I just wrote and posted the column from the RV. Because I could.
Everyone is settled in with their Blackberries, iPhones, laptops and hand-held games. Thanks to the blizzard and the inability of the Greater DC area to clear snow the way it’s done further north, we have a long journey between here and home.
It wasn’t easy at breakfast this morning. The oatmeal was vile. But I ate it anyway. Got a plan to stick to.
There a blizzard in DC right now, and much of the town is shut down. Fine by me, since I’m not leaving this hotel today. And it’s made for some decent entertainment thus far: The sight of conference attendees, probably drunk, sledding down the hotel’s steep driveway on a sign that was being used for a HIPAA conference in another part of the building. Snowball fights have been happening a lot, too.
Here’s what it looks like outside as of 7 a.m.:
It’s a lot of snow compared to what the locals are used to. Back home, this would be just another storm.
Given that I used to have fear and anxiety over traveling and impending bad weather, it’s amazing that I’m writing this from aboard a cramped RV, zipping through the New York area en route to the ShmooCon security conference in Washington D.C.
A blizzard with up to 20 inches of snow is scheduled to dump on DC while I’m there.
Yet I’m calm — even enjoying myself.
How I overcame that fear has been told over many previous blog posts. The posts that tell it best are here and here.
I’m grateful.
The point being that those who suffer from fear, anxiety and mental illness can overcome it all.
The work to get there is hard and painful. But it can be done.
The author admits that his OCD behavior includes an obsession with the Manson Case. Here’s why.
Ever since I was a kid and I first saw the 1976 TV movie on the Manson Murders, I’ve been fascinated. I’ve read “Helter Skelter,” the book by Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, dozens of times.
I own the 1976 and 2004 versions of the film on DVD, along with a documentary called “The Six Degrees of Helter Skelter,” where host Scott Michaels, keeper of the popular Findadeath.com site, takes the viewer on a tour of places connected to the case, including Cielo Drive, scene of the Tate murders:
Why the fascination with such an awful tragedy?
Not because of the brutal nature of the murders. I’ve seen the crime scene forensic photos, and they made me sick to my stomach.
It’s really part of my fascination with history. Like it or not, this is a piece of American history. It’s a snapshot of everything that went wrong in the 1960s, where a counterculture born of good intentions — a craving for peace in Vietnam and at home — lost it’s way because there were no rules, no discipline and there was no sobriety. I agree with those who believe the promise of the 1960s died abruptly in the summer of 1969.
I’m also fascinated because it shows how easily seemingly stable people can be brainwashed and controlled to the point where they would willingly heed orders to commit the worst of sins.
I’ve learned from my own struggles with mental disorder that when a person is at their lowest and they’re looking for purpose, even the sweetest among us can fall prey to a monster like Charles Manson.
It shows the dark path someone can take without help from the right people.
That’s not to say I see myself in these people. I don’t. I could never embrace what they embraced, even when I was at my lowest.
But the bottom line is that these people were controlled, that a defect of the mind allowed this kind of programming to happen.
It has nothing to do with my own struggles with OCD. But since that struggle has forced me to do a lot of homework on the brain and what makes it tick, I can’t help but be drawn to these cases.
This one is a lesson in history and mental disorder all wrapped into one.
How could I resist?
I just hope others who are fascinated by this case are sucked in for similar reasons and not because they glorify what happened.
Unfortunately, the latter certainly exists in society.
The author finds that he gets the most relaxation from the things he once feared the most.
Mood music
A strange thing happened to me on the way to recovery: I started finding peace and relaxation in the very things that used to fill me with fear and spark anxiety attacks. [See Fear Factor]
It used to be that relaxing meant holing myself up in the bedroom watching endless episodes of Star Trek. I watched a lot of the news, too, which instead of relaxing me would send my brain into an endless spin of worry about things happening at the far corners of the world.
Lying on the couch all weekend — sleeping for a lot of it — was relaxation.
Then Sunday night would arrive and I’d go into a deep depression about the tasks that awaited me the next day at work.
Writing — the very thing I earned a living from (and still do) — filled me with dread. Oh, I loved being a journalist even back then, but I was always in fear of not getting a story perfect. I would sit on a story for hours; writing, re-writing, polishing and reading it aloud multiple times to make sure it “sounded” perfect.
If I had to make a business trip, the heart would pound. I’d obsess about the travel itself and whether I would actually make it there alive. Conferences filled me with dread. What if I didn’t manage to cover every piece of news coming from the event?
Oh, and when writing, it had to be absolutely silent around me. Noise would interrupt the gears in my mind — except for the sound of my voice when reading my articles aloud.
I would go crazy about getting the kids to bed by 7:30 so I could lie comatose in front of the TV. If my wife wanted to talk instead, rage would build inside, though I would try not to show it. I sucked at hiding it, though, and in my own passive-aggressive way, she knew she wasn’t getting through. And yet she stuck around anyway. (See: The Freak and the Redhead: A Love Story]
I’m not sure when things changed. But here’s what relaxation and peace mean to me now:
–Family time. Of course, I’ve always craved being with my wife and children more than anything else. But it used to be that I wanted us all sitting around the house doing nothing. Now I love experiencing things together. Trips with Erin to Campobello Island off New Brunswick, Canada, the mountains of New Hampshire or Newport, R.I. for the Newport Folk Festival. Trips with kids in tow to Battleship Cove, Old Sturbridge Village, The N.E. Aquarium, The Museum of Science. I always cherished my time with them. Now I cherish it more. A lot more.
— Writing. For the life of me, I can’t figure out the reason for this, but writing is relaxing now. Other than when I’m with my wife and kids, writing is when I’m happiest. And I no longer re-read my stuff over and over again. I decided that’s what editors are for. Sure, I’m an editor. But every editor needs an editor. And no, I don’t read ’em back to myself anymore.
–Writing WITH music. In another bizarre twist, I went from needing quiet while writing to needing music. The louder the better. Henry Rollins. Motley Crue. Metallica. Thin Lizzy. Cheap Trick. All perfect writing music.
–Travel. Instead of fearing travel, I now relish it, though I don’t like being away from my family for too long. I start to miss them the second I hit the road. They’re on my mind the whole time I’m away. But I love to go places, see things, experience cities outside my own comfortable Bostonian walls. Last year alone, I visited Chicago twice, Washington DC twice, and went to San Francisco, Nevada, Arizona and New York.
One of the DC trips was in an RV with a group of IT security guys. That was the trip back from the Shmoocon security conference. It’s a 12-hour ride and it’s cramped. But I get to hang out with some of the smartest people in my industry.
Thursday, I leave on the RV for the trip down to DC for Shmoocon 2010. I’ll do a lot of writing for work this weekend. But I’m going to have a blast doing it. I’ll get impatient to be home by Sunday afternoon. I’ll miss my family. But I’ll be a better journalist for making the trip.
I’m determined to take the family to DC this year. There are logistics and financial realities to work out, but it’s going to happen.
I don’t spend much time wondering how I came to enjoy what I once feared. I know the answers.
Erin and the boys teach me something every day about living, whether it’s Erin showing me courage by quitting a steady job to try and make her own business work or Duncan, the youngest son, convincing his older, more skittish brother to go with him on a camping trip with the grandparents because “It’ll be fun, Seaney!” That was a couple years ago. Since then, Sean, who has overcome a lot of fears himself and made his Dad proud, relishes those trips as much as Duncan does.
But above all — and the family examples are a huge part of this — I think the transformation came with my conversion to the Catholic Faith. My bringing God into my life, everything has changed for the better. That includes my concept of rest.
To me, rest is not about lying down and shutting off. It’s about living to the best of your ability. When that living gets scary, I put my trust in God. And that makes everything come together.
Make no mistake: I still have a lot of work to do on these things. But I’m glad to be making the journey.
As Henry Rollins once sang:
No such thing as free time. No such thing as downtime. There’s only lifetime. It’s time to shine.
The author on why self-deprecation is a handy tool for controlling demons.
Mood music:
[spotify:track:0g1HLSNG4KxjDXdeYMnLym]
A few readers have told me I put myself down too much in these blog posts. Since I’m really not trying to put myself down — I do have a monster ego, after all — it’s time to say a bit about the power of self-deprecating humor.
It’s true that I like to poke fun at myself. I do it to everyone around me, so I may as well do it to myself. [For more on this, see The Power Of Sarcasm]
I make fun of my bald head, big ears and nose.
I like to joke that I used to have hair halfway down my back, but now I’m bald and all the hair is on my back.
Contradictions like that, in my view, are worth poking a little fun at.
I see self-deprecation as an important tool for OCD management because it keeps me grounded and reminds me — in moments of high ego intoxication and moments of deep self-pity — not to take myself too seriously.
It’s also a good ice breaker that usually puts others at ease.
So next time you hear me say something to belittle myself, don’t fret. I’m not engaging in self-loathing.
Truth is, I like who I am.
And since I like to tease those closest to me as a form of affection, you could interpret me making fun of myself as proof that I’m pretty much OK with who I’ve become.
As a result I’ve gotten a fair amount of questions about the true value of anti-depressants. I’m not a doctor, so don’t take my perspective as Gospel. Also remember there’s no one-size-fits-all solution here. What I write here is based on my own personal experiences. What works for me may not work for the next person.
The more I read up on depression, mental illness and the drugs prescribed for it, the more I see the human brain as an engine. Comparing it to an engine makes this whole think easier to understand.
We know that the engine of a car is made up of many small parts and when one part gets worn out the rest of the engine can fail. We know that a car needs just the right amount of oil, transmission fluid, brake fluid etc. to function properly. If the oil runs out, the engine seizes up. If the brake fluid runs dry, the breaks fail. On the flip side, too much of these fluids can harm the engine.
We also know that the auto mechanic uses many different techniques to keep engines healthy or fix them when they break.
The brain works much the same way.
Think of the different drugs as different tools to deal with very specific problems in the engine.
In my case, Prozac addresses the very specific fluid deficiencies that spark OCD behavior. The effect is not as simple as the image below suggests (though I do like the image and need to find the artist so I can properly credit him/her):
It may also be useful to think of the therapist as the auto mechanic who is well versed in how to regulate the different engine fluids and pinpoint specific fixes for specific problems. It’s also true that there are good mechanics and bad mechanics who sometimes make the problem worse. [More on this in my previous post: Have Fun With Your Therapist (A.K.A.: The Shrink Stigma)]
In the brain, when certain fluids are running low, the engine stops working properly. The result is depression and a host of other mental disorders.
Since OCD is essentially the brain pumping and spinning out of control, I like to think of my specific problem as a lack of brake fluid.
But the good folks at WebMD explain it much better than I ever could. Here’s some WebMD wisdom I included in a previous post, Prozac Winter:
How Antidepressants Work
Most antidepressants work by changing the balance of brain chemicals called neurotransmitters. In people with depression, these chemicals are not used properly by the brain. Antidepressants make the chemicals more available to brain cells like the one shown on the right side of this slide:
Antidepressants can be prescribed by primary care physicians, but people with severe symptoms are usually referred to a psychiatrist.
Realistic Expectations
In general, antidepressants are highly effective, especially when used along with psychotherapy. (The combination has proven to be the most effective treatment for depression.) Most people on antidepressants report eventual improvements in symptoms such as sadness, loss of interest, and hopelessness.
But these drugs do not work right away. It may take one to three weeks before you start to feel better and even longer before you feel the full benefit.
And, just as weather can impair the performance of your car engine (my father‘s car went for a swim when Revere got flooded out in The Blizzard of 1978 and never worked properly again), too much bad weather can keep the brain from working properly:
Why do I seem to get so gloomy each winter, or sometimes beginning in the fall?
You may have what’s called seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. The condition is marked by the onset of depression during the late fall and early winter months, when less natural sunlight is available. It’s thought to occur when daily body rhythms become out-of-sync because of the reduced sunlight.
Some people have depression year round that gets worse in the winter; others have SAD alone, struggling with low moods only in the cooler, darker months. (In a much smaller group of people, the depression occurs in the summer months.)
SAD affects up to 3% of the U.S. population, or about 9 million people, some experts say, and countless others have milder forms of the winter doldrums.
So this worsening of mood in the fall and winter is not just my imagination?
Not at all. This “winter depression” was first identified by a team of researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health in 1984. They found this tendency to have seasonal mood and behavior changes occurs in different degrees, sometimes with mild changes and other times severe mood shifts.
Symptoms can include:
Sleeping too much
Experiencing fatigue in the daytime
Gaining weight
Having decreased interest in social activities and sex
SAD is more common for residents in northern latitudes. It’s less likely in Florida, for instance, than in New Hampshire. Women are more likely than men to suffer, perhaps because of hormonal factors. In women, SAD becomes less common after menopause.
I’m still learning the science of mental illness, and remember I’m not a doctor. I just share my personal experiences and explain what works for me.
Mental-illness sufferers often avoid therapists because the stigma around these “shrinks” is as thick as that of the disease. The author is here to explain why you shouldn’t fear them.
Mood music for this post: “Just Another Psycho” by Motley Crue:
It’s a funny thing when I talk to people suffering from depression, addiction and other troubles of the mind. Folks seem more comfortable about the idea of pills than in seeing a therapist. After all, they’re just crazy “shrinks” in white coats obsessed with how your childhood nightmares compromised your adult sex life, right?
Since I rely on a therapist and medication as two of MANY tools in my recovery, I’m going to take a crack at removing the shrink stigma for you.
I’ve been to many therapists in my life. I was sent to one at Children’s Hospital in Boston as a kid to talk through the emotions of being sick with Chron’s Disease all the time. That same therapist also tried to help me and my siblings process the bitter aftermath of our parents’ divorce in 1980.
As a teenager, I went to another therapist to discuss my brother’s death and my difficulty in getting along with my stepmother (a wonderful, wonderful woman who I love dearly, by the way. But as a kid I didn’t get along with her).
That guy was a piece of work. He had a thick French accent and wanted to know if I found my stepmother attractive. From the moment he asked that question, I was done with him, and spent the rest of the appointment being belligerent.
That put me off going to a therapist for a long time. I started going to one again in 2004, when I found I could no longer function in society without untangling the barbed wire in my head. But I hesitated for a couple years before pressing on.
The therapist I started going to specialized in dealing with disturbed children and teenagers. That was perfect, because in a lot of ways I was still a troubled kid.
She never told me what to do, never told me how I’m supposed to interpret my disorder against my past. She asked a lot of questions and had me do the work of sorting it out. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what a good therapist does. They ask questions to get your brain churning, dredging up experiences that sat at the back of the mind like mud on the ocean floor. That’s how you begin to deal with how you got to the point of dysfunction.
She moved to Florida a year in and I started going to a fellow who worked from his house. I would explain my binge eating habits to him, specifically how I would down $30 worth of McDonald’s between work and home.
“You should stock your car with healthy foods like fruit, so if you’re hungry you can eat those things instead,” he told me.
That was the end of that. He didn’t get it. When an addict craves the junk, the healthy food around you doesn’t stand a chance. The compulsion is specifically toward eating the junk. He should have understood. He didn’t. Game over.
The therapist I see now is a God-send. He was the first therapist to help me understand the science behind mental illness and the way an inbalance in brain chemistry can mess with your thought traffic. He also provided me with quite an education on how anti-depressants work. Yes, friends, there’s a science to it. Certain drugs are designed to shore up the brain chemicals that, when depleted, lead to bi-polar behavior. Other meds are specifically geared toward anxiety control. In my case, I needed the drug that best addressed obsessive-compulsive behavior. For me, that meant Prozac.
That’s not to say I blindly obey his every suggestion. He specializes in stress reduction and is big on yoga and eliminating coffee from the daily diet. Those are two deal breakers for me. Yoga bores the dickens out of me. If you’ve been following this blog all along, I need not explain the coffee part.
I also find it fun to push his buttons once in awhile. I’ll show up at his office with a huge cup of Starbucks. “Oh, I see you’ve brought drugs with you,” he’ll say.
Thing is, he’s probably right about the coffee. But I’ve given up a lot of other things for the sake of mental health. I’m simply not putting the coffee down right now.
I think part of this is about testing him, too. I can’t help but push the buttons sometimes just to see what I can get away with.
But on balance, it’s a productive relationship that has helped me to find a lot of peace and order in my life. I thank him for that.
He kind of reminds me of Dr. Keyworth, the shrink who counseled Josh Lyman and President Bartlet on “The West Wing.” He took their crap with a straight face, not the least bit concerned that these were powerful, intimidating people.
The main point of this post is this:
There are good therapists and not-so-good therapists, just like there are good and not-so-good primary care doctors; just like there are good cops and bad cops.
But if you feel like you need to talk to someone objective and you hold back for fear of being in the same room as a quack, well, then you’ll never know what you could have accomplished.
I chose to talk to a professional despite my deepest reservations. I’m grateful that I did.
It doesn’t seem right that a friend’s death would hit me harder and fuel my insanity more than the death of a biological brother. But that’s what happened.
This is the story of Sean Marley, who introduced me to metal music, taught me to love life, and whose death was one of the cattle prods for my writing this blog.
I had known Sean for as long as I could remember. He lived two doors down from me on the Lynnway in Revere, Mass. He was always hanging around with my older brother, which is one of the reasons we didn’t hit it off at first.
Friends of older siblings often pick on the younger siblings. I’ve done it.
Sean was quiet and scholarly. By the early 1980s he was starting to grow his hair long and wore those skinny black leather ties when he had to suit up.
On Jan. 7, 1984 — the day my older brother died — my relationship with Sean began to change. Quickly. I’d like to believe we were both leaning on each other to get through the grief. But the truth of it is that it was just me leaning on him.
He tolerated it. He started introducing me to Motley Crue, Ozzy Osbourne, Van Halen and other hard-boiled music. I think he enjoyed having someone younger around to influence.
As the 1980s progressed, a deep, genuine friendship blossomed. He had indeed become another older brother. I grew my hair long. I started listening to all the heavy metal I could get my hands on. Good thing, too. That music was an outlet for all my teenage rage, keeping me from acting on that rage in ways that almost certainly would have landed me in jail.
We did everything together: Drank, got high, went on road trips, including one to California in 1991 where we flew into San Francisco, rented a car and drove around the entire state for 10 days, sleeping and eating in the car.
This was before I became self aware that I had a problem with obsessive-compulsive behavior, fear and anxiety. But the fear was evident on that trip. I was afraid to go to clubs at night for fear we might get mugged. When we drove over the Bay Bridge I was terrified that an earthquake MIGHT strike and the bridge would collapse from beneath us.
I occupied the entire basement apartment of my father’s house, and we had a lot of wild parties there. Sean was a constant presence. His friends became my friends. His cousin became my cousin. I still feel that way about these people today. They are back in my life through Facebook, and I’m grateful for it.
He was a deadly serious student at Salem State College, and his dedication to his studies inspired me to choose Salem State as well. Good thing, too. That’s where I met my wife.
In 1994, things started to go wrong for Sean. He became paranoid and depressed. He tried to hurt himself more than once. I didn’t know how to react to it.
That fall, he got married and I was best man. I wanted to be the greatest best man ever. But I was so self-absorbed at the time that there was no way I could effectively be there for someone else, even him.
Over the next two years, his depression came and went. He was hospitalized with it a couple times. By the summer of 1996, he was darker and more paranoid than I’d ever seen him. But I was so busy binge eating and worrying about my career that I didn’t pay enough attention.
In November 1996, I got a call at work from my mother. She had driven by Sean’s house and saw police cars and ambulances and all kinds of commotion on the front lawn. I called his sister and she put his wife on the phone. She informed me he was dead. By his own hand.
I spent a lot of the next 10 years angry at him for doing such a thing. He had everything going for him. And he chose to end it. I didn’t understand it, even as I was descending into my own brand of craziness.
The reason his death hit harder than my own brother’s is complicated. I think it’s because I had been burned for the second time, which is always worse than the first. It’s probably that I was an adult the second time and had a greater awareness of circumstances behind his death. Or it’s probably just the nature of the ending.
It took my own struggle with depression and OCD years later to truly grasp what he had gone through. I wasn’t there for him, but by sharing my own struggles I can hopefully be there for others.
Life has been good in the years since his death. I married a wonderful woman, followed a career path that’s produced many Blessings, found God and had two precious children.
We named our first son Sean Michael Brenner. And with that, I guess I was able to move on.
My son is every bit as smart as the man he was named for. His wit tickles me every day. And he’s caring beyond his years.
You can bet your ass I’ll be watching him like a hawk to make sure he doesn’t become too much like the man he’s named after.
The author discovers that winter makes his depression worse and that there’s a purely scientific explanation — and solution.
My therapist and I recently agreed that my Prozac intake should go up a bit for the duration of the winter.
I’m doing well for the most part, but there’s a three-hour window of each day — usually late afternoon — where my mood slides straight into the crapper.
The reason is simple: People who suffer from chemical imbalances in the brain are directly impacted by daylight levels. When the weather is dismal, cold, rainy and the days are shorter, a lot of folks with mental illness find themselves more depressed and moody. Give us a long stretch of dry, sunny weather and days where it gets light at 4:30 a.m. and stays that way past 8 p.m. and we tend to be happier people.
There are lessons to be had in the history books:
— Abraham Lincoln, a man who suffered from deep depression for most of his adult life, went from blue to downright suicidal a few times in the 1840s during long stretches of chilly, rainy weather. [See Why “Lincoln’s Melancholy” is a Must-Read.]
— Ronald Reagan, a sunny personality by most accounts, was a man of Sunny California. Once, upon noticing that his appointments secretary hadn’t worked time in his schedule for trips to his ranch atop the sun-soaked mountains of Southern California — and after the secretary explained that there was a growing public perception that he was spending too much time away from Washington — Reagan handed him back the schedule and ordered that ranch time be worked in. The more trips to the ranch, he explained, the longer he’ll live.
The WebMD site has excellent information on winter depression. Here’s an excerpt:
If your mood gets worse as the weather gets chillier and the days get shorter, you may have “winter depression.” Here, questions to ask your doctor if winter is the saddest season for you.
Why do I seem to get so gloomy each winter, or sometimes beginning in the fall?
You may have what’s called seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. The condition is marked by the onset of depression during the late fall and early winter months, when less natural sunlight is available. It’s thought to occur when daily body rhythms become out-of-sync because of the reduced sunlight.
Some people have depression year round that gets worse in the winter; others have SAD alone, struggling with low moods only in the cooler, darker months. (In a much smaller group of people, the depression occurs in the summer months.)
SAD affects up to 3% of the U.S. population, or about 9 million people, some experts say, and countless others have milder forms of the winter doldrums.
So this worsening of mood in the fall and winter is not just my imagination?
Not at all. This “winter depression” was first identified by a team of researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health in 1984. They found this tendency to have seasonal mood and behavior changes occurs in different degrees, sometimes with mild changes and other times severe mood shifts.
Symptoms can include:
Sleeping too much
Experiencing fatigue in the daytime
Gaining weight
Having decreased interest in social activities and sex
SAD is more common for residents in northern latitudes. It’s less likely in Florida, for instance, than in New Hampshire. Women are more likely than men to suffer, perhaps because of hormonal factors. In women, SAD becomes less common after menopause.
Here’s where the Prozac comes in for me:
As I mentioned in The Bad Pill Kept Me from the Good Pill, Prozac helps to sustain my brain chemistry at healthy levels. Here’s a more scientific description of how it works from WebMD:
How Antidepressants Work
Most antidepressants work by changing the balance of brain chemicals called neurotransmitters. In people with depression, these chemicals are not used properly by the brain. Antidepressants make the chemicals more available to brain cells like the one shown on the right side of this slide:
Antidepressants can be prescribed by primary care physicians, but people with severe symptoms are usually referred to a psychiatrist.
Realistic Expectations
In general, antidepressants are highly effective, especially when used along with psychotherapy. (The combination has proven to be the most effective treatment for depression.) Most people on antidepressants report eventual improvements in symptoms such as sadness, loss of interest, and hopelessness.
But these drugs do not work right away. It may take one to three weeks before you start to feel better and even longer before you feel the full benefit.
I’m convinced the drug would NOT have worked as well for me hadit not been for all the intense therapy I had first.Developing the coping mechanisms had to come first.
I’ve also learned that the medication must be monitored and managed carefully. The levels have to be adjusted at certain times of year — for me, anyway.
So next week I’ll start taking the higher dosage and let y’all know how it goes.
![[ImgPet.jpg]](https://theocddiaries.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/imgpet.jpg?w=300)
