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Finish What You Started

Funny thing about people who suffer from serious mental illness: They tend to make all these big plans but never really follow through with anything.

I don’t fault them. For one thing, they have an illness. Also, I used to be just like them.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:37A5wFomo4EVz5tGInAynI]

Watching the start-stop-start-thud behavior of a friend is reminding me of what I used to do. My friend, who I won’t name, always has some big plans afoot. There was the plan to go half way around the world to film a documentary that was downgraded to a book project when the better thing to do in the face of technical difficulties was to collapse in despair and quit. The book project never got off the ground.

There was the plan to relocate to another state to teach that was somehow downgraded to various odd jobs that ended quickly over petty disagreements.

Then there was a return home to do more educational work that ended after less than three months.

There are plenty of reasons why these things happen. Sometimes a person is simply plagued by all kinds of bad luck. But when mental illness is at work, all of life’s curve balls become overwhelming, seemingly insurmountable calamities.

In college my great passion was to be a great journalist. Every class I took and every side activity I did was devoted to that goal. I rose far and fast in my first reporting and editing jobs, and the ultimate goal was to be a top editor for a daily newspaper. I got the night editor job at The Eagle-Tribune and that quickly turned into an assistant editor job for the paper’s New Hampshire editions.

Then my fear and anxiety started to surface. I had a difficult boss. The hours were brutal. Whenever a really big news story was unfolding I’d start to feel cold panic, even though I wasn’t one of the reporter’s running to the scene. A couple of my projects ran into trouble, and I started to seriously believe that I was no longer capable of coming up with a good idea and following through on it.

I lasted another couple years in the job but did nothing of any real importance. I started to dream up the next big chapter of my life: A writing job of some sort in the healthcare field. I was so overwhelmed with my disease that I felt like I’d be making a hell of a dent in the world by working for a hospital or some other health organization. Jobs in that industry proved hard to find, so I seriously started considering jobs that had nothing to do with any of my dreams and goals. I thought about joining the U.S. Postal service and actively looked into what it would take.

A week later I was talking to my father and step-mother about returning to the family business. Surely, I thought, I could do great things there with all the management skills I had learned as an editor. I could make it more than the obscure job I remembered throughout high school and college by starting up a couple charities. Surely, Dad would pay me to spend all my time on that.

That grand plan lasted about two weeks. My father brought me back down to reality by telling me he didn’t have any open positions. Thank God he threw cold water on me. Otherwise, I might have gone backwards instead of forward.

Things ultimately worked out. I got a job writing about cybersecurity — a topic I’m passionate about to this day — and I’ve kept at it. The reason, I think, is that I finally reached a point a few months into that job where I knew I had some deep issues I had to deal with. My emotional and spiritual growth has run a parallel course with my career and it has made all the difference.

I’m told that I was always a stubborn kid who would decided to do something and stick with it hell or high water until I reached the prize. When I wanted to lose weight I would focus in on it like a laser beam and throw myself into diet and exercise until I was thin. I got there by some unhealthy means, mind you. But that’s another story. The bottom line is that I did what I felt I had to do to get where I wanted to be.

That stubborn resolve definitely served me well early in my career as I clawed my way into the news business. And it served me well when I decided to start doing something about the problem that was eventually diagnosed as OCD.

But the fear and anxiety certainly sent me off course several times along the way.

I was lucky, because I’ve usually regained my footing just in time, or smarter people would stop me from making dumb moves, like going back to the family business.

Some are not as lucky. They set goals that look insurmountable the second fatigue and frustration set in. I really feel for them.

I hope my friend is able to snap out of it.

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Call It An Allergy And Walk Away

If someone offers me a drink and I tell them I’m sober, they accept it and that’s that. If I’m offered food that doesn’t fit my recovery program for compulsive binge eating, I can’t say it that way without getting odd stares.

This is something all compulsive binge eaters deal with in society — a big, ugly lack of understanding that destructive addictive behavior takes on many forms, and that food can be as destructive to the abuser as cocaine.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/8YNfvl_qhVE

I’ve tried hard to raise awareness in this blog, but even regular readers don’t seem to get it when we’re together in a room and there’s a bunch of food I’m not touching. No flour? No sugar? That’s crazy. One friend suggested it was heavy handed of me to compare my experiences to the kind of hell a runaway alcoholic deals with.

With anxiety and depression I certainly understand, but when I think serious addictions I was thinking some sort of drug abuse – in fact heroin is what popped into my head. Alcohol also a possibility… but binge eating? Come on man. Everyone has a hard time knowing when to say when to junk food, Shit, I gotta throw it in the trash sometimes so I don’t eat it all.

For those who haven’t dealt with food as an addictive substance, his skepticism is understandable.

The second I tell someone I can’t eat what they offer me, the common question is if I am lactose or gluten intolerant. When I say no, the stares get more uncomfortable.

But here’s something I think is important for binge eaters in recovery: It’s unfair to get angry with people for failing to understand the connection between addiction and eating habits. We can’t expect everyone to magically understand. So my advice is that when asked, we just tell the person we have an allergy and walk away.

It’s not a lie. What is an allergy, after all? It’s the body’s inability to process certain substances. For a binge hound like me, I can’t process flour and sugar items because the switch in my brain that goes off when the proper intake is achieved doesn’t work. The more I have the more I crave, and I fill myself with it until I’m on the floor unable to get up.

Even the AA Big Book describes alcoholism as an allergy. It’s right at the beginning of the book in a chapter called “The Doctor’s Opinion,” in which Dr. William D. Silkworth writes:

We believe, and so suggested a few years ago, that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy; that the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in the average temperate drinker. These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all; and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve.

For others, the same problems are not the result of a dependence on alcohol, but of any number of things like gambling, pain medication, spending, sex and, in my case, binge eating.

I’m getting better at resisting the urge to explain it to people. I just got back from a conference in New York where the question of why I didn’t eat certain things came up a few times. I just said I have an allergy and the discussion was over.

Sometimes, it’s better that way.

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A Relapse Isn’t The End Of The World

When a person relapses back into addictive behavior, it seems like the end of the world. Everything they’ve worked for is in ashes, and they embrace their old demon with reckless abandon.

It shouldn’t have to be that way.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:1JKiRbc7uA6B9QrO3I1zZH]

I’m thinking hard about this because I came close to a relapse recently, and a friend now finds himself in a full, free-falling backslide.

A lot of people have a hard time seeing compulsive binge eating as an addiction on par with alcohol and heroin. But it’s just as effective at destroying a man’s life and health as those other things. And since you still need to eat to survive, there’s a lot of fear around this type of relapse, because it seems to suck us in deeper more quickly.

Anyway, this post isn’t meant to convince the skeptics. It’s directed specifically at those who have relapsed to their addictions, whatever the substance. It’s the same message to be had in today’s mood music, from the Sixx A.M. “Heroin Diaries” soundtrack:

You know that accidents can happen

It’s OK, 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 best thing to do is accept the relapse and start over. But when the feeling of failure overwhelms you, it’s easier said than done. The point was brought home to me the other day when talking to my friend who relapsed.

He noted that this is his third relapse, and that he wasn’t sure if he could return to the halls of Overeater’s Anonymous. He correctly noted that there are some people in the program who look at relapse cases as pariahs. Most people will embrace you and try to help you regain your footing. But the ones who look at you like an exploded zit can be overwhelming and keep you from going back.

Shame takes on a lot of insidious forms for the relapsed soul.

Talking to this fellow makes me realize just how lucky I was this time. I came to the brink and started getting sloppy. But I pulled myself back before falling off the cliff and going on a binge. A lot of good people aren’t so fortunate.

I really feel for my friend. He’s stuck down the hole and doesn’t know if he can ever find his way back out. He says he’s knee deep in the food and won’t leave his house because he’s putting on weight so fast that he doesn’t want to be seen.

That is one of the shittiest things about compulsive binge-eating: You can’t hide it because your behavior is obvious in the fast weight gain. This disease hangs off our belly like a sack of shit. And when it keeps you from leaving your house, you are in a very bad place. I know, because I spent a lot of years avoiding people because I didn’t want them to see the mess I’d become.

Hell, in my journey to a near-relapse, I didn’t gain weight but still felt bloated and didn’t want to be around people.

In the week since I realized how far to the edge I’d come, I’ve tightened the bolts on my program considerably. I’m starting to feel better, and I’m close to having a new OA sponsor. Like I said, I was lucky this time.

But I feel a little anger toward some of the people in this program for making my friend feel so ashamed. We’re supposed to help each other up when someone falls, not treat this like some powder puff popularity club where the folks with long term recovery are rock starts and the fallen are zeroes.

I shouldn’t feel the anger, though, because that kind of behavior is just another part of this disease. None of us were playing with a full deck to begin with, and even in recovery, it can be hard not to be an asshole.

But as I told my friend: “Fuck them. It’s not about what they think. It’s about what you do to get better.”

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Deal With It, Get Over It And Get Out Of My Way

It’s been an emotional few days. I came to the edge of a relapse. A father figure died. Then there was the 9-11 anniversary. This stuff can burn a person down to nothing. But I don’t burn like I used to.

Mood music:

It’s funny how people react not only to their own adversity, but that of others. Some people become incapacitated with grief when a pet dies and some of us want to say, “Fuck, man. It’s a pet. Get over it and stop crying in front of everyone.” But that’s just us judging someone without all the facts.

When I come up against difficult things, I write about it. One now-former reader lamented that my blog is “soooo depressing” that she can’t read it anymore. That suits me fine, because she was the type that had all the answers and told you how you should live. She was an expert in everything, but she never really understood the purpose of this blog, which is to stare the horrors of life in the face, describe it honestly and deal with it. Life is full of depressing things, but when you can face those things head on, there’s a ton of joy and beauty on the other side. That’s my experience, so I try to share it without telling you what to do.

And that’s what this post is about. Dealing with adversity and learning to get over it.

Yeah, I came close to a relapse last week. I did what every addict does — I reached a point in my recovery where I got so comfortable and felt so in control that I started getting sloppy. It’s funny how this happens, because when we feel in control it usually means things are falling apart behind the scenes. In my case, my father having three strokes tired me out enough that I started forgetting to do the things a person in recovery is supposed to do.

I went to a 12-Step Big Book study last night and the chapter of the night was perfect for me. It was about people who relapse because they think they have their addiction licked. They have that one weak moment that sends them back down to hell.

Going to a meeting the night that chapter was on the table was a classic case of God trying to tell me something. That something goes like this: Life is full of the good and bad. Deal with it and get over it. And, above all, don’t binge over it.

I write this stuff down and share it because we all have moments where we need that kick in the ass. My ass stings pretty good right now, but I’m feeling very grateful for it.

When you become paralyzed by the hole in your soul, the thought of dealing with it is terrifying. But when you finally take that next step, it’s one of the best, natural highs out there.

Last week I started to deal with things. I told my wife about my sloppiness and decided to declare myself in breach of abstinence and sobriety. I decided to tear it down and start over.

Yesterday I left my sponsor a message telling him I was sorry for being such a lousy sponsee. Now we’ll see if he wants to stick with me or if I need to find someone else. At least I took that step.

This evening I’m going to go to the wake for a man I looked up to, and it will be with a sense of celebration, not sadness. He lived his life as we all should: To the full. He earned a ticket straight to Heaven, and that makes me happy. I’ll admit I’m a bit nervous about seeing his wife and daughter for the first time in many years. They haven’t been happy with me in that time and tonight probably won’t change things. I don’t want to be an uncomfortable presence. I’ll just do the best I can.

I have all the coffee I need and I packed three abstinent meals for the day. I guess you could say my pistol is fully loaded and I’m ready for what comes next.

I have a busy work day, and I couldn’t be happier about that. I do, after all, love what I do.

I have to deal with my feelings about ending the estrangement with my mother. This week, I’m going to talk to Erin and carve out an action plan.

If you see me twitching and talking to myself, don’t worry. I’m dealing with life and getting over things I can’t control or undo.

Out of my way.

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My Brain Is On The Pavement. But At Least I Showered

It’s hard to pinpoint the moment my recovery started getting wobbly and I started getting sloppy. I don’t know if it’s fully accurate to call this a relapse, but it’s pretty damn close.

Mood music:

One thing is certain: I’m in a shaky place lately, and this is as good a place to sort things out. Talking is always better, but sometimes I have to write it.

I’ve been very tired lately, and in my fatigue, my recovery program from binge eating and other addictions has gotten sloppy. Twice in as many weeks, I’ve forgotten to pack an abstinent lunch before leaving the house. When you’re recovery is on sturdy ground, that’s a mistake you NEVER make.

I haven’t been making it to many 12-Step/OA meetings of late, and I can’t remember the last time I called my sponsor. I guess I’ve been too tired and short-fused to go over the same bullshit, over and over again.

I haven’t gone on any binges, thankfully. But I know how it works. I’m not stupid. When you start getting careless, you open yourself up for the crash.

I’ve been going over the last few months in search of the moment things started to go wrong.

My father having three strokes was certainly a factor. It’s hard not to worry all the time when the guy who has been the strong man in your life is suddenly in a wheelchair, not able to do much for himself. But I decided early on to be strong, cool and rational for other family members.

To do that, I guess I felt I needed a crutch. I didn’t want to binge eat or drink, so I smoked. Then Erin found the cigarettes I was hiding, and I resolved to quit that, too. Then and there, much of my patience for people went down the garbage chute.

I won’t lie: It still pisses me off that I had to stop smoking. Sure those things give you cancer. But to me it seemed much safer then the other things, which leave me in a mental state that disrupts everything, even my ability to dress myself. And so I start wearing the same clothes repeatedly, so I don’t have to think much about my appearance.

And, in the last week, I’ve been quietly re-assessing the status of things with my mother. I think I’m finally ready to reconcile, though it’ll never go back to the way it was. It can’t go back to the way it was. And so I have to think carefully about how to do this. That makes me even more tired.

At least I haven’t stopped taking showers and brushing my teeth. I’ve done that before, and it’s not pretty.

My next actions are clear:

–I’m going to consider all this a break of abstinence and go back to square one.

–I’m going to get a new sponsor. The current one has done his best with me, but I haven’t returned the favor.

–I need to start getting to more than one meeting a week. Actually, one a week is a good place to start.

–I need to make an action plan to deal with my mother.

–I need to start being honest with myself and stop pretending I have perfect control over everything.

I’ll come out of this. I always do. This is part of managing my life. You go through periods when everything is running like a Swiss watch. Then there are times when the machinery falls out of its casing, scraping your wrist on its way to the ground.

Venting here is how I deal with it and keep upright. I do it publicly because there are many people like me out there, who have no answers and are looking for a place to start.

Take it from me: Writing it out is a great place to start.

From there, realize you can’t fix yourself without help. Next, go find that help.

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41 Years

Some people get depressed on their birthday. Not me. The fact that I turn 41 today is a freak of nature. But a year into my forties, I know I have more cleaning up to do.

Mood music:

Item: When I was sick with the Crohn’s Disease as a kid, I lost a lot of blood and developed several side ailments. I’m told by my parents that the doctor’s were going to remove the colon more than once. It didn’t happen. They tell me I was closing in on death more than once. I doubt it was ever that serious. Either way, here I am.

Item: When the OCD was burning out of control, I often felt I’d die young. I was never suicidal, but I had a fatalistic view of things. I just assumed I wasn’t long for this world and I didn’t care. I certainly did a lot to slowly help the dying process along. That’s what addicts do. We feed the addiction compulsively knowing full well what the consequences will be.

When I was a prisoner to fear and anxiety, I really didn’t want to live long. I isolated myself. Fortunately, I never had the guts to do anything about it. And like I said, suicide was never an option.

I spent much of my 30s on the couch with a shattered back, and escaped with the TV. I was breathing, but I was also as good as dead some of the time.

I’ve watched others go before me at a young age. Michael. Sean. Even Peter. Lose the young people in your life often enough and you’ll start assuming you’re next.

When you live for yourself and don’t put faith in God, you’re not really living. When it’s all about you, there no room to let all the other life in. So the soul shrivels and hardens. I’ve been there.

I also had a strange fear of current events and was convinced at one point that the world would burn in a nuclear holocaust before I hit 30. That hasn’t happened yet.

So here I am at 41, and it’s almost comical that I’m still here.

I’m more grateful than you could imagine for the turn of events my life has taken in the last six years.

I’ve learned to stop over-thinking and manage the OCD. When you learn to stop over-thinking, a lot of things that used to be daunting become a lot easier. You also find yourself in a lot of precious moments that were always there. But you didn’t notice them because you were sick with worry.

I notice them now, and I am Blessed far beyond what I probably deserve.

I have a career that I love.

I have the best wife on Earth and two boys that teach me something new every day.

I have many, many friends who have helped me along in more ways than they’ll ever know.

I have my 12-Step program and I’m not giving in to the worst of my addictions.

Most importantly, I have God in my life. When you put your faith in Him, there’s a lot less to be afraid of. Aging is one of the first things you stop worrying about.

So here I am at 41. feeling a lot better about myself than I did at 31. In fact, 31 was one of the low points.

But I’d be in denial if I told you everything was perfect beyond perfect. I wouldn’t tell you that anyway, because I’ve always thought that perfection was a bullshit concept. That makes it all the more ironic and comical that OCD would be the life-long thorn in my side.

I just recently quit smoking, and I’m still missing the hell out of that vice. I haven’t gone on a food binge in nearly three years, but there are still days where I’m not sure I’ve made the best choices; those days where my skin feels just a little too loose and flabby.

I still go to my meetings, but there are many days where I’d rather do anything but go to a meeting. I go because I have to, but I don’t always want to.

And while I have God in my life, I still manage to be an asshole to Him a lot of the time.

At 41, I’m still very much the work in progress. The scars are merely the scaffolding and newly inserted steel beams propping me up.

I don’t know what comes next, but I have much less fear about the unknown.

And so I think WILL have a happy birthday.

OCD Diaries

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Cold Turkey Has Got Me On The Run

More than a week after I quit smoking cold turkey, I’m pissed off.

It pisses me off that other people can enjoy a drink or two, the occasional cigar or feast without letting it take over everything else in their lives.

Mood music from the debut EP of Pull Trouble From The Fire:

[soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/pulltroublefromthefire/06-dead-wait”]

It pisses me off that I have to learn to behave and pretend I don’t wish I had some of what everyone around me has.

It pisses me off that I have to keep explaining to people why I can’t eat flour or sugar — ever — why I can’t have a glass of wine or a beer — ever — and why I can’t just have a cigar on the weekends and be done with it.

When I wrote about the smoking last week, a friend asked me the following question, with a comment mixed in:

“Just out of curiousity, how many cigars do you smoke? One or more/day? Do you opt for a toro (6 or 7? cigar) or a robusto? If you’re having a robusto a couple times each week (or even a toro every day), isn’t that moderation?

“While I’ve never tried them, I’ve seen how cigarettes can pull you in and you can go from one cig to a pack/day in a short time. Not that I’m condoning it, but I think an occasional cigar is like a good scotch. It a treat more than a habit.

“I’ve found that you need to pick the vices your going to ween off carefully, or it will be at everyone’s peril. Wouldn’t it be better to set boundaries so you can enjoy a vice while preventing overindulgence? Doesn’t forced moderation ultimately help strengthen the psyche (I don’t know, just asking)?

“I guess what I’m asking is whether you’re being too hard on yourself at the expense of others? As you say, you can’t do anything in moderation, but it seems you may not be able to implement a fix in moderation either. Kick the cigs. Save the cigars. Don’t be a miserable bastard!”

It’s a fair question, and he’s right that a person who is cold turkey will make others miserable. That’s why people like us are at our nastiest as human beings after we first clean up.

He is wrong when he asks: “Doesn’t forced moderation ultimately help strengthen the psyche?”

I can see where he’s going with this. Even in sobriety people like me live to an extreme. But in our world, moderation doesn’t exist.

That’s the core problem of our disease: The part of the brain that regulates moderate behavior was obliterated somewhere along the way. Therefore, it has to be all or nothing.

In the AA Big Book on which the 12 Steps of Recovery is built, the opening chapter is called “The Doctor’s Opinion.” In it, Dr. William D. Silkworth outlines the physical defects of the disease and how it impacts our behavior. He literally describes it as an allergy. Once we take a drink or engage in a food binge, a demonic craving kicks in that shuts off the sanity switches in our heads.

“We believe, and so suggested a few years ago, that the action of alcohol on these chronic alcoholics is a manifestation of an allergy; that the phenomenon of craving is limited to this class and never occurs in the average temperate drinker. These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all; and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it, once having lost their self-confidence, their reliance upon things human, their problems pile up on them and become astonishingly difficult to solve.

“Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.”

The doctor uses alcohol as the example, but the same applies for all addictive behavior.

To those who think it’s weird when a man or woman can’t enjoy something in moderation, I get your skepticism. The problem — or the blessing in your case — is that your brain doesn’t work like mine. You have a gift a lot of us would kill for: The ability to realize when you’ve had enough of something.

My wife can buy a six-pack of beer and make it last two months. I wouldn’t be able to last two hours without downing it all. Then I would need more. The difference between us is one of brain chemistry.

Weening off the comfort substances was not an option for me for the simple reason that I have to have it all. Trying to have smaller amounts of something each day or week won’t work in that environment.

So I’ve had to go cold turkey.

It’s hell the first week. The second week, which is where I’m at, is one of more muted irritability.

From there, it gets easier, and we get better. Much better.

I’ll be glad when I get there after this latest round of cold turkey.

[soundcloud url=”http://soundcloud.com/pulltroublefromthefire/05-trainwrecks”]

OCD Diaries

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Get well, Tottenkoph

Magen Hughes (@tottenkoph on Twitter), a friend from the security community, had some major surgery yesterday. This post is simply to remind folks to send her well wishes on the Twitters and such.

I won’t go into the details of what has been ailing her (you can read about it in her blog) but I have been inspired as hell by the positive attitude she has shown throughout the ordeal.

She sent regular updates on her emergency room visit that were full of good humor and she also made me laugh when she posted a picture of the pre-surgery cleaning solution she had to drink.

As someone who has been there, I’ve developed a dark sense of humor about such things.

Get well fast, my friend.

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I Need A Lot Of Gum. And Maybe A Gun

It’s been one week since I have smoked a cigarette or a cigar. The itch is gone but the crankiness is not.

Mood music:

I’m finding some relief in gum. But now I’m starting to think crazy thoughts about it. Behold:

I find myself wondering if there are websites that sell exotic types of gum. I’m sure there are, though I haven’t looked yet.

Beer-flavored gum?

Cigar-flavored gum?

Rum-flavored gum?

The crazy thinking goes something like this: If I can no longer have any of my vices, I can chew gum that at least tastes like all my vices.

But here’s what would happen:

–I’d become obsessed with stockpiling all the gum I could find. I would find a way to spend hundreds of dollars a pop.

–I would chew a flavor and eventually decide it’s just not as good as the real thing.

–I’d start obsessing about the real thing.

From there, the danger is obvious.

That’s how the mind of an addict works.

I’ll just have to stick with the garden-variety, minty fresh gum until I get past this.

OCD Diaries

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I Have Coffee, Rock & Roll, Gum and This Keyboard. Don’t Mess With Me

Day five without tobacco is upon me, and I’m doing OK. Uncomfortable, yes. But OK.

I have other crutches to keep me tobacco free AND free of binge eating:

–I have strong coffee.

–I have all the Rock & Roll I want, and I’m keeping the music playing.

–I’m chewing a shitload of gum and my breath has probably never been so clean and fresh.

–And I have this keyboard. Writing ALWAYS helps.

But I’m still edgy. You’ve been warned.

OCD Diaries