all part of being human. That’s why the readership of this blog keeps growing. Everyone struggles and relates to the cause and effect.

But when does addictive behavior become the stuff of evil — a cancer that takes you over body and soul until satisfying the itch becomes the priority over all else?

That’s where we try to separate the so-called normal people from the crazies. I say try because one person’s crazy is another person’s normal.

We all think we know the difference between normal and crazy. But most of the time, we don’t know shit.

I can only tell you where my sense of normal crossed over into insanity. I’ve told you in a million different ways in this blog already.

To me, the key to recovery is partly about identifying when a behavior makes life unmanageable. Not the typical idea of unmanageable, where a person might always be scattered, nervous, hyper or lazy, thus becoming difficult to be around.

No, I’m talking unmanageable in the sense that your life is like a car speeding out of control, where one tire is flat, the engine has run out of oil and the back bumper is hanging off and causing sparks as it drags on the ground. The vehicle is ready to fall apart, and yet it keeps going faster and faster.

The addictive behavior that does that to your life is the insidious devil whose head must be ripped off if you’re going to make it.

For me, clinical OCD has always been a driver of my addictive behavior. I had to bring the OCD to heel before I could even begin to deal with the addictions. The 12 Steps of Recovery are key to my ability to manage both.

I’ve broken my addictive behavior into categories that have more to do with what makes me insane than what is simply considered good or bad for you.

I love cigar smoke. Smoking is bad for you.

I love coffee. Some say that’s bad for you, though I don’t really believe it.

I love spending money on things. Who doesn’t? But spending too much can ruin you and those you love.

I love music. Some days I’d rather sit around listening to rock and roll than doing any number of other things I should be doing.

All of that can be considered addictive behavior. But binge eating, followed closely by alcohol and third by the prescription pills I used to take for back pain — those are the things I craved so badly that at one point I was willing to let everything else in life go to hell.

When you start neglecting the people and things you love most so you can scratch the itch, you got a real problem.

People blind themselves to the danger by thinking about addiction as simply drinking too much or shooting heroin. But you can get an out-of-control, soul-eating addiction to just about anything.

That’s the thing people fail to grasp, and I’ve tried using this blog to educate them.

But without a painfully deep dive into the steps, nobody will learn what they need to learn. And so I’m going in.

The posts in this weekly series will focus on one step at a time and how each one has come into play in my long struggle to fight off the demons. Some steps I’ll be able to tackle in single posts. Other steps will take two or three posts. This is a big-ass onion, and I’m not even close to peeling back all the layers.

Some days I don’t know where to begin.

But for this series I know where I’m going now. I started here, and there’s no turning back.

–Bill

evil_video_game_addiction

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Caught On Camera: The Aging Process

Remember that post I wrote about the time I tried to be Jim Morrison? Well…

Mood music:

My stepmom found some photos of the younger me during a recent cleaning spree. Here I am, with long hair and very large glasses, circa 1992:

That hair was halfway down my back before I decided to chop it a year later. Now, nearly 20 years later, the hair is ON my back. I still have pretty big glasses, though.

That’s not the only thing that hasn’t changed, though. Review the next set of before-after pictures and see if you can spot the common elements between 1992 and 2011:

Those who find the common element will win… absolutely nothing.

By the way, that younger Bill Brenner may look better than I do, but I wouldn’t change a thing. I may be uglier, but I’m a lot happier than I was when those long-haired photos were taken.

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13 Years Married To The Love Of My Life

Erin and I have been married for 13 years. We’ve been together for 18. I don’t know where the time goes, but as I sit here typing this I’m the luckiest — and most grateful — guy on the planet.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/1CIcWrCAl_c

We celebrated Saturday and my mood spectrum that day symbolizes what she’s had to put up with quite accurately.

I was in a good enough mood in the morning and by afternoon I was in a funk. My planning for the day was scattered at best and I was overly defensive about what seemed like everything. It was the result of simply being tired, but my head has been in this space before.

We went to the Lowell Folk Festival and I was in a daze as we walked around. As she noted, I wasn’t present. I can’t remember what was in my head at the time but it had something to do with some selfish bullshit about what I wanted to do earlier in the day.

By dinner the mood started to brighten and at some point in the restaurant, I became present again. From there, we had a late night and it was a wonderful time.

That’s what happens when you’re able to make the bullshit in your head stop. Everything falls into place.

With all the years with OCD, my mood swings have been a constant presence, the dog that follows be everywhere, refusing to scram.

Fortunately, with a lot of treatment and help from God and the love of my life, the moods swing upward more than downward these days.

I owe that largely to Erin’s patience.

She could have thrown in the towel a long time ago and I wouldn’t have blamed her.

But she stayed and helped me, and I’m a better man for it.

The person she is makes me want to be better still.

No one can ever tell what the future holds, and that’s why it’s best to live life one day at a time. All I know right now is that I am blessed. Every day I thank God for the woman he sent into my life.

I hope she feels the same.

Happy Anniversary, My Love.