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Support Your Local Crisis Hotline Person

One of the byproducts of writing this blog is that old friends and strangers have reached out to me for chats about what they’re going through.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/mso6N_eqg_k

You could say I’m doing an increasing amount of unpaid, uncertified counseling. I’d like to think it’s just me trying to be a good friend and following up on what I do here.

It can be a bit much sometimes. That’s not a complaint. It’s just the everyday challenge of life. But when someone else commits their time to counseling people through their pain, depression and crises, I respect them for what they’re getting into.

Amber Baldet, one of my friends from the business world, is in the process of getting certified to do online crisis and suicide prevention. Here’s her profile.

Donating a couple dollars to the work she’s undertaking will help her considerably.

If you see her around, thank her for doing it. You never know. She might be the one who helps you through a crisis someday.

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Season of Depression

Like everyone else, I love the colors and crisp air of autumn. But there’s something else about fall that I hate: It’s the beginning of the mood swings and depression.

Mood music: 

http://youtu.be/DcEAI5p-wUg

When the days get shorter and I find myself driving to work in the dark, it has an effect on my brain. Welcome to my annual class on S.A.D.

People who suffer from chemical imbalances in the brain are directly impacted by daylight levels. When the weather is dismal, cold, rainy and the days are shorter, a lot of folks with mental illness find themselves more depressed and moody. Give us a long stretch of dry, sunny weather and days where it gets light at 4:30 a.m. and stays that way past 8 p.m. and we tend to be happier people.

There are lessons to be had in the history books:

– Abraham Lincoln, a man who suffered from deep depression for most of his adult life, went from blue to downright suicidal a few times in the 1840s during long stretches of chilly, rainy weather. [See Why “Lincoln’s Melancholy” is a Must-Read.]

– Ronald Reagan, a sunny personality by most accounts, was a man of Sunny California. Once, upon noticing that his appointments secretary hadn’t worked time in his schedule for trips to his ranch atop the sun-soaked mountains of Southern California — and after the secretary explained that there was a growing public perception that he was spending too much time away from Washington — Reagan handed him back the schedule and ordered that ranch time be worked in. The more trips to the ranch, he explained, the longer he’ll live.

The WebMD site has excellent information on winter depression. Here’s an excerpt:

If your mood gets worse as the weather gets chillier and the days get shorter, you may have “winter depression.” Here, questions to ask your doctor if winter is the saddest season for you.

WHY DO I SEEM TO GET SO GLOOMY EACH WINTER, OR SOMETIMES BEGINNING IN THE FALL?

You may have what’s called seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. The condition is marked by the onset of depression during the late fall and early winter months, when less natural sunlight is available. It’s thought to occur when daily body rhythms become out-of-sync because of the reduced sunlight.

Some people have depression year round that gets worse in the winter; others have SAD alone, struggling with low moods only in the cooler, darker months. (In a much smaller group of people, the depression occurs in the summer months.)

SAD affects up to 3% of the U.S. population, or about 9 million people, some experts say, and countless others have milder forms of the winter doldrums.

SO THIS WORSENING OF MOOD IN THE FALL AND WINTER IS NOT JUST MY IMAGINATION?

Not at all. This “winter depression” was first identified by a team of researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health in 1984. They found this tendency to have seasonal mood and behavior changes occurs in different degrees, sometimes with mild changes and other times severe mood shifts.

Symptoms can include:

  • Sleeping too much
  • Experiencing fatigue in the daytime
  • Gaining weight
  • Having decreased interest in social activities and sex

SAD is more common for residents in northern latitudes. It’s less likely in Florida, for instance, than in New Hampshire. Women are more likely than men to suffer, perhaps because of hormonal factors. In women, SAD becomes less common after menopause.

Here’s where the Prozac comes in for me:

As I mentioned in The Bad Pill Kept Me from the Good Pill, Prozac helps to sustain my brain chemistry at healthy levels. Here’s a more scientific description of how it works from WebMD:

HOW ANTIDEPRESSANTS WORK

Most antidepressants work by changing the balance of brain chemicals called neurotransmitters. In people with depression, these chemicals are not used properly by the brain. Antidepressants make the chemicals more available to brain cells like the one shown on the right side of this slide:

Photo Composite of Neurotransmitters at Work

Antidepressants can be prescribed by primary care physicians, but people with severe symptoms are usually referred to a psychiatrist.

REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS

In general, antidepressants are highly effective, especially when used along with psychotherapy. (The combination has proven to be the most effective treatment for depression.) Most people on antidepressants report eventual improvements in symptoms such as sadness, loss of interest, and hopelessness.

But these drugs do not work right away. It may take one to three weeks before you start to feel better and even longer before you feel the full benefit.

I’m convinced the drug would NOT have worked as well for me had it not been for all the intense therapy I had first. Developing the coping mechanisms had to come first.

I’ve also learned that the medication must be monitored and managed carefully. The levels have to be adjusted at certain times of year — for me, anyway.
Last year, I found myself managing my moods a lot better than in years past. I still went through periods of depression, but I saw it for what it was and was and kept it from dragging me down more often than not.
I’m hoping to do better than that this time around. I’ll keep you posted.
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How To Talk To A Liar Who’s Been Caught

A reader who recently found the two posts I wrote on addicts as compulsive liars had a sad story to share. Her husband, a compulsive spender, gambler and drinker, lies to her all the time. He apparently sucks at it. She always finds out.

Mood music:

How, she asked me, does she deal with a person like this? She still loves him, and in many respects he’s still the great guy. But lies are a cancer on even the most tried and true relationships.

It’s a hard question for me to answer. For one thing, it’s self-serving of me to tell a person like you how to talk to a person like me. My instinct will naturally be to tell you to go easy on him and calmly talk it through. It is true that yelling at a liar won’t make him stop. In fact, it will probably compel him to lie even more, convinced that any shred of honesty will result in a verbal beating every time.

This part has been especially challenging for me over the years. I grew up in a family where there was constant yelling. Because of that, I react to yelling like one might react to gunshots. I instinctively avoid it at all costs, and that has led to lies.

But if your significant other is stealing money behind your back to buy drugs, a friendly, smiling reminder to him that grownups aren’t supposed to behave this way won’t work either. The liar will simply thank God that he got off the hook that time.

You just can’t win with a liar.

I lied all the time about all the binge eating and the money I spent on it. I’m guilty of the lie of omission when it comes to smoking. And in moments where I felt like I was in trouble, I lied about something without meaning to. The instinct just kicked in and a second later I was smacking myself in the head over it.

Here’s where there’s hope:

Lies tire a soul out. It weighs you down after awhile like big bags of sand on your shoulders. Guilt eats you alive. That’s how it’s been with me in the past.

If you’re like that and there are any shards of good within you, you eventually come clean because you want to. Remember that lying is part of two larger diseases: Addiction and mental illness. Nobody wants to be sick.

But while some who get sick wallow in it and make everyone around them miserable, others are decidedly more stoic about it and try to do the best they can with the odds they’re dealt.

I was a miserable sick man but eventually, through spiritual growth, I tried to become a more bearable sick man. That meant dealing with the roots (addiction and OCD) and the side effects (lying).

I still fall on my face. But I work it hard and seem to have gotten much better than I used to be.

I credit Erin for a lot of this. She could have either thrown me out or thrown up her arms and turned a blind eye to my self destruction. But somehow, she has found a middle ground in dealing with me. It hasn’t always been pretty. But we’ve had our victories along the way.

You want to know how to talk to a liar who’s been caught? You’re better off asking her than me.

pinocchio

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Axl Rose: Still A Jackass

Guns n Roses singer Axl Rose is still a jackass after all these years. Consider the following:

Mood music:

From the metal news site Blabbermouth.net:

GUNS N’ ROSES‘ continual tardiness is making things rough for concert promoters and fans alike, with long waits for Axl Rose just as much a definite at a the band’s concert as hearing “Paradise City” or “Welcome To The Jungle”. At the Rock In Rio concert on October 2, GUNS N’ ROSES came onstage two hours late despite having reportedly agreed to pay a heavy fine for making the audience wait.

GUNS N’ ROSES‘ defended its actions with a brand new post on its Facebook page, stating, “Love it Hate it Accept it Debate it — You want 8 o’clock shows go find F-R-I-E-N-D-S or hit a cinema somewhere.. or you wanna be informed go catch the 10-o’clock news.. this is Rock N’ Roll! Treat yourself don’t cheat yourself thinking you’re gonna go to school or work or whatever you ‘normally’ do the next day. Oh and remember before you get high and never want to come down. ‘you can have anything you want but you better not take it from me!’ This is GUNS N’ ROSES and when the time is right the stage will ignite. Looking forward to sharing that with rockers soon!”

GUNS N’ ROSES‘ 2001 show at Rock In Rio saw them take to the stage two hours late, and while the crowd waited patiently for them on that occasion, this has not been the case at other shows.

In March 2010, fans of the band rioted in São Paolo, Brazil after a private show was canceled at the last minute, and in 2002 fans in Vancouver, Canada and Philadelphia in the U.S. rioted when shows were canceled on the day.

Also in 2010, organizers of the Reading festival in England pulled the plug on the band’s PA, silencing them after they took to the stage an hour late and tried to overrun the event’s curfew time by over half an hour.

Here’s what Axl doesn’t understand after all these years: When you pay to see him perform, it’s reasonable to expect the band to take the stage close to the time the ticket states. People travel from far and wide to see their favorite bands. Some disrupt their schedules to get to the venue on time. Most have jobs to get to the following morning.

Axl thinks it’s wrong for people to get upset with him for not fulfilling his side of the deal and that they should “treat themselves” and not “cheat themselves.” But it’s not a treat to spend two extra hours in a concert hall waiting for something to happen.

Axl’s mental health issues are the stuff of rock legend. His mood swings have led to riots and a world of hurt for those around him.

After more than 20 years, one would have hoped he grew as a person; that he brought his selfish instincts to heal.

But apparently not.

I feel sorry for him. To go through all these years and not learn from mistakes seems like such a waste.

Perhaps it’s hypocritical of me to say these things. After all, I have plenty of things I still need to work on.

But I can’t help myself.

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Happy Birthday, Old Friend

It just dawned on me that today would have been Sean Marley’s 45th birthday. You’ve seen much here about how his life and death shaped me. But right now I just want to point out all that was cool about him.

Mood music:

–He was a gifted guitarist. He could learn to play just about anything, and could write great musical bits when he wanted to. He gave me my first guitar for Christmas in 1986. It was an Ibanez strat model. He had what I think was a Guild electric guitar with a dark blue or black body. I sold the Ibanez several years later and it’s one of my biggest regrets. Sean was pissed but forgave me. I sometimes wonder whatever happened to his guitar. I hope someone’s putting it to good use.

–He was a great writer, and was a very disciplined diary keeper. He showed me several posts over the years, but I haven’t read them since his death. I know they are in safe hands, though.

–His hair went through more changes than Hillary Clinton’s, in both style and color.

–He reveled in listening to bands that weren’t as well known. He was listening to Kix several years before they achieved moderate success. He turned me on to T-Rex, Thin Lizzy and Riot (not Quiet Riot. This band was just called Riot).

–He loved the sea as much as I did, which makes sense, since his father Al was the one who really taught me to appreciate the ocean.

–He was a vegetarian who could not understand why people had to kill animals for food or any other reason. I never caught on, but I respected him for it.

–He was a very spiritual man who was always seeking. He eventually rebelled against the Catholic faith he was brought up on, but he was always reading, writing and exploring who exactly his higher power was.

–He used to find a lot of bizarre z-grade horror movies for us to watch. I can’t remember half the titles, though the Toxic Avenger was in there somewhere. One movie involved aliens who drank their own vomit. He thought that was especially funny.

–He was a Libertarian way before it was the popular thing to be. In fact, in the 1988 presidential election we both voted for a practically unknown politician named Ron Paul. He was the libertarian candidate. Sean voted for him because he was a true believer. I just didn’t want to vote for Bush or Dukakis.

–He was always taking classes, studying and studying some more. He had a serious, deep academic mind. He never stopped learning.

–He was my brother. Not by birth, but our souls were interconnected.

Happy Birthday, old friend.

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Mentally Ill Behind Bars

Came across a disturbing report by Steve Visser in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that clearly illustrates how far we have to go in getting the mentally ill the help they need.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/yndfqN1VKhY

The headline: Mentally ill inmates languish in local jails

From the article:

Detention Officer Terroyanne Harris considers the inmates she oversees on 3 North as much patient as prisoner. They suffer from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress and other mental illnesses. Some walk aimlessly around their cell block. Some are lost in hallucinations.

Most are in the Fulton County jail because they are more of a nuisance than a danger in the free world.

Taken into custody for petty crimes such as trespassing, damaging property or resisting an officer, some end up trapped in a revolving door of arrest and release. Others languish behind bars for years as they wait to be declared competent enough to stand trial.

Fulton County is not an aberration. The same is true in DeKalb, Cobb and Gwinnett counties, as well as some rural counties in the state.

Jails have become the new asylums. In Georgia, more mentally ill people are locked away than are treated in all the state psychiatric hospitals combined.

This is bad for a variety of reasons, the first being that a mental illness sufferer’s chance of recovery is seriously diminished in a bleak environment like that. Environment can make all the difference. I know from experience.

My OCD and depression run hot whenever I spend too much time indoors, hidden from the daylight. Even walking into a hospital to visit someone for an hour has a depressing impact on me. It’s a bleak environment, where people are essentially imprisoned by their illnesses. But it’s still better than the inside of a jail cell.

The article captures one aspect of this tragedy quite well:

With more mentally ill people on the streets, more have run-ins with the law. A Supreme Court decision in the mid-70s made it harder to involuntarily commit those with mental illnesses. Jail is where many land.

I can’t help but think of the fellow in my hometown people call Crazy Mike.

In any city there’s a guy like him.

The stereotype is usually a long beard, ratty clothes and the fellow is usually living on the street. He talks aloud to no one in particular and falls asleep on playground equipment.

People like to laugh at him.

I’m no saint. I’ve made my share of fun of people like this, and in the rear-view mirror, looking back at my own struggle with mental illness, it makes me feel ashamed. It makes me the last guy on Earth who would be fit to judge others for poking fun at someone less fortunate.

Is Mike better off in a jail cell? I can picture him easily getting detained for disturbing the peace and ending up in the slammer. But I can’t picture him being better off.

I think of all the war veterans who are on the street or in jail because their experiences in combat left them traumatized for life. They fought for their country and deserve better.

The state of Georgia needs to reform its system now. Locking the mentally ill away in jail isn’t just tragic. It’s outrageous. I don’t fault officers in the correctional facilities. They seem to be doing the best they can with the tools they have. The problem is that these inmates shouldn’t have landed there in the first place.

Here’s hoping Georgia and other states find a way to solve this problem.

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Be Yourself, Even If People Hate You For It

The more I talk to fellow recovering addicts and emotional defects, the more I realize we have one big thing in common: We want to please everyone and be loved for it. Unfortunately, it’s an impossible goal that can lead to crushing disappointment.

Mood music:

It’s an especially stinging problem in the age of social networking, where some people have learned to measure their worth by how many “friends” and “followers” they have. Facebook in particular is full of peevers who get picky about what you post even as they post things that annoy others. It’s an atmosphere tailor made for resentments.

Whenever I go to an OA, AA or 12-Step Big Book study meeting, someone always brings up their need to have everyone like them. The reason they became an addict was because that hunger could never be satisfied.

I wrote about my own experience with this in a post called “Why Being a People Pleaser Is Dumb.”

I wanted desperately to make every boss happy, and I did succeed for awhile. But in doing so I damaged myself to the core and came within inches of an emotional breakdown. It caused me to work 80 hours a week, waking up each morning scared to death that I would fall short or fail altogether. I wanted to make every family member happy. It didn’t work, because you can never keep everyone happy when strong personalities clash.

In the face of constant let-downs, I binged on everything I could get my hands on and spent most waking moments resenting the fuck out of people who didn’t embrace me for who I am.

I’d like to tell you I’ve learned to shrug it off and let people go when they didn’t want to subscribe to my personality. But the truth is that I still struggle with it.

When a family member gives me the cold shoulder, it affects me. Never mind that I’ve cold-shouldered many a family member in my day. When I discover someone on Facebook has unfriended me, I go on a hunt to find out who it was and why. Never mind all the people I’ve disconnected from for annoying me.

With this disease, hypocrisy is a constant companion.

As conflicted as I remain, I am coming around to the idea that I have to be myself, even if some people hate me for it. It’s a slow and messy process, but you could also say there’s a survival instinct kicking in.

I’m a devout Catholic who wants to be accepted by everyone in my church community. But my gallows humor and metal-head ways are going to bubble to the surface and I can’t expect everyone to like it.

On the other side of the blade, I can’t expect all my friends in the music and writing worlds to share my views on faith.

I also can’t expect everyone to approve of everything I write here. By extension, I can’t expect everyone to want all the content I insist on pushing through my social networking feeds.

All I can do is be myself and hope that the better parts of me surface more often than the unsavory parts.

Being someone else is simply too hard. Besides, in the end we get judged on who we were, not on who we pretended to be.

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Three Years (Almost) Clean

Three years ago yesterday, I went on my last binge. Actually, it was more like reaching the end of a final, two-month long binge. The abstinent and sober life hasn’t been perfect by any stretch. But it beats the hell out of where I was at the start.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/IKpEoRlcHfA

Compulsive overeating was my biggest, most destructive addiction. It led to health problems that only got worse with time. I became a waste of space and fell short as a husband, dad and friend. I used to think about food all the time — where to get it, when to binge it and how to hide the aftermath.

People think of drugs and alcohol as addictive things, followed by gambling, pornography and the Internet. Food, on the other hand, that’s something we need to survive. If you’re a binge eater, it’s not an addiction, the thinking goes. You’re just a glutton who eats too much. The truth is we are ALL addicts. Some of us need chocolate, others need to watch every episode of their favorite TV show.

This year has probably been the most challenging for me since ditching the flour and sugar. There have been stress factors that didn’t exist before, including my father’s multiple strokes. Last month I decided to restart my program at square one, with a new sponsor and a tightening up of my food plan.

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 was pretty damn close.

Twice in as many weeks, I forgot 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 was skipping too many 12-Step/OA meetings and I stopped calling my sponsor.

One morning I woke up, had a what-the-fuck moment and decided to kickstart things. Hence the “almost” in today’s title.

Last year, my sister Shira asked me what the difference was between someone with a binge-eating addiction and someone who just eats too much without thinking.

It’s a fair question, and a wise one. Here’s how I see it:

Though we all have our addictions, there’s a line someone with an overpowering habit crosses. On the other side of that line, life becomes unmanageable. The fix becomes more important than anything else. You spend ALL your time thinking about how to get it. You burn through money you don’t have and become crafty at lying about it to everyone around you, including the people you love most.

In short, the need for a fix takes your entire brain hostage.

I guess that if I were just a casual overeater, I’d be overweight but life would hum along pretty much as it’s supposed to.

I’m not sure if that makes sense, but that’s what it means to me.

When you realize you need to deal with it, the 12 Steps of Recovery is the map to take you there. It’s very simple. The first steps are the admission that you have a problem that has made life unmanageable, and that you can’t bring it under control without help from a higher power.

There are the basic tools: Having a food plan (mine is devoid of flour and sugar and I put almost everything I eat on a scale). There’s the sponsor, writing, meetings, etc. But along the way, you learn things about yourself and grow in ways well beyond what you expected.

My recovery has lead to many healed relationships and a clearheadedness I never knew before. I’ve been able to reach out to people I’ve hurt in the past and set things right.

It isn’t all roses. The first few months of abstinence were not sober days. I used a lot of wine as a crutch to keep from eating. Eventually I put that down too, because I saw where it was taking me and it scared me. And I’ll be honest: I don’t really miss the food anymore, but I DO miss the wine. Sobriety can be an awkward thing.

I’ve also learned that being clean doesn’t make you a better person. I’ve seen people in AA and OA that will make your skin crawl, and they’ve been clean a long time. Sobriety doesn’t mean you instantly learn how to behave like a good human being. Some people find they were better at that when they had a glass in their hand. Me? I have a runaway ego and some days I still have a bad attitude.

I’m a work in progress. A lot of work.

But I’ll take the me of today over the me of three years ago.

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Duncan And I Need A Trail Of Post-It Notes To Get Through The Day

Things are rough in the Brenner household lately. Duncan’s ADHD is running hot, and so is my OCD. The resulting FUBARs are probably entertaining to the outsider, but it’s quite possible that Erin and Sean are ready to kill us.

The back-to-school grind is great in that the kids needed to get back to their routine. But by the time Duncan gets home he’s fried. Not good when there’s homework to do. He can’t focus, and we need to stand over him so he’ll do the homework. When I’m in OCD mode that’s not easy, because all I can think of are the chores that need to get done.

Duncan has also developed something of a persecution complex. If Sean or one of the neighborhood kids don’t want to do what he wants to do, they’re out to get him as far as he’s concerned. With other kids in general, he’ll inevitably find something to get indignant about.

Meanwhile, I’ve had a lot on my mind lately. Nothing awful, just the everyday challenges of life. The problem here is that I go into a zone where I can’t hear what people are telling me and I leave things lying around the house.

I wouldn’t describe these things as bad. It’s just stuff Duncan and I need to keep working on. We’re both still a lot better than we were a couple years ago.

I am starting to think the two of us would benefit from a trail of post-it notes. When I start going into a chore frenzy, a few well-placed post-it notes telling me to focus back on Duncan might do the trick. For Duncan, a trail of notes reminding him to change his clothes, do his homework and stop punching his brother might work.

Or not.

When I lose patience with Duncan, four words ring in my head: “You of all people.”

I of all people should be patient with Duncan. I was a problem child on a much deeper, darker magnitude than him. He’s a good boy. I should be a lot calmer when he has his meltdowns and gets uncooperative. Because I’ve been in his shoes. And yet I’m not patient with him at all.

I’ll just have to keep working hard at it.

Because he’s a beautiful kid, and he deserves that from me.