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A Depressed Mind Is Rarely A Beaten Mind

A report in USA Today says 1 in 100 adults have planned their suicide in the past year, a statistic that doesn’t surprise me, knowing what I do about depression.

Mood music:

I’ve suffered a lot of depression in my day. I’m experiencing a touch of it right now. I’ve never seriously considered ending it. But I can easily see how someone in that state of mind could head in that direction.

From the report:

“There’s a suicide every 15 minutes in the United States, and for every person who takes his or her own life there are many more who think about, plan or attempt suicide, according to a federal report released Thursday.

“The analysis of 2008-09 data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health found that rates of serious thoughts of suicide range from about 1 in 50 adults in Georgia (2.1 percent) to 1 in 15 in Utah (6.8 percent). Rates of suicide attempts range from 1 in 1,000 adults in Delaware and Georgia (0.1 percent) to 1 in 67 in Rhode Island (1.5 percent).

“Overall, more than 2.2 million adults (1.0 percent) reported making suicide plans in the past year, and more than 1 million (0.5 percent) said they attempted suicide in the past year, according to the researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.”

I think I was just lucky. Or, more likely, my religious beliefs made suicide a line I wouldn’t cross. Instead, I dove head-first into a self destructive existence where I lived for my addictions.

Perhaps subconsciously, as I binged my way to 280 pounds and ate painkillers for breakfast (I was prescribed them for chronic back pain) I was slowly trying to kill myself. A troubled mind can easily rationalize that it’s not suicide if you’re not jumping off a building, pointing a gun at your head or wrapping a noose around your throat. Fortunately, I came to my senses before I could finish the job.

But I’ve seen relatives get hospitalized for suicidal talk and my best friend became one of the tragic statistics on Nov. 15, 1996. When depression takes hold on the vulnerable mind, you stop thinking clearly and, at some point, you lose full control of sane actions and thought. Some people think suicides were simply cowards who couldn’t cope with life’s everyday challenges. But they have no idea what they’re talking about.

Depression is an insidious beast that lurks like a vulture, waiting for you to get just tired enough to submit to the torture.

I’ve learned to see my own depression as just another chronic illness that comes and goes. I treat it with Prozac, regular visits to a therapist and a strict diet. I’ve learned, in a strange way, to still be happy when I’m depressed.

That sounds fucked up. But it’s the best way I can describe it.

Being lucky enough to have reached that point, I’ve made it my mission to help break the stigma.

Sadness and suicidal thoughts need not be the end. For a lot of people I know, it turned out to be just the beginning of a life full of wisdom and beauty.

overcome depression will help you fight depression and beat it in time

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My Mood Swing: A Soundtrack

I’m in a rotten mood this afternoon and I’m not sure why. Various people are pissing me off though. So I’m listening to songs that seem to commiserate with me. Allow me to share:

http://youtu.be/PBT5nAqMwvs

http://youtu.be/TraSBSNfpCg

That’s better.

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Feel It, Don’t Fight It: Making The Disorder Work For You

Instead of fighting mental disorder — be it OCD or A.D.H.D. — picture yourself accepting and even embracing it, then learning to use it to your advantage.

It’s kind of like Luke Skywalker learning to use and control the Force instead of it controlling him.

Yesterday’s post on mental illness as a luxury item resonated with several readers, especially the part where I quote Edward (Ned) Hallowell, psychiatrist and co-author of “Driven to Distraction” and “Delivered From Distraction.”

Here’s what my friend Heather Stockwell said:  “Dr. Hallowell shaped a lot of my perceptions about A.D.H.D. and how to live with it rather than fighting it.

From my friend Anne Genovese: “Ned is a great guy and has developed many techniques to deal with his A.D.H.D. Ask him about highly purified EPA and DHA. We did a study with him on about 20 A.D.H.D. kids; the ones on the ultra-purified fish oils did way better concentration-wise than the ones considered to be doing well on medication.”

Hallowell has written about mental disorder being the stuff legends are made of. The thinking is that you have to be a bit crazy or off-balance to do the things that change who we are and how we live:

“Consider also the positives that so often accompany A.D.H.D.: being a dreamer and a pioneer, being creative, entrepreneurial, having an ability to think outside the box (with some difficulty thinking inside of it!), a tendency to be independent of mind and able to pursue a vision that goes against convention. Well, who colonized this country? People who have those traits!

“Back in the 1600s and 1700s, you had to have special qualities — some would say special craziness — to get on one of those boats and come over to this uncharted, dangerous land. And the waves of immigration in subsequent centuries also drew people who possessed the same special qualities. In many ways, the qualities associated with A.D.H.D. are central to the American temperament, for better or worse. I often tell people that having A.D.H.D. is like having a Ferrari engine for a brain, but with bicycle brakes. If you can strengthen your brakes, you can win races and be a champion, as so many highly accomplished people with A.D.H.D. are. But if you don’t strengthen your brakes you can crash and burn as, sadly, many people who have A.D.H.D. but don’t know how to manage it ultimately do.”

That’s also true of people with OCD, like the late Joey Ramone, Harrison Ford and Howie Mandel.

Early on in my efforts to get control of my life, one of my biggest struggles was that I didn’t want to completely rid myself of the OCD. I knew that I owed some of my career successes to the disorder. It drove me hard to be better than average. I needed that kick in the ass because being smart didn’t come naturally to me. I had to work at it and do my homework.

There was a destructive dark side, of course: The OCD when stuck in overdrive would leave me with anxiety attacks that raised my fear level and drove me deep into my addictive pursuits. That in turn left me on the couch all the time, a used up pile of waste.

The two sides of the disorder were like two buzz saws spinning in opposite directions. My brain, caught between them, took a lot of cuts.

My challenge became learning to shut one of the blades down while letting the other keep spinning. Or, as Dr. Hallowell put it, developing a set of breaks to slow it down when I needed to.

My deepening faith has helped considerably, along with the 12 Steps of Recovery, therapy, changes in diet (more on that tomorrow) and, finally, medication.

You could say those are the things my breaks are made of.

I still need a lot of work, and the dark side of my OCD still fights constantly with the good side. I’ve come to see the OCD as a close friend. Like a lot of close friends, there are days I want to hug it and days I want to launch my boot between its legs.

My progress has come with a fair share of irony: Without the fear and panic driving me, I sometimes act more like someone with A.D.H.D. I lose focus, my mind wafting into that place that makes you forget to put your coat in the closet and pay the electric bill. Erin has noted more than once that I’ve become a slob.

I have. But I am in a happier place than I used to be, so it’s a trade-off I’m willing to accept, even if earns me the occasional scolding.

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Is Mental Illness A ‘Luxury’ Disease?

There’s an interesting debate unfolding on The New York Times website about mental illness in America. What got my attention was the suggestion that mental illness and the related treatments are luxury items.

Mood music:

The debate — between a variety of professionals in the mental health field — runs the spectrum from suggesting mental illness is still misunderstood and undertreated to being over diagnosed and used as an excuse to hide from personal responsibility.

From the introduction:

Whether you call it hypochondria or American exceptionalism, the numbers are plain: Americans lead the world in diagnoses of mental health problems.

For some conditions, perhaps wealth explains the disparity: in developing nations, more people are focused on pressing needs like food and shelter, making depression a “luxury disorder” in wealthy nations like the United States.

But are there other factors at play for conditions like attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, that may be “culture-specific”? Maybe the condition is more common in the United States because the high-energy, risk-taking traits of A.D.H.D. are part of America’s pioneer DNA. Or maybe the same behavior is common elsewhere, but given another label? Some critics would argue that American doctors, teachers and parents are simply too quick to diagnose A.D.H.D. and medicate children. Do the American medical and educational systems inflate the numbers?

Edward (Ned) Hallowell, a psychiatrist and co-author of “Driven to Distraction” and “Delivered From Distraction,” suggests that A.D.H.D. in particular is part of the American DNA:

There are two main reasons the diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder is high in the U.S. First of all, our gene pool is loaded for A.D.H.D. Consider the central symptoms of the condition: distractibility, impulsivity and restlessness. Consider also the positives that so often accompany A.D.H.D.: being a dreamer and a pioneer, being creative, entrepreneurial, having an ability to think outside the box (with some difficulty thinking inside of it!), a tendency to be independent of mind and able to pursue a vision that goes against convention. Well, who colonized this country? People who have those traits!

His description of someone with A.D.H.D. is priceless:

I often tell people that having A.D.H.D. is like having a Ferrari engine for a brain, but with bicycle brakes. If you can strengthen your brakes, you can win races and be a champion, as so many highly accomplished people with A.D.H.D. are. But if you don’t strengthen your brakes you can crash and burn as, sadly, many people who have A.D.H.D. but don’t know how to manage it ultimately do.

As someone with OCD, I’d add that the description also fits for my condition.

Peter R. Breggin, a psychiatrist in Ithaca, N.Y. and author of more than 20 books and the director of the Center for the Study of Empathic Therapy, Education and Living says the drugging of children for A.D.H.D. has become an epidemic:

The A.D.H.D. diagnosis does not identify a genuine biological or psychological disorder. The diagnosis, from the 2000 edition of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders,” is simply a list of behaviors that require attention in a classroom: hyperactivity (“fidgets,” “leaves seat,” “talks excessively”); impulsivity (“blurts out answers,” “interrupts”); and inattention (“careless mistakes,” “easily distractible,” “forgetful”). These are the spontaneous behaviors of normal children. When these behaviors become age-inappropriate, excessive or disruptive, the potential causes are limitless, including: boredom, poor teaching, inconsistent discipline at home, tiredness and underlying physical illness. Children who are suffering from bullying, abuse or stress may also display these behaviors in excess. By making an A.D.H.D. diagnosis, we ignore and stop looking for what is really going on with the child. A.D.H.D. is almost always either Teacher Attention Disorder (TAD) or Parent Attention Disorder (PAD). These children need the adults in their lives to give them improved attention.

He makes an important point about the use of medication. A lot of parents turn to drugs because they simply don’t know what to do. Junior is a terror in school and on the playground and he’s exhausting everyone at home with his behavior. Turning to drugs is often an act of desperation. Desperation can be a good thing. It can force us to deal with our problems in ways we weren’t willing to consider before. But it can also rush us into bad decisions.

Erin and I are walking this tightrope with Duncan. We’ve had him tested in the doctor’s office and at school, and he has all the textbook traits of someone with A.D.H.D. But at 8 years old it’s still difficult to know for sure if this is A.D.H.D or something else that acts like it. Pills could tame his difficulties, but if he has something else that’s simply acting like A.D.H.D. — bi-polar disorder or OCD, for example — the pills that work for A.D.H.D. could make those other things much worse. So we’re not doing the medication.

This much I can tell you: When his older brother asks aloud if Duncan has A.D.H.D., Duncan bristles. He doesn’t like the label. And who can blame him?

I can tell you that Duncan has made a lot of progress with the other tools we’ve deployed: cool-down exercises, activities to channel anger (painting is one of his favorites) and so on. But there are still big challenges every day. And that’s ok.

Does the search for a problem and solution make us over-reactive parents? I don’t think so. When you see your child struggling, your instinct is to help them find a better way. Their happiness is what matters to us in the end.

Are kids diagnosed too easily and drugged too quickly? I’m sure of it. But to simply write the parents off as over-reactive is silly.

Society in general has learned to take everything too far. Ever since tragedies like the Columbine High School massacre, school administrators and teachers go crazy over things that are usually nothing. A kid collecting sticks and rocks in the schoolyard because he simply likes to collect these things becomes a danger. Why would a kid collect rocks and sticks if he didn’t intend to hurt his classmates with them, right?

We all struggle to find the sensible middle ground, because American society has seen some really bad shit in the last two decades: 9-11, Columbine, kids knifing each other in schools. We’ve seen the worst of the worst. The resulting fear can blind us to the fact that we’ve also seen the best of the best, including the advances in medical care.

When I was Duncan’s age and I was behaving badly, I was simply written off as a behavioral problem. I saw it happen to other kids as well. In hindsight, the building blocks of my mental illness were already swirling around in my head, shaped by the hard stuff I was experiencing back then, like my parents’ divorce, my brother’s death, the hospitalizations with Crohn’s Disease and the schoolyard bullying over my excessive weight.

Behavioral problems aren’t written off as easily today, and we should all feel good about that. The trick is to make the best use of all the newer mental health treatments, and that’s still a work in progress for all of us.

In my case, I’m lucky because I was determined to try everything else before trying medication. That resulted in several years of hard self-discovery and a better understanding of how I got the way I am. It led me to an array of coping tools I may not have learned to use had I turned directly to medication. Eventually I learned that my brain chemistry was still too far off center for me to control without medicine, and that’s when I tried the Prozac, which has worked exceptionally well.

It didn’t turn me into a robot. I’m still me. I see everything and feel everything. I still get depressed. But with the Prozac correcting the chemical traffic in my brain, these things no longer incapacitate me.

Is treatment a luxury? Sure. If you live in deep poverty and your biggest concern is where the next meal for you and your family is coming from, that’s going to be your first focus.

But if you aren’t in that situation and you have the luxury of dealing with mental illness, you shouldn’t feel bad about it.

You should simply thank God and do your best to pay it forward.

fulllength-depression-1

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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.