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Diary of a Thumb Sucker

My son Duncan sucks his thumb. No big deal, but since he’s going to be eight soon, he’s coming around to the realization that it’s probably time to stop. There’s just one problem.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/TraSBSNfpCg

Much of the time, he’s not aware that he’s doing it, which can make quitting all the more difficult.

Duncan usually does it when he’s tired or feeling insecure. It’s the latter part I worry about most.

This is one of the many challenges of parenting this loving, witty and all-around beautiful boy.

As I’ve mentioned before, we’ve had Duncan evaluated in recent months and have learned he fits all the textbook symptoms of ADHD. He’s still too young for an accurate diagnosis, but we’ve blasted full steam ahead at getting him the help he needs.

He goes to a therapist and loves it. As she talks to him, he gets to make cool things: A pink lizard he made out of beads, for example. He does a lot of writing and drawing exercises, and is slowly learning a lot about himself. He’s also beginning to learn a bunch of coping tools for anger, insecurity and focus.

When school resumes, he’ll be getting help with his fine-motor skills, which will make him better able to express himself through art and writing.

The boy has come a long way since the start of the year, and we’re very proud of him.

This makes me especially happy, because he’s learning things now that I only started to learn after I brushed up against multiple emotional breakdowns and spiraled into addictive pursuits.

Maybe, just maybe, Duncan will be the Brenner who breaks the cycle of mental illness that has a deep history in the family.

Right now, it’s like we’re watching him in his own personal springtime, where his abilities are starting to sprout and bloom. His sun is rising.

There’s still a way to go, of course, and to me his thumb sucking illustrates that. A lot of insecure thoughts continue to swirl around in his head. He sucks his thumb to sooth himself, just like I did with binge eating. I know that after developing coping tools, it takes a long time to master them. Hell, I’m still trying to master them.

The other part of the challenge is that we still don’t have a rock solid diagnosis.

Duncan’s doctor says his ADHD-like symptoms could also be the very beginnings of something much different — bipolar disorder, depression, maybe even OCD like his old man.

I’ve always had the fear that my kids would inherit my defects. I don’t worry nearly as much now, though.

Duncan may have his struggles. Everybody has their struggles. Tell me you’ve never had a wave of depression or been addicted to something and I’ll tell you you’re full of shit.

But Duncan is not me. He’s his own person. And so far, his childhood has been much different than mine was.

He also has a phenomenal mother. Between her strength and goodness and the skills I’ve picked up on the road to recovery, he’s going to do just fine.

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Hitting Bottom and Staying There

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about hitting bottom. Specifically, after I hit bottom, how long did it take for things to start looking up? I got bad news for those craving the quick fix.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/yUSn0u2GIjE

The first point worth making is that I didn’t hit one bottom like you usually see in the movies, where the addict falls so low that the clouds part and they see the light in huge, dramatic fashion. Reality is slower than that — and more boring.

I didn’t just hit one bottom. I hit a series of bottoms. And I stayed down there for a while each time before I even considered pulling myself up.

One crash was a couple months after my best friend took his life. I was binge eating with more zeal than ever, and I don’t think I cared at that point if my heart gave out. I was too crushed to care much about anything.

I had just been handed the job of editor for the Lynn Sunday Post, a paper that was already dying. I would be its pallbearer. The job included double duty as a writer for North Shore Sunday. I worked 16-hour days, six days a week.

Work was all I had at that point. Erin and I were engaged (realizing life is too short, I proposed a month after Sean died), but I was still trying to please my masters, so work came first. On Sundays, my only day off, I was sleeping through the entire day.

By the summer of 1997, I realized I had to push back or end up in an institution somewhere. Fortunately, my boss at the time saw that I was physically deteriorating and stepped in.

In December 1998, I was 285 pounds and collapsing under the weight. My father was too, and wound up getting quadruple bypass surgery. That was another slap in the face to warn me that I had to clean up. I lost 100 pounds, though I did it through unhealthy means that would blow up in my face several years later.

In late 2001 I realized that I was never going to please the managing editor I worked for at The Eagle-Tribune. He was forcing me to be the type of manager I didn’t want to be — an asshole. So I told him I was going higher up the food chain to get reassigned. And that’s what I did. They put me back in the night editor’s chair, which helped for a short time.

By late 2004 I was out of The Eagle-Tribune and in a job I loved. But I was putting enormous pressure on myself and the physical toll was showing. All my personality ticks were in overdrive: the obsession with cleanliness. The paranoia over my kids’ safety. A growing sense of fear that kept me indoors a lot.

That was probably the deepest bottom to date, the one that made me realize I needed to get help from a therapist; help that led to my OCD diagnosis.

The next bottom was in late 2006, when I had developed many of the mental health tools I use today. But my brain chemistry was such a mess I couldn’t get past the fear and anxiety attacks. That’s when I decided to try medication, which has worked far better than I ever thought possible.

The last bottom was in the summer of 2008. I was finally finding some mental stability, but I surrendered to the binge eating during therapy and was back up to 260 pounds. And it was hurting my health in a big way. I kept waking up in the middle of the night, choking on stomach acid. I couldn’t find clothes that would fit me. I was getting depressed again.

And so I started checking out OA and by October was headlong into my 12-Step Program of Recovery.

All these events were bottoms. And I lingered there for weeks and months at a time.

There are reasons the bottoming-out process takes a long time:

1. You usually fall to the bottom slowly, so slowly that you don’t notice the movement.

2. Once you crash to the floor, you become so out of sorts that you don’t realize you’re in hell. It’s just another shitty day, followed by another, and then another, and then another.

3. It’s usually those around you who realize you’ve arrived in a bad place. But you’ve been causing them so much pain for so long that they don’t even realize it immediately.

Once you hit the bottom, the depression and self-destructive behavior intensifies.

http://youtu.be/zBEo5ZGGsO4

Then you wake up one morning and decide you’re so sick of life that something has to change. And you start making changes.

The changes end up taking a long time, too.

That’s probably not what you wanted to hear. But it does get better.

OCD Diaries

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Killed By Fear (Doctor Phobia and the C Word)

The Fredstock 2 benefit concert Erin and I went to Friday night hit me where I live for another reason besides a love of music: The event was also about raising awareness about colorectal cancer. I’m a high-risk case.

Mood music:

I never knew Fred Ciampi, the man the benefit is named for. He passed away this winter from colorectal cancer, and the benefit was also meant to help out his wife, Claudia DeHaven Ciampi-Biddle. (Donations can still be made by writing to Claudia@snowlionyoga.com. Please put Fredstock Donation in the subject.)

When I saw his picture, my first thought was, “Man, he was young.” In fact, he died just shy of his 40th birthday.

The other thing that came to mind was that it could just as easily be me in the obituary. The childhood Crohn’s Disease that reduced my colon to a tube of scar tissue also left me at a much higher risk for colon cancer.

It’s something I’ve had to live with since 1990, when I got a letter from my then-doctor recommending I get regular colonoscopies to monitor for possible colon cancer. As a 20-year-old I balked. You never really worry about cancer at that age. But I had the test anyway.

It was a good thing I did.

They found hundreds of polyps throughout the colon. These weren’t — and aren’t — the type of polyps that they typically worry about. These are more like skin tags. Specifically, they are part of the scar tissue.

The doctor was pretty stern with me. “You can’t wait five years between colonoscopies,” he told me. “This stuff can be dangerous.”

Naturally, I went eight years before the next one, and in those years I did some of the most vicious binge eating of my life. Each year that passed made me more fearful of what was going on inside.

I got the test done in 1999 because of some bleeding. Everything was fine, and I’ve done much better at getting a colonoscopy every other year to keep an eye on things. So far, so good, though I’m about a year overdue for the next one. I better make that call this week.

Perhaps I’m a fatalistic personality, but I won’t be a bit surprised if colon cancer is found in me at some point. I haven’t had a Chrohn’s attack since 1986 and I know my luck could run out sooner or later.

But I don’t really fear it like I used to. I figure I get the test frequently enough that anything they find will be at an early and treatable stage.

If I’ve learned anything from all this, it’s that fear and embarrassment is the deadliest risk of all.

People are too embarrassed to get a colonoscopy because of how the procedure is done. No one has to know about it except their doctor and maybe a couple family members. But they avoid the test anyway because they still find it embarrassing. Then they end up dying of colon cancer a few years later. Not in every case, but in many.

Embarrassment is a powerful thing. It keeps a person from seeing things as they really are and keeps them from facing their demons.

It’s not always bad to be embarrassed. God put the emotion in us for a reason. If we’re a jerk to someone or we get caught doing something unethical, we should feel shame.

But we shouldn’t feel shame over an illness and shouldn’t be embarrassed about getting help, whether it’s for colon trouble or the mental illness and addiction at the heart of this blog.

I’m not saying Fred was like that. Like I said, I never knew him.

But I know a thing or two about fear, shame and embarrassment.

Don’t let those things keep you from letting the professionals help you.

OCD Diaries

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Facebook Changed My Social Dysfunction

Going to see The 360s last night drove home an interesting point for me: The Facebook world and the real world are indeed two different places. And it may have made my social dysfunction worse.

Mood music:

First, I want to thank The 360s for a great show last night. When I leave a show with my ears ringing, feeling like I’ve been kicked in the gut, I know I’ve had a good, healthy dose of rock n roll. I need that sort of thing every day.

Here’s what was weird for me, and it’s nobody’s fault, really. Heck, it’s not even necessarily a bad thing: I’m connected with all the band members on Facebook. Seeing their status updates every day makes me feel like I really know them. But in person, we’re strangers.

I approached the band members, who looked at me puzzled, trying to figure out who I was. Once I introduced myself, they knew who the strange guy in front of them was and they were very friendly. Some of them read this blog, but in real life, in a dark club, I don’t really resemble the cartoon logo people associate me with. And outside of Facebook, we’ve never really talked to each other in a room.

And so I come off as the typical hanger-on at rock shows, the guy in the room who sucks up to the band so he can tell people he knows them. That’s not my goal, but I can see how I might come off that way. I can be a real train wreck sometimes.

In a way it’s kind of cool, because it goes to show that you can’t replace the real world with something found in cyberspace.

That’s actually a relief, because I sometimes worry that if I get too good at the social media thing, I’ll forget how to function when face-to-face with someone.

Actually, let me correct that: I’ve never really understood how to function when face to face. And that brings me to the main point of this post.

Even though I can comfortably give a talk in front of an audience and share my most embarrassing truths in writing, I remain socially dysfunctional.

I lose the ability to distinguish what I see in the people I share a room with from people I share a Facebook page with. So, once off Facebook and back in the real world, I forget how I should act around people.

I’ve gotten better at this stuff since crawling out of the black hole that is OCD and addiction. But I suppose I’ll always be fighting the battle at some level. And that’s OK.

My social awkwardness didn’t get in the way of what was a great night out with my wife. I had fun, and look forward to the next concert. I also didn’t need to feed my addictive side with binge eating or booze to get through the night. That’s some pretty good progress.

I just need to work on my real-world people skills. But then doesn’t everybody?

OCD Diaries

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You CAN Revisit Your Past (A Trip to Revere)

Erin had an audio conference to record Thursday morning, so to ensure a quiet house, I put the kids in the car and went to Revere Beach, the scene of my tumultuous, painful, angry yet beautiful upbringing.

I’ve written a lot about Revere in this blog. How could I avoid it? But I’ve been short on photos to show you. I fixed that problem with this latest journey back in time. Sean and Duncan had a field day picking up shells and jumping in the water — things I took for granted at their age.

The most striking thing about visiting my old home is that as a whole, Revere Beach is a far more beautiful place than I remember growing up. Part of it is because there was a massive renovation of the beachfront in the 1990s. Pavilion roofs ripped off in the Blizzard of 1978 were replaced, sidewalks were extended to the entire length of the beach and, most importantly, the Deer island sewage treatment plant has cleaned up the ocean considerably.

Here’s the rocks behind Carey Circle, just footsteps from my front door. I used to hide here during moments of anger and depression, chain smoking Marlboro Reds:

The house on the right is where Sean Marley grew up. My house was two doors down. During my teenage years, I spent more time in the Marley house than I did in my own. The house on the left is where Sean moved in after he and Joy got married. It’s also the house where his life ended:

My house, dead center, as seen from Pines Road, across the street:

A lot of dead jelly fish used to wash up on the beach. Here’s the private part of the beach, where the bored among us would blow up the dead fish with firecrackers and, on the fourth of July, the bigger explosives.

 This is the first house after Carey Circle, where the Lynnway becomes Revere Beach Boulevard. Me and my siblings used to hang out in this house in the 1970s and play with the kids who lived there. Their father allegedly had ties to the mob and, sometime in 1978 or 1979, he was gunned down in the kitchen. It was believed to be haunted after that, but I never really took that seriously. The house did creep me out, though:

The trip ended with lunch at Kelley’s.

A good trip, I’d say.

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The Brady Bunch Offended Me

Sherwood Schwartz, creator of “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch,” has died at age 94. Naturally, I’m remembering how I hated “The Brady Bunch” for giving me a fake picture of family life.

Mood music:

I hated “The Brady Bunch” because it made me so angry that my own family was never like that. But then no one’s family is really like that.

I did like the movie adaptations that came out in the 1990s because the films mocked the feel of the original series. You had the family living in the 1990s but acting like they were in the 1970s. Some elements of the family were modernized, though: Alice the housekeeper and Sam the butcher get it on at one point.

When Mike asks Sam what he’s doing there in his robe in the middle of the night, rummaging through the fridge, Sam says, “Oh, just delivering some meat.”

Obviously, Schwartz’s point was to create the perfect picture of family, not because it reflected reality, but because it would be nice if it were reality.

Now that the chip on my shoulder has been filled in by time, experience and hopefully a little wisdom, I see “The Brady Bunch” as a nice idea, however unrealistic. In fact, the escape from reality was a welcome relief to a lot of people whose families were miserable and ugly. A little relief helps you regroup and carry on.

My problem is that I’ve always had a tendency to overthink these things.

I never took issue with “Gilligan’s Island.” As absurd as the show was, I’ve always liked the theme of people with nothing in common getting thrown together — forced to become a new family of sorts in order to survive.

I admit without shame that my favorite episode is the one with the Japanese sub pilot who didn’t realize the war was over; the one who complained that the Chinese stole the idea for water torture from Japan.

Despite how the younger, angrier version of me felt, the older me believes Schwartz did a lot of good for a society that tends to stew in its own, stinking, cynical juices.

Rest in peace. I hope you find the folks in Heaven to be something like the characters you created.


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Not What God Wants Me To Be, But Not The Person I was

The title of this post is a popular saying among those who use the 12 Steps to bring their addictive behavior to heel. It’s a good line to keep in mind when you’re ready to lose patience with yourself and slip into self-loathing.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/jYpydtdlWxA

There’s a lot about myself that still has to change. I still get angry too easily. I still get self absorbed. I still give in to OCD thinking and actions, even when I know better. I still suck at saving money. Little problems still turn into big crises in my head.

But I don’t see a reason to beat myself over it, because I used to be much, much worse.

A temper today involves angry thoughts and self pity. As a young punk a temper meant punching dents into walls (I lacked the muscles to make a hole), flipping off people on the highway for cutting me off or, worse, getting touchy when I cut them off. It also meant unleashing a torrent of verbal vitriol.

Getting self absorbed back then meant spending what I wanted, eating what I wanted and making the decisions I wanted with no regard for anyone else. I still fall into that behavior, but I catch it more quickly than before and correct myself as much as possible. Doing service has been good for me because it gives me fewer opportunities to stray. Being a husband and father has helped, too.

Giving into OCD today means I may go on a cleaning spree at the moment I need to be doing other things. It means I may check and re-check my laptop bag to make sure the machine is inside, dooming myself to a longer, more traffic-laden commute in the process. It means I’ll occasionally run short on patience. But back then, it meant being blinded to everything around me by obsessive worrying about things that in hindsight were a lot of nothing. Which, in turn, led to the selfish behavior.

I bring this stuff up because everyone has a cross or six to carry on a daily basis, and it’s easy to give in to the worst kind of thinking and write yourself off as a failure.

In times like this, it’s also helpful to remember what Clarence the angel scribbled in the book he gave George Bailey at the end of “It’s a Wonderful Life” — “No man is a failure who has friends.” I used to think I had no friends. Then I realized the problem was that I was ignoring my friends in favor of isolation.

We all have something to offer and to live for. We’re all screw-ups — nothing like the people God wants us to be.

But if we’re just a little better than we once were, that’s huge.

I’m going to keep working on being who God wants me to be. It’s an almost impossible task, because how do you ever really know what God wants you to be (until you’re dead and he tells you directly, anyway)?

He always leaves clues, though. So instead of feeling sorry for ourselves we can simply do the best with the clues we’ve got.

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Social Anxiety, Alcohol And Whatever Else Numbed Me

Addicts often become the way they are because they suffer from severe social anxiety. To carry on in a large group setting is as painful as having a leg sawed off while wide awake.

I know the feeling very well.

 

Item: It’s December 2001 and I’m at the home of the big boss for the annual Christmas party. I skipped out on this celebration a year earlier because talking to co-workers about anything other than the work at hand terrified me. I came up with a good excuse, though I can’t remember what it was. I couldn’t get out of two in a row, so off I went with Erin to the party. For the first hour I stood there like a stone, not knowing what the hell to say to these people, many of whom I was butting heads with at the office.

I’m offered a glass of wine. I suck it down in two gulps and start to loosen up. So I have another. And another. And another. Conversation becomes easier, so I have another.

I walk away realizing that enough alcohol will numb that itchy, edgy feeling I get around people. So getting drunk becomes standard operating procedure.

After awhile, the social settings are no longer enough. I need to numb myself every moment of every weekend, then every night after work. When I’m back on the newsroom night desk I stay up late on Sunday nights watching TV. Wine is a necessity, followed by a nice food binge.

Item: I leave that job and go to a company full of young, just-out-of college party hounds. The company likes to have long offsites where the free booze flows like tap water. Being an addict, I make sure to get my fill, followed by my fill of food. There’s nothing quite like a food binge when you’re drunk. For someone like me, it’s heaven for the first hour, followed by shame and terror over my utter loss of control. I gain up to 50 pounds in this job as I binge my way through the social discomfort I feel in a setting like that.

Item: It’s 2009 and I’m several months into my abstinence from binge eating. I’ve dropped 65 pounds on the spot and my head is clearer, but the defect in my head is still there, so I go looking for other things: Wine — lots of it. It becomes a necessity every night with dinner. I get itchy when the supply is cut off. By Christmas I realize wine is no longer compatible with a clean life — the kind I have to live, anyway. So I take my last sip on New Year’s Eve and put it down.

Two things are worth noting here:

1. I was never a fall-down drunk. There was always a line I refused to cross, to that zone where you become stupid and incoherent. But I needed to have some. Not having some led to that feeling like your skin is either two sizes too loose or too tight. The OCD behavior worsens, and I’m twitching, pacing and bouncing off walls and furniture until I have some. THAT is addiction. You don’t have to be smashed and stoned 24 hours a day to qualify. All you need is that unquenchable thirst; the kind that drives you mad until it’s fed.

2. My need to fill the hole in my soul with food and drink has almost always been connected to social anxiety. It’s not just the big work party settings. It’s the small family settings, where I feel the pressure to say something useful every two minutes. I stopped drinking and binge eating, but other crutches have emerged to take their place. I stare at my Android phone or flip through a book. I break off and take walks to be alone for a few minutes. I don’t think it’s awful behavior. It’s certainly better than what I used to do. But it goes to show that you never heal 100 percent.

I’m much better with people settings than I used to be. One reason is that in recovery I’ve come to enjoy people more. I even enjoy watching a little dysfunction.

I can speak in front of a room full of people and often do for work. That’s better than when I would be terrified to do so. I can certainly express myself in writing in ways I could never have done a few years ago. But when I’m at a family gathering or with friends I haven’t seen in awhile, the social anxiety still sets in.

I know a lot of people with social anxiety. Some think they are freaks. Others think they’re either too intellectually inferior or superior to those they are with. Others don’t beat themselves over it. It simply is what it is.

The key is wanting to get better, then doing whatever it takes to get there.

I’m better, but I still have a lot of work to do.

It’s like they say in the halls of AA and OA: I’m not yet the person God wants me to be, but I’m not the person I was, either.

Progress is progress.

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Looking For The Bright Side

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

Mood music:

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

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

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

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

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

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

This morning, I’m grateful for the following:

–My family still puts up with me

–I have some great friends who help me along

–I remain sober and abstinent.

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

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

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

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

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

OCD Diaries

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‘It Comes Alive And I Die A Little More’

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

Mood music:

[spotify:track:4RCJ2xbTfJalOq7RtTsOPv]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dwelling on things.

That’s where it starts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It sucks a person’s vitality from every pore.

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

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

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

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