The OCD Diaries

May 18, 2011

The Easier, Softer Way

A reader asked me the other day if I still take medication for OCD. Yes, I told him. He told me that when he was diagnosed with OCD, he thought about trying something other than therapy or meds, but after a while realized that it wasn’t that easy. He’s right.

Mood music:

I know a lot of people who have struggled to control their own addictions and mental illnesses using alternative methods. Many times it works for them. The problem is when you try to use one thing as the cure all. That could mean relying on medication alone. It could mean seeing a therapist but not doing anything else.

I’ve tried the one-thing approach. It doesn’t work. My demon wears many layers, so I need many layers of weaponry and armor to fight back.

That means the medication. And therapy. And a 12-Step program to deal with the addictions the OCD fueled. And a lot of praying. And a lot of help from the people around me.

It can get tiring doing all those things. Sure, I have a wife, two kids and a demanding job. Some might ask where I could possibly find the energy to do all these things for my recovery. Sure, some days I’d rather just lie on the couch and stare at the cieling. Sure, some days I just want to tell the people around me to go away so I can be by myself.

But you know what? I’d rather go through life being useful. If I don’t do all these things for recovery, I’m going to fail as a husband, father and employee. It’s as simple as that.

If you can wrestle all your demons to the ground with one silver-bullet solution, I envy you.

Then again, when someone tells me they found a magic bullet, I’m more inclined to think they’re full of shit.

May 17, 2011

How Flour & Sugar Nearly Destroyed Me

When people ask about my giving up flour and sugar, they have an easy time grasping the raw health benefits. What’s harder for them to understand is how these things can form a mixture as addictive as heroin.

Here’s my attempt to explain it.

First, the point I need to make is that for us addicts, the substance isn’t the root of our problem. Two other things bring us down:

–A hole in our soul that we try to fill with anything that might make us feel good, be it drugs, booze, food or spending money.

A lot of times when someone sobers up or stops binge eating, it’s a white-knuckle experience.

It’s not just because you’re missing your junk and the momentary feeling it gives you. It’s because the hole in your soul — the thing that drove you to addiction in the first place — is still there. If you don’t deal with that hole, you might stay clean for a year or two. But sooner or later, unless you stay on top of it with brutal discipline, you’ll fall right back into the old, insidious patterns.

–When we latch on to a particular substance as a crutch, we can never, ever get enough.

It’s very simple, really: Once we take the first drink, the first hit or the first bite, we’re off and running and nothing — and I mean nothing — can make us stop. In my case, I would eat and eat and eat. The wall that goes up inside most people when they get their fill doesn’t exist for folks like me. I just keep gorging. Here’s an example of what the behavior looks like:

6 a.m.: Wake up, pour coffee. Resolve to live on nothing but coffee and cigarettes for the day.

8 a.m.: Fuck it. You’re hungry. Eat something healthy for breakfast. A bagel and cream cheese will do. Serving size, one 12-ounce container of cream cheese. Add swiss cheese.

8:15 a.m.: Smoke another cigarette and decide that’s all the food you’re going to eat for the day. Resolve to eat one giant breakfast and nothing else for the day for the next several days.

9 a.m.-10:15: As you work, start having a back-and-forth in your head as to whether you really should be having lunch.

10:45 a.m.: Walk to the vending machine for a healthy snack of animal crackers. Choose the Pop Tarts instead. Continue to ponder lunch.

11 a.m.: Take a break from work and drive around to clear your head. Resolve to have a smoke or two but no lunch.

11:02 a.m.: Proceed to the nearest fast-food drive-through or buffet place.

11:15-noonish: You chose the buffet place. Good. Stay there until you’ve had your fill. This will require going back for seconds, thirds and fourths.

Noonish-3ish: Resume working while pondering why you’re such a shameful idiot.

3ish: Get in the car. Plan to drive straight home.

3:05 p.m.: Stuff yourself with the $25 bag of McDonald’s you don’t quite remember buying a couple minutes ago.

3:30 p.m.: The three cheeseburgers, two large fries and two orders of chicken strips is consumed, and you’re sitting there wondering what you’re doing in the Dunk ‘N Donuts drive-through.

3:32 p.m.: Stare at the empty box of donuts and wonder what’s wrong with you.

3:35-4 p.m.: Keep your eyes on the road as you try to put the shame you’re feeling in the proper perspective.

4 p.m.: Get in the house and try to act like nothing’s wrong. When the kids ask you to play with them, explain that your back hurts and lie on the couch.

5:30 p.m.: Dinner time. Try as hard as you can to eat some of what’s on your plate, even though it looks healthy and your gut is throbbing from what you did earlier.

6:30 p.m.: Get the kids ready for bed.

7:30 p.m.: Fall asleep on the couch and forget the day you’ve just had.

Repeat process the next morning.

No matter what you latch onto as the crutch, this is usually what the itch and the scratch look like for the typical addict. You scratch until you bleed.

In my case, the substance and crutch was flour and sugar. I would binge specifically on the food that was loaded with those two ingredients.

Once in my system, it flipped a switch in my brain that twisted my thinking. I would grow paranoid, depressed and afraid, seeing imagined enemies around every corner. A friend would look like just another animal out to get me.

In that mindset, there’s no limit to the stupid things you’ll do or say.

Like any addict who finally reaches a special point of desperation, I turned to a 12-Step program to get better. The steps are effective for the simple reason that it targets the hole in your soul — not the substance itself.

In the end, that’s what you need to work on to have long-term recovery.

That’s how it is for me, anyway.

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 11, 2011

Facebook Dysfunction: A Family Affair

Let’s face it: We all have connections on Facebook that we constantly consider defriending because they say and do irritating things. I have no doubt there are people out there who feel that way about me.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/jyb8pMsyPFw

I have no problem with people un-friending me. Not anymore, anyway.

At one point, I had to admit that my obsessive-compulsive demons were latching onto the Facebook friend count, and that each loss of a connection felt like a personal blow. My mind would spin endlessly about why someone felt the need to disconnect from me. Was it something offensive I did? Did I hurt someone or come off as a fake?

But I’ve come to see that sometimes it’s the right thing for a person to do. This blog covers a lot of heavy stuff. A lot of people have become daily readers and tell me my openness has inspired them to deal with their own issues. But for others, especially those with a lot of pain in their lives, every post is going to feel like a baseball bat to the head.

Then there’s the heavy volume of content that flows down my news feed, which can dominate the news feeds of people with a smaller number of connections.

I admit it: I can be very hard to live with in the House of Facebook. I’m the loud obnoxious guy who hogs the dinner table conversation.

But some of you are hard to live with, too.

— Some of you post a lot of bad music.

–Some of you complain about every little, stupid thing.

–Some of you blather on about all the big things you have going on, but you never seem to complete what you started.

–Some of you post way too many pictures of babies with food on their faces. I looove babies, but come on now.

–Some of you take self-portraits each morning with your cell phones, always from the driver’s seat of your car. That gets annoying.

–Some of you carry on with the same political whining all the time, to the point where it’s just a bunch of noise.

–Some of you can’t help but take a picture of your food. The problem is that practically no one cares what you’re about to put in your mouth.

–Some of you have fights with significant others where the rest of us can see it.

–Some of you get all lovey-dovey with your significant other where everyone can see it. That’s particularly gross.

–Some of you put up so many philosophical quotes that it all becomes a blur, just like the political whiners.

Is all that stuff worse than the things I do on Facebook? It’s all in the eyes of the beholder.

None of what I mentioned is all that bad, really. We’re all just being human.

We’ve all had to deal with difficult family members, friends and co-workers. That’s life.

In that sense, Facebook is just another mirror.

We all like to look at ourselves in the mirror, whether it’s to admire our new shoes or cringe over our girth.

But I’d like to think that most of us, despite the annoying things we do on here, are worth keeping around and even helping at times.

We’re one big dysfunctional family, and there’s a lot of fun in dysfunction if you know what to look for.

And if someone like me really gets to be too much to put up with, you know where the unfriend button is. No hard feelings.

May 9, 2011

“Do Something Every Day That Scares You”

During some leadership training at work a few months ago, the facilitators urged us to follow the advice of Eleanor Roosevelt and “Do something every day that scares you.” Now comes this new Sixx A.M. album and a song called “Are You With Me Now” with the line, “Find the places that scare you, come on I dare you…”

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/ede2_tuZJp8

A cosmic reminder to get out of my comfort zone? Perhaps. But it’s a tricky exercise, and not because I’m too scared to do something big and risky.

I’ve done a lot of things that were big and risky for me in recent years. Now I’m left with a bunch of little things that scare me, and the bigger things seem easier in the rear-view mirror.

The most fearsome thing I’ve done is confront the fear and anxiety that used to torment me. To do so, I had to make the decision to try out an antidepressant called Prozac. In my mind back then, to take a pill meant admitting defeat and trying something that could make me a lot worse. But desperation forced me to move past those feelings and in I went.

That was five years ago, and I haven’t had a single anxiety attack since then. Without the anxiety, the fear started to lose its grip.

A bunch of other fears had to be faced leading up to that point, of course. Fear of going to a therapist because he or she would probably just confirm that I was a freak who didn’t fit in with the rest of society.

Fear of going to an Overeater’s Anonymous meeting because the very name sounded embarrassing to me. A 12-Step program for binge eaters? That would surely make me look like a freak, since, you know, binge eating isn’t a genuine addictive behavior according to some. Forget that as an anonymous group, no one was going to know I was doing it anyway. I knew, and that was scary enough.

Admitting I was powerless against my addictions and putting my full trust in God to remove the defects was scary, because OCD is all about trying to control everything. The insanity of the disorder is the reality that in the big picture, we have absolutely no control over most things in life.

Making amends with people from my past for things that I did to them back then was scary. When a relationship fades on a bad note, the hardest thing on Earth is to look the person in the eye and say you’re sorry.

The decision to stop drinking was scary, because after I put the food down I was relying on a steady flow of alcohol as a crutch. Pick up a drink to put down the food. “Normal” addicts usually do it the other way around.

Looking at all this, I feel like I’ve heeded the call of Eleanor Roosevelt and Sixx A.M. But not entirely.

I’ve faced down a lot of big fears and I’m better for it. But I still have a bunch of little fears that are rooted in things that may seem insignificant by comparison.

One fear is to shut down the laptop, pack it away for several days and exist without the ability to see what everyone is doing all the time. I reigned in my addictions to food and alcohol. I brought the compulsive spending down to a dull roar. But the Android. The Laptop. Technology is a new addiction and I’m a slave.

In some respects, it’s strange that this is now my lot in life. For most of my adulthood, I was never an early adopter of the latest gadgetry. I didn’t own an iPod until late 2008, and it’s one of the older models. I was still using a Walkman and cassette tapes long after everyone started switching to digital music.

And yet here I am, skilled to the gills in the ways of smartphones, social networking and squeezing Internet connectivity out of the most remote places.

Shutting it all down? That would scare me. For now, I have the best excuse in the world not to do it: My job. Without the Internet, I can’t do the job.

Another fear would be to join a Way of Life (AWOL) group. AWOL is a method of studying the Twelve Steps using a specific format. It involves what some might call brutal discipline. It’s a closed study group. On the surface, I see these groups as too rigid — living examples of the solution becoming an addiction. And yet several people who I know to be perfectly sane keep telling me it’s worth doing.

Not traveling scares me. There’s always the fear that if I miss an opportunity to network with industry peers and simply be seen, I’ll become a nobody again.

That last one is an interesting fear, since one of the fears I kicked long ago WAS a fear of travel. It used to terrify me. Now I’m terrified to stop.

I’m a person of contradictions, I admit.

But facing the bigger fears tells me I can face these smaller ones.

May 4, 2011

The Sinister Minister’s Definition of Normal

The news of Osama bin Laden’s death makes me wonder: Are we all hoping now that things will go back to normal, to the way life was before 9-11? I can’t help but think of wars of the past, and how there was always a craving to “go back to normal.”

Mood music:

One of the better examples of our craving for normal was in 1920. It was right after World War 1 and presidential candidate Warren G. Harding promised a return to “normalcy.” Normalcy wasn’t even a proper word, but Americans liked the sound of it. Harding was elected and went on to make history as one of the 20th century’s most useless presidents.

A lot of history has happened since them, of course. We’ve seen many more wars and economic upheavals. We all have our ideas of what normal is in the public realm. Normal doesn’t always lead to good things. Just look at the “normalcy” of the 1920s, which ended in the start of the Great Depression.

In our personal lives, it’s also true that grasping for “normal” hasn’t always led to good things. We have our ideas of what a normal life looks like: Working a 9-to-5 job, ball games on weekends, falling asleep in front of the TV at night.

Then we have our ideas of what normal looks like in individuals. The conventional kind of individual normal is usually described as someone who doesn’t look or talk funny, dresses in a way that doesn’t scream for attention and blends in. Normal people follow the latest fashions. A so-called normal person eats regular portions at mealtime and can make do with just a couple sips of wine. A normal person gets along with his or her family and listens to everything parents advise them to do.

Here’s the Wikipedia definition of normal:

“In behavior, normal refers to a lack of significant deviation from the average. The phrase “not normal” is often applied in a negative sense (asserting that someone or some situation is improper, sick, etc.) Abnormality varies greatly in how pleasant or unpleasant this is for other people. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “normal” as “conforming to a standard”. Another possible definition is that “a normal” is someone who conforms to the predominant behavior in asociety. This can be for any number of reasons such as simple imitative behavior, deliberate or inconsistent acceptance of society’s standards, fear of humiliation or rejection, etc.”

Of course, life doesn’t work that way. And thank God for that.

I’ve been thinking about our warped notion of normal a lot lately. The bin Laden story has just intensified those thoughts. I’ve also been thinking about it because of Nikki Sixx’s new book and accompanying Sixx A.M. album, “This is Gonna Hurt.” The project illuminates the beauty of people who don’t look like the conventional picture of normal. Some of Sixx’s photo subjects are missing limbs or suffer from serious deformity. But for these people, that is normal.

For me, a dysfunctional family, addictive behavior and mental disorder have all been normal. My normal. Binge eating isn’t considered a normal addiction, but in my world it is. It leads to the same normal self destruction that heroin and cocaine leads to. It’s just not as expensive and it’s legal.

My mother always tossed the word around when talking disapprovingly about something me, Erin or the kids did. “That’s not normal,” she would whine.

In her world, “not normal” is anything that fails to conform to her wishes.

Normal really is a bullshit word when you get down to it.

Most of us are different. And that’s how it should be. If God had created us all to conform to the average way, He would have been pretty bored.

I have a big nose and big ears. My waistline is up around the ribcage. People say I dress like a priest because I wear the cross around my neck where everyone can see it and wear a lot of black. Given the heavy metal I listen to all day and my studded boots, you could say I resemble something closer to a sinister minister.

Disclosure: I didn’t come up with “sinister minister.” It was actually the name of a local band from the 1980s. I wonder whatever happened to them? They sure as hell weren’t normal, but that made them a lot more fun to hang around with at parties.

Anyway, I just wanted to suggest that there is no such thing as normal or abnormal.

We’re all meant to be different as individuals. Our families are all meant to be different. Current events have never fit the description of average. Never for long periods, anyway.

Instead of scowling at the lack of “normalcy,” you should embrace it.

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 1, 2011

Crohn’s Disease in Revere, Mass.

An old friend from Revere came over last night, and somewhere in the conversation the subject turned to Crohn’s Disease and why so many of our old friends have it.

I’ve had the disease since the 1970s, and my struggles with it are well documented in this blog. But my friend noted how many of our friends from the Point of Pines, Oak Island and elsewhere have taken bad turns with their health in recent years, and several have developed my disease.

I won’t name names for privacy’s sake, but besides me, we counted three other cases. Could it be something in the water? my friend wondered aloud. After all, a huge General Electric plant sits just across the water in Lynn. There’s also a trash-burning incinerator across the Pines River on Lynn Marsh Road.

Could those industrial sites be responsible?

Who knows? I’ve never seen any studies on the matter, so it would be impossible to trace all the illness to those places.

I do know that when we were kids, before the Deer Island water treatment plan was built, the water of every coastal town in the Boston area was polluted with a putrid mix of bacteria. We all swam in that water as kids, and who knows what the long-term effects of that were.

I have another theory: Doctors simply know a lot more about Crohn’s Disease today than they did back then.

When I was first diagnosed with it in 1978, very little was known or understood about the disease. I endured very long hospital stays and severe dietary restrictions that I don’t really see imposed on people today. People still end up having to take these measures, but it’s not as commonplace. Drugs have improved. The understanding of what makes the disease tick has improved.

Maybe that understanding has simply led to more cases being found and diagnosed.

Of course, it’s all speculation at this point.

I’m just glad my case of the disease is in check, and I hope some of the fellow sufferers are doing better with theirs.

I heard another theory from another friend a couple weeks ago, that Revere had a curse hanging over it that shot down a lot of people from our generation. Besides the Crohn’s Disease, there were multiple suicides and drug addictions that ended in death.

If you asked me that about six years ago, I’d have bought the theory straight away. Today I tend to doubt it.

It was a sad and unfortunate period, but it wasn’t a curse. We all had our share of childhood happiness in Revere in between the bad stuff. And I know now what I didn’t get back then: That we weren’t meant to live soft lives devoid of pain and struggle. These things are tossed in our path to mold us into what we can only hope to be: good people. It doesn’t always work out that way, of course. But let’s face it: Has life ever been fair?

I recently wrote about the time the Brenners nearly left Revere. There’s no question that for a time, I hated that city and would have done anything to get out.

But I think I would have developed the Crohn’s Disease wherever I lived. Bad things and good things would have happened wherever I lived.

Why?

Because that’s life.

April 29, 2011

OCD and ADHD Linked? Maybe

I recently wrote about our challenges with Duncan and how I often curse myself for a lack of patience with him, given my own history with OCD. This morning I came across a column from Dr. Keith Ablow that might explain a lot.

Mood music (Still some coding weirdness with the video embedding, but the music works):

Let’s start with a few paragraphs from Ablow’s column:

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are very different conditions, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual—the “bible” of psychiatric diagnoses published by the American Psychiatric Association. Yet, my clinical experience tells me they may be linked.

OCD is characterized by unwanted and intrusive thoughts and behaviors. A patient might complain that she “can’t stop thinking” about germs and, therefore, feels compelled to wash her hands dozens of times a day. It is as though the mind or brain is doing senseless laps around a track the person very much wants to stop running.

ADHD is characterized in part by distractibility, forgetfulness and trouble organizing. A patient might complain she “can’t focus” and never seems to finish a task. It is as if the mind cannot stay on course and complete even one lap around the track the person very much wants to run.

Different medicines (in addition to various forms of therapy) are used to treat OCD and ADHD. Obsessions and compulsions seem to yield to medications like Prozac or Effexor that boost serotonin and norepinephrine in the brain. ADHD seems to improve more with stimulants, like Ritalin or Adderall.

But for several of my patients, their obsessions and compulsions seem to have developed as a counterproductive way of “dealing with” preexisting and severe attention deficit problems. Since they couldn’t select what to pay attention to, and since that meant their focus shifted painfully from one thing to another to another, their brains seem to have dropped anchor into rigid, repetitive thought and behaviors (obsessions and compulsions)—so that they began to think or do the same thing again and again and again, in order to stop the very distressing sense of drifting aimlessly.

Naturally, I find myself thinking back to childhood for evidence. I’ve written a lot about my childhood in this blog, including the parts where I believe the seeds of mental disorder were planted.

But it never occurred to me to scour the brain for times when I may have shown some ADHD tendencies.

Looking back, it’s still hard to know for sure.

I certainly had trouble focusing. I was one of the kids who went to a special class for kids who had trouble focusing. I was always daydreaming and staring out the window, but people with OCD do that, too. It’s just that we OCD types have brain-wrenching problems playing over and over in our minds. It’s not about dreams of flying pigs and fluffy clouds. Not that those things go through the mind of someone with ADHD.

I also used to imagine myself in certain scenes from movies and comic books, especially the Superman and Star Wars genres. I wrote about this in a previous post called “Hiding in Movies.” One time, in third grade, I got so carried away that I started to loudly hum the then-new theme to “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” which had come out that year.

“Who’s humming?” the teacher asked. In unison, half the class answered, “Bill!”

Was that some ADHD working within me? Perhaps. But I’ll never know for sure. The time to determine it was in the 1970s. We obviously can’t go back there.

I always chalked up my elementary school tutors as byproducts of all the school I missed because of the Crohn’s Disease. I needed a lot of help to keep from repeating grades 2, 3 and 4.

Fast forward to 2011, where I’m a parent of two kids. One of them, Duncan, has something going on.

The boy has a heart of gold and a razor-sharp wit, but as I’ve written before, winter messes with his mind as badly as it does mine. He’s always had his quirks, as we all do. Some of them are disruptive enough that we decided to have him evaluated. My family history alone was reason enough to do it.

The meeting in February was fascinating, frustrating, confusing and illuminating all at once.

The doctor asked Erin about her family history, then turned his glare to me. Apparently the paperwork I filled out set off most of the alarm bells in this process. I knew it was coming. I expected it.

He asked about my brother’s death, my childhood illness, the state ofmy parents’ mental health back in the day and how it all shaped the addictive behavior and OCD I would struggle with as an adult. My sister’s struggles also came up.

After that line of questioning, the doctor calmly told us Duncan fit all the textbook criteria of someone with ADHD. He also has some serious trouble with fine motor skills, which helps explain his penmanship.

We’ve long had our suspicions on both counts. But to hear it from a doctor’s mouth was something else.

We talked a lot about how family dynamics could really shape a kid’s struggles and how various mental disorders end up manifesting themselves. My family dynamic growing up took the mental ticks in my head and molded them into something very dark.

The doctor talked about medication. The good news: The stuff they prescribe for ADHD is extremely effective in correcting the brain’s wiring. For a few minutes, I thought that would be the road we were taking.

I wasn’t afraid.

I’ve been on Prozac for four years and know better than most that it works without wiping away my feelings and personality the way I once feared it would. One of our relatives recently worried aloud that medication would kill Duncan’s personality and turn him into something of a robot.

It’s a fair concern, but I know better. I’ve done my homework and used myself as a test case.

But what the doctor said next shattered any idea of medication — for now, at least.

He said that Duncan’s ADHD-like symptoms could also be the very beginnings of something much different — bipolar disorder, depression, maybe even OCD.

ADHD medicines can make those other things much, much worse further down the line.

At this point, we have Duncan seeing a therapist we’re very happy with. Spring is here, so some of his quirks are easing off a bit.

Dr. Ablow’s column doesn’t change the game for us. But it does give us something more to think about.

April 23, 2011

‘Binge Eating? Come On, Man’

Every now and then, someone expresses shock at my classifying a compulsive binge eating disorder as addictive behavior. So it was when an acquaintance in the infosec world contacted me this morning.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:0ydzdWYWIFlGBurhjEXwit]

Rather than run the entire message verbatim, I’m going to address certain chunks. His text is in italics, followed my my responses. First, I want to point out that I like this guy. He does great work in our industry. I also think his observations are perfectly reasonable.

First, he questioned the short “about” blurb you see at the end of each post:

“Welcome to THE OCD DIARIES, the blog that kicks fear, anxiety, depression and addiction in the teeth. It’s written by Bill Brenner, a man who went through hell, saw the light and lived to tell about it.”

To that, he said:

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

For those who haven’t dealt with food as an addictive substance, his skepticism is understandable. It’s a very common skepticism, which is one of the reasons I blog about it. There are misconceptions to shoot down. So let me explain it this way:

Specifically, I’m addicted to flour and sugar. Like an alcoholic or drug addict, I would feel the itch for it and it would drive me insane until I got my fix.

That didn’t merely involve eating a couple doughnuts and regretting it later. It meant consuming as much as I absolutely could. It reached the point where it severely disrupted my life. In the post “Anatomy of a Binge,” I describe a day in the life of me back when I was in the grip of the spell. When you live from binge to binge, little else in life matters. Work suffers. Family suffers. That’s the difference between destructive, addictive behavior and simply having the tendency to eat a little too much.

I’ve learned to control it the same way more traditional addicts have done it: By doing a 12-Step program.

People are always going to have trouble buying the notion that this is a legitimate addiction. I can’t change everyone’s mind. I only know that this is how it is for me and many other people who I have met, and if someone who compulsively binge eats will find it in them to get help after reading some of this blog, that’s all that matters to me.

One more point about addiction: My personal experience is that the behavior is merely a byproduct of a bigger, more insidious problem. I like to call it the hole in my soul, complicated by a sometimes debilitating mental disorder called OCD.

From my perspective, the OCD — mixed with a history of close friends dying, serious childhood illness and constant tragedy in the family — drove me to my addiction. The combination of all these things is the “hell” I speak of in the “about” blurb.

Everyone has their struggles. Everyone has their own version of hell. This was simply mine. I don’t lament it. I love the life I have today and I’m not the same man I was even five years ago. As far as I’m concerned, I owe it to my maker to share where I’ve been so others know they are not alone or without hope.

Quick question, have you always had your faith — reason I ask is because 2 people I know were so heavily addicted and the bible was how they escaped their addiction. I found it to be one extreme to another.. they became fundamentalist in a way… I felt like I’d lost my “mates” — but on the same token I’m of course stoked that they will continue to walk the earth… I just wish there was a middle ground.

I’ve always believed in God, but my faith has really deepened in recent years. I don’t tell people what they should or should not believe. All I ask of people is that they be kind to others and honest with themselves.

I wholeheartedly agree there are those who take it way too far, to the point that it is just another addictive, compulsive behavior.

Some folks cling to their 12-Step program so tightly that their addictive behavior latches on to the program itself. In my opinion, this can get unhealthy. The same thing applies to religion.

To find recovery in Overeater’s Anonymous, the only requirement is to want to stop eating compulsively. It’s very simple. There is no “OA diet.” But there are a few different food plans people choose from. One is based on a “Dignity of Choice” pamphlet that outlines a few different plans. Then there’s the so-called “Grey Sheet” plan (included among the options in “Dignity of Choice”) a lot of recovering food addicts cling to like a passage from The Bible.

For them (not everyone, but quite a few people), there IS NO OTHER WAY. If you’re not following the food plan outlined there, you are not abstinent. There’s also the mindset that you HAVE TO ABSTAIN FROM FLOUR AND SUGAR and have nothing in between meals to be abstinent. Eat an apple in between lunch and dinner and you break your abstinence and have to start over.

To me, this is an extreme that causes a lot of people to fail. It pisses me off when someone following the strictest plan tells someone they’re not being abstinent if they’re doing their own plan differently.

For the record, I don’t eat flour or sugar, and I don’t eat in between meals. I have to have it this way because the defect in my brain approaches anything in between as an invitation to binge. Flour and sugar, mixed together, had the same effect on me as heroin has on the more traditional junkie.

But not everyone can do it that way. There are many reasons for someone to do it differently. If you have diabetes, for example, following my exact food plan could be bad, maybe even lethal.

I also feel that if an apple between meals keeps you from binge eating, that’s what you do. If the more extreme among us tell you you’re not abstinent if you do that, they’re wrong.

In my view, folks who get that way become addicts of a different sort. The compulsive behavior centers around the program itself.

With faith, all that matters to me is that I have beliefs that sustain me. Everyone must walk their own road on that one.

I hope this was a decent explanation.

Thanks for the feedback.