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Depression Takes Another Life: Ronnie Montrose

Depression has claimed another victim. Published reports confirm that legendary guitarist Ronnie Montrose’s March 3 death was a suicide.

Many of you are unfamiliar with him, but his playing left a lasting mark on a lot of mega-star musicians, including Eddie Van Halen, who recorded four studio albums with original Montrose singer Sammy Hagar.

Mood music:

Montrose’s wife, Leighsa Montrose, described how badly he suffered in an interview with Guitar Player magazine:

“Ronnie had a very difficult childhood, which caused him to have extremely deep and damaging feelings of inadequacy,” said Leighsa. “This is why he always drove himself so hard. He never thought he was good enough. He always feared he’d be exposed as a fraud. So he was exacting in his self criticism, and the expectations he put upon himself were tremendous. Now I see that perhaps he didn’t want to carry these burdens for very much longer.”

I’ve been ultra-sensitive on the issue of suicide ever since my best friend took his life 15-plus years ago.

I was angry with him for many years. I thought he was a coward who left behind a mess. My thinking has evolved considerably since then. I now see suicide for what it is: The act of a person so ill with depression that they’ve lost the ability to think clearly. Whenever I hear of a suicide, I feel the need to mention it here because I don’t want anyone else’s name tarnished because that’s how it ended for them.

The topic is a tough one for Catholics like me, because we were always taught that suicide is a ticket straight to Hell. These lines from the Catechism of the Catholic Church show that suicide isn’t the trip to eternal damnation many in the church would have us believe:

“2282 Grave psychological disturbances, anguish, or grave fear of hardship, suffering, or torture can diminish the responsibility of the one committing suicide. 

2283 We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.”

Nothing is ever as black and white as we’d like to believe. The older I get, the clearer that point becomes.

It used to seem strange to me how depression could snuff out one life while leaving legions more intact. But it’s not so strange, really. Cancer kills a lot of people every day, but many more are left standing.

I’m no stranger to depression. I suffer the bleak feelings of it regularly, though never to the point of suicide. Mine is a brooding, curmudgeonly form of depression that I’ve learned to manage well through therapy and medication.

I’m one of the lucky ones, I suppose. I’ll just be grateful about it and leave it at that.

I hope Montrose finds the peace he couldn’t find in life.

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I Bet Health Insurers Would Gladly Cover Suicide Pills

The Catholic Church is bringing out its heavy artillery to fight a Massachusetts ballot initiative that, if passed, would allow doctors to prescribe lethal pills to terminally-ill patients that want to be put out of their misery.

I’m with the church on this one.

Mood music:

Boston Globe columnist Scot Lehigh describes this quite nicely:

An initiative petition to legalize physician-assisted suicide has been certified by Attorney General Martha Coakley. If backers collect enough signatures, and the Legislature fails to act, the question will go on the November 2012 ballot.

Modeled on the death-with-dignity law in Washington state, the measure says that if an adult state resident is judged terminally ill with less than six months to live by two physicians, he can get a lethal prescription.

The initial request has to be made in writing. Two people, one of whom is not a family member (and would not share in the estate), have to witness the signing of the request and attest that patient is capable and acting voluntarily. The terminally ill patient has to repeat the request twice verbally, at an interval of at least 15 days. He would be counseled about alternatives like hospice care and pain control. The lethal dose would not be administered by a physician; rather, the patient would swallow it himself.

If the initiative does make the ballot, expect determined opposition. Indeed, Cardinal Sean O’Malley focused on the ballot question during a recent Mass for Bay State lawmakers and jurists, saying he hoped that Massachusetts citizens would not be seduced by language like “dignity,’’ “mercy,’’ and “compassion.’’ Those words, he said, are a “means to disguise the sheer brutality of helping people to kill themselves. A vote for physician-assisted suicide is a vote for suicide.’’

After laying all this out, Lehigh asks:

“If a terminally ill patient wants to end his life a little early, why is that against the good of his person?”

Fair question. Here’s my opinion:

When a person chooses to end their life it’s always tragic. If depression is the cause, the individual has lost all hope and is effectively no longer able to make sand decisions. If a person is terminally ill, they are often in unspeakable pain. On some levels, you can’t blame a person in that situation for wanting to end the pain.

Here’s my problem, though:

Doctors are often wrong. I know of many people who were told they had six months to live and outlasted the grim prognosis by years. Whether you have weeks, months or years to live, there’s a lot of good you can still do with your life. We’ve heard many tales of people who achieved greatness in the face of death, helping their fellow man and living with dignity instead of rolling over and quitting.

When a person is so sick they can’t do those things, they want to relieve loved ones of the burden they feel they’ve become. But to me that’s bullshit. If you spend your life taking care of people, it’s perfectly appropriate for them to take care of you when the time comes. Most people I know want to care for their sick loved ones.

My ultimate attitude is that it’s not over until God says it’s over. Trying to die before it’s really time is cheating. Some will cry bullshit on that point. I don’t really care.

If you want to die with dignity, that’s your business.

I’d rather live with dignity — If for no other reason than to piss off the health insurers who fight tooth and nail not to cover life-saving procedures on a daily basis.

I bet my insurance provider would gladly cover my lethal injection. It’s cheaper than paying for my other procedures.

This could be my way of saying “fuck them.”

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The Wellbutrin Experiment: Day 8

As I mentioned earlier, I’m taking Wellbutrin to combat a tougher-than-usual bout of winter depression. Here’s where I stand eight days in.

Mood music:

I think I’m starting to feel it, though it’s hard to know for sure this soon. The nurse told me it could take several weeks before I’d feel the full effect, since Wellbutrin slowly accumulates. I have noticed a few things, though:

–I’m a little more focused than I’ve been in several weeks.

–I’m not feeling like I’m in a fog as much as I had been.

–I haven’t been feeling down like I was a week ago.

Whether it’s the Wellbutrin kicking in or not, I’m just glad to be feeling better.

Note: Four hours after writing the part you just read, I came down with vicious mood swings. As I write this, my skin doesn’t fit right, I’m itchy all over (yes, I showered today) and I’m agitated as hell. The good news is that I have gone through the same exact thing whenever my Prozac dose has been adjusted. It lasts a few hours, and then everything evens out. It’s usually the point I reach when the medication is about to kick in.

For those wondering what this experiment is all about, let’s review:

I started taking Wellbutrin because it’s supposed to shore up depleted brain chemistry that the Prozac isn’t designed to fix.

The Prozac increases the amount of serotonin, a natural substance in the brain that helps maintain mental balance. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, a substance that helps transmit messages from one nerve cell to another. In other words, it keeps traffic in the brain moving normally.

It has served me well, but this winter the blue moods have been tougher to shake. Enter the Wellbutrin, a drug used to treat major depression and seasonal affective disorder. It’s also used to help people quit smoking because it squashes cravings.

While the Prozac raises Serotonin levels, Wellbutrin shores up another neurotransmitter called Dopamine.

If this all sounds confusing, think of the brain as a car engine. To run properly, the engine needs the right amount of fluids, including brake fluid, transmission fluid and oil. Run low on any one of these and you got problems.

It’s amusing for me considering my efforts to kick some addictions in recent years. Despite my sobriety and abstinence, here I am, finding that there’s better living through chemistry after all.

Cheers.

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OCD On My Left, ADD On My Right

It’s been an interesting month in mental disorder awareness. In taking steps to nip wintertime depression in the bud, I’ve learned that OCD isn’t my only mental defect.

Mood music:

It appears that as OCD messes with one side of my brain, Attention Deficit Disorder is toying with the other side. This little epiphany happened when I visited the nurse who helps me manage my regimen of medication.

She asked a lot of questions she usually doesn’t ask about my focus of late. I noted that while I still have frequent OCD moments — particularly if I’m knee-deep in a work project or tackling a list of chores at home — I also seem to be having trouble concentrating a lot. One recent day in work, for example, it took all the strength I had to focus on the work at hand.

That almost never happens. But this time, doing the work was painful. It gave me a migraine. If I hated what I do that would be normal. But I love what I do. Meanwhile, at home, I’d stand in the kitchen, oblivious to the fact that I was standing right where Erin was working on dinner. I would try to give her a hug or shoulder rub while she was in the middle of a task — almost as if I had one foot in this dimension and another foot in some other world.

There’s more to it, but those are a couple good examples.

Looking back on my life, it all makes sense. The OCD-ADD push and pull has always been there to some degree. As a kid I would go into OCD mode, organizing my Hot Wheels and Star Wars action figures just so. Then I’d go the other way and have a hell of a time trying to focus on simple homework assignments or chores around the house.

The Prozac nurse tells me it’s actually typical for someone to go back and forth with these disorders. OCD and ADD operate on the same mental plain. Both spark anxiety (I used to be crippled by anxiety, but that’s not an issue today) and mood swings. Both are effected by the time of year, amount of daylight vs. darkness, etc.

The image that comes to mind is two-face, that villain in Batman with the split personality.

So now I have Wellbutrin to go with the Prozac to balance things out.

Funny how life works. You learn something new about yourself, and then discover it’s not really new at all.

God clearly has a sense of humor.

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Serotonin, Dopamine And Two Blue Pills

As the reader knows, I’ve had a persistent bout of winter depression. Not the “I’m sad and want to hurt myself” type, but the ho-hum, grumpy old man variety.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/c-QnnLudkQA

This afternoon I visited the nurse who manages my Prozac intake and walked out with a new drug: Wellbutrin.

I’ll be taking it in addition to the 60 MG of Prozac I’ve been taking for a few years now. The Prozac increases the amount of serotonin, a natural substance in the brain that helps maintain mental balance. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter, a substance that helps transmit messages from one nerve cell to another. In other words, it keeps traffic in the brain moving normally.

It has served me well, but this winter the blue moods have been tougher to shake. Enter the Wellbutrin, a drug used to treat major depression and seasonal affective disorder. It’s also used to help people quit smoking because it squashes cravings.

While the Prozac raises Serotonin levels, Wellbutrin shores up another neurotransmitter called Dopamine.

If this all sounds confusing, think of the brain as a car engine. To run properly, the engine needs the right amount of fluids, including brake fluid, transmission fluid and oil. Run low on any one of these and you got problems.

I just started taking the Wellbutrin this afternoon. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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Traci Foust Talks OCD on NPR

Erin is playing me an NPR broadcast about OCD. I went looking for the link to include here and tripped over another good NPR segment. This one is an interview with Traci Foust, author of “Nowhere Near Normal: A Memoir of OCD.”Nowhere Near Normal: A Memoir of OCD

I recently connected with Traci on Facebook and she’s a great resource for understanding the disorder.

Do yourself a favor and listen to it HERE.

While we’re on the topic, it’s also worth checking out “A Life Lived Ridiculously” by Annabelle R. Charbit, about a girl with obsessive compulsive disorder who makes the mistake of falling in love with a sociopath.

Both writings work so well because of how the authors use humor. Of course, my humor falls on the dark side, so take that comment with a grain of salt.

Annabelle RcAs for that other OCD segment on NPR, here it is. It’s about how art can be used to raise a person’s understanding of the disorder.

Enjoy, and be better for it.

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My Happy Lamp Isn’t Working As I’d Hoped

Me and the happy lamp Erin bought me to combat winter depression aren’t seeing eye to eye. Everyone I talk to who uses one says it works. But here’s my problem…

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/UXFUnnoSphY

As I stare at the florescent glow that’s supposed to simulate sunlight, a nagging thought dogs me: “It’s just not the same as real sunlight,” I keep telling myself.

There’s something about genuine sunlight — how it bounces off trees and houses, how it shoots through windows and lights a room — that you just can’t capture in a box.

When the happy lamp is on, it just seems like I have my face extremely close to one of those florescent ceiling lights.

I’m not blind to the fact that part of the problem is me. Knowing that it’s not the same as real sunlight, I have a hard time giving it a chance. That’s really not fair to those who have to live in the same house with me, I realize.

As I said a couple days ago, I’m going to give it another go and work hard to be disciplined about it.

I bring all this up because I suspect I’m not the only one whose skepticism — or is it cynicism — gets in the way of the scientific benefits of light therapy.

I found a write-up from the Mayo Clinic that explains the science pretty well:

Light therapy is a way to treat seasonal affective disorder (SAD) by exposure to artificial light. Seasonal affective disorder is a type of depression that occurs at a certain time each year, usually in the fall or winter.

During light therapy, you sit or work near a device called a light therapy box. The box gives off bright light that mimics natural outdoor light. Light therapy is thought to affect brain chemicals linked to mood, easing SAD symptoms. Using a light therapy box may also help with other types of depression, sleep disorders and some other conditions. Light therapy is also known as bright light therapy or phototherapy.

Reading further, I can see how I haven’t exactly been doing it right. I turn on the box and don’t keep track of time. I’m inconsistent about the time of day I use it. My mind gets caught on visuals: what I want the light to look like vs. the scientific effect. Here’s how the Mayo Clinic says to do it:

Three key elements for effective light therapy
Light therapy is most effective when you have the proper combination of duration, timing and light intensity:

  • Duration. When you first start light therapy, your doctor may recommend treatment for shorter blocks of time, such as 15 minutes. You gradually work up to longer periods. Eventually, light therapy typically involves daily sessions ranging from 30 minutes to two hours, depending on your light box’s intensity.
  • Timing. For most people, light therapy is most effective when it’s done early in the morning, after you first wake up. Doing light therapy at night can disrupt your sleep. Because light therapy seems to work best in the early morning, you may need to wake up earlier than you normally would to get the most benefit from treatment. Your doctor can help you find the light therapy schedule that works best.
  • Intensity. The intensity of the light box is recorded in lux, which is a measure of the amount of light you receive at a specific distance from a light source. Light boxes for light therapy usually produce between 2,500 lux and 10,000 lux. The intensity of your light box affect how far you sit from it and the length of time you need to use it. The 10,000 lux light boxes usually require 30-minute sessions, while the 2,500 lux light boxes may require 2-hour sessions.

Finding time for light therapy
Light therapy requires time and consistency. You may be tempted to skip sessions or quit altogether because you don’t want to spend time sitting by a light box. But light therapy doesn’t have to be boring. It can be time well spent.

You can set your light box on a table or desk in your home or in your office. That enables you to read, use a computer, write, watch television, talk on the phone or eat while undergoing light therapy. Some light boxes are even available as visors that you can wear, although their effectiveness isn’t proven.

Getting the most out of light therapy
Light therapy isn’t effective for everyone. But you can take steps to get the most out of your light therapy and help make it a success, including:

  • Be consistent. Sticking to a daily routine of light therapy sessions can help ensure that you maintain improvements over time. If you simply can’t do light therapy every day, take a day or two off, but monitor your mood and other symptoms — you may have to find a way to fit in light therapy every day.
  • Time it right. If you interrupt light therapy during the winter months or stop too soon in the spring when you think you’re improving, your symptoms could return.
  • Get the right light box. Do some research and talk to your doctor before purchasing a light therapy box. That way you can be sure your light box is safe, the right brightness and that its style and features make it convenient to use.
  • Include other treatment. If your symptoms don’t improve enough with light therapy, you may need additional treatment. Talk to your doctor about other treatment options, such as psychotherapy or antidepressants.

OK, then. I’m going to give this another try.

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Prozac Winter Has Set In

I’ve had some sharp mood swings in recent days. Now that it seems to be leveling off, I can write about it.

Mood music:

I made it through the usual Christmas blues in one piece and even enjoyed the holiday once it arrived. A week of vacation followed, and we Brenners did something we rarely do: Sit around like slugs. We needed it. We must have needed it really bad, in fact, because God sent the whole family a stomach bug to force a couple days of inactivity. I escaped the bug myself, but pretty much stayed under the quilts anyway.

The mood swings started around Thursday. I’d feel happy and at peace for a couple hours, then miserable, angry and agitated for a few hours, then back and forth. I didn’t mention it to my family, though I’m sure it was obvious. New Year’s Eve was especially brutal. I walked around in a fog all day, even as we did stuff as a family. We enjoyed a trip to the Museum of Science but much of the time my head was someplace else — someplace darker.

I carried on that way into the evening, feeling deep sadness over things I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Then, as we got further into the evening, my spirits lifted. After Duncan and my niece went to bed, Erin, Sean and I watched TV and Sean and I played a game of Battleship. It felt good.

Yesterday was a good day overall. I had enough energy to go on a housecleaning spree before church. In the afternoon Duncan and I worked on a craft involving Plaster of Paris and, while the plaster dried, we watched some Harry Potter.

I ended the day dozing off in my favorite living room chair next to the Christmas tree lights, and was feeling content about it.

A couple items worth noting:

–The worst of my mood swings coincided with some dreary weather outside. No snow, but lots of clouds and a fair amount of rain. That kind of weather always tampers with my mood.

–Yesterday, New Years Day, the sun lit up the day brilliantly. I always do better when the sun shines.

The weather is always a factor for those who are prone to depression this time of year, when the days are short and the trees are bare.

I’m feeling good this morning. All in all, it was a good, restful vacation but I’m ready to get back to the work I love. I used to dread the end of vacation, so that’s a big plus.

I cherished the time I spent with family, even if my flawed side sometimes surfaced to make a mess of things.

I’ve learned to expect this stuff at the beginning of winter. That means I’m able to recover more quickly.

Thank God for that, because nothing sucks more than a slow, downward spiral you can’t pull yourself out of.

"Darkness and Light" -- check out the "Four Lease Ranch" blog where I found this. Good stuff.
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THE OCD DIARIES, Two Years Later

Two years ago today, in a moment of Christmas-induced depression, I started this blog. I meant for it to be a place where I could go and spill out the insanity in my head so I could carry on with life.

In short order, it snowballed into much more than that.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/IKpEoRlcHfA

About a year into my recovery from serious mental illness and addiction — the most uncool, unglamorous addiction at that — I started thinking about sharing where I’ve been. My reasoning was simple: I’d listened to a lot of people toss around the OCD acronym to describe everything from being a type A personality to just being stressed. I also saw a lot of people who were traveling the road I’d been down and were hiding their true nature from the world for fear of a backlash at work and in social circles.

At some point, that bullshit became unacceptable to me.

I started getting sick of hiding. I decided the only way to beat my demons at their sick little game was to push them out into the light, so everyone could see how ugly they were and how bad they smelled. That would make them weaker, and me stronger. And so that’s how this started out, as a stigma-busting exercise.

Then, something happened. A lot of you started writing to me about your own struggles and asking questions about how I deal with specific challenges life hurls at me. The readership has steadily increased.

Truth be told, life with THE OCD DIARIES hasn’t been what I’d call pure bliss. There are many mornings where I’d rather be doing other things, but the blog calls to me. A new thought pops into my head and has to come out. It can also be tough on my wife, because sometimes she only learns about what’s going on in my head from what’s in the blog. I don’t mean to do that. It’s just that I often can’t form my thoughts clearly in discussion. I come here to do it, and when I’m done the whole world sees it.

More than once I’ve asked Erin if I should kill this blog. Despite the discomfort it can cause her at times, she always argues against shutting it down. It’s too important to my own recovery process, and others stand to learn from it or at least relate to it.

And so I push forward.

One difference: I run almost ever post I write by her before posting it. I’ve shelved several posts at her recommendation, and it’s probably for the best. Restraint has never been one of my strengths.

This blog has helped me repair relationships that were strained or broken. It has also damaged some friendships. When you write all your feelings down without a filter, you’re inevitably going to make someone angry.

One dear friend suggested I push buttons for a good story and don’t know how to let sleeping dogs lie. She’s right about the sleeping dogs part, but I don’t agree with the first suggestion. I am certainly a button pusher. But I don’t push to generate a good story. I don’t set out to do that, at least.

Life happens and I write about how I feel about it, and how I try to apply the lessons I’ve learned. It’s never my way or the highway. If you read this blog as an instruction manual for life, you’re doing it wrong. What works for me isn’t necessarily going to fit your own needs.

Over time, the subject matter of this blog has broadened. It started out primarily as a blog about OCD and addiction. Then it expanded to include my love of music and my commentary on current events as they relate to our mental state.

I recently rewrote the “about” section of the blog to better explain the whole package. Reiterating it is a pretty good way to end this entry. You can see it here.

Thanks for reading.

"Obsession," by Bill Fennell

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Is It Bad That Two Family Members Are In Therapy?

If more than one member of the same family is in therapy, is that a sign that the family is seriously screwed up?

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/iFAweWkqqjk

That’s the question we are asking ourselves these days. As the reader knows by now, I’ve been in therapy for OCD and related issues for seven years. Duncan sees a children’s therapist to help him work through his ADHD.

Is this family a basket case? In my opinion, it’s exactly the opposite.

I wouldn’t be enjoying the equilibrium I have today if not for the years of therapy.

Meanwhile, Duncan is learning a lot of helpful techniques to help him focus and control his anger.

I’m a staunch advocate of therapy as a tool for mental health. I think too many people are embarrassed when it’s suggested that therapy would do them some good. People who stay away from therapy because they feel it’s a mark of weakness have no idea what they are denying themselves. That makes me sad.

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?

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, dumb ass.

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.

Our relationship has settled into this banter back and forth, and it continues to serve its purpose. We go over everything happening in my life at that given moment, and if he suspects I’m thinking in unproductive ways or lying to myself, he calls me on it.

I’m better for it.

All that is the long way of saying I think it’s absolutely healthy if multiple members of one family are in therapy at the same time.