The OCD Diaries

August 12, 2011

Rethinking Jani Lane Upon His Death

Former Warrant singer Jani Lane was found dead last night in a Comfort Inn in L.A. at age 47. It’s unclear at this point what the cause is, but his death is making me re-think a few things about my attitude.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/cSdvxocgbAg

I remember when Warrant came out in the late 1980s. I couldn’t stand them. Sure, they sounded good. Crunchy guitar sound. Good vocals. But it all sounded so fake. I thought “Cherry Pie” was the dumbest song I’d ever heard. Again, the sound was good. But the lyrics were stupid and the feel wasn’t real to me. Admittedly, though, I liked “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and hated the fact that I liked it.

The band also came out at a point in the late 80s when every band was starting to sound and look alike. I decided I was too cool for it all.

I did what a lot of other metal heads did in the early 90s when the metal scene imploded under the weight of all the copycats: I started listening to so-called grunge: Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains. My own band, Skeptic Slang, sounded a lot like the grunge we were listening to, with hints of old-school metal here and there.

I still listen to all those bands, but in recent years I’ve returned to my 80s hard rock roots. Warrant has not been part of my playlist.

I’ve seen interviews with Jani Lane over the years where he lamented writing “Cherry Pie” and took a crack at reality TV. He looked and sounded like a troubled man in those clips, and he did indeed wrestle some demons. He was recently sentenced to serve 120 days in jail after pleading no contest to a 2010 DUI charge — his second in two years.

As for his death, no one really knows what happened. We can speculate, but I won’t. I’ll just wait for the follow-up news reports.

Instead, I’m examining my own reaction to his death and what it says about me and human nature in general.

When I first saw the news an hour ago, I felt bad. I went on Youtube and started playing Warrant songs. I was thinking that they sounded much better with age, then I had a “what the fuck?” moment.

Here I am, thinking these songs sound pretty good. And I’m sneering at all the nasty comments people make about being glad he’s dead. Then I catch myself, because in my self-righteous anger I quickly remember that I used to say things about how bands like this sucked and needed to be destroyed. I’m pretty sure I’ve joked from time to time about how it would be nice for bands like this to go down in a flaming plane wreck.

That’s not nice. It’s certainly not a good fit with my Christian beliefs. But there it is.

It’s funny how we get when musicians and celebrities we don’t think much of die. I found it amusing that people were tearing Michael Jackson down in the last decade of his life because of his alleged pedophilia, yet, when he died, everyone magically forgot that stuff and acted as if Jesus Himself had been crucified again.

When Motley Crue bassist Nikki Sixx opined about Jackson being a “child rapist” and I wrote about it, the comments section of this blog descended into all kinds of name calling. Most of it came from people who love Michael Jackson’s music.

More then one person noted that Jackson was never found guilty of such things. When he was still alive, people were not defending him so ardently.

We do this stuff a lot when famous, tarnished figures die. We play up the good stuff they did and conveniently forget the bad stuff. Or, at least, we minimize the latter as some unfortunate little interlude between the acts of greatness. Richard Nixon comes to mind.

And now we’re remembering the good stuff Jani Lane contributed to the world in his 47 years.

You know what? That’s how it should be.

Everyone deserves a shot at redemption, and making music I personally didn’t care for doesn’t mean there was something wrong with Jani Lane. He wrote the music he wanted to write. It spoke to him, and it spoke to others, even if I wasn’t one of them.

The band’s success in the late 80s and early 90s happened because the music made a lot of kids happy, just as Motley Crue’s “Shout At The Devil” and Def Leppard’s “Pyromania” gave me moments of happiness during a troubled youth.

We all have our tastes and opinions. We all tend to think our opinions are better than everyone else’s.

That’s part of the human condition. We don’t just do it to celebrities. We do it to everyone. We are judgmental savages sometimes.

Rest in Peace, Jani Lane. I apologize for any of the bad stuff I said about you over the years.

OCD Diaries

August 8, 2011

One Year Later: Missing Joe “Zippo” Kelley

Hard to believe, but it’s been a year since the death of Joe “Zippo” Kelley. I listened to Zippo Raid’s “Punk Is In Season” disc on the way home from work and smiled the whole time. In the year since he died, Joe has had a big impact on my own life.

Here’s the second track on that CD, one of my favorites:

http://youtu.be/nnyVCQrFN7Q

I’ve gotten to know his awesome parents, Joe and Marie, and a lot of other people from other local bands. I’m richer for that. It would have been a million times better if I was making these new friends with Joe still around, but there’s no use in trying to figure out God’s master plan.

We fell out of touch after college because I let my demons turn me into a recluse for a long time. What’s done is done.

There’s a great lesson for all of us, though, one that has gotten clear as the months have gone by. The soul of a person who lives to the full and impacts so many people for the better never really dies.

His presence has been at every local rock show I’ve been to, most notably the two benefit shows in his honor last October and this past January. He’s very much with us whenever we listen to his music.

Another favorite off the “Punk Is In Season” disc is about Greg Walsh, drummer of Zippo Raid, Pop Gun and other acts. I’ve known Greg for almost as long as I knew Joe. We worked together when I was in my first reporting gig in Swampscott and Marblehead, Mass. The first time I heard the opening lines I laughed till I hurt:

Greg couldn’t make it to the fuckin’ show

It was rainin’ wasn’t even fuckin’ snow

What else can we say

Greg is a fuckin’ pu-sey!

Greg knew how well that lyric nailed him, and during the chorus you can hear him gleefully chanting: “Oye! Oye! Oye!”

That’s the Joe I remembered. He could poke fun at you and make you feel like one of his best buddies in the same breath. In fact, if he needled you, you knew he liked you.

When you hung out with him, you always knew you were in the presence of someone with a heart of gold.

That’s how it was at Salem State, when we’d stand outside the then-commuter cafe smoking cigarettes and talking about Nirvana. He could take to people effortlessly, even a guy like me who often had trouble knowing how to act in front of people.

It’s been said that when you went to a Zippo Raid show, everyone who showed up was in the band. That’s just another telling example of how welcoming a presence he was.

I’ve become a fan of many of the musicians who showed up at those two benefit shows to pay homage to Joe. And that experience has rekindled a love of the Boston music scene that had gone cold for a long time.

Thanks, Joe.

Right before the January benefit show, I ran a post where Joe’s friends shared memories of their time with him. On this one-year anniversary of his passing, it seems very fitting that I re-run those narratives. So read on. Peace be with you all.

–Bill

Greg Walsh, drummer for Pop Gun and Zippo Raid, who once worked with the author in a dingy little weekly newspaper office in Marblehead:

“When Zippo Raid first started out I was studying a lot of the drummers we played with because I really needed to get up to speed – so to speak – with punk rock drumming. I was seeing what worked and didn’t work – and what I noticed was a lot of bands did breakdowns where they’d be playing fast and then suddenly cut the tempo in half – it was like pushing moshers off a cliff and they gladly went along for the ride.

“So I begged Joe to find some spots in our songs for breakdowns, but anything we tried sounded forced and honestly kind of trite, and we took pride in not doing punk rock “by the numbers.”

“Then one day Joe came to rehearsal and said he wrote a song with breakdowns in it – called “Work.” But we always referred to it as “The Breakdown Song.”

“I have a recording of that rehearsal where he says he wrote that song for me. Probably just to shut me up, but the sentiment was still there.”

Harry Zarkades, singer and bassist for Pop Gun:

“Joe Kelley, when I first met him, was a DJ at WMWM Salem State College Radio 91.7 FM when Pop Gun was in it’s hey day. Well, if we ever had one.

“Anyhow, we used to goof around and play a version of Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever” for kicks (a song which we all secretly like but didn’t actually fit our musical motif). Se we decide to play it live in the studio at WMWM when we’re in there one day, and Joe, with his terrific sense of humor, decides to get revenge on us for playing it on his show. So we play about 10 Pop Gun songs and then, for a less than Grand Finale, we break into Cat Scratch. Joe is miffed, amused, but quickly acts. At the end of our show he tees up the actual Ted Nugent live recording of Cat Scratch complete with stadium crowd noise which he blares into the studio as we finish our tune.

“We were totally confused, but eventually got the joke. Joe was sitting in the booth very pleased with himself. The guy had a great sense of humor, like I said.

“I miss that most about him.”

Stu Ginsburg, owner, Platorum Entertainment, one of the planners for this Saturday’s benefit show:

“His first appearance on WMWM was when he came back to school and found the radio station during my show. He rang the buzzer and asked me if I was f—ing his girlfriend, then he thought it was cool anad came back wth me a few times and became a DJ and so on.

“Prior to WMWM, he and his girlfriend were going to many Grateful Dead shows and other hippy events. Joe never played gutair at that time, but WMWM changed him into Joe Zippo. He was a rightous dude. I miss him.”

August 8, 2011

From youngest child to oldest son: Anatomy of an identity crisis

When a sibling’s death turns the baby of the family into the oldest son, you get an identity crisis filled with anger and confusion.

As part of my treatment for OCD I’ve had to dig deep into my Revere past for clues on how I got this way. Recently, this huge piece of the puzzle presented itself.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:5QJ7GsolBcJP0tQnEZIU6i]

I’ve written at length about my brother Michael, who died of an asthma attack when I was 13. That experience will test any average kid, and I was no exception. The loss infused a deep reservoir of fear and anxiety in me that would bubble over many times over the years.

But something else happened that would make me feel strange and alone for a long time.

I started my life as the youngest of three kids, the proverbial baby of the family. Michael was the oldest, and in the Brenner family much has always been expected of the oldest son.

My father was the middle child of his generation, but he was the only son. My grandfather, who came off a boat from the former Soviet Union with all the typical old-school values, expected the world of my father. As my grandfather descended deep into old age and illness in the mid-1960s, my father became increasingly responsible for the family business.

Growing up, my older brother became the one my father leaned on the most. Michael was encouraged to chart his own course and was studying to be a plumber. But he was expected to help out with the family business and do a lot of the grunt work at home.

I was the baby, and a sick and spoiled one at that. I came along almost three years after my sister Wendi, and by age eight I was in and out of the hospital with dangerous flare ups of Crohn’s Disease. I got a lot of attention but nothing hard was expected of me. I was coddled and I got any toy I wanted.

The result was a lower-than-average maturity level for my age. At age 10 I acted like I was 5 sometimes. I would crawl into bed with my father for snuggles, just like a toddler might do.

During Christmas 1980 — the first after my parents’ divorce — I wanted it to look like Santa had come, even though I knew by that point that he didn’t really exist. I clung hard to the delusion, because my parents played Santa all the way up to their last Christmas as a couple, when I was nine. So on Christmas Eve 1980, I took all the gifts I had already opened and arranged them as if Santa had dropped them in my living room. I even wrote a “To Billy from Santa” note. Christmas morning I got up, went in the living room and expressed all the excitement of a kid who discovers that the jolly fat guy had come overnight.

My maturity level hadn’t changed much by the time I hit 13. I probably regressed even further right after my brother died. But as 1984 dragged on, I was slowly pulled into the role of oldest son.

All the stuff that was expected of my brother became expected of me, and I wasn’t mentally equipped to deal with it. My brother had a lot of street smarts that I lacked.

As I descended into my confusing and angry teen years, I would be sent on deliveries for the family business. I’d get flustered and lose my sense of direction. One time my father sent me to Chelsea for a package. It was 4:30 and the place I was going to was closing at 5. I got there at 5:10 and had to drive back to Saugus without a package. I felt humiliated and ashamed.

As I reached my 20s all that immaturity and feeling of inadequacy hardened into an angry rebellious streak. I started getting drunk and stoned a lot and would hide behind boxes in my father’s warehouse, chain-smoking cigarettes and binge eating while everyone else did the dirty work.

I spent three years hiding in a community college so I wouldn’t have to work. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, though I saw myself a poet and musician.

I try hard to remember the point where I started to finally act like the oldest son and accept responsibility for my life. There’s no single moment I can think of, though I trace the turning point to when Erin and I started dating in 1993.

I stayed selfish for many years after that, but I had at least found my career choice and work ethic. My work ethic would become excessive like a lot of other things in my life, but the feelings of inadequacy would linger.

Every time I got a raise or promotion, I’d call my father, eager to show him how I was moving up in the world and becoming the oldest son he always wanted.

He would ask how much the raise was and I’d tell him.

“That’s it?” he would ask.

Never, ever good enough, I thought bitterly.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come around to see and respect his point of view. Becoming a parent probably pushed me hard in that direction. I realized along the way that Dad was doing his best to teach me how to be a man and fly on my own.

He wanted me to understand the value of a dollar and a hard day’s work. He wanted me to understand what it was like to care about things other than myself.

Slowly but surely, I figured it out. Thanks, Dad.

Still, to this day, I still need to work at it.

All the confusion and anger over going from the baby to the oldest son has settled into gratitude. I have an amazing life and the inner piece that has always escaped me. I wish my brother was still here to corrupt his nephews, but in a sick sort of way, maybe his exit from the stage was required in order for me to have a chance.

That too might be delusional thinking, and make no mistake: I’d still give up a large percentage of my personal growth to have him around today.

But as this whole experience demonstrates, it’s not about me. Today I’m the oldest son and I think I’ve finally gotten the hang of it.

August 5, 2011

When Playing It Safe Makes Things Worse

I had coffee with a friend from the security industry yesterday. I thought I was coming to offer feedback on something having to do with the profession. Then he told me about a mental-emotional problem.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:4DA95pyBe6QORPGvTEuMWQ]

He told me he had a bunch of medical tests and they discovered that a small corner of his brain doesn’t work as well as it should. The result is that his short-term memory frequently takes a dive.

There are far worse problems to have. But his main concern is that it’s keeping his career from going where he wants it to.

We went back and forth about whether he should make his condition public or whether he should pursue other medical options.

As I sipped my iced Starbucks it became clear that something else was going on.

His biggest problem, I discovered and told him, is that he’s held back by fear — fear of what might happen if his short-term memory acted up in the midst of a job he really wanted to be doing.

He admitted that his recent career moves have involved a lot of playing it safe, doing things where there’s the least opportunity for failure at the hands of his mental tick.

I’ve been down this road before. And you know what? Playing it safe never helps. In fact, it just makes things worse.

Several years ago, when it became clear to me that my brain didn’t work normally, fear engulfed me until my self esteem was reduced to an ash pile. I held back in my work as night editor of The Eagle-Tribune. I tried playing it safe, never going toe to toe during disagreements with other editors.

Then I decided that the solution was to get out of there and find something less stressful to do. I opted to go back to straight reporting and went to TechTarget. Fortunately, the job turned out to be far more challenging than I expected. I realized this right at the time I decided to tackle my mental illness head on.

Luckily, my boss was a nurturing soul who was willing to let me go for the throat and get better. Miraculously, my work didn’t suffer. In the years to come, in fact, my workmanship would get better.

Now I do a lot of stuff in my job that’s out of my comfort zone. I give talks in front of groups of people. I get on airplanes. I venture an opinion on topics that I know will draw heavy disagreement. I give my boss a hard time when I don’t agree about something.

A few years ago, the very idea of doing those things would have scared me into an emotional breakdown.

I’ve screwed up along the way. But I’m still here.

I do my job well enough, often enough. And the more I succeed, the more confident I get.

Had I played it safe because of the things that might have gone wrong because of my OCD and anxiety, I wouldn’t be doing what I love today.

It’s not worth worrying about the mistakes you might make. You WILL make mistakes. And most of the time, you’ll be the only one to notice.

When my kids worry about making mistakes, I play them some Def Leppard and remind them that a one-armed drummer makes mistakes, but that all you can hear is him driving the heartbeat of the song despite a missing limb.

He could have retired from music and that would have made his life worse.

But he took a chance and designed a drum kit that helped him get past his problem.

Call me overly idealistic. Tell me I’m blowing sunshine up your collective asses.

It’s what I believe. Because I’ve been down this road.

My life today is far from perfect. It can get messy at times.

But it beats the hell out of playing it safe.

July 15, 2011

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.

July 5, 2011May 15, 2015

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.

June 20, 2011

The Problem With ‘One Day At A Time’

“One day at a time? You wouldn’t believe the crap that swirls around my head one day at a time.” –Anonymous

Recovering addicts have a saying burned into their brains: “One Day at a Time.” It’s important wisdom to live by. But when the recovering addict has OCD, there’s a big problem.

Mood music:

Let’s look at the meaning of “One Day at a Time.” In the world of 12-step recovery programs, the idea is not to be overwhelmed. Instead of trying to get your arms around everything necessary for recovery a week into the future or a month or year, we subscribe to the idea of just focusing on what we have to do today. Doing this a day at a time makes the clean-up tasks seem a lot less overwhelming.

The problem with an OCD case is that the disorder forces you to do nothing BUT stew over the future. You look at the next week or month and relentlessly play out the potential outcomes of that space of time.

The first time someone told me to take it a day at a time, my first instinct was to punch him in the face.

I had a business trip three weeks away to worry about.

I had a medical test planned for the following month and had all kinds of potentially grim outcomes to worry about.

That’s how guys like me roll.

So how have I managed to keep my addictions largely at bay for well over two years? Simple: I remembered another 12-Step saying (OA saying, more specifically): Fail to plan, plan to fail.”

The Powerfully Recovered website, based on the book of the same title by Anne Wayman, explains it better than I could, so let me share:

One day at a time doesn’t mean we shouldn’t plan

I imagine that this is the very first slogan that found it’s way into the original Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. Can’t you just picture a frantic newcomer talking about how difficult he (and yes, it was only men in the beginning – and the men didn’t think women could be real alcoholics, which is another story…) he was finding sobriety?

I can almost imagine the conversation:

Newcomer: What am I going to do? Next week I have to go to the office Christmas party – how will I ever stay sober there!

Oldtimer (early on, he might have been sober only a week): Slow down, it’s not next week yet. Take it One Day at a Time!

And a slogan is born – because it’s got some real wisdom in it. For in truth, each one of us has only one day at a time – or one hour or one moment.

Abstaining a moment at a time

In the first few rocky days of recovery, just abstaining for that moment, hour, etc. is truly all we can do. If we can’t do that, there’s no point in worrying about tomorrow, or next week, or whenever.

The One Day at a Time philosophy has benefits far beyond the early days in recovery. It can keep us grounded in the present – that Holy Instant that is so easy to miss in a busy and productive life.

Planning is okay

Unfortunately, some in 12 Step Groups have taken the philosophy to mean we shouldn’t plan. This is patently false. A major promise of the Program is torestore us to sanity, and that includes the very human blessing and curse – planning. We need to set goals, to make appointments, to design our lives.

But planning doesn’t mean we have to leave One Day at a Time behind – the trick is to watch for expectations.

It’s one thing to plan and quite another to demand that the plan work out the way we require it too – in that we have no control at all. When our plans bring unintended results – and the often do – all we need do is reevaluate, accept where we are in this moment, and start anew.

There are a lot of contradictions when you put the sayings “One day at a time” and “Fail to plan, plan to fail” together. It’s like a warm front running into a cold front. You get thunder, lightening and worse. Cars are picked up and wrapped around trees.

But in the end, life is unfair like that. We have to learn to deal.

So even when the OCD in me is planning, planning, planning, I do remember to take my recovery — especially the food plan that helped me break the binging spell — one day at a time.

I can digest life much more fully when the pieces are broken up.

But the push and pull still makes for plenty of confusion.

May 14, 2011

Back Story Of THE OCD DIARIES

Since I’ve been adding new readers along the way, I always get questions about why I started this thing. I recently expanded the “about” section, and that’s a good starting point. But more of a back story is in order.

Mood music:

Before I started THE OCD DIARIES in December 2009 with a post about depression hitting me during the holidays, I had always toyed with the idea of doing this. The reason for wanting to was simple: The general public understands little about mental disorders like mine. People toss the OCD acronym around all the time, but to them it’s just the easy way of saying they have a Type-A personality.

Indeed, many Type-A people do have some form of OCD. But for a smaller segment of the population, myself included, it’s a debilitating disease that traps the sufferer in a web of fear, anxiety, and depression that leads to all kinds of addictive behavior. Which leads me to the next reason I wanted to do this.

My particular demons gave me a craving for anything that might dull the pain. For some it’s heroin or alcohol. I have gone through periods where I drank far too much, and I learned to like the various prescription pain meds a little too much. But the main addiction, the one that made my life completely unmanageable, was binge eating.

Most people refuse to acknowledge that as a legitimate addiction. The simple reason is that we all need food to survive and not the other things. Overeating won’t make you drunk or high, according to the conventional wisdom. In reality, when someone like me goes for a fix, it involves disgusting quantities of junk food that will literally leave you flopping around like any garden-variety junkie. Further evidence that this as an addiction lies in the fact that there’s a 12-Step program for compulsive over-eaters called Overeater’s Anonymous (OA). It’s essentially the same program as AA. I wanted to do my part to make people understand.

Did I worry that I might get fired from my job for outing myself like this? Sure. But something inside me was pushing me in this direction and I had to give in to my instincts. You could say it was a powerful OCD impulse that wasn’t going to quit until I did something about it.

I write a lot about my upbringing, my family and the daily challenges we all face because I still learn something each day about my condition and how I can always be better than I am. We all have things swirling around inside us that drive us to a certain kind of behavior, and covering all these things allows me to share what I’ve learned so others might find a way out of their own brand of Hell.

I’m nothing special.

Every one of us has a Cross to bear in life. Sometimes we learn to stand tall as we carry it. Other times we buckle under the weight and fall on our faces.

I just decided to be the one who talks about it.

Talking about it might help someone realize they’re not a freak and they’re not doomed to a life of pain.

If this helps one person, it’ll be worth it.

When I first started the blog, I laid out a back story so readers could see where I’ve been and how personal history affected my disorders. If you read the history, things I write in the present will probably make more sense.

With that in mind, I direct you to the following links:

The Long History of OCD

An OCD Christmas. The first entry, where I give an overview of how I got to crazy and found my way to sane.

The Bad Pill Kept Me from the Good Pill. How the drug Prednisone brought me to the brink, and how Prozac was part of my salvation.

The Crazy-Ass Guy in the Newsroom. Think you have troubles at work? You should see what people who worked with me went through.

The Freak and the Redhead: A Love Story. About the wife who saved my life in many ways.

Snowpocalypse and the Fear of Loss. The author remembers a time when fear of loss would cripple his mental capacities, and explains how he got over it — mostly.

The Ego OCD Built. The author admits to having an ego that sometimes swells beyond acceptable levels and that OCD is fuel for the fire. Go ahead. Laugh at him.

Fear Factor. The author describes years of living in a cell built by fear, how he broke free and why there’s no turning back.

Prozac Winter. The author discovers that winter makes his depression worse and that there’s a purely scientific explanation — and solution.

Have Fun with Your Therapist. 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.

The Engine. To really understand how mental illness happens, let’s compare the brain to a machine.

Rest Redefined. The author finds that he gets the most relaxation from the things he once feared the most.

Outing Myself. The author on why he chose to “out” himself despite what other people might think.

Why Being a People Pleaser is Dumb. The author used to try very hard to please everybody and was hurt badly in the process. Here’s how he broke free and kept his soul intact.

The Addiction and the Damage Done

The Most Uncool Addiction. In this installment, the author opens up about the binge-eating disorder he tried to hide for years — and how he managed to bring it under control.

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

The 12 Steps of Christmas. The author reviews the 12 Steps of Recovery and takes a personal inventory.

How to Play Your Addictions Like a Piano. The author admits that when an obsessive-compulsive person puts down the addiction that’s most self-destructive, a few smaller addictions rise up to fill the void. But what happens when the money runs out?

Regulating Addictive Food: A Lesson in Futility. As an obsessive-compulsive binge eater, the author feels it’s only proper that he weigh in on the notion that regulating junk food might help. Here’s why the answer is probably not.

The Liar’s Disease. The author reveals an uncomfortable truth about addicts like himself: We tend to have trouble telling the truth.

Portable Recovery. Though addiction will follow the junkie anywhere in the world, the author has discovered that recovery is just as portable.

Revere (Experiences with Addiction, Depression and Loss During The Younger Years)

Bridge Rats and Schoolyard Bullies. The author reviews the imperfections of childhood relationships in search of all his OCD triggers. Along the way, old bullies become friends and he realizes he was pretty damn stupid back then.

Lost Brothers. How the death of an older brother shaped the Hell that arrived later.

Marley and Me. The author describes the second older brother whose death hit harder than that of the first.

The Third Brother. Remembering Peter Sugarman, another adopted brother who died too early — but not before teaching the author some important lessons about life.

Revere Revisited.

Lessons from Dad. The author has learned some surprising lessons from Dad on how to control one’s mental demons.

The Basement. A photo from the old days in Revere spark some vivid flashbacks.

Addicted to Feeling Good. To kick off Lent, the author reflects on some of his dumber quests to feel good.

The lasting Impact of Crohn’s Disease. The author has lived most of his life with Crohn’s Disease and has developed a few quirks as a result.

The Tire and the Footlocker. The author opens up an old footlocker under the stairs and finds himself back in that old Revere basement.

Child of Metal

How Metal Saved Me. Why Heavy Metal music became a critical OCD coping tool.

Insanity to Recovery in 8 Songs or Less. The author shares some videos that together make a bitchin’ soundtrack for those who wrestle with mental illness and addiction. The first four cover the darkness. The next four cover the light.

Rockit Records Revisited. The author has mentioned Metal music as one of his most important coping tools for OCD and related disorders. Here’s a look at the year he got one of the best therapy sessions ever, simply by working in a cramped little record store.

Metal to Stick in Your Mental Microwave.

Man of God

The Better Angels of My Nature. Why I let Christ in my life.

The Rat in the Church Pew. The author has written much about his Faith as a key to overcoming mental illness. But as this post illustrates, he still has a long way to go in his spiritual development.

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely. The author goes to Church and comes away with a strange feeling.

Running from Sin, Running With Scissors. The author writes an open letter to the RCIA Class of 2010 about Faith as a journey, not a destination. He warns that addiction, rage and other bad behavior won’t disappear the second water is dropped over their heads.

Forgiveness is a Bitch. Seeking and giving forgiveness is essential for someone in recovery. But it’s often seen as a green light for more abuse.

Pain in the Lent. The author gives a progress report on the Lenten sacrifices. It aint pretty.

May 3, 2011

Had He Lived

Today would have been my brother’s 45th birthday. I sometimes wonder what he’d be doing and saying in the crazy world we inhabit today.

Mood music:

Let’s go back to 1984, the year he left us.

He probably would have been amused to find me hanging out with Sean Marley and listening to Motley Crue and Def Leppard. He would have noticed my widening girth and got on me about it. Despite his asthma he was a fanatical weight lifter. He’d be on my ass to join a gym. Just not his gym. Me hanging around his gym would have been gross.

Side item: Right after he died, I did join his gym, Fitness World. It was just down the street from our house, a short walk down a side alley. I wasted no time trying to be him, and lifting weights in Fitness World was as good a place as any to start my charade. I lasted maybe a week. Everyone there expected me to be him. I should have figured out then and there that there could only be one Michael S. Brenner.

Later in my teen years, he might have punched me in the face or broken my other middle finger (he had broken one of them in the back of my father’s van one day when I flipped him off) for wearing his leather jacket. It was a true biker’s jacket, with the zippers on the sleeves and scratch marks from a few falls he had off his motorcycle. He was one cool-looking motherfucker in that jacket. But when I put it on, it was two sizes too small. I wore it anyway.

He might have been jealous of the palace I made out of the basement apartment at 22 Lynnway. At the time of his death the place was being renovated and the plan was for him to move in there. Instead, my father rented it to a guy who was nice enough but always seemed to be fighting with his girlfriend. Since my bedroom was in the basement level at another end of the house, this often pissed me off. Sometimes I heard the make-up sex, and that pissed me off even more. It’s hard to get lost in your quiet, dysfunctional mind when people are making a racket on the other side of the wall. The guy moved out by late 1987 and I moved in.

He might have been annoyed when I decided not to pursue a career in drafting. I wanted to be a writer instead. The poetry I was writing at the time would have sent him into fits of laughter. It would send you into fits of laughter, too.

He was going to be a plumber, and he might have shaken his head back and forth in disgust at my inability to do anything useful with a set of tools.

What he would have thought of me in the 1990s, or of Sean Marley, for that matter, is probably not worth exploring. Had he lived a lot would have been different. I don’t know if Sean and I would have gotten as close as we did, and had that been the case, his death in 1996 wouldn’t have sent me into the self-destructive nosedive I found myself in.

He probably would have been pleased to see me get my demons under control in the last decade. He might even appreciate my decision to be open about it in this blog. But he might not have told me so.

One thing I’m pretty certain of: He would have loved his nephews, and they would have loved him.

I realize this post is a useless exercise. Things happen for a reason, and the past had to unfold as it did so I could be who I am today. You could argue that I would have missed out on a lot of experiences had he lived.

You could also argue — and I would probably agree — that he never really died. He played his part on this world and left, and the part he played is still shaping our lives today.

Whatever.

All I know is that this is May 3rd and he’s enjoying his birthday in a better place. This is my Happy Birthday to him.

May 2, 2011

Osama bin Laden’s Death And The Importance of Closure

I just wrote a blog post on @CSOonline about bin Laden’s death and how, in my opinion, it doesn’t change things. My good friend Alan Shimel read it and immediately took issue with what I said: “Sorry, it does change everything. A sense of closure that I didn’t even realize I was craving all of these years,” he wrote.

He can understand the craving for closure better than I can on this matter. He lost a loved one on that awful day.

Mood music:

He wrote to me, “I wrote something last night right after I heard the news, http://www.ashimmy.com/2011/05/the-night-the-usa-got-its-groove-back.html. But I have to tell you that Bonnie stayed up late to watch everything while we both had tears in our eyes. We felt like finally her sister could rest in peace. I didn’t realize how not catching him had effected me.”

I hear you, brother. God Bless you both.

That day definitely had an effect on my state of mind, and I didn’t know any of the victims personally. I came very close to an emotional breakdown.

There are two types of head cases headed for a breakdown: There’s the type that tries hard to get him or herself killed through reckless behavior, and then there are those who cower in their room, terrified of what’s on the other side of that door.

I fell into the latter category. I started drinking copious amounts of wine to feel OK in my skin, and I went on a food binge that lasted about three months and resulted in a 30-pound weight gain. The still-undiagnosed issues I had going on beneath the service were the perfect target for terrorists.

I do know many people who lost loved ones that day, and the lack of closure did indeed send them into their own personal torment of addiction and depression. Alan mentioned that one of his relatives has struggled with depression since that day.

In my security blog on @CSOonline, I suggested that bin Laden’s death doesn’t change much because we made him irrelevant a long time ago by getting on with our lives instead of cowering as he wanted us to.

I firmly believe that.

But at the same time, I do recognize that this is a major moment of closure for a lot of people. And that’s huge.

In the past year, I’ve gotten closure on a friend’s suicide by reconnecting with his widow and making amends for my lack of helpfulness when she needed it most. Closure lifts a big weight from your heart. But the wound never goes away completely. And whether we get closure or not, we still have to get on with our lives.

That’s what Alan and Bonnie have done since 9-11. They stood straight and moved forward. Alan is someone I’ve come to admire in the security community.

I’m glad his and Bonnie’s steps are lighter now.