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Screwing Your Kids In The Divorce, Part 3

This is one of those things that is technically none of my business. But when I see a beautiful little girl suffering the consequences of someone else’s stupidity, it’s hard to stand there and say nothing.

Mood music:

There’s a guy I know who is staring divorce in the face. This is a message for him.

When a marriage falls apart it’s never a one-way street. Husband and wife are both guilty of falling short in this union. But it happens. We’re all human.

Here’s the problem: When divorce is imminent, both parties tend to find ways to hurt each other, even when they don’t mean to. It’s simple, really: You hurt like hell because it didn’t work out. It’s easy to focus on your future ex’s role in the failure but hard to look at where you fell short.

And so, seething with anger and eager to land a few crushers, you do little spiteful things to get back at her.

Exhibit A: You both have a little girl and need to share custody. Who gets her three days a week? Who gets her for four? What works best for each work schedule?

You’re not working, so you can have her any time you want. So you pick your days and leave your ex with the days you know she has to work.

This forces your ex to find daycare for your daughter and it ensures mother and daughter will hardly get to see each other on what is supposed to be their time together.

Now, in the best of circumstances people work and family time often suffers due to crazy schedules. That’s life. But when you can prevent such a situation from happening, why wouldn’t you?

Because you’re a wounded animal, and you want to maul the person you feel put you there.

Your own faults are too big to face right now. In fact, you probably can’t even see them. Your faults are like the sky — so vast it’s hard to focus on every bird or plane that crosses it.

So fuck her, you say. Let her deal with it.

Here’s the problem: You’re not just hurting your ex. You’re hurting your daughter.

I’ve seen it for myself. She bounces from one relative’s house to the next. She gets all the love a little girl can get, but she misses her mom. And because her mom has to drop her and run, she’s upset and confused a lot.

I remember when my parents divorced 31 years ago. I was 10 years old — in a much better position to process things than your little girl is now. And I was still confused and angry when they shipped me off to summer camp. I felt unwanted, lonely and isolated. The scars burn me to this day. Then the custody battles intensified and I felt like a piece of paper tugged at from both sides. Grab at something fragile that way and you tear it down the middle.

And my parents’ intentions were good — they wanted to shield me from the court proceedings and ugliness that goes with it.

Your intentions are crap. You just want to stick it to your ex.

You love your daughter and want to protect her. I’ve seen that. Your feelings as a Dad are not in question.

But you’re hurting her anyway. She’s collateral damage in your little dance with stupidity.

Nobody can make you do things differently. It comes down to the future you want for your daughter and whether you want peaceful co-existence with your ex in the years to come.

People can help you with a lot of things, but nobody can make your decisions for you.

So here’s a little advice from someone who was burned by divorce as a kid and just spent the last few years facing down a bunch of personal demons:

–First of all, start dealing with your issues. You have serious depression going on. I’ve lived with depression for much of my adult life and I know it when I see it. Find a good therapist who can help bring it out of you.

–Try harder to find a job. Sitting on your brains all day is fueling your depression. You have talent. I’ve seen it. You can never feel whole if your abilities are stifled. Besides, as a dad you have financial responsibilities. That includes helping to pay for repairs around the house. You may not live there anymore, but your daughter does. Refusing to help pay for things because you were kicked out hurts your little girl. That is unacceptable.

–As you approach future divorce proceedings, think about what’s best for your daughter — not about what’s worse for your ex.

You didn’t help bring a kid into the world to kick her around and leave her adrift. That’s certainly not what you want, is it?

I’m also sure you want her to love you the way you love her. Trust me: If you don’t stop this bullshit, she will learn to hate you.

She’s a smart little firecracker and she catches on quick.

Once she sees your role in all of this, she will hurt you back. Trust me: I’ve been down this road. The names, faces, finances and geography were different, but the hurt and the effect it had on me as an adult is the same.

Don’t let it happen.

Sincerely,

Bill

OCD Diaries

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Medical Marijuana For OCD Treatment: Not For Me

I just read an interesting blog post on how medical marijuana could be used to treat OCD. There are medicinal helpers for this disease, but pot would never work for me.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/pjloMejBQEU

Here’s an excerpt of the article, from the official website of hemp legalization advocate Jack Herer (originally published on the All Voices site):

OCD is a treatable disease. With adequate therapy and correct counseling by experienced psychiatrist and physicians, the intensity of the disease can be decreased in little time. Effective treatments for obsessive-compulsive disorder are now easily available, and fresh researches are yielding new and improved therapies that can help people with OCD and other anxiety disorders lead productive, fulfilling lives.

Some doctors even say that Medical Marijuana (Cannabis) can also help in eliminating the disease. Dr. Breen of Southern California insisted that he has been successful in treating two patients with OCD via medical Marijuana. He shared, “Today I had two patients who have been successfully treating their symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder with medical marijuana. One was a 46-year-old man whose symptoms are primarily having ‘to check things all the time.’ He explained having to walk back to his car all the time to check his door locks etc. The second was an 18-year-old male who had the compulsion to try and touch the ceiling in a room. In both cases their symptoms were disruptive to their daily lives.

Let me be clear: I personally have nothing against pot use. I’ve seen alcoholics do far more damage to themselves and others than those who smoke marijuana. I’m also dumbfounded that we don’t use hemp a lot more often as an alternative fuel source and other things, like paper. Keeping pot illegal does nothing to curb drug use. It’s as useless as Prohibition was in the 1920s.

It may even be helpful to those suffering with OCD.

But it is not for me.

The reason is simple: I have an addictive personality. I can get addicted to just about anything with destructive results. My main problem is with flour and sugar. Alcohol is a close second.

I smoked plenty of pot in my late teens and early 20s and I know how I react to it: I binge on any kind of food available to me until I’m ready to explode. Then I pass out and, when I come to, forget what I was doing. I must have liked that enough to keep doing it for a time. But then I kept binge eating long after I stopped enjoying the feeling I got — if I ever did at all.

I also bristle at the suggestion that a drug can “eliminate” the disorder. You never completely get rid of it. You just learn to manage it in a way where it no longer makes your life unmanageable.

But if a little marijuana helps someone else get there, who am I to judge?

OCD Diaries

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Looking For The Bright Side

My attitude sucks this morning. I explain some of the reason in my last post, but there are a variety of factors:

Mood music:

1. Despite my best efforts to be the family man I’m supposed to be, I always find myself coming up short.

2. The weather has been a gray, depressing soup since I got back from California, where the weather was perfect. This makes for a hard re-entry.

3. I seem to have no control over my days lately. This would make anyone cranky.

This too shall pass, like all the bad moods that came before. For now, my challenge is to keep it all together and not give in to self pity. I’m going to lean on the 12 Steps hard today. I have no choice.

Writing this is part of that. By writing about my shitty mood, I’m wringing the venom from my soul, and that will serve me well as the day goes on.

I have another tool I’m going to use to re-start the day and send it in the right direction. I’m going to write a little gratitude list.

This morning, I’m grateful for the following:

–My family still puts up with me

–I have some great friends who help me along

–I remain sober and abstinent.

–I’m done traveling for a bit, so I can be back in my routine.

–My father seems to be slowly getting better nearly a month after his stroke.

–The sun is finally breaking through the clouds. I hope it stays that way.

–Church is in a couple hours. Time with God will re-set my attitude. or so I hope.

Seize the day, people — no matter how imperfect the day may be.

OCD Diaries

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Me, Dad And The Kill Switch

My father was passed out cold during my visit to the rehab center yesterday, and I left feeling depressed. I hadn’t seen him in a week because I had a business trip to California, and I kept hearing about how much better he was. I wanted to see for myself.

Mood music:

But he slept the whole time. That’s probably for the best. The more sleep he gets, the better.

But the self-absorbed side of me was feeling cheated as my gaze alternated between him and the floor for more than an hour.

Sleep has never been a problem for Dad, and I’ve inherited that trait. Like Dad, I can fall asleep at the drop of a hat. I’m particularly susceptible to sleep during a wave of depression or anxiety. My brain has a kill switch that goes off in times of maximum stress.

I’ve learned to disable the kill switch in recent years, because I’ve learned it’s better to face your problems with both eyes open.

But I know that to a certain extent, Dad’s deep sleep is because he’s depressed. Who wouldn’t be after a stroke and nearly a month in the hospital?

I’m told Dad has always gone through depressed periods, and it’s always been somewhat surprising to me. He’s always been able to appear in complete command around us kids. Even after my brother died, he seemed to be in control of his emotions, though I did see him cry once during that period. I’m sure he cried more than that. But I almost always saw Dad in control.

Looking back, two things come to mind:

–That he could be in control as two of his three kids suffered sometimes debilitating illness (Michael’s asthma, my Crohn’s Disease) is amazing to me. After Michael died and I got sick a few more times, he got to deal with another child in crisis: My sister, who has gone a few thousand rounds against depression herself.

–His sleeping patterns have probably been driven at various points by his own depression. Call it his own kill switch.

Before my parents divorced in 1980, my mother regularly went out with friends in the evenings while Dad lay in bed, watching TV.

He’d fall asleep instantly. I always chalked it up to exhaustion, given his relentless work schedule. But looking back, maybe there was some depression in there and the kill switch was taking over.

I used to spend those nights watching all the bad TV the 1970s had to offer. Sometimes, I’d get into trouble, especially the kind that involved matches and plastic.

Recently, I had a conversation with Dad where he acknowledged that his orderly exterior often masked huge emotional difficulties when I was young.

That still floors me.

At the same time, it makes perfect sense.

Life is unfair. We have to be able to carry on in the face of adversity.

The kill switch was one of the coping tools in my father’s arsenal.

It’s a tool he passed down to me.

Like father, like son.

OCD Diaries

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‘It Comes Alive And I Die A Little More’

There’s a Metallica song called “The Unnamed Feeling” that nails an important truth about OCD and anxiety. We have our triggers, but many times we can’t see or describe what’s pulling us apart.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:4RCJ2xbTfJalOq7RtTsOPv]

I mentioned this a little bit in a post I wrote earlier about A&E’s “Obsession” series:

Things eat at you in a more gradual, quieter fashion. By the time the hand washing and contorted expressions begin, the sufferer has been boiling in obsessive thinking for hours. To me, that’s the worst part — when you’re alone, trapped in a spinning mind. It’s a lonely, alien feeling. You feel like the last man left standing after a nuclear explosion. Nothing is left. Now what the fuck do you do?

By the time the stereotypical behavior comes out, there’s almost a relief because you’ve reached the beginning of the end of an attack.

To say it’s a faceless, shapeless monster that comes alive is fairly accurate. I was chatting a fellow OCD sufferer on Facebook recently and this came up. She found this blog through the Facebook page I set up for it, and she pinged me to share some of her own unique quirks.

She mentioned the usual things like repetitive actions. But then she nailed what for her is the most hurtful part:

“I would rather have the physical manifestations of ocd, (hand washing, checking, germ phobia) rather than the exhausting-beating myself up mentally about something. Even though the physical stuff can be very frustrating, painful, and exhausting; it is not nearly as painful and damaging as dwelling on things.”

Dwelling on things.

That’s where it starts.

Life can be flowing along peacefully and then it comes out of nowhere and stabs you right between the eyes: A stray thought about someone or something. You think of an appointment in the calendar or a loved one taking a plane ride. That’s where it starts: Just a random picture.

You begin to focus a little more on the image, and the imagination starts to run wild.

Location plays a big part in this. The random images start to spin into a damaging funnel cloud when I’m in closed up spaces: An elevator, a traffic jam, a meeting.

Those places make my mind wander until it finds its target.

From there a small concern becomes a sickening worry until you can no longer contain yourself.

That’s when the stuff everyone can see starts up: The windmill hands. The fidget, relentlessly tugging at my clothes because maybe — just maybe — something is embarrassingly out of place.

It sucks a person’s vitality from every pore.

Thankfully, I’m over the worst of it. I still have my OCD moments, but smaller things drive it.

The internal brain spin and the demon that triggers it is in its box most days now. The box is made out of the coping tools I’ve built during six-plus years in therapy. The nails that keep the box shut are made from Prozac.

Writing in this blog is a powerful tool because I spill all the dark thoughts out onto a page. One I write about it, it’s no longer in my head.

The unnamed feeling is the toughest beast you’ll ever wrestle. But if you think it’s unbreakable, you’re wrong.

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A&E’s ‘Obsessed’: First Impressions

My fellow OCD buddy Steve Repsys pinged me the other day about an A&E program called “Obsessed.” This morning I finally got around to checking out some clips. It has it’s good points. And it’s not-so-good points.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/72rWAe0pUdQ

I’m a big advocate of any programming that educates people about OCD, addictions and other demons of the soul. That’s why I’ve written a lot about the movie being made called “Machine Man.” But reality TV leaves me cold almost every time because, well, it’s not really reality.

There’s always more drama when the cameras roll. People change in front of the camera whether they mean to or not. Nobody wants to be boring on film, so, somewhere deep in the brain, the instinct to play things up nags at you.

Add some drama music and fancy lighting and you get something that’s not 100 percent truth. Lies infect the mix.

A&E is a chief offender. Last Halloween they did a show called “Amityville: The Last Testament” where a clairvoyant woman who investigates paranormal activity for the police is contacted by Ronnie DeFeo, who has been serving a life sentence for killing his family in their Amityville home (he originally claimed demonic possession made him do it, and the crime gave birth to the “Amityville Horror” movie and book franchise). In the episode, DeFeo — famous for his constant changing of stories — again claims posession, and reaches out to the woman to help prove it.

Somewhere in the episode, she says she has to investigate the house, and there she is, in a house that is clearly not THE house to those who have seen pictures of the inside or been there. It’s also well known that the current owners allow nobody inside to film, especially where the haunting hoax is concerned.

People eat it up and accept it as truth because they don’t know any better.

Tell someone a program is based on a true story and they instantly believe everything in it really happened.

That episode ran through my head as Steve presented me with the link to this “Obsessed” series. So let’s have a look. 

The series is explained this way on the A&E site: “Intense and highly personal, A&E’s true-life docu-series “Obsessed” examines the lives of everyday people impris- oned by unmanageable, repetitive behaviors and sometimes debilitating fear. Whether it is Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Panic Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, General Anxiety Disorder, Hoarding or a variety of phobias, the unscripted series gives viewers a chance to see first-hand how an obsession can radically affect a person’s life.”

There’s the woman who has trouble with intimacy because she’s afraid to tell her new boyfriend about her OCD. There’s a guy obsessed about how to cross a threshold. Then there’s Chad, a rock musician who suffers from severe anxiety, accompanied by a hand-swiping ritual. Passing cars terrify him. He takes care when crossing on of the spaces between granite slabs that make up the sidewalk.

There are shards of truth throughout, and I’m glad to see that. A lot of people suffer from these things, and the uneducated just thinks they are weird.

But the Chad segment plays up every stereotypical quirk to the point where the viewer misses something important. They hear the dramatic music. They see the facial expressions and the uncomfortable looks from friends and family.

But the camera can’t capture some of the more hurtful truths about OCD and anxiety. Things eat at you in a more gradual, quieter fashion. By the time the hand washing and contorted expressions begin, the sufferer has been boiling in obsessive thinking for hours. To me, that’s the worst part — when you’re alone, trapped in a spinning mind. It’s a lonely, alien feeling. You feel like the last man left standing after a nuclear explosion. Nothing is left. Now what the fuck do you do?

By the time the stereotypical behavior comes out, there’s almost a relief because you’ve reached the beginning of the end of an attack.

The cameras will always capture the latter part. But it can never, ever touch the stuff that starts it all — the insanity that attacks the center of the mind.

That’s my take, anyway. Someone else with OCD will probably explain it differently.

Which is actually why, despite all I just said, “Obsessed” is worth checking out.

Even though the drama is amplified and A&E has a history of loosening up on truth in favor of theatrics, there are some important truths in there.

People often see someone with the repetitive actions and wonder what that person’s problem is. This series will at least answer that question. That’s a start.

And in breaking a stigma, we have to start somewhere.

Even a channel like A&E.

OCD Diaries

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Even If Talk Is Cheap, Drugs Alone Won’t Work

If a recent story in The New York Times is to be believed, psychiatrists are ditching talk therapy in favor of quick-to-the-draw prescription solutions because insurance companies won’t pay them enough for the broader treatment.

As someone who benefited greatly from both therapy and medication, I find this disturbing.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:40T969H60rqt5v1tWZDEMS]

From the article, written by Gardiner Harris:

Like many of the nation’s 48,000psychiatrists, Dr. Levin, in large part because of changes in how much insurance will pay, no longer provides talk therapy, the form of psychiatry popularized by Sigmund Freud that dominated the profession for decades. Instead, he prescribes medication, usually after a brief consultation with each patient. So Dr. Levin sent the man away with a referral to a less costly therapist and a personal crisis unexplored and unresolved.

Medicine is rapidly changing in the United States from a cottage industry to one dominated by large hospital groups and corporations, but the new efficiencies can be accompanied by a telling loss of intimacy between doctors and patients. And no specialty has suffered this loss more profoundly than psychiatry.

Trained as a traditional psychiatrist at Michael Reese Hospital, a sprawling Chicago medical center that has since closed, Dr. Levin, 68, first established a private practice in 1972, when talk therapy was in its heyday.

Then, like many psychiatrists, he treated 50 to 60 patients in once- or twice-weekly talk-therapy sessions of 45 minutes each. Now, like many of his peers, he treats 1,200 people in mostly 15-minute visits for prescription adjustments that are sometimes months apart. Then, he knew his patients’ inner lives better than he knew his wife’s; now, he often cannot remember their names. Then, his goal was to help his patients become happy and fulfilled; now, it is just to keep them functional.

Dr. Levin has found the transition difficult. He now resists helping patients to manage their lives better. “I had to train myself not to get too interested in their problems,” he said, “and not to get sidetracked trying to be a semi-therapist.”

This is tragic on so many levels.

I’ve said it before: Medication (Prozac) has been a critical part of my OCD management. It put my defective brain chemistry into balance and greatly reduced the moments where my brain would pulsate out of control with worry and obsessions until it incapacitated me.

But had I gone on the drug without doing the brutally hard therapy first, I would not be doing anywhere near as well as I am today. I can promise you that.

Mental health is like physical health. There is no magic bullet — or magic pill — fix.  You need a combination of diet, rest and exercise to maintain health as well as any medicine that you may need.

Talk therapy helps you build your coping tools from scratch. They become your lifeline to sanity, especially if the drugs stop working, which can happen in a variety of circumstances.

This is just one more example of the health insurance industry putting the bottom line before wellness. I don’t want to beat on the insurance providers just for the hell of it. The industry does face the genuine problem where treatments are becoming more expensive, especially in a population where many refuse to take care of themselves.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way…

There are things one can do to cut costs. But when you cut into the muscle of the treatment — in this case talk therapy — the treatment will bleed to the point of near-death.

Now I know what they’re thinking: People can go to a therapist for talking and the other guy for medication, but now we have another problem. Not everyone can afford both.

In my case, I go to a therapist to talk things out, and a nurse on his staff is authorized and in charge of writing my prescription.

Psychiatry and therapy are not exactly the same beast.

But a good psychiatrist includes the talking part and uses it to maximum effect.

Force them to stop doing that and many people will fall through the cracks.

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Fear and Self-Loathing in San Francisco

Just got to my hotel in Santa, Clara, Calif., with a few random memories shifting around in my head — memories that illustrate who I was and who I am now.

Mood music:

It was July 1991 and I was with Sean Marley on my first trip to the west coast. I didn’t really want to go because I was afraid of everything and everyone. But Sean was red h0t about the idea, and back then I was always out to impress the man.

So off we went, on a 10-day California trip that would take us as far north as Eureka and as far south as Los Angeles. We lived in the rental car the whole time except for L.A., where we stayed in a friend’s apartment.

I remember the plane going in for a landing. I looked out the window and saw the Bay Bridge below. It was a gorgeous sight from that height, with the bay glistening in the summer sun. I saw the same view this morning and felt warm and energized. Back then was different. I thought of the Bay Area earthquake two years before, with TV coverage that included a live shot of a piece of the bridge collapsing and a car driving off the newly created edge into the abyss.

I knew we’d be driving over that bridge at least twice.

Terror.

I was afraid of talking to strangers.  I was afraid to go to clubs at night for fear we might get mugged so far from home.

In L.A., we hooked up with a guy who used to live in the Point of Pines in Revere. I didn’t remember him, but he and Sean were tight as kids. Michael was his name. Michael took us to visit a couple of his friends who were living the stereotypical Hollywood lifestyle. They had a band, but sat in their cramped bungalow all day, surrounded by towers of empty beer cans and cigarette boxes, watching all the bad daytime TV they could feast their eyes on.

One of them asked me where we were from. The Boston area, I told him.

“Dude,” he said through the cloud of cigarette smoke encircling his head. “That’s a pretty long way from here.”

The statement filled me with more terror.

A pretty long way from here. From my safe place in the basement apartment at 22 Lynnway, Revere, Mass.

Terror.

That’s pretty much what the trip was. Sean ate it all up and had the time of his life, despite me.

I didn’t know back then that I suffered from OCD-induced fear and anxiety. I was still many years away from the therapy, medication and spiritual conversion. I had no idea what the 12 steps were when I was 21. Too bad, too, because I SHOULD have had the time of my life on that trip, too.

But that’s what fear does. It robs you blind. Robs you of everything that should make life worthwhile.

Thank God I’m done with that shit.

I’ve made this flight many times since then, always on business. But I’ve gotten the chance to enjoy the surroundings and experience the culture along the way.

In small steps, I’ve tried hard to make up for lost time. That gets me in trouble sometimes, because I forget to pace myself. That happened last time I was here in February, and my family paid the price.

Let’s see if I can do better this time.

And maybe one of these days, instead of coming here for work, I can come here for fun. Maybe Erin will live out of a rental car with me for 10 days.

What do you say, honey?

OCD Diaries

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The Problem With ‘One Day At A Time’

“One day at a time? You wouldn’t believe the crap that swirls around my head one day at a time.” –Anonymous

Recovering addicts have a saying burned into their brains: “One Day at a Time.” It’s important wisdom to live by. But when the recovering addict has OCD, there’s a big problem.

Mood music:

Let’s look at the meaning of “One Day at a Time.” In the world of 12-step recovery programs, the idea is not to be overwhelmed. Instead of trying to get your arms around everything necessary for recovery a week into the future or a month or year, we subscribe to the idea of just focusing on what we have to do today. Doing this a day at a time makes the clean-up tasks seem a lot less overwhelming.

The problem with an OCD case is that the disorder forces you to do nothing BUT stew over the future. You look at the next week or month and relentlessly play out the potential outcomes of that space of time.

The first time someone told me to take it a day at a time, my first instinct was to punch him in the face.

I had a business trip three weeks away to worry about.

I had a medical test planned for the following month and had all kinds of potentially grim outcomes to worry about.

That’s how guys like me roll.

So how have I managed to keep my addictions largely at bay for well over two years? Simple: I remembered another 12-Step saying (OA saying, more specifically): Fail to plan, plan to fail.”

The Powerfully Recovered website, based on the book of the same title by Anne Wayman, explains it better than I could, so let me share:

One day at a time doesn’t mean we shouldn’t plan

I imagine that this is the very first slogan that found it’s way into the original Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Can’t you just picture a frantic newcomer talking about how difficult he (and yes, it was only men in the beginning – and the men didn’t think women could be real alcoholics, which is another story…) he was finding sobriety?

I can almost imagine the conversation:

Newcomer: What am I going to do? Next week I have to go to the office Christmas party – how will I ever stay sober there!

Oldtimer (early on, he might have been sober only a week): Slow down, it’s not next week yet. Take it One Day at a Time!

And a slogan is born – because it’s got some real wisdom in it. For in truth, each one of us has only one day at a time – or one hour or one moment. 

Abstaining a moment at a time

In the first few rocky days of recovery, just abstaining for that moment, hour, etc. is truly all we can do. If we can’t do that, there’s no point in worrying about tomorrow, or next week, or whenever. 

The One Day at a Time philosophy has benefits far beyond the early days in recovery. It can keep us grounded in the present – that Holy Instant that is so easy to miss in a busy and productive life.

Planning is okay

Unfortunately, some in 12 Step Groups have taken the philosophy to mean we shouldn’t plan. This is patently false. A major promise of the Program is torestore us to sanity, and that includes the very human blessing and curse – planning. We need to set goals, to make appointments, to design our lives.

But planning doesn’t mean we have to leave One Day at a Time behind – the trick is to watch for expectations. 

It’s one thing to plan and quite another to demand that the plan work out the way we require it too – in that we have no control at all. When our plans bring unintended results – and the often do – all we need do is reevaluate, accept where we are in this moment, and start anew. 

There are a lot of contradictions when you put the sayings “One day at a time” and “Fail to plan, plan to fail” together. It’s like a warm front running into a cold front. You get thunder, lightening and worse. Cars are picked up and wrapped around trees.

But in the end, life is unfair like that. We have to learn to deal.

So even when the OCD in me is planning, planning, planning, I do remember to take my recovery — especially the food plan that helped me break the binging spell — one day at a time.

I can digest life much more fully when the pieces are broken up.

But the push and pull still makes for plenty of confusion.

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I Don’t Have Money, But I Have This Bullhorn…

A few months ago I wrote a post about a movie called Machine Man, which deals with a man struggling with OCD.

I mentioned how the film maker, Kellie Madison, was raising money for the film at the grass roots to keep it free of the Hollywood sleaze machine.

This afternoon I saw a message on the movie’s Facebook page saying the money goal hasn’t been met yet:

“Still working on reaching our minimum production goal. Be a part of Machine Man – every donation counts!”

I don’t have money to give right now, but I do have a bullhorn in the shape of this blog.

If you suffer from OCD or know others who do, this could be a groundbreaking, stigma-busting film. Seeing it released would certainly mean a lot to me.

If you can, please help her out. If you don’t have money, spread the word to others who might.

Here’s a press release describing the film and Kellie’s approach:

Veteran Female filmmaker Kellie Madison tackles obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) with narrative feature film; Kicks off never-been-done-before grassroots campaign to raise awareness and funding

For Immediate Release

FEMALE FILMMAKER TACKLES OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE DISORDER (OCD) WITH NARRATIVE FEATURE FILM

Writer / Producer / Director Kellie Madison Kicks Off Never-Been-Done-Before Grassroots Campaign to Raise Awareness and Funding

(HOLLYWOOD, CA) – Donald Trump. Howie Mandel. Howard Stern. Each of these men is among the most influential public figures of the world. Yet, most wouldn’t imagine that these powerful people all share a common mental disorder. They, along with millions of others around the globe, suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), a neurobiological anxiety disorder characterized by intrusive thoughts (obsessions) and a need to perform repetitive and ritualistic behaviors (compulsions). One in 50 adults currently battle with obsessive and compulsive behavior. One in 25 has dealt with the disorder at some point in their lives.

Just as “Rain Main” brought worldwide awareness to autism and “Children of a Lesser God” eloquently dramatized the trials and tribulations of the hearing impaired, Kellie Madison brings us a narrative film that illuminates the debilitating struggle that millions of people who suffer from OCD go through on a daily basis. “Machine Man,” chronicles the spirited tale of an average man, who struggles with an extraordinary problem, facing his most debilitating fear in order to save the woman he loves.

Far too often, people with OCD suffer in silence because of the shame and stigma associated with this disorder.  Some don’t even recognize what they’re suffering from and are terrified to leave their homes.

To date, a film that addresses the daily debilitating fears associated with OCD has yet to be produced. Film is one of themost powerful mediums for conveying messages to audiences around the world. A feature like “Machine Man” can and will create empathy and awareness for those suffering with OCD. This will ultimately affect change by helping people recognize their disorder and subsequently seek proper treatment.

It takes more than a great script and great talent to get a film off the ground.  It takes funding.  Madison is using her passion for the project to attempt a filming feat no Producer has yet to achieve: raising the entire $2,000,000 budget of the film through philanthropic support from the local community. We need YOUR help in spreading the word.  This grassroots campaign is a unique, ambitious and worthwhile endeavor.  Depending on the level of support, all participants will be rewarded, including the opportunity for a role in the film.  Additionally, partial proceeds will go to the International OCD Foundation.

Kellie Madison, as well as experts from around the country are on board and available for interviews. We would appreciate your help and the opportunity to spread the word about this amazing project.