Learn From My Mistakes

In all my efforts to get sane a few years ago, I did a lot of stupid things. I’m sharing it with you here so you don’t make the same mistakes:

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/l4Xx_vjGnlo

–Don’t try to control your compulsive binge eating problem by fasting. You won’t make it through the morning, and then you’ll binge like you’ve never binged before.

–Don’t mix alcohol with pills that have the strength of four Advil tablets in an effort to kill your emotional pain as well as your physical pain. That sort of thing might kill you.

–Don’t hate the people in your life for the bad things they’ve done. Remember that they’re fucked up like you and that hating them will never make the pain go away. In fact, it’ll just make it worse.

–Avoid the late-night infomercials. Those things were designed for suckers, especially suckers who can’t sleep because they’re so overcome with fear and anxiety that they see knife-wielding ghosts around every corner. You might find yourself falling for it and spending stupid sums of money on fraudulent bullshit like this.

–Don’t spend every waking hour worrying about and rushing toward the future. You will miss all the beauty in the present that way, and that’s a damn shame.

–Don’t try to control everything. Doing so just makes you look like an asshole.

–Don’t put down others just so you’ll feel better about yourself. You’ll just ruin another life, and you will not feel better. You’ll feel worse.

–Don’t try to eradicate your mental disorder. Learn to work with it instead, because once your brain reaches adulthood, there’s no turning back.

–Don’t spend your life trying to please everyone. You never will, and they usually won’t deserve the effort.

Don’t over-think things. Thinking doesn’t make you smarter.

Don’t bitch about your job. You’ll just annoy people. Change yourself and your attitude first. Then, if you still don’t like the job, work on finding a new one and keep doing your best at the current job in the meantime.

Don’t whine about how tough everything is. Life is supposed to be tough at times, and wallowing in it keeps you from moving on to the good stuff. To put it another way, stop seeing yourself as a victim.

Class dismissed.

OCD Diaries

Before You Hate Someone For Life, Consider This

We all have someone in our personal life who we hate. There’s often a good reason for it, especially if you’ve been molested. But we often loathe someone before we’ve considered all the complexities of the relationship.

I’ve been there. But as I get older, the chip on my shoulder gets smaller and I’m better at seeing the other side. In that spirit, let’s consider the following:

Mood music:

A lot of us hate one or both of our parents because we felt neglected or we were physically and verbally abused as kids.

People think I hate my mother because we haven’t spoken much in 5 years, but the truth is that under all the bitterness and resentment I still love her. In hindsight, two of her three kids were very sick as children and one didn’t survive. Her marriage to my father ended badly. She was also from a line of women who had the chronic urge to lash out. Inevitably, some of that’s going to rub off.

In hindsight, I think she did the best she could with the tools she had. The problem now is just learning to get along and setting boundaries that will be respected.

People who remember me from my days at The Eagle-Tribune probably think I hate some of the bosses I had while there, especially between late 2000 and early 2002. I did for a long while, but no longer. Looking back, one or two people struggled with their own health problems and were equally prone to depression.

When you spend every waking hour in fear that you’re not going to measure up and that someone somewhere is out to get you, you will have a hard time being a nice person. When we feel embattled, we have trouble seeing that the person at the focus of our anger is dealing with his or her own pain. Pain makes you do bad things — sometimes to yourself, sometimes to others.

On the flip side, some have questioned my devotion to the Catholic faith. A lot of people hate priests who sexually abused children and I can’t blame them. Molesting a kid is one of the best reasons to hate someone that I can think of. You’re especially going to be inclined to feel that way if you were abused or if, like me, you have children. It’s also easy to hate when you run into churchgoers who hammer you with all their self-righteous views while hypocritically ostracizing people who don’t fit the prim and proper mold. But in our moment of anger, we forget that priests are human with all the same weaknesses we have.

Those who act on their darker impulses deserve to be removed from the picture. It becomes a matter of safety and justice. But when you consider how close a lot of us come to stepping over the edge, it’s hard to keep hating. Besides, a person’s faith shouldn’t be about the damaged humans you have to deal with at church. It should be about you’re direct relationship with the Man upstairs.

If we want to hate and flip off the guy who cuts us off on the highway, it’s worth considering that the guy probably had as shitty a day — or worse — than you’ve had. We’re all capable of being dicks after a rough day.

If we want to hate the weather forecasters because it’s pelting rain and snow when we’re craving warm sunshine, we should remember that at that moment, we’re just being stupid. Especially if we live in New England, where the weather patterns often defy even the most seasoned meteorologists. Besides, its supposed to be hot in summer and cold in winter.

Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Man, is this fighting between the Occupiers and Tea Party people getting nasty.

Yesterday, my wife posted something about the occupy movement and poked some nerves.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/XvInEYevpmw

There was this comment from our cousin Ed:

“I’m sorry Erin, it’s hard for me to compare the Tea Party movement — a political party with an agenda — to a bunch of bored kids trying to find themselves and making US pay for it! I applaud the action, but now I want to know what they want and to move on already!”

That got this response from our friend Jesse:

“The idea that the 99% is a bunch of “bored kids trying to find themselves” is so utterly offensive that words fail me. REALLY? That’s why the movement is global?

“We have troops in Uganda, Iraq, Afghanistan, and are building schools in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the former Yugoslavia with taxpayer dollars. The “war” in the middle east is virtually without objective at this point, costs us millions a day and has cost us trillions in total.

“Our public schools languish in poverty and our healthcare STINKS. We are 27th in the world for maternal fetal medicine and infant mortality! Haverhill is the largest city in the state without a band or orchestra (middle or highschool) for example.

“Additionally, with 2 jobs I am unable to make ends meet. Despite that I’m pregnant for over 2 months I worked 6-7 days a week (7 most of the time) until I became to ill to continue doing so and even then I was NOT making ends meet. I have a Bachelor of Science degree, extensive training in 2 other areas and a TON of work experience in NYC and Kansas City.

“The father of my baby is irresponsible and nearly entirely uninvolved (I’m being diplomatic here I assure you). I haven’t earned so little per hour for my brain and hards work since I was in my early 20’s. I’m 40. I’ve had numerous surgeries and 7 miscarriages and 2x bailed myself out of 10’s of thousands of dollars in medical debt WITH insurance mind you.

“My credit score dropped from 800 in August of 2010 to 650 by August of 2011 because of medical bills and prenatal care/lab bills that I am unable to pay and which the father will NOT help pay.

“Please don’t compare me, the 99%, to the Tea Party where the women leaders boast about returning to a “more constitutional government that our forefathers intended” when those forefathers didn’t even give women the right to vote! I could not possibly care less if you are a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent, Tea Party member or entirely apolitical. JUST PLEASE give a crap that we have outsourced nearly all of our manufacturing and that the ratio of profit dispersement/pay between the typical American CEO and the average worker is now $459 to $1.

“It is criminal, disgusting and if people were not in a television, sugar and carb coma they would absolutely NOT tolerate it. Apparently those who do not tolerate it are only JUST begining to be heard. If you think we are bored kids you are in for a rude awakening. WE are not going away. WE are the sleeping giant who has been awakened and is starving after way-too-long a hibernation.”

This is what happens. If you’re on one side, the other side is evil.

This is nothing new, of course. It’s always been this way.

People get fierce in their opinions and breath hell fire when they’re disagreed with. Then someone comes along and asks, “Can’t we all just get along?” Seconds later, someone comes along and punches out that guy’s teeth for raining on a good parade.

In my opinion, there are some smart, thoughtful people on both sides. I know them. I work and play with them. Our kids go to school together. I’m related to many of them. They are good people, but they disagree viciously from time to time.

Some say it has to stop. I say screw that. A good debate keeps our minds sharp.

Here’s where we are better than some who quarrel in other countries: We yell, but most of us aren’t punching and shooting each other. That does happen, but the vast majority of people on both sides keep it peaceful.

Disruptive? Absolutely. Loud? Sure. But we’re all (mostly) still talking to each other, and I think that says more about our nature than the more violent stuff.

In a bigger sense, we are getting along. We just disagree passionately about a few things.

That’s perhaps one of the better legacies of the Founding Fathers, that the system they created has made for mostly peaceful discourse in the last 230-plus years. Well, except for the Civil War.

People love to quote the Founding Fathers like they’re gods, forgetting that they allowed slavery to exist and, as Jesse noted, forbade women the right to vote.

It just goes to show how this country is deeply rooted in dysfunction. But for the most part, it’s a good dysfunction, because people are still generally caring and responsible beneath all the yelling.

Carry on.

Judith Miller: The Liar’s Journalist

Judith Miller is one of many reasons I left mainstream journalism years ago. I forgot about her until Fox News decided to run this piece of filth about the BlackBerry outage and cyber terrorism.

If you want to see a true specimen of fear-based journalism, read that article. In it, she takes the recent BlackBerry outage, which was the result of tech failure and not terrorism, and connects it to cyber terrorism anyway, despite the absence of facts to support her thesis.

From her article:

An RIM spokesman has said that the outage was caused by what Security Week called “a core switch failure within RIM’s infrastructure,” and not by a deliberate disabling attack. But the outage highlights the threat that determined cyber-warriors could pose to the nation’s communications systems if they target them. For over a decade cyber-experts have urged the U.S. to upgrade critical infrastructure to protect vital dams, power plants, and communications systems from cyber-crime or cyber-attacks from rival countries. But the country remains complacent and highly vulnerable, as the BlackBerry outage shows.

Amazingly, she goes on to connect it to biological terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, two subjects she wrote about at length last decade as a reporter for The New York Times. She scared the shit out of a lot of people with those articles, including me. The slimy part isn’t that she scared people. It’s that she scared people with stories that turned out to be inaccurate or completely false.

As her Wikipedia profile notes, Miller was later involved in disclosing Valerie Plame’s identity as CIA personnel. She spent three months in jail for claiming reporter’s privilege and refusing to reveal her sources in the CIA leak.

She willingly engaged in the fear-based journalism after 9-11 that lead to a lot of heartache and loss later. Her stories were used by the Bush Administration to build the case for going to war in Iraq. We went in unprepared for the bloody insurgency that followed.

I should probably laugh at this kind of journalism when I see it and move on. But the fact of the matter is that this stuff used to leave me a crippled mess.

When you have an out-of-control case of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), you latch onto all the things you can’t control and worry about them nonstop. Nothing feeds that devil like the kind of crap Miller writes and Fox News delivers. I’ve written before about the anxiety and fear I used to have over current events. I would think about all the things going on in the world over and over again, until it left me physically ill. I personally wanted to set everything right and control the shape of events, which of course is delusional, dangerous thinking.

Right after 9-11 I realized the obsession had taken a much darker, deeper tone. This time, I had the Internet as well as the TV networks to fill me with horror. Everyone was filled with horror on 9-11, obviously, but while others were able to go about their business in a depressed haze, I froze. Two weeks after the event, I refused to get on a plane to go to a wedding in Arizona. Everyone was afraid to fly at that point, but I let my fear own me. It’s one of my big regrets.

Part of the problem was my inability to take my eyes off the news. To do so for a five-hour plane ride was unthinkable. To not know what was going on for five hours? Holy shit. If I don’t know about it, I can’t control it!

I really used to think like that.

Her reports about the potential for bio terror fed the beast. I wouldn’t mind at all had her reports been based on truth. When there is a real danger people need to know about, you have to report it. That’s when people need to hear the scary truth. But I do mind, because the fear she threw around was not based on truth.

I can’t blame her for how I reacted to the coverage. I had a crippling mental illness that was still years away from being diagnosed. I can’t blame anyone for that. It was my problem to work on.

But I worry about people who are at the stage of illness I once found myself in. They will read Miller’s BlackBerry article and react as I once did.

True, that’s their problem. But if you are the writer, you should care about how people will react.

Then again, if you’re willing to write lies, you’re not really going to care about that, are you?

How To Talk To A Liar Who’s Been Caught

A reader who recently found the two posts I wrote on addicts as compulsive liars had a sad story to share. Her husband, a compulsive spender, gambler and drinker, lies to her all the time. He apparently sucks at it. She always finds out.

Mood music:

How, she asked me, does she deal with a person like this? She still loves him, and in many respects he’s still the great guy. But lies are a cancer on even the most tried and true relationships.

It’s a hard question for me to answer. For one thing, it’s self-serving of me to tell a person like you how to talk to a person like me. My instinct will naturally be to tell you to go easy on him and calmly talk it through. It is true that yelling at a liar won’t make him stop. In fact, it will probably compel him to lie even more, convinced that any shred of honesty will result in a verbal beating every time.

This part has been especially challenging for me over the years. I grew up in a family where there was constant yelling. Because of that, I react to yelling like one might react to gunshots. I instinctively avoid it at all costs, and that has led to lies.

But if your significant other is stealing money behind your back to buy drugs, a friendly, smiling reminder to him that grownups aren’t supposed to behave this way won’t work either. The liar will simply thank God that he got off the hook that time.

You just can’t win with a liar.

I lied all the time about all the binge eating and the money I spent on it. I’m guilty of the lie of omission when it comes to smoking. And in moments where I felt like I was in trouble, I lied about something without meaning to. The instinct just kicked in and a second later I was smacking myself in the head over it.

Here’s where there’s hope:

Lies tire a soul out. It weighs you down after awhile like big bags of sand on your shoulders. Guilt eats you alive. That’s how it’s been with me in the past.

If you’re like that and there are any shards of good within you, you eventually come clean because you want to. Remember that lying is part of two larger diseases: Addiction and mental illness. Nobody wants to be sick.

But while some who get sick wallow in it and make everyone around them miserable, others are decidedly more stoic about it and try to do the best they can with the odds they’re dealt.

I was a miserable sick man but eventually, through spiritual growth, I tried to become a more bearable sick man. That meant dealing with the roots (addiction and OCD) and the side effects (lying).

I still fall on my face. But I work it hard and seem to have gotten much better than I used to be.

I credit Erin for a lot of this. She could have either thrown me out or thrown up her arms and turned a blind eye to my self destruction. But somehow, she has found a middle ground in dealing with me. It hasn’t always been pretty. But we’ve had our victories along the way.

You want to know how to talk to a liar who’s been caught? You’re better off asking her than me.

pinocchio

Axl Rose: Still A Jackass

Guns n Roses singer Axl Rose is still a jackass after all these years. Consider the following:

Mood music:

From the metal news site Blabbermouth.net:

GUNS N’ ROSES‘ continual tardiness is making things rough for concert promoters and fans alike, with long waits for Axl Rose just as much a definite at a the band’s concert as hearing “Paradise City” or “Welcome To The Jungle”. At the Rock In Rio concert on October 2, GUNS N’ ROSES came onstage two hours late despite having reportedly agreed to pay a heavy fine for making the audience wait.

GUNS N’ ROSES‘ defended its actions with a brand new post on its Facebook page, stating, “Love it Hate it Accept it Debate it — You want 8 o’clock shows go find F-R-I-E-N-D-S or hit a cinema somewhere.. or you wanna be informed go catch the 10-o’clock news.. this is Rock N’ Roll! Treat yourself don’t cheat yourself thinking you’re gonna go to school or work or whatever you ‘normally’ do the next day. Oh and remember before you get high and never want to come down. ‘you can have anything you want but you better not take it from me!’ This is GUNS N’ ROSES and when the time is right the stage will ignite. Looking forward to sharing that with rockers soon!”

GUNS N’ ROSES‘ 2001 show at Rock In Rio saw them take to the stage two hours late, and while the crowd waited patiently for them on that occasion, this has not been the case at other shows.

In March 2010, fans of the band rioted in São Paolo, Brazil after a private show was canceled at the last minute, and in 2002 fans in Vancouver, Canada and Philadelphia in the U.S. rioted when shows were canceled on the day.

Also in 2010, organizers of the Reading festival in England pulled the plug on the band’s PA, silencing them after they took to the stage an hour late and tried to overrun the event’s curfew time by over half an hour.

Here’s what Axl doesn’t understand after all these years: When you pay to see him perform, it’s reasonable to expect the band to take the stage close to the time the ticket states. People travel from far and wide to see their favorite bands. Some disrupt their schedules to get to the venue on time. Most have jobs to get to the following morning.

Axl thinks it’s wrong for people to get upset with him for not fulfilling his side of the deal and that they should “treat themselves” and not “cheat themselves.” But it’s not a treat to spend two extra hours in a concert hall waiting for something to happen.

Axl’s mental health issues are the stuff of rock legend. His mood swings have led to riots and a world of hurt for those around him.

After more than 20 years, one would have hoped he grew as a person; that he brought his selfish instincts to heal.

But apparently not.

I feel sorry for him. To go through all these years and not learn from mistakes seems like such a waste.

Perhaps it’s hypocritical of me to say these things. After all, I have plenty of things I still need to work on.

But I can’t help myself.

A Facebook Fad I Can Embrace

There have been a lot of groan-inducing Facebook fads along the way. The “25 Things About Me” is one example. The “only some of you will have the guts to repost this” is another. But the latest fad is one I can actually embrace.

Ever since the redesign everyone complained about, amusing posters have popped up everywhere. I suspect the ability to play images bigger was the prime motivator.

A lot of them are pretty good. Allow me to share some of my favorites. Some are clever and humorous. Others simply speak the truth.

demotivational posters - TORTURING YOUR DAUGHTERS BOYFRIEND

demotivational posters - THIS

Lessons Steve Jobs Taught Us About Life

The news is full of analysis this morning about all the ways Apple’s Steve Jobs changed the world. Rightfully so. But he was also an interesting case study in human nature, and we can learn from what was good and maybe not so good.

Mood music:

Let’s put aside talk of the iPhone, iPad etc., and talk about the man. I’ll admit that I’ve always been hard in my judgement of Jobs. Sure I have no right to judge, but while none of us do, all of us do.

My view of Jobs has always been colored by the TV movie about him and Bill Gates called “The Pirates of Silicon Valley.” The film focuses intently on Jobs as a crazy, overbearing and even cruel executive. Apple employees wear shirts that say “90 hours a week and loving it!” He torments employees constantly in the film, and you find yourself thinking that it would be good if he got run over by a truck at the end of the movie.

But Jobs was a brilliant visionary, and brilliant visionaries always seem to fight harder against their demons than most people. Or maybe it just seems that way because they’re on the public stage.

Considering my own battles with personal demons, I’m actually awed by what it must have been like for him. I’m just a regular Joe. I’ve never invented things that will change how we live and I never will. But I’ve had to struggle plenty to be a better man. I’ve been cruel to people in my past. I’ve let obsessive-compulsive thinking drag me to the depths. Clawing back has been beyond hard.

It must have been a million times harder for a guy like Jobs, who possessed a talent and drive few on this Earth will ever know. When you’re so damn good at changing the world with technology, how can you not carry on like a deranged narcissist when you’re still young? Some manage to avoid that, but they are freakishly exceptional people.

While there are plenty of indications that Jobs remained a difficult boss to work for in his later years, there’s also a lot of evidence that he grew as a human being. Mark Milian at CNN wrote a good piece about Jobs’ spiritual growth. In it, he says:

“As with anyone, Jobs’ values were shaped by his upbringing and life experiences. He was born in 1955 in San Francisco and grew up amid the rise of hippie counterculture. Bob Dylan and the Beatles were his two favorite musical acts, and he shared their political leanings, antiestablishment views and, reportedly, youthful experimentation with psychedelic drug usage.

“The name of Jobs’ company is said to be inspired by the Beatles’ Apple Corps, which repeatedly sued the electronics maker for trademark infringement until signing an exclusive digital distribution deal with iTunes. Like the Beatles, Jobs took a spiritual retreat to India and regularly walked around his neighborhood and the office barefoot.

“Traversing India sparked Jobs’ conversion to Buddhism. Kobun Chino, a monk, presided over his wedding to Laurene Powell, a Stanford University MBA.

“Rebirth is a precept of Buddhism, and Apple experienced rebirth of sorts when Jobs returned, after he was fired, to remake a company that had fallen the verge of bankruptcy.”

He still fought personal demons, to be sure. But you could say he died a better man than he once was.

It doesn’t matter who you are and how big you become. It doesn’t matter how much talent you have or if you create things that change how everyone else lives.

If your soul doesn’t evolve and you fail to be good to the people in your life, the rest doesn’t matter much, does it? That’s my belief, anyway. Feel free to disagree.

I think Jobs did grow inside, and good for him.

This awesome image by Charis Tsevis

Faith: An Excuse To Duck Personal Responsibility?

A friend and reader is unconvinced when it comes to my posts about surrendering to a higher power as part of recovery from addiction. Here’s what she said:

“Bill while I agree with a lot of what you say in this article. I fail to see the “surrender to a higher power model.” In fact, that is one of the many flaws I find in AA styled groups. I have no addictions (well maybe caffeine), but have read a modicum of information about them. My perception is that yielding resolve to a “higher power” seems to be an excuse for not taking responsibility. I say this after spending a good deal of my early 20s looking for some spiritual certainty. At various points I think I’ve found it, but then I realize it was just my own inner-needs presenting a false image.”

She makes a fair observation. On the surface, it’s easy to see addicts turning to Faith as just another crutch. And I’ve known people who use it to justify bad, selfish decisions. One guy would prattle on about the Lord providing whenever he borrowed money he never repaid. Others seem to have a level of Faith that grows when things are good and dwindles when things don’t go well.

So let me try to answer the question. First, I’ll point out that this is how I see it. Any number of religious people might explain things differently.

For me, when I try to control everything and handle everything by myself, I overwhelm myself and everyone around me. Part of my problem is that I can’t control a lot of things. If I crash and burn, I blame it on how hard life is and how I’m working so hard to handle all the challenges. When I do that, I’m avoiding personal responsibility.

It’s a common problem with addicts. We need help because we are too mentally damaged to make good decisions when we’re under the spell of our substances. We see things as us against the world. There’s nobody to help us. We’re on our own. And it’s hard to face your fears when you’re alone.

You can lean hard on other people, but when you do that you eventually burn them out. When someone is constantly calling you or showing up at the front door because they can’t handle life, it becomes disruptive to everyone in the immediate vicinity.

Enter the Higher Power.

A person’s higher power isn’t necessarily the conventional concept of God. It’s simply the realization that something bigger than yourself is at play and ready to help if you simply accept it. Your Faith can be rooted in Buddhism. You could be a Wiccan or Jewish. Or, like me, Catholic. You don’t necessarily have to be a regular church or temple goer, though I choose to go to church at least once a week.

It’s about the higher power of YOUR understanding.

While this is a central part of the 12 Steps and AA, I don’t believe that this is the only way to kick an addiction. Some people just decide to stop drinking, eating or drugging and manage to quit cold turkey. I envy them. Others do it with a strong support system of family and friends. Others, like me, need more.

Personally, I think surrendering the idea that I could control my demons alone was the first step in taking responsibility for my actions. The surrendering isn’t an act of giving up and becoming dependent on Faith like a cultist robot. Specifically, I surrendered an idea and a behavior that wasn’t working. I surrendered the image I had of myself. That’s when I was able to move forward.

It doesn’t mean I’m cured. I still struggle. But if I fall on my face, the responsibility is all mine. I think people who expect God to keep them from failure and bad fortune are delusional. Our mission is to learn to stay upright when things aren’t going so well, so we can come out of it better than before.

I hope that helps.

Art by Bill Fennell