Insanity to Recovery in 8 Songs or less

The author shares some videos that together make a bitchin’ soundtrack for those who wrestle with mental illness and addiction. The first four cover the darkness. The next four cover the light.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a devoted fan of hard rock and metal music [See How Metal Saved Me]. I’ve found that the music helps me to release whatever negative thoughts I may have at the time. And so I thought I’d share some with a little help from Youtube.

Just don’t play ’em all at once, as the space-time continuum that binds the universe together might rupture, killing us all.

1. Cheap Trick: Woke Up With A Monster.

I love this band, and since we are often the monster we awake to, it’s entirely appropriate:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRTgQ4cx5ik&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

2. Sixx A.M.: Girl With Golden Eyes

This entire album — a soundtrack to Nikki Sixx’s book “The Heroin Diaries,” is perfect for folks like us. I like this song because it’s the part of the story where the addict really starts to hit bottom. And as we all know, hitting bottom is the first step in recovery:

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

3. Nine Inch Nails: Gave Up

This song speaks to the hopelessness we often feel. And in an unrelated but interesting aside, this video was shot at the residence of Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski, where Tate and four others were murdered by the Manson Family in 1969 (NIN’s “Broken” and “Downward Spiral” albums were recorded in the house, which Trent Reznor converted into a studio):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVpw1SwJRBI&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

4. Metallica: The Unnamed Feeling

The video is pretty self-explanatory:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx_lhZQ_4Pg&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

5. Sixx A.M.: Life is Beautiful

As Sixx says at the end, “When you’ve lost it all, that’s when you realize that life is beautiful.”

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

6. The Decemberists: Sons and Daughters

I love this song because it really nails the feeling you get when the black cloud finally lifts:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5H8DwJI0uA&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

7. Avett Brothers: The Battle of Love and Hate

We all struggle internally with love and hate, and this song ends with Hate realizing that maybe — just maybe — he was being an idiot. Love, meanwhile, is patient and kind throughout:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7xUZkKd58c&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

8. P.O.D.: Alive

This song was big shortly after 9-11-01. It resonated with those who were starting to come out of the shock and despair of the attacks, at least in the sense that people came to appreciate their own lives a little more than before:

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

OCD DIARIES: The 12 Steps of Christmas

The author reviews the 12 Steps of Recovery and takes a personal inventory. There’s really no Christmas theme here, other than that the author found the headline catchy.

I’m reconstituting my OA food plan quite nicely since the Christmas Eve scare. I’m lucky for not having slipped completely. Now I find myself thinking about the 12 steps this program is based on. It’s been a bit since I’ve reviewed them to see where I fit in, so here goes:

Step 1We admitted we were powerless over our addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable.

I have this one nailed. Hell, I wouldn’t have started going to OA meetings if I hadn’t realized I was indeed powerless over my addiction. But as I was reminded last week, this step must always be top of mind. Otherwise, you relapse before you know what hit you.

Step 2Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

This one was easy for me. I realized a few years ago that I would be nowhere unless I let Jesus into my life. Thing is, when an addict is busy being an addict, they’re too busy giving in to the Devil to listen to God. Thankfully, God’s voice is much louder as time goes on.

Step 3Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.

For this, I direct you toward the post about my conversion: The Better Angels of My Nature.

Step 4Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

This is a tough one. I’ve definitely done a lot of soul searching about where my fault lines lie and how to be better, but I have a lot of work to do on this one. The biggest sign of progress is that I can look back on the past and see that while I was busy smoldering over people who were being jerks to me, I was busy being an even bigger jerk to someone else. [See: Bridge Rats and Schoolyard Bullies] I’ve also realized that I have a bit of an ego problem that needs work. For more on that, see The Ego OCD Built.

Step 5 Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

I’ve admitted it to God and myself, and a few other human beings. But when it comes to outlining the EXACT NATURE of my wrongs, I’m not always as honest as I need to be. But I’m working on that.

Step 6Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

I’m ready, but old habits die hard.

Step 7Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.

I ask Him every day. Of course, I think God helps you see your shortcomings but you have to be the one to work on the removal part.

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

I’m willing to make amends with some people but not others. I know for sure I have harmed others in my life and I’m truly sorry for that. Others harmed themselves. I just happened to be standing too close to the tracks when they put their hands on the third rail. Clearly, I have work to do on this one.

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

See Step 8.

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

I’m working hard on this one every day. I thank you all for being patient.

Step 11Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.

Doing this step a lot, and believe me — it helps. A lot.

Step 12Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

You could say that starting this blog was my way of working this step. I’ve also started sponsoring people in OA to help them get a grip on their compulsive eating. I’m not sure I’m all that good at it yet, but I’m definitely grateful to those who come to me looking for help. In asking me for help, they are actually helping me to be a better man. It sounds confusing, but it’s true.

Scaring the People in Your Life

The author is hearing from a lot of old friends shocked to read about his past. Thing is, basket cases are good at hiding their craziness in public.

To most of my family, the stories I tell in previous posts aren’t all that surprising. They were there. My in-laws may not have known everything that was going on back in the day, but they saw my quirks.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:78iMIaSjeVlUoNa7rehPOU]

Even at work, my quirks were easy to see. It surfaced in the form of my over-intensity on deadline; my habit of hovering over page designers; my overbearing nature toward the reporters I managed on the night shift.

But I was much better at keeping it together — on the surface, at least — around most friends back then.

Which brings me to another truth about people with mental illness and addictions: We do most of our suffering and self destructing in private.

There’s a scene in a “West Wing” episode where Leo McGarry, recovering alcoholic and chief of staff to the fictional President Bartlet, tells someone: “I don’t get drunk in front of people, I get drunk alone.” I ate alone. And I ran through my darkest, most obsessive-compulsive thinking alone. Most of the time, the two went hand in hand.

But there were times in my life where I hid it well.

As a student at North Shore Community College and later at Salem State College, I was really coming into my own in terms of my look and attitude. I played up the long-hair and metal image, stayed thin through bouts of starvation and read a lot of books so I could talk about them and appear smart.

That’s not to say I was walking around with fake skin. I was who I was at the time. In many ways I’m still the same guy. It’s just that I waited till the door to my room was closed and locked before I let the Devil out.

Despite what I’ve written about being the crazy-ass guy in the newsroom, I’ve been pretty good a lot of the time at putting on a calm, cool face, especially in more recent years. As I was diving deeper and deeper into the food addiction to dull the unpleasantness of going through therapy, I was being prolific as hell at work, writing a ton of breaking news and doing so with a smile.

At one point, a boss at the time marveled that I was so relaxed and zen-like for a guy who had just spent 12 hours covering a big news event. I laughed hard at that. I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but zen-like was a new one.

On the drive home that day, I ordered $35 worth of junk in a nearby fast-food drive-thru and downed the contents of the four bags by the time I got home.

I was also pretty good at hiding my depression. Part of that is because my brand of depression has never been the suicidal variety that essentially makes the sufferer close down. Mine was more of a brooding depression in which I internalized my feelings and withdrew as often as I could. But on the job, I pushed all those feelings into the proper compartment and went on with life.

There’s light at the end of this tale. The therapy, medication, Spiritual awakening and loss of fear have gone far in making me the calm, zen-like guy on the inside as well as outside. I still carry the restlessness of OCD, but I manage it all better and don’t let the condition get in the way of the precious present nearly as much as before.

To those who knew me in the late 1980s and early 1990s: Don’t worry. I’m basically the same guy you knew back then.

The difference is that the man inside has gotten a lot better at being the man on the surface.

But make no mistake: I still have my bad days. I am human, after all.

OCD Diaries 12-27: Edge of a Relapse

The author comes dangerously close to a relapse, but lives to fight another day.

Mood music for this entry: “Accidents Can Happen,” by Sixx A.M.:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nan4Kdtz-9w&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

It was bound to happen sooner or later. That moment where the addiction would come calling again. [Instead of retreading my history of addiction here, I’ll point you toward the entry that gets into it all: A Most Uncool Addiction.]

I put down the flour and sugar — my whiskey and/or crack — on Oct. 1, 2008 and dropped 65 pounds on the spot. Thursday night was the first time since then that the food came calling.

Here’s how it works:

You’re going about your business and all seems well, then maybe you spot some food on the table that you USED to binge on. You walk away, but the vision of the food sticks in your mind like the edge of a knife. You walk back toward the food without actually realizing you’re doing it. Before you have time to process what’s happening in your thoughts, the food is in the mouth.

The good news is that I didn’t touch the flour or sugar in the end. My abstinence from those ingredients remains intact. But the other part of my program, where almost everything I eat goes on a little scale, faltered. Not terribly. But enough for me to stop and realize I was in the perfect position for a full-blown relapse.

My first brush with potential relapse is unsettling, to say the least. When you work so hard to get to a certain point and come close to throwing it away, it’s downright scary.

This morning I’m feeling the bloat. I’m sure it’s because my dinner didn’t go on the scale as it should have. I was at a restaurant, celebrating my step-mom’s birthday. I ordered the right things, but didn’t pay enough attention to how much was on the plate.

I awoke to the realization that I need to reign it in and double down on the usual discipline.

The good news is that, unlike previous times where I would lose my way with the food, I’m not walking around in a depressed fog. My mind is pretty clear right now. I know what I have to do.

That is an important sign in my evolution. I may still screw up on occasion, but instead of descending into weeks and months of binge eating, I’m poised for a quick rebound.

That’s real progress.

I’m also awakened to the fact that all addicts are at risk for a sudden relapse. You can be right as rain, and then you’re falling down before you can even process what’s happening.

The reason I include that Sixx A.M. video above is because it speaks so clearly on the problem at hand. Nikki Sixx fought heroin and other addictions for many years. He has gone from stone-cold sober to full-blown relapse and knows how it can potentially break a person for good.

The point of the song is that, as the title says, accidents can happen. The part of the song that really cuts to the core is this chorus:

And you know that accidents can happen
And it’s okay,
We all fall off the wagon sometimes
It’s not your whole life
It’s only one day
You haven’t thrown everything away.

The reason those lines are so powerful is that as addicts, we truly believe we’ve thrown it all away when we screw up. There’s the feeling that to fall off the wagon is to undo weeks, months or years of progress; to be right back to square one, as if the program of recovery never happened.

I’ve been there before. Not this time.

In one sense, I’m lucky because I didn’t lapse back into the ingredients and binge behavior of years past. Maybe that makes it easier for me to regain my footing.

But I also think I’m lucky because I’ve experienced some true growth, the kind where setbacks make you stronger instead of undoing you.

So for today, I’m thanking God that I had a fender bender and not a head-on crash. I’m tightening the eating today, not tomorrow or New Year’s Day. The fix starts now.

And since I’m in between OA sponsors, I’m going to stop dragging my heels and get a new one. It’s critical to have someone to kick you in the ass in times like these.

Break time is over.

To be able to get back up and move on, for me, is so absolutely huge.

I Thank God for that.

I’ll end by pointing you toward another song that sums up my closing lines here– “Broken, Beat and Scarred” by Metallica:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5ACdgebi4c&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Fear Factor

In this installment, the author describes years of living in a cell built by fear, how he broke free and why there’s no turning back.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” — Franklin Delano Roosevelt

This morning I led a meeting of Over-eaters Anonymous, a task that included standing before a room of people for 30 minutes to tell my story of OCD, addiction and recovery.

It was my third time “qualifying” at an OA meeting this past year. Meanwhile, I did a fair amount of public speaking for my day job as senior editor of CSO Magazine. I sat on panels at security conferences and did solo presentations in front of various information security groups around the country.

Five or so years ago, the notion of me getting up to speak in front of people would have been laughable.

I was too busy hiding in my cage of fear to do such things. Fear will rob you blind, forcing you to avoid life and retreat into the sinister world of addiction.

Breaking free of it was a gift from God. But it took a long time to figure out how to unwrap it and realize my potential.

For me, fear was one of the many byproducts of OCD, something that went hand in hand with anxiety. It kept me away from parties. It scared me out of traveling. I turned down a lot of living in favor of lying in my bedroom watching TV. There are a couple examples in particular that I’m not proud of.

1991

One summer night I was hanging with two friends in front of Kelly’s Roast Beef, a popular eatery on Revere Beach. As we started walking the mile back to my house, we noticed we were being followed by some 15 punks. It was clear they were looking for trouble. I panicked and ran to a nearby bar. As I looked back, I couldn’t see my friends.

The punks had circled them and started kicking and punching their guts in. I called the police and the beatings ended quickly, but I couldn’t get over the fact that I ran away. Worse, it marked the end of my walking along the beach at night for many years to come.

It was a huge fear-inflicted injustice. I grew up on that beach and loved the place. I walked its entire length daily. It gave me peace and clarity. And I allowed some punks to scare me away.

2001

A week after the 9-11 attacks in New York and Washington, Erin and I were scheduled to fly to Arizona to attend a cousin’s wedding. The night before were were supposed to leave, I gave in to my terror at the prospect of getting on a plane and we didn’t go. It’s one of the biggest regrets of my life.

There are smaller examples in between and in the years after, but those are two of the more vivid memories.

Fear also fueled the binge eating and kept me from standing up for things that were right in the family and workplace. It was better to keep my trap shut, I thought. To do otherwise would put my job in danger or have me blackballed.

Then there was the fear of loss I wrote about a few blog posts back — fear that if I didn’t overprotect my kids I might lose them to some imagined beast; that if I spoke my mind during a spousal spat my wife might walk out on me. In hindsight, these were foolish ideas. But in the grip of fear, you think this way and act on it even though you really know better.

When I began getting treatment for the OCD the fear actually accelerated for a while. If a toe went a little numb I’d think I was suffering from a blood clot. A headache would leave me wondering if a tumor was growing inside my skull. A pain in the chest became fear of a heart attack.

I can’t remember when the fear finally began to lift. I think it was in early 2007, shortly after I began taking Prozac. Once the medicine untangled the chemical imbalances in the brain, situations I had feared suddenly seemed manageable. It was pretty weird, actually. I didn’t know what to do with this new feeling. Or maybe it was the year before, when I converted to the Catholic Faith and increasingly let God into my life. When you have God on your side, there’s really nothing to fear, right?

Then little milestones came along. There was a business trip to California that would have consumed me with worry a few years before. There was the first time giving a presentation in front of a room full of security people who were almost certainly smarter than me. The computer holding my PowerPoint presentation went on the fritz and I was forced to present sans slides. I told the audience that I was just going to wing it and that broke the ice.

Today, I look for opportunities to give talks in front of crowded rooms. I have work to do on my speaking skills, but I want more. The more I do, the more my confidence grows and the smoother and more organized the presentations get.

I look for opportunities to fly as well. And though I work hard on the business at hand, I ALWAYS make a point of building in a day to go out and explore, especially if there’s a piece of history to see up close. I want to see it all. Staring at the hotel room TV will no longer do.

Sometimes I worry that the fear will return and I’ll again retreat to my old cage. I don’t think that’s going to happen, though, for one simple reason — the world has been opened up to me. I’ve experienced too much joy these last couple years to go back to the way I was.

I couldn’t go back if I tried. Not that I would want to try.

To be clear, I still worry about things. But I don’t let it shut down the rest of my life. Instead of being engulfed, I can put the concern in its proper mental compartment and move along with my life.

There will be difficulties ahead, I’m sure. That’s life. But I feel more ready to deal with what may come than I’ve ever been before.

OCD Has its Benefits

I’ve joked to people before that having OCD isn’t all bad. One benefit is that it gives you extra drive to get things done.

Most of the time that drive is spent on all the wrong things: checking the door eight times to make sure it’s locked, going bat-house crazy when something on your desk is knocked out of place (and I have a lot of stuff on my desk), and trying to make sense of things you have absolutely no control over.

I turned to therapy and medication to eradicate or at least lessen such behavior.  But truth be told, I didn’t want the OCD to go away altogether. I worried fiercely that managing the disorder would make me lose my professional edge, that I would somehow turn into a care-free robot.

That didn’t happen, thankfully. If anything, I’m a much more effective journalist now than I was when I was letting the brain spin out of control inside my skull.

But every once in awhile, the spinning mind forces me to get off the couch and do something I might not have done otherwise. In this case, I gave up a lazy evening to chase down news that President Obama has picked his new White House cybersecurity coordinator.

The Bridge Rats of Point of Pines, Revere

In this post, the author reviews the imperfections of childhood relationships in search of all his OCD triggers. Along the way, old bullies become friends.

I used to blame childhood bullies and name-callers for all the things that led to an adulthood with OCD. I was bullied, you ask? You betcha. I was called a lot of names related to being fat. Some kids gave me the occasional beating. But I was no better than they were.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:2uqAPEdeZxmOqIuH9ejdgv]

For every five kids who picked on me, there were five other kids I picked on to feel better. In high school, there was one kid everyone called Stiffy because of something unfortunate that happened to him in the locker room shower. He had a speech impediment that caused him to talk in a low, tone-deaf drone. He was freakishly thin. He had double the body hair that I have today, and that’s saying something. I’m pretty sure he got a few beatings along the way.

There was the classmate in elementary school who got beat up a lot. I beat him up once because he was the only kid in the schoolyard I could take down.

So in one sense, the childhood vitriol that came my way was poetic justice. The other thing is that you grow up and realize all kids do stupid things, but most of us grow up.

I remember a gang called the Bridge Rats. They were all about my older brother’s age and hung out under the General Edwards Bridge connecting the Point of Pines neighborhood in Revere, Mass. to the neighboring City of Lynn. They smoked pot, sucked kegs of beer dry and bullied the crap out of me and some of my friends. Among their many works of graffiti under that bridge was a corrupted version of the Ten Commandments. Since I was a believer in God even as a kid, I was pretty certain they were all going to burn in Hell, and I wanted to be their bus driver.

In high school, when I wasn’t picking on Stiffy, I got my share of fat jokes thrown my way. And I was never allowed into any of the little groups that form among classmates. I even had trouble fitting in with the headbanger crowd.

Then I lost a bunch of weight in what was, in hindsight, the stirrings of athletic bulimia, where eating binges were followed by days, weeks or months of starving myself, existing on black coffee and Raisin Bran, and working out three hours a day. I grew my hair long. A few people started to actually think I was cool.

The trend continued into the college years, where I kept the hair long, got involved in all the extra-curricular groups and for the first time started making a lot of friends. I drank and smoked pot, the same things I used to think the Bridge rats were going to burn over. I chain smoked. And for most of college, it kept me thin and cool.

Of course, inside the empty hole in my soul was starting to grow, gathering up all that was dark in me to form the mental disorder that would stalk me in adulthood. The addictions were what I used to try filling the hole.

But on the surface, I was doing a decent job of holding up my facade.

Fast-forward to more recent years, when I turned to therapists to help me peel back layer after layer of what ultimately fueled my OCD. There was the family tragedy and childhood illness. There was the loss of dear friends and the constant fear that more loss was right around the corner.

But a funny thing happened in therapy: The memories of schoolyard bullies and Bridge Rats didn’t come bubbling to the surface. I now know why — because they really weren’t traumas at all. We were all being stupid kids, and since I was guilty of the same behavior, I wasn’t entitled to harbor resentments. If anything, I plunged into a period of self-loathing over the memories of things I had done to others.

But here’s the great part of it all: Those I’ve since reached out to have been pretty forgiving. We’ve also become friends. As for those Bridge Rats: I’m connected to many of them via Facebook and we often look back at those days and laugh. Most of us are too busy with our spouses, kids and jobs to lament past misdeeds. We learned from them instead. And we grew up.

I lost track of Stiffy after graduation and hope he’s ok. I am at least at peace over the fact that I did befriend him in our senior year and renounced what I had done to him.

Fear of Loss

There was a time when fear of loss would cripple my mental capacities. I got over it — mostly.

It’s 6:30 Sunday morning as I write this, and a snowstorm is exploding outside my living room window. Sean and Duncan are already playing games on the family laptop.

I’m enjoying the precious present moment, more so since I can remember when my mind used to spin so fast with worry that I would barely recognize the wonderful things in front of me. Including my kids.

In fact, I was often looking at the miracle in front of me and, instead of enjoying it, would work myself into an anxiety attack. Because there was always the chance I could lose it all. Fear of loss.

A word about Sean and Duncan: Sean is an 8-year-old third-grader, one of the smartest kids in his class. Duncan is a 6-year-old kindergartner, equally smart but with more of a romantic streak. He gets crushes on the little girls in his class on a regular basis. They get their brains and their looks from their mom.

They constantly dazzle me with their razor-sharp wit and their kindness toward others. They can pray the Rosary from memory better than many adults. They love unconditionally.

Before I found a treatment program for OCD, I was in constant fear of losing them and their mom to imagined illnesses and other calamities. In 2005, long before the current H1N1 pandemic, when a much more deadly flu virus was killing people in Asia and health officials were worrying that that might blossom into a pandemic as lethal as the 1918-19 Spanish Flu, I worried around the clock that these precious children might someday be stricken with it. I searched five pages of Google search results every morning to get the latest news of every new death.

Looking back, it all seems incredibly stupid. But it also makes perfect sense.

Since OCD is essentially a disease of worry in overdrive, my mind was doomed to always be seeking out something new to worry about. Since I’ve watched a brother and two best friends die, fear of loss was destined to poison my mental juices.

I also used to worry relentlessly about impending snowstorms and hurricanes for the disruptions they might cause.

Then there was the fear of loss in work form, where I’d constantly worry that if I didn’t slave away 80 hours a week at work, I just might fall out of favor with the bosses.

Whenever I had to get on a plane for business travel, I worried that maybe — just maybe — the plane might blow up in flight.

Then I found my faith and found treatment. It was along time coming, but it came.

Don’t get me wrong. I still worry about my wife and kids all the time. When a former colleague recently lost her only child in a motorcycle crash, a fresh wave of worry flooded in.

But I don’t spin mental webs about things that MIGHT happen like I used to. I hardly spin those webs at all today. I know bad things can still happen. But I’ve learned that there’s no fruit in fearing things that are completely beyond my control. All I can do is be the best husband and dad I can possibly be, keeping everyone safe and healthy and giving them all the love I have to offer.

Instead of dreading the snow, I’m enjoying it, even though I have to shovel out the car in an hour because I’m on schedule to do the readings at the 9:30 Mass. Instead of dreading the next business trip, I find myself looking for all the cool, historic places to check out at my next destination. I’ll work hard while there, but I always build in a few hours to take a look at the things I don’t get to see everyday.

It’s a beautiful gift.

The Better Angels of My Nature

It’s not hard for me to write about OCD, binge eating and pills. These are a part of life for people across political and religious divides. Depression and anxiety will hit you whether you’re Catholic, Baptist or agnostic; Democrat, Republican or Libertarian.

Religion and politics. Those are tough.

Those who know me know I have strong opinions on both. But I walk a delicate path between friends and family who are all over the map on these issues. So I wasn’t going to touch it here.

On the subject of religion, however, I realized I had no choice. To write about my experiences with OCD without mentioning my Faith is impossible. It’s too much a part of who I am and how I got here.

In April 2006 I was Baptized a Catholic after going through the RCIA program. This, after more than a decade in the religious wilderness. I was born into a Jewish family but we observed it in a mostly secular manner. By the time I reached my 20s, there was nothing keeping me there.

My first taste of the Catholic Faith was when I met my wife. She grew up going to church every Sunday and going to the same parochial school our boys go to today.

Erin never forced her faith on me, and our marriage certainly wasn’t built on the condition that I convert. I slowly inched toward my Faith over time, and my battle with OCD marked a turning point.

Among my friends and family are people who don’t believe in God and don’t want to hear others talk about it. Then there are those who believe in a higher power but are too angry over perceived wrongdoings in the Church. A lot of that anger is justified, especially when observed through the prism of the Priest Sex Abuse Scandal and atrocities that have happened in God’s name at the hands of misguided people over the centuries.

To the right are those who follow their Faith with a sometimes blinding passion. Bring up things about the organized church you disagree with and they’ll shut the conversation down with a few terse words. On this side of the court, to disagree with what the Pope or Bishops say is to be a fake Catholic or worse.

My misgivings, mainly the intolerance that often abounds in the church, are summed up pretty nicely by this West Wing clip, when President Bartlet, a devout Catholic, rips apart a TV pundit who claims to be an authority on the Word of God:

I also get a big kick out of movies that lampoon religion when it’s handled well. A special favorite is this one:

But all that aside, I believe in the central teachings of the Catholic Faith — that through the death and resurrection of Jesus, sinful humans can be reconciled to God and be offered salvation and the promise of eternal life.  (Wikipedia’s definition, but it’s essentially what I believe).

A big part of my conversion involved my battle with OCD. Part of the mental disorder involved relentless self criticism and loathing. Self-hatred is not too strong a description. I was so convinced that I was flawed beyond repair that I simply plowed along with my self-destructive behavior. I couldn’t get out of my own way.

Catholic conversion entered the picture because, as I was peeling back layer after layer in the struggle to find myself, I found that I simply couldn’t get there without help from a higher power. In 12-step programs like Overeaters Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous, a central theme is that you need to put all your trust in a higher power. In fact, Step 2 says, “For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority—a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.”

I could have been drawn to one of the Protestant denominations or something like Unitarianism. But for me, the Catholic Faith resonated above all others. As I studied the Faith and applied it to my own history, I started to understand that I was not sinful beyond hope. I learned that it’s never too late for any of us, and so I found the strength to move forward and get better. It’s a journey that will continue to my dying breath.

I cherish Mass each week, along with all the Sacraments. My favorite is the Sacrament of Reconciliation — Confession. By spilling out the junk on a regular basis, I feel lighter, less burdened and able to deal with the lingering byproducts of my condition.

The community aspect has also been a tremendous source of strength. I’ve made some dear friends along the way, some of whom don’t share my skepticism of the Church as a governing entity.But we’re able to put those things aside. After all, we’re in full agreement on the central aspect of the Faith.

Faith isn’t for everyone. It may not even be the key to recovery for a lot of people. But it was essential for me, and that’s all that matters.

The Freak and the Redhead: A Love Story

I wasn’t looking for a soul mate when I met her. It was the summer of 1993 and I was doing just fine on my own.

Mood music:

I was in a band and we were busy pretending we were really something. This was long before I woke up one day, realized I really don’t know how to sing, and decided to spare the masses the agony of me trying to play vocalist.

I was driving around in a beat-up Chevy Monte Carlo. I had recently crashed it into the side of a van and the door was held shut with a bungee chord. I had recently tired of my long black hair and shaved my head for the first time. For some reason, that attracted her.

I was still a few months away from finding my calling as a journalist, and I was busy hiding from any real work. I pretended to work in my father’s warehouse but was really hiding behind boxes most of the time chain-smoking cigarettes.

I was starting to write for the college newspaper at Salem State College. She was editing the college literary journal, “Soundings East.” I joined the staff to get closer to her so I could make my move.

My first memory of her was on the drive home from classes one afternoon. Stuck in the vile traffic that often snarls the road from Salem to Route 114, I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw a red-headed (strawberry blond, to be more accurate) bobbing her head back and forth to music. I later learned she was listening to The Ramones, and I’m pretty sure she was bobbing her head way off key and off beat from the music. That’s one of the things that attracted me.

On our first date, I took her to meet my mother. The first time she took me home to meet her family, I had forgotten my glasses and was wearing prescription sunglasses and a Henry Rollins T-shirt.  It was my first trip to Haverhill and getting home that night in the dark with sunglasses was an experience in mild insanity. But it was worth it. Her dad, by the way, was worried because he’d heard I was Jewish and pork chops were on the menu. I also met her whacky 12-year-old baby sister, who would eventually grow into the woman I would brand for life with the nickname “Blondie.” I taught Blondie the important things in life, like how to carefully put a string of tape on the back of a cat, to show how it would trick the cat into thinking it was under a piece of furniture and would, as a result, crawl as low to the ground as possible.

That wasn’t even enough to scare away my future wife.

In the years since, she has stayed with me through my bouts of depression following the deaths of many friends and relatives, obsessive-compulsive behavior, fear and anxiety and the binge-eating disorder that at one time pushed my weight to the upper 280s.

She was well within her rights to run for her life. But she stayed, gave me two precious children and helped me to overcome my demons and become the man I am today. She also gave me an extended family that I cherish, even the father-in-law who is to the right of Attila The Hun. I make the latter comment with complete affection, by the way.

My demons weren’t easy for her to understand, to be sure. My path was not the same she had been on. Yet she stayed.

She listens to folk music and puts up with my Heavy Metal. She puts up with the off-color language I picked up during my Revere, Mass. upbringing, which still surfaces in times of anger or intoxication.

She’s dedicated to her Church, sings in the choir and is a Eucharistic minister. Her parenting is the reason my sons are smart and caring beyond their years. She had the courage to leave a relatively safe full-time job to try and build her own business, something that’s not for the faint of heart.

I would never have gotten on top of my OCD without her. My Christmas gift to her is the relative sanity I carry around today. I hope she likes it. 🙂

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