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Who We Were/Who We Are

Last night I fell asleep while leafing through my high school yearbook. I’m connected to a lot of old classmates on Facebook, and it’s funny how different many of us are now.

It’s no surprise, of course. We have to change. In appearance and in mindset. That’s what we do. Yet we still fixate on the old days sometimes.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QP6H4ov7FE&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

I came across pictures of folks I never talked to in high school. Then there are those I knew but didn’t like. That’s OK, because they didn’t like me either. A few classmates are no longer with us.

It’s odd and cool that I’m friendly today with people I didn’t like back then.

I spend a lot of time getting nostalgic in this blog. I’ve written about Revere a million times. I used to want to go back to those days, as bad as some of those days were, because for awhile there I was skinny and had long hair. We tend to remember how we looked and not necessarily how we felt.

I guess it’s easy to understand why I wanted to go back to the 1980s when I was a perfect mess in my late 20s. When you’re a mess in the present, you tend to forget that things were as bad or worse in the past. You want to be anywhere than where you are.

But I don’t feel that way anymore.

Why the hell would I ever want to go back now?

If I were walking up the street and I encountered the 20-year-old me, I wouldn’t like the kid. I’d marvel at his stupid views of the world and his tendency to talk trash about his dad, even though his dad kept a roof over his head. I’d laugh at the fringe leather jacket and the skull rings. I was a pretentious little bastard.

And for all the pretending and efforts to look cool, it never got me anywhere with the opposite sex. Not in high school, anyway.

I like the 40-year-old me much better. I’m bald and thicker around the middle, but I’m real. And I’m not quite as thick in the middle as I was a few years ago.

I know who I am and I am who I want to be: A husband, a dad, and a writer.

I have a wife and two kids who don’t really care what I look like as long as I’m good to them.

Looking at the other kids in the yearbook, I picture older, wiser people who I see as friends today. I used to pick on one girl for getting pregnant in high school and wasting her future. She married the guy she was with in high school and they had more children. One child died too early. But they’re a loving family.

Another kid was nothing but a punk to me. The message he scrawled in my yearbook was so mean a teacher who saw it took white out to the page. Today, that dude is a close friend.

Looking at who we were in the yearbook and who we are today, I think most of us should be proud.

We didn’t grow up to be perfect and, in many cases, we didn’t grow up to be rich. But through all the aging and all the pain that we all go though between age 20 and 40, we’ve gained something much more precious: a purpose.

We’re parents who get a chance to raise kids who might eclipse us in a variety of ways. Our work, however unimportant it may seem sometimes, could end up helping people we’ll never meet.

We’re still young enough to change a few things we still don’t like about ourselves. Maybe it’s extra unwanted weight. Maybe it’s the career. If 40 is the new 20, we have plenty of time to make changes.

The way I see it, as long as we never lose our ability to change, there’s hope for us all.

Changing. Adapting. Getting stronger and better.

It’s who we are now. And it’s much cooler than who we were.

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Dueling Priests: A Religious Adventure

You would think everyone could get along at church. But, it turns out, people get as political and competitive as they would in the corporate setting. Here’s why these human imperfections actually strengthen my faith.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lspjLG9nHXk&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

First, a little history: In September, our beloved pastor, Father Dennis Nason, passed away, leaving a gaping hole in the church community. The parochial vicar, Father Michael Harvey, performed practically every Mass from that point until a new pastor, Father Tim Kearney, joined the parish in late January.

I like Father Kearney a lot. He’s a hands-on kind of guy. He personally directed a Passion play Sean performed in on Palm Sunday and took an active role in the R.C.I.A. (Right of Christian Initiation for Adults) group I helped out with this year. He’s very good with the kids. He remembers names. That’s what I want in a pastor.

Father Harvey is much more conservative in his approach to Mass. He doesn’t like dramatizations of the Holy Word at all. A couple years ago he changed the Easter Vigil Mass around so lectors had straight readings instead of the different lines for God and the three narrators that had been in place before. Father Kearney put the lines back in this year. One one hand, I always thought Biblical dramatizations were a good thing. It brings the Word of God to life for younger folks in ways a simple reading won’t pull off. In this age of Web 2.0 and superior computer graphics, it takes a lot to suck a kid in at church.

That said, I really like Father Harvey, too. He’s fabulous with the kids and spends hours upon hours at the school. I also respect the rigor he puts on himself. He talks often about not being a particularly nice guy when he was younger. I think he’s been beating himself hard over that ever since becoming a priest. The thing is, it leads to some very inspiring homilies. He’s also a very gentle, mild-mannered guy. That doesn’t mean I agree with everything he says, as I make clear in this older post. I also bristle when he gets uncomfortable with Duncan’s pink hat and overall love affair with the color. You’d think it was a gender or sexual orientation instead of just a color.

But in the bigger picture, I think the clashing styles of these two priests is good for the church. Father Kearney’s approach will reach a lot of younger people — not just children, but 20-and-30-somethings who might be enticed to come to church again. Father Harvey’s approach satisfies the more conservative part of the church. Together, they can serve a wider collection of families and individuals.

But not everyone is happy with this new dynamic.

For the folks who had taken on a lot of extra work between pastors, Father Kearney’s hands-on style is uncomfortably jolting to those who were used to Father Nason’s more laid back approach.

Meanwhile, some parishioners are getting prickly over Kearney’s longish homilies, especially during Lent. Some Masses ran late, which really gets to those who think there’s an 11th Commandment: Masses Shalt Not Last More Than 1 Hour.

It never takes much to rattle a parish. People get set in their ways and are easily scandalized by anything new and different. People who have had certain roles for many years don’t want to give up their turf. They know what’s best, and everyone else is a dope who should keep to themselves. They absolutely hate being told what to do, especially when a suggested change of tactic is implied.

Some would say the church deserves this because of past injustices like the priest sex abuse scandal. I know one guy who refuses to go to confession because he confessed his sins to a priest that was later convicted and imprisoned for sexual misconduct.

For those of us who have Faith, hanging on to it can be a real bitch. We constantly let human personalities and Earthly struggles get between us and Jesus. I’ve done it many times.

For years after my best friend died in a suicide, I wasn’t receptive to anything a priest had to say. Suicide is supposed to be a one-way ticket to Hell, and I didn’t want to believe that my friend was going there for being mentally sick and not even close to being in his right mind. For a very long time, I got more comfort in  my addictive impulses than in anything related to faith.

We constantly hear about people leaving the church, and sometimes it feels like priests would do just about anything to get people to come back. You see elaborate campaigns like “Catholics Come Home” and run into priests who don’t want to offend anyone over anything. One of the things I’ve always liked about Father Mike is that he doesn’t care who he offends. The word of God is the way it is. Period.

But to me, a guy who only recently learned what it means to Let Go and Let God, the biggest problem is that we all let our egos get in the way.

We place personality over everything else.

We’ll grab onto any excuse to stop trying to be good Christians. The sex abuse scandal was a perfect example, though I personally believe you’d have to be whacked in the head not to have been outraged by that. Nothing shakes a person’s faith from its moorings like anger and rage.

That’s our big challenge, to remember every day that it all comes down to one simple thing: The relationship we as individuals have with God.

It should be a relationship impervious to human bickering, though it never really is.

I consider myself lucky. A few years back, I’d let everything to do with church politics consume me with rage and worry. In working the 12 Steps of Recovery, I’ve learned that the only way to move forward is to let that stuff go. My ego still resurfaces periodically to mess it all up, but for the most part I’m getting the hang of this “surrender” thing.

The other thing, and this might reveal a sinister side of me, is that I enjoy a good clash of personalities. A little drama is always entertaining, and I like seeing people with widely differences forced into a small space where the only way they can survive is to work together.

The best of what’s in us can come out in those circumstances.

In the end, I think the priests in my parish will have to learn how to work together. It’s their problem to work out.

In time, I think they will.

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‘Binge Eating? Come On, Man’

Every now and then, someone expresses shock at my classifying a compulsive binge eating disorder as addictive behavior. So it was when an acquaintance in the infosec world contacted me this morning.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:0ydzdWYWIFlGBurhjEXwit]

Rather than run the entire message verbatim, I’m going to address certain chunks. His text is in italics, followed my my responses. First, I want to point out that I like this guy. He does great work in our industry. I also think his observations are perfectly reasonable.

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.

For those who haven’t dealt with food as an addictive substance, his skepticism is understandable. It’s a very common skepticism, which is one of the reasons I blog about it. There are misconceptions to shoot down. So let me explain it this way:

Specifically, I’m addicted to flour and sugar. Like an alcoholic or drug addict, I would feel the itch for it and it would drive me insane until I got my fix.

That didn’t merely involve eating a couple doughnuts and regretting it later. It meant consuming as much as I absolutely could. It reached the point where it severely disrupted my life. In the post “Anatomy of a Binge,” I describe a day in the life of me back when I was in the grip of the spell. When you live from binge to binge, little else in life matters. Work suffers. Family suffers. That’s the difference between destructive, addictive behavior and simply having the tendency to eat a little too much.

I’ve learned to control it the same way more traditional addicts have done it: By doing a 12-Step program.

People are always going to have trouble buying the notion that this is a legitimate addiction. I can’t change everyone’s mind. I only know that this is how it is for me and many other people who I have met, and if someone who compulsively binge eats will find it in them to get help after reading some of this blog, that’s all that matters to me.

One more point about addiction: My personal experience is that the behavior is merely a byproduct of a bigger, more insidious problem. I like to call it the hole in my soul, complicated by a sometimes debilitating mental disorder called OCD.

From my perspective, the OCD — mixed with a history of close friends dying, serious childhood illness and constant tragedy in the family — drove me to my addiction. The combination of all these things is the “hell” I speak of in the “about” blurb.

Everyone has their struggles. Everyone has their own version of hell. This was simply mine. I don’t lament it. I love the life I have today and I’m not the same man I was even five years ago. As far as I’m concerned, I owe it to my maker to share where I’ve been so others know they are not alone or without hope.

Quick question, have you always had your faith — reason I ask is because 2 people I know were so heavily addicted and the bible was how they escaped their addiction. I found it to be one extreme to another.. they became fundamentalist in a way… I felt like I’d lost my “mates” — but on the same token I’m of course stoked that they will continue to walk the earth… I just wish there was a middle ground.

I’ve always believed in God, but my faith has really deepened in recent years. I don’t tell people what they should or should not believe. All I ask of people is that they be kind to others and honest with themselves.

I wholeheartedly agree there are those who take it way too far, to the point that it is just another addictive, compulsive behavior.

Some folks cling to their 12-Step program so tightly that their addictive behavior latches on to the program itself. In my opinion, this can get unhealthy. The same thing applies to religion.

To find recovery in Overeater’s Anonymous, the only requirement is to want to stop eating compulsively. It’s very simple. There is no “OA diet.” But there are a few different food plans people choose from. One is based on a “Dignity of Choice” pamphlet that outlines a few different plans. Then there’s the so-called “Grey Sheet” plan (included among the options in “Dignity of Choice”) a lot of recovering food addicts cling to like a passage from The Bible.

For them (not everyone, but quite a few people), there IS NO OTHER WAY. If you’re not following the food plan outlined there, you are not abstinent. There’s also the mindset that you HAVE TO ABSTAIN FROM FLOUR AND SUGAR and have nothing in between meals to be abstinent. Eat an apple in between lunch and dinner and you break your abstinence and have to start over.

To me, this is an extreme that causes a lot of people to fail. It pisses me off when someone following the strictest plan tells someone they’re not being abstinent if they’re doing their own plan differently.

For the record, I don’t eat flour or sugar, and I don’t eat in between meals. I have to have it this way because the defect in my brain approaches anything in between as an invitation to binge. Flour and sugar, mixed together, had the same effect on me as heroin has on the more traditional junkie.

But not everyone can do it that way. There are many reasons for someone to do it differently. If you have diabetes, for example, following my exact food plan could be bad, maybe even lethal.

I also feel that if an apple between meals keeps you from binge eating, that’s what you do. If the more extreme among us tell you you’re not abstinent if you do that, they’re wrong.

In my view, folks who get that way become addicts of a different sort. The compulsive behavior centers around the program itself.

With faith, all that matters to me is that I have beliefs that sustain me. Everyone must walk their own road on that one.

I hope this was a decent explanation.

Thanks for the feedback.

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Jesus Has My Back

This is a very special Easter for me. Five years ago tonight, I was Baptized and got a new chance at life.

Since then, I’ve tried to live a Holy life. I’ve come up short much of the time, but I just keep trying.

It’s a massive, sometimes overwhelming challenge to get it right these days. Everywhere you look there’s something to temp you. For an addictive personality like mine, being weak in that environment is as natural as breathing.

I used to beat myself silly over that. Not so much now.

Five years ago, I was a couple years into therapy for the OCD diagnosis that was still a few months away at that point. I wan’t taking Prozac yet, and I was having daily anxiety attacks.

I was hoping that the conversion would somehow cure me of all those things. The truth is that things got much worse for me after the 2006 Easter Vigil.

It was like that intense fever you get right before the virus starts to ease up on you. I was at the lowest of lows. But the turnaround was coming.

I just had to learn a simple lesson: The more you put into your Faith, the more you get back. I’ve also had to learn a lesson that’s especially painful for someone with OCD: You have to let go of the urge to control everything. My fellow OCD sufferers know what a bitch that can be.

One day I simply surrendered. I didn’t give up. I just realized that you can’t control the big things. Only God can.

Once you realize that, you stop sweating over the little things.

Learning the 12 Steps to help manage my addictions has taught me a lot in that regard.

Last night, a friend sent me a message that ended with, “Jesus has your back.”

He sure does.

Some of you might think this Faith thing is a bunch of hogwash.

I’m not going to argue it with you.

I believe what I believe, and that’s good enough.

I’m very inspired this morning by my old friend Deb Jones. She lost her daughter this past week. I can’t imagine what that must be like. I don’t ever want to know the feeling.

But there she is, sharing her Faith on Facebook, telling everyone that while things will never be the same for her family on Earth, her daughter is fine. Because she’s truly in a better place.

It’s easy to wonder why God lets the bad stuff happen. But I think my seven-year-old son said it best the other day:

“Dad, I don’t see how people could get mad at God,” he says.

“Why not?” I ask.

“Because while we’re all busy getting upset down here, we have no idea what God is doing up there.”

That’s probably the best way I’ve ever heard someone explain that God has a plan and we have no idea why things happen the way they do.

But Duncan is pretty certain about one thing God’s not doing up there:

“I know this much,” he says. “God’s not picking his nose, because he doesn’t like that.”

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Prayers for Old Friends

This morning my thoughts and prayers are with the Jones family, who mourn the loss of a daughter and sister.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKbPUzhWeeI&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

Twenty years ago, I would hang out with this family for days on end.

Jeff Jones (he goes by Geoff Wolfe today) was my fellow Doors freak, and I remember many pleasant afternoon’s and evenings in their back yard. I was there for July 4 1991, which I remember because someone slammed into my car and took off that night. The car, a 1981 Mercury Marquis, never ran right again. I got pretty smashed that night.

The next year, we celebrated the 4th by blowing up a mannequin with M-80s.

I remember their children, Josh and Sarah, running around the house and yard.

We had a mutual friend in Bob Biondo, a kid who must have weighed in excess of 400 pounds. He had long, curly hair and always wore a cap and trench coat to hide his girth. He supplied me with a lot of weed and cigarettes and he was another mainstay in the Revere basement.

At some point in the early 90s I decided I was getting too grown up to hang around with these people. So I stopped coming around.

I moved to Lynnfield and made sure Biondo didn’t know where I lived. I simply stopped calling the Jones house.

What I didn’t know at the time was that I was beginning a deep slide into depression and addiction. I cut myself off from a lot of people and started to isolate myself.

Thanks to Facebook, I recently reconnected with the Jones family.

Yesterday, I received word that Sarah died.

As a parent, I shudder violently as I think of what Deb and Geoff are going through.

Fortunately, they have a strong Faith. As Deb said on her Facebook page yesterday:

“For those of you grieving … don’t! My daughter is at peace in the arms of her Lord. No more worries, no more pain. Remember the wonderful times you had with her. She was a very special person. Our lives will never be the same, but as for Sarah, she is fine.”

They can use a lot of prayers right now, so if you can spare some that would be appreciated.

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To Sean on His 10th Birthday

Sean turns 10 today, and this is my birthday message to him.

Let’s start with the appropriate mood music, a song you are very fond of:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpOxjOj0zhk&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

You entered the world on Earth Day, 10 years ago. Wow. A full decade.

As I wrote to you last year, you were graced with a beautiful Mom and a Dad with just a few kinks in him. I would always try to hide my OCD, depression and addictive behavior from you, but I wasn’t always good at that. You didn’t seem to mind. In fact, you helped me get well.

I’ll try to avoid the history lesson for the rest of this letter, though I’ll probably cave to the urge to compare you at 10 to me at 10. Those who want more of a history can read the note I wrote for your birthday last year.

Today, I get so much joy from this stage of your life.

I take delight in your Star Wars fascination, because I had the same fascination when I was 10. Come to think of it, when I was 10, “The Empire Strikes Back” came out.

That makes me pretty old.

But your interest in all things Star Wars makes me feel young again.

I’ll tell you something else: The Star Wars Lego sets you’ve been collecting are far more elaborate than anything that was available when I was your age. In fact, Legos were just a bunch of blocks from what I remember.

I had quite the collection of Star Wars toys at your age. It’s a shame I eventually destroyed those toys, because it would have been fun passing them along to you. But that’s OK. These Lego Star Wars sets are far more interesting.

The fact that you have to build them is perfect for a kid like you. You’re a natural engineer. You put these things together at the speed of light.

There are some things about you entering the double digits that’s hard for me to adjust to. For starters, you no longer like all the cute nicknames I tend to give you. Cute is no longer cool. Especially if we’re anywhere near your friends.

For a guy who shows affection by needling people, that’s not going to be easy for me to adapt to.

But I will.

One of the cool things about you being 10 is that you’ll probably get to see a couple more PG-13 movies. A while back, when Duncan was at his cousin’s house and it was just me and you, I let you watch “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith” and you declared it the best day of your life. Who knows? Maybe this year you’ll get to see the Indiana Jones movies. You already know the stories, because you digested the book adaptations in just a couple days.

You know what else I love about you at this age? You’re taking a liking to my music. I think it’s the coolest thing that you want to hear the bands I listen to. I’m especially tickled that you like Thin Lizzy, because to like that band is to exist at an advanced level of coolness.

I’m also proud of the job you’re doing as Duncan’s big brother. Sure, you guys fight a lot. All siblings do. But when Duncan is in pain, you’re always right there comforting him. You gleefully share all your interests with him, and he sops it up like a sponge.

You were far less enthusiastic about joining the local Scout pack than Duncan was, but you’re warming up to it and I’m happy to see that.

What’s not to like about camping on a battleship for a Scout activity?

You used to be afraid to try those things. I remember when you were reluctant to go camping with your grandparents.

Now you’ll try just about anything, even when you don’t think you’ll enjoy it.

That’s called facing your fears. You conquer your fears with each new experience, and words can’t adequately describe how proud of you that makes me.

I’ve always been proud of you, of course.

But on your 10th birthday, I wanted to tell you so again.

I doubt you’ll mind.

I love you, kid.

Your Dad,

April 21, 2011, 6:45 a.m.

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Wanted: Psychiatric Specialists in the Emergency Room

A friend directed me toward a disturbing story on NPR’s website about the mentally ill languishing in ERs.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkJOZOOXJWk&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

Here’s the first few paragraphs of the report by Jenny Gold:

As he lay on a gurney in the emergency department of Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island, Erik grew increasingly upset. He had called the police to report a theft from his apartment, but wound up being taken to the hospital.

The ER staff quickly determined that Erik, 40, who has been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and PTSD, needed urgent psychiatric care, but there wasn’t much they could do.

Like many hospitals, Memorial doesn’t have a psychiatric unit, and all of the psychiatric units in the nearby facilities were full. Erik, a bright, articulate and devoutly religious man, had to wait nearly two days on a gurney in the ER before he could be transferred.

Mentally ill patients often languish in hospital emergency rooms for several days, sometimes longer, before they can be moved to a psychiatric unit or hospital. At most, they get drugs but little counseling, and the environment is often harsh.

A few thoughts on this:

–This is disturbing as hell when you consider the fact that when you listen to the phone recording from just about every therapist’s office, you are directed to the nearest emergency room in a crisis situation. Someone in a desperate state goes to the ER as directed only to find no help.

–The typical ER is an infuriating place to be because you almost always wait for hours unless you’ve been brought in by ambulance or you have blood pouring out all over the floor. I don’t necessarily blame ER staff for this. They never have enough resources. Some will debate me on that, but I’ve been in enough ERs to make the observation.

In the final analysis, I think the main responsibility for fixing this problem starts with the upper-level hospital administrators and boards of directors. They need to make it a priority to have emergency assistance for people with mental health emergencies.

If there’s a good reason they can’t do this, and I doubt there is, then mine and other therapists need to stop telling people to go to the emergency room.

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Reinforcing the Stigma Instead of Breaking It

Lost in my most recent tirade against employers who discriminate against the mentally ill is a point that’s very important: People like us have a responsibility to prove we’re up to the challenges we seek.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QanVuQIXU5s&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

In my opinion, employers have no legal right to deny someone a job simply because they were diagnosed with a mental illness. They do, however, have the right to pass over a candidate who doesn’t seem up to the job.

My friend Danielle Goodwin shared a personal example of someone denying her a job because she was honest about what she had:

I interviewed several times (making the cut each time) for a national-level position worth some big bucks last year. They used emotional intelligence testing and the whole nine yards. I passed everything.

I went for my final interview with the president of the company (all of the lower committees had recommended me to be hired). Everyone had told me the guy asks stuff that no one else has ever asked you and to be totally honest because he can spot a liar…so he asks me piercing, direct questions about my childhood abuse. I was completely honest with him, and I found out the next day he told everyone else everything I told him and that because I was hurt as a child, I definitely couldn’t function in their company.

What a jerk! He had the right, I guess, since it was just an interview…but why dig in so deep and ask me those things if you’re just going to hold it against me without ever seeing my work product and ethic.

If anything, adult children like me work harder, work more efficiently, and produce higher quality work according to the research.

The guy who interviewed her, told everyone about the conversation and turned her down was an asshole. Pure and simple. A lawyer could have had a field day picking that bastard to pieces.

At the other end of the spectrum is this comment from Beth Horne, president and CEO of The Horne Agency, a marketing and advertising firm. She has lived this from both sides, as the mental illness sufferer and as an employer. She wrote the following via the United States Mental Health Professionals group on LinkedIn:

I was diagnosed with Bipolar 2 twenty years ago. I received treatment and have been stable for years, thanks to excellent therapy, medication and education. Before returning to school for my PhD in Psychology, I worked in Marketing/Advertising for several large media companies before opening my own advertising agency. I was open about my diagnosis with my employers during my interview process, and it never hindered me from being hired. In fact, I never interviewed for a job I did not get, due to my work record, resume and references.

I think that my work performance more than made up for any issues I may have had regarding my disorder, such as sometimes having periods of depression or getting a bit manic when life changes occurred. I worked very hard NOT to let them affect my work performance or reduce my ability to generate revenue for my company. 

However, I have been in management with these companies and had employees with mental issues who did not take care of themselves and they became liabilities to the company and had to be let go. Some would refuse to take their medication and attend therapy, some would miss work continually or be so over-medicated they were in a constant stupor, unable to perform their duties. I had one woman who came into the office in such a manic state I had to ask her to stay in her office until she could have her husband take her to her doctor, and to please refrain from taking any sales calls, for fear of her ruining client relations. 

If someone knows they have a mental issue/disorder, it is a personal choice whether or not to accept their diagnosis and get help and follow their treatment. Is this always easy? NO! But if they are to function in the work environment, it is their responsibility to do anything and everything in their power to stay as healthy as possible. If this is not possible for them, then it is time to look into disability.

Employers need to understand that not everyone with a diagnosis of a mental illness is like another…there are people with bipolar disorder who have little problem going on with their daily routine with just therapy and medication, while others find it impossible to blend into the work environment. I use bipolar disorder as just one example, but there are many others, as we all are aware. I have a mother who has a mild form of OCD and is a supervisor at a hospital. What better profession could there be for someone who will always be strict about following rules, cleanliness and excellent patient care than an RN? Or like my brother, who also has the same issue, works in IT?

Both are successful and well-adjusted, and their coworkers probably have no idea they have any mental problems whatsoever. So before they judge and dismiss a potential employee because of ignorance, they should look at the person as a whole and not just their diagnosis.  

Beth, you are so right. Thanks for sharing.

Like Beth, I’ve been judged by my workmanship and not by any mental health issues I’ve disclosed. That has been the case for me in every job I’ve ever had.

I’m very fortunate.

There have also been times in past jobs where my workmanship suffered because I wasn’t taking care of myself. I was refusing to even consider therapy or medication, and I sank lower and lower.

I was reinforcing the stigma instead of breaking it.

Today I succeed because I refuse to let the struggles render me useless. Like Danielle, I fight harder and longer, and I never give up.

Better to be part of the solution than the problem.

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The World of “Crazy Mike” (Knowing Who You Pick On)

Got a lot of comments on yesterday’s post about the mentally ill guy in Haverhill people call “Crazy Mike.” Read on and you’ll know him better.

Mood music:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYyK-ZvpR_M&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

The most insight on Mike comes from Katherine Doot, an old friend of Erin’s and recent discoverer of this blog. She lives in Arizona now, but as a Haverhill native she got to know Mike pretty well. Here’s what she had to say:

Mike in fact is a Vietnam veteran who does in fact have SEVERE PTSD, or post traumatic stress disorder. He has medication that helps, when he can take it, but as I was told, the medication is often stolen from him.

Sadly this poor man lives in his mind every day reliving the horrors that he saw in Vietnam and cannot escape.

I had run-ins with him when I lived in Haverhill. Was I scared? Of course, but the man deserves respect for going to fight in a war in the name of our country. He deserves compassion for the nightmare that is his reality, and just maybe a bit of sympathy because of the lack of all of the above.

I work at an office that serves veterans, and at this office I have seen many of the Vietnam vets, most in better condition than Mike, but most have some sort of mental condition that stems from their war time. I feel sorry for what these brave soldiers gave up. Every chance I get, I make sure to take a moment, to shake their hands, and to say thank you for doing what they did. Sadly most of them are shocked by the simple words, and it brings me to tears every time.

As I said yesterday, I’m lucky. I struggled for years with crippling mental illness, but that was nothing compared to this.

This whole affair has also reminded me of all the homeless veterans I’ve seen in Haverhill and Revere over the years.

There’s always evidence that the guy on the street is a veteran. There are the service tattoos and the jacket patches. Many of them saw things that were hard to live with, and they were rendered mentally ill. Instead of getting help, they wound up on the street because they couldn’t hold a job or stay off drugs and booze.

It would be high-minded of me to say we need to do better for our veterans. But it’s been said so often it’s pretty much lost it’s meaning. We like to praise our veterans on Veterans Day or July 4. But once the holiday is past, we go back to treating them like shit.

Because they’re homeless and, as a result, they’re dirty, scary and unpleasant to those who have lived far more comfortable lives. And, don’t you know, we LOVE to judge people even though we know nothing about them.

I single myself out for ridicule, because back when fear, anxiety and addiction had me by the balls, I used to walk or drive the other way when these guys approached.

I’ve had my struggles. We all have. But I have no idea what it’s like to be on a battlefield.

I do know that a lot of people — good people who have sacrificed for God, country and family — have taken tragic turns in the line of duty. It’ll always be this way because life’s unfair.

Do these guys deserve better from the rest of us? You bet your ass they do. Including “Crazy Mike.”

When someone is on the street and hungry, we like to say they did it to themselves. Or we say we gotta help them and then do nothing. I’ve done both.

They did drugs. They stole and lied to people.

But the fortunes of man are never, ever so simple.

There’s always something in the history of each of us that shapes the decisions we make and how we live otherwise. I’ve made many bad choices in my day. But God’s Grace has carried me through.

May the vets on the street find that same Grace.

I bunked with a Vietnam veteran who has PTSD last year when I was on team for a Cursillo retreat.

He’s been through the wringer over the years. He saw terrible things in Vietnam, and he came home to people who were spitting on soldiers instead of praising and thanking them. 

I thought it was appropriate that a guy with PTSD would be rooming with Mr. OCD. We had a lot of laughs over that.

But here’s the thing: This guy doesn’t bitch about his lot in life. He’s retired, but he spends his days helping fellow veterans.

And he’s active with the Cursillo movement.

The tragedy of service bent him in every direction. But it didn’t break him.

There’s hope for all of us.

Even “Crazy Mike.” He walks the streets talking to himself today. But with the right kind of help, who knows what kind of goodness he may be capable of.

Posted on

“Liking” The Crazy Mike of Haverhill Page is Sad and Stupid

Here’s the part where I lose some of my Haverhill friends. I don’t care.

In any city there’s a guy like “Crazy Mike.”

The stereotype is usually a long beard, ratty clothes and the fellow is usually living on the street. He talks aloud to no one in particular and falls asleep on playground equipment.

People like to laugh at him.

I’m no saint. I’ve made my share of fun of people like this, and in the rear-view mirror, looking back at my own struggle with mental illness, it makes me feel ashamed. It makes me the last guy on Earth who would be fit to judge others for poking fun at someone less fortunate.

But I have to believe that God put me through those earlier experiences in the hope that I’d come out of it wiser and more compassionate. If I in fact have, then I need to be the guy to stand up for “Crazy Mike” and others like him. I need to start by never making fun of someone in that condition again and, if I’m lucky, take a few people with me.

A friend of mine mentioned today that he was more than a little disappointed in some of his friends for “liking” a Facebook page dedicated to “Crazy Mike.” I looked up the page to find that the page has 1,166 “likes.”

The description of Mike reads: “Walking any and everywhere, Yelling at cars, Using imaginary machine guns, talking to myself, Having a court trial while walking down the sidewalk, Screaming racial slurs, Sleeping in and around Building #19 1/16, Lighting chips on fire in Market Basket.”

He yells at cars, you say? We all yell at cars. It’s just that we’re usually behind the wheel pissed off because someone cut us off in traffic.

Using imaginary machine guns? I’ve seen plenty of so-called sane people do that while talking about their favorite scene from “Lethal Weapon” or “Con-Air.”

Screaming racial slurs? That’s wrong of him, but many of us have used the same awful slurs. Not because we are racists, but because we tend to master stupid talk when we’ve had a bit much to drink.

Talking to himself? I do that all the time, and I’ll bet more than a few of the “Crazy Mike” page likers do it, too.

Sleeping in front of Building 19? That’s just because he’s not as lucky as those of us who have a home to sleep in. I’m sure there are twenty-somethings who like that page and still enjoy the comforts of their parents’ houses.

It would be easy for me to say you people are hypocrites and shitheads. But I am, too, so I would just be piling on another layer of hypocrisy.

Instead I’ll just end with this:

We are all God’s children. We are all crazy to varying degrees.

We all have the capacity for big acts of wisdom and bigger acts of stupidity.

Instead of laughing at this “Crazy Mike,” just thank God you’re not in his shoes.

I’d like to know more about Mike, now. We all have a history that molds us into who we are. I’m wondering about his story.

Did he fight a war and come home with post-traumatic stress disorder? Maybe, maybe not.

But if nothing else, his story — one of mental illness — deserves to be told.