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Real Men (and Women) Ask for Help

The author learns that sometimes he has to put his pride aside to do the right thing.

Mood music for this post: “Ride On” by AC/DC:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZo12LIWqYw&hl=en_US&fs=1]

One of the more unfortunate byproducts of my OCD is that I don’t like to ask for help when I need it. This flaw has taken me to the brink of a nervous breakdown many times.

When you struggle with addiction and mental disorder, you cling hard to an ego that’s always bigger than what the reality of the situation justifies.

In my warped world view, to as for help has always been to admit weakness. It’s a huge contradiction for me, because the biggest lesson I’ve learned in my 12-Step program is that nobody breaks free of addiction without help. That’s why we have sponsors to kick us in the ass.

One of the reasons James Frey was so easily exposed as a fraud over the fabrications in his book “A Million Little Pieces” was that he claimed to have overcome his demon on his own. Anyone who has been down this road knows it’s impossible to kick your most self-destructive demon without help. A Million Little Pieces.jpg

I don’t fault Frey all that much, though, because as I’ve noted before, addicts are among the best liars on the planet.

I’m no exception.

I’m a lot like the character Quint in “JAWS” in that I suffer from working-class hero syndrome. (One of the many excellent lines in that movie was when Hooper told Quint to knock of the working-class hero crap, after Quint kept picking on Hooper for not getting his hands dirty enough.)

In my case, I like to believe that adults should be able to make a living without any help from family and friends. In a financial rut? You figure it out and avoid asking your parents for help at all costs. I’ve looked down on people who have done that in the past. I described one case as someone using their father like a piggy bank.

To me, asking Dad for help means failure. I think some of that attitude comes from the fact that I leaned on my father‘s financial assistance a lot in my 20s. When my 1981 Mercury Marquis finally died a painful death at the hands of its abusive driver, I went to Dad and nagged for a new car. I got one — a 1985 Chevy Monte Carlo.

Being a cash-strapped parent on the edge of his 40th birthday, I look back on that sort of thing and realize what a burden that was on my father. When I got married and settled into my 30s, I vowed never to bother my father for money again. I would manage on my own at all costs.

For the most part, I have. In fact, until this year, Erin and I have rarely paid a bill late. Erin deserves most of the credit for this, because spending money on stupid things has always been a weak spot for me, and most of the time she has handled the bills and made it work despite her husband’s $40 fast-food binges and early-morning spending sprees on Amazon.com.

We’ve managed quite well on our own, even managing to send the kids to a Catholic school to the tune of $600 a month.

But as I’ve been noting in this diary in recent days, we’re finding ourselves in a real financial bind this year. Our story isn’t unique. The economy is in a shambles right now and most everyone we know is in a financial hole. But in our case, we finally ran out of clever ideas to keep the boat afloat.

So this week, I did something painful: I asked my father for financial help.

I spent yesterday in a real funk over it, because to me it felt like a big admission of failure. My father, God Bless him, was pretty nonchalant about it and told me not to worry. But I worried anyway. I care quite a bit about what he thinks of me, and the ability for someone to work hard, earn a living and be independent is one of the ways he measures a person. Remember that post I wrote on how being a people pleaser is dumb? Well, sometimes I’m still guilty of trying.

I’ve expressed my dismay to some friends this week, and all have told me I shouldn’t feel the way I do. One friend, who doesn’t speak to his parents, said I should feel lucky to have the kind of relationship where I can get the kind of support my father can give me.

Another friend said that I shouldn’t feel bad because when you have a family to take care of, you do what you must do for them. If borrowing money is what it takes to keep Sean and Duncan in school, that’s what I need to do, one person pointed out.

Someone else put it simply, “Family is family. You help each other out.”

As this crappy week limps to its conclusion, I am starting to absorb the lesson God had in store for me. It’s a lesson I’ve had to relearn time and time again, most recently during my road to recovery from addiction and mental disorder:

We all need help in some form.

Life is about ups and downs, and when you’re down you usually need someone to throw you a rope so you can get out of your hole.

And in the end, this isn’t failure. Erin and I made a choice over a year ago: She would leave a job she was unhappy in, and try to build a freelance editing business. She has worked her ass off, and in many ways we’ve done well. She has gotten clients and earned their respect. Until recently, we were keeping the bills paid, albeit late in some cases. We have to refine the business plan. And we need an exit strategy in the event this thing doesn’t succeed.

But we’ll get there. And we knew full well that we’d hit ruts like this.

In the end, I wouldn’t change the path we embarked on last year. Despite all this turmoil, Erin is still much happier than she was in that job. And I’m much happier than I was a couple years ago, when our money supply was a lot healthier. Back then I still had a lot of recovery ahead of me, and that led to some pretty dark periods. I’ll take this over that any day.

In the present situation, I just need to get over myself and get out of my own way. And let family help.

There are ways I can immediately pay my father back. I can keep being the best parent I can possibly be. I can continue to swing for the fences at work. And I can hold my recovery together.

Further out, I’ll have to make sure I repay in other, still to be determined ways.

For now, I did something I had to do. It sucked for me. It truly did.

But as my father used to say to me when one of my unreasonable kid requests couldn’t be met and I’d start to tantrum over it:

“Too bad.”

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Don’t Let a Hard Week Take You Down

Nothing challenges recovery like a bad week. Or was it a good week?

Mood music for this post: “Outshined” by Soundgarden:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLZBhlTXHuo&hl=en_US&fs=1]

This has not been the best of weeks. It started with a lot of worrying about money and has taken a lot of twists and turns. Things are looking up, but now I have to nurse the physical damage that happens when the OCD runs hot.

As I write this my head is pounding. I’m feeling restless and tired. I’m ultra sensitive to the sound of the birds outside my open living room window. But, oddly enough, beneath it all I’m in a pretty good mood.

For one thing, a week like this used to be my perfect excuse to plunge into my favorite addictions.

I’d spend $40 a day on fast food and drink wine from the bottle. I’d forget to shower for days. I’d sleep a lot because that was better than facing the world.

I’d lie there and worry about all the things I had no control over; things that were not there in the real world but were very real in my mind.

It used to be fairly easy to get into this kind of state. A fight with a family member would be enough to set off the chain of events. Work worries could always be counted on to flip the switch. The neighbor’s dog looking at me the wrong way would send me into a mood swing.

None of that stuff has been part of this week.

Sure, I’ve worried about a few things, but I haven’t binged over it. I did waste Sunday afternoon in shut-down mode, but as Erin told me, I shouldn’t feel bad about it. It’s a gift that I have this kill switch that shuts me down and forces me to cool off sometimes.

I had to do something this week that was extremely hard for me. It was the kind of thing that stabbed at my sense of self respect. A real body blow to my pride. Something that made me feel like a leech. But I’m now seeing it as something I needed to do; something that has turned out to be a sign of personal growth. I’ll give you a lot more explanation on this tomorrow or Saturday, when I have a better fix on the outcome.

As crappy as this week has been, I know I don’t have to eat or booze over it. I can still pull myself together and have a very productive work week.

The 12 Steps make it possible. So does the realization that I have deep family support and a wife and kids that complete me. I have many more friends than I had a decade ago. Not sure how that happened, but I’m grateful for it.

All of what I just described is possible because I have God in my life. He doesn’t give me anything more than I can handle. I guess that means I can handle quite a bit. I’m actually grateful for that.

Recovery can be a messy thing. There are always setbacks that test you. Relapse is always seconds away.

But I’ve learned that if you trust God and those around you — and if you refuse to let your stupid pride be a barrier — you can do the right things and everything will work out.

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The Downward Spiral

The author searches for a way out of his latest bout of depression.

Mood music for this post: “The Downward Spiral” by NIN:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbJkeNRQVLk&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

I was going to start this with some amusing anecdote about how I’m suffering so others might be saved. Jesus already did that sort of thing, of course. Dopes like me think it’s good to suffer to benefit others, but it’s just delusional thinking we engage in to feel better about ourselves when the chips are down.

That aside, I have been in an emotional downward spiral these last few days.

Financial woes kicked off this latest bout of depression. You can read more about that in “Emotions Come from a Strange Place” and “Turning the Tables on Those Who Whine.”

Yesterday started with a gloomy mood, then my spirits lifted as I started to tackle some work projects. Then my mood sunk deep after something I thought would help the family finances fell through.

All things considered, it wasn’t a bad day from there.

I had a pretty productive work day, getting a podcast done and launching a new crop of articles, though it took everything I had not to let my mood interfere with the tasks at hand. I also didn’t go on a fast-food binge on the way home like I used to do. I just went home — sitting through two traffic jams on the way — and collapsed into my bed for an hour. That was better than throwing away my sobriety and abstinence.

Seeing that I was in a fragile state, Erin insisted I go to an OA meeting, which I did. It helped a lot. It was nice to get out of my head for an hour and hear people talk about their recovery and how they’ve hung on to it despite difficult times like these.

From there my mood started to lift. I came home to find that Sean and Duncan had done all my chores for me, and Sean hugged me and called me the “best Dad ever.” Those kids can tell when their Dad isn’t himself. After putting them to bed Erin and I collapsed into bed and talked about the day’s events.

We didn’t figure out the solution to our troubles, but the conversation knocked my perspective back into line.

We talked about other people we know who are going through their own financial troubles, and by comparison our situation isn’t as bad. Our marriage is still rock-solid. We have beautiful children and a vast support network of family and friends. God is never far from us, and if we keep our cool it’ll all work out.

One thing’s clear: I have to keep my recovery whole.

I have to because when I’m in the vice-grip of my addictions, I’m useless as a husband and father.

I also sponsor people in OA, and if I blow it I can’t help them.

There are also family members with troubles of their own, and I have to keep it together for them.

There are some bright spots to this story.

For one thing, my family is getting better at knowing what to do when I’m in a funk, which is basically to let me be withdrawn for a while.

Most importantly, looking at the last couple years, I’m much happier today, even though money is tight.

A few years ago money was no problem, but I was seriously fucked up. I was 280 pounds of self-destructive mayhem under the control of his addictions and riddled with fear and anxiety.

Today I’m sober, abstinent from binge eating and the fear and anxiety went away a long time ago.

I’ll take today’s state of affairs over the old way any day.

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Emotions That Come from a Strange Place

The author finds himself walking between depression and hope. A strange place to be. (Written during a depressive episode in 2010.)

Mood music for this post: Henry Rollins’ “I Think I Know You” performed over “A Warm Place,” from Nine Inch Nails’ “Downward Spiral” album:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CPIT4nsT24&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Yesterday was a perfect example of the strange place I’m in emotionally these days.

It started well enough. A good Mass at church in the morning, a phone conversation with an old friend, the laughter of my wife and kids filling the house. I found myself looking forward to the coming week’s work projects and was especially looking forward to my 2-year-old niece’s birthday party in the afternoon. I even made it through several pages of Slash’s autobiography.

Then, somewhere between 1 and 2 p.m., I had a brutal mood swing. It came on as suddenly as the flame that ignites when you drag a match across sandpaper.

The match in this case was more worry about the financial difficulties I wrote about over the weekend. The allergies assaulting my senses didn’t help matters.

I’m usually pretty talkative at family events, but once we got to my sister-in-law’s house I found myself feeling socially awkward. I looked around at family members who I usually love to be with and decided I really just didn’t want to put on a happy face and socialize. My head started to throb.

So I did what I’ve always done in situations like this. I found a room nobody else was in and dozed off. I’ve always had a kill switch inside me that goes off in times of heavy emotional stress. I go right to sleep. Then I wake up later feeling fine.

It’s a gift, I suppose. It keeps me from doing other things, like getting smashed or being mean to people whose only crime was to me in my presence when I wanted to be alone. I used to binge eat during moments like this, too. But as the reader knows by now, that’s not an option these days.

So I’m pissed with myself now for letting my emotional weaknesses get in the way of what should have been a nice afternoon with family. Fortunately, my sister-in-law Amanda took a lot of great photos so I can at least see what I was missing.

This is one of the few pictures with me. The fuse in my head was burning at this point and within minutes I'd be hiding.

As a result, I missed precious moments like…

Sean showing off his latest Lego creation:

Duncan running around with the remains of his snack all over his face, along with a little blood from some rough playing:

The birthday girl blowing out her candles:

Why toss my dirty laundry on here, when the better thing to do is just let it go and move on? Because it’s a relevant example of how one’s demons can still surface at the worst moments, even when you’ve reached a solid level of recovery as I have.

No matter how strong a person in recovery is, he/she is still ALWAYS seconds away from failure.

That’s not a complaint. Just a simple fact. I’m not a special case.

As is usually the case in this blog, I have a positive ending for you:

Because I have God, an amazing family and recovery on my side, the troubled emotions will surely pass. They’ll pass because instead of sitting on my problems, I’m going to do something I’ve learned to do in recent years.

I’m going to tackle the source of the bad emotions head on and do what I must to set things right.

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Careful How You Help Others

The author on the need for boundaries when helping people in need.

Mood music for this post: “Ten Years Gone,” The Black Crows with Jimmy Page:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWovzhNH4TQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Being someone who has benefited greatly from the kindness of others, I’m forever trying to pay it forward. One way I do this is by sponsoring people in my 12-Step Program.

But if you don’t handle this blade carefully, it will cut you deep.

That’s what I’m learning, anyway.

I’m new at this sponsorship thing. I’m pretty sure I still suck at it.

Here’s how it works: In a 12-Step Program like AA or OA, the person in search of recovery from their addiction needs someone to coach them along. In the case of OA, you find a sponsor who has achieved recovery (long-term abstinence from compulsive overeating) and ask that person how they are achieving it.

For this to work, the sponsee has to be willing to toss aside all their stubborn thinking about what’s acceptable in recovery and essentially do what their sponsor tells them to do.

In this case, the sufferer checks in with his/her sponsor by phone just about every day for 10 or 20 minutes. You tell the sponsor what your food plan is for the day and what meetings you plan to attend. You also talk about any anxieties in your head that might cause you to go on a binge. When you reach a more advanced stage of recovery, the check-in calls can be more about discussing the 12 Steps and other things instead of running down the daily food plan. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach.

The sponsor typically has all their sponsee calls set up over an hour or two-hour period each day — time set aside just for this. If a sponsee calls even a few minutes early or late, the sponsor’s schedule can get screwed up.

A bad sponsor can be a nightmare for someone trying to find recovery. A sponsor who casually skips call-ins or refuses to adjust to any special food needs their sponsee has because it differs from their own food plan can do serious damage.

A common tactic for OA recovery is to nix all flour and sugar. It’s not a requirement. The only requirement in OA is to stop eating compulsively. But it’s something that’s necessary for a lot of people, including me.

Some sponsors have real trouble sponsoring someone who does not give up flour and sugar. The sponsor typically fears that they might slip in their own recovery by guiding someone whose food plan is different from theirs.

I have a problem with this, because if you have certain medical conditions, you need a specialized plan that’s inevitably going to differ from what the sponsor does. And I’ve met people struggling to find recovery who sink deeper into their addictive behavior because their sponsor was too stubborn to work with them.

This cuts both ways, of course. Sometimes it turns out the sponsee SHOULD ditch the flour and sugar, but they’re so desperate for those ingredients for their junk fix that they close themselves off to anything their sponsor is trying to tell them.

My first sponsor was brutally strict. But that’s what I needed — someone who would give me a deep kick in the ass.

But I was ready to do anything for recovery. Had I not been, I would have just lied to her on the phone every day about what I was doing. People like us tend to lie a lot, as I’ve mentioned before.

Right now I have two sponsees. One, in my opinion, should be off the flour and sugar, but he remains blind to that fact. I could be totally wrong about his needs, of course. But his behavior closely mirrors my own before recovery, and I’ve urged him to try ditching the flour and sugar to see how he feels for a bit. No dice.

My other sponsee is very responsive to my guidance. She has suffered enough that she is ready to do what she must. But boundaries are a problem. She sometimes misses the regular call-in time, then calls me several times later in the day. She’s the type that can suck the life out of you if you don’t set down some tough boundaries.

There are some people you try to help who will try to lean on you for things that are way outside your duty as a sponsor, like buying their groceries and running to their house at 2 in the morning because they’re having a bad night.

Am I screwing up as a sponsor somewhere along the way? Probably. I’m still pretty new at this.

My biggest fear is that instead of helping people, I’ll just make their damage worse. But I do warn those I take on that I’m not a doctor and any plan of recovery I suggest should be run by a real doctor and/or nutritionist.

So here’s why I’m bringing all this up:

Yesterday I went to pick up my sponsee to take her to an OA meeting. She has no car but lives only about 5 minutes from me so I was glad to do it.

But when I called her at the appointed time, she didn’t pick up the phone. I tried several times to no avail, then decided to just head to the meeting. I was almost there when she called. It turns out she fell asleep on the couch and didn’t hear the phone.

I wound up turning around and going to her apartment to talk over some boundaries I felt we needed to have. I was pissed about missing my meeting, but something still compelled me to change course.

I’m glad I did. Seeing this person’s environment was useful to me. And I turned the visit into a mini-OA meeting. During the course of the conversation, I set down some boundaries and she agreed to follow them. She is ready for the challenge.

Hopefully I am, too, because I’d much rather help this person get well than drive her further down the road to hell.

This business with helping others in recovery is tough stuff.

If I ever master it, I’ll let you know.

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Turning the Tables on Those Who Whine

The author has a low tolerance for those who bitch. But he’s about to do it anyway.

Mood music for this post: “Thorn in My Pride” by The Black Crows:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d-xq6q72cA&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

This post is about whining and hypocrisy.

For much of my adult life, I’ve had a low tolerance for people who whine about every little thing. I say adult life, because as a teenager all I did was whine.

Facebook has become a favorite hangout for people with lives packed with drama, and they whine on their profile pages with complete abandon.

I see those messages and I get all high and mighty, telling whoever will listen that these folks should keep their crying to themselves.

In the world outside of Facebook, not even my kids are safe from my low tolerance. Here’s an example:

Sean, 3 at the time, whines about something.

Me: “How about some cheese to go with that whine.”

Sean, being pretty sharp for a 3-year-old: “But it’s not lunchtime.”

The other night a friend from work marveled at how LITTLE I whine about things. He said something about how I’m one of the most optimistic people he’s ever met.

I am an optimist. After all I’ve been through, I’ve found the ability to see the silver lining around every cloud.

But I’ll be honest: Sometimes it’s all just an act.

I try to keep the optimistic face and only show people the confident, been-there-done-that-no-big-deal side of me. Sure, I spend a lot of time in this blog pointing out my weaknesses and failures, but I do it for the sake of testifying as to who I used to be and how I became the guy I am today. That requires taking a rigorous moral inventory of one’s self. Otherwise, I try to keep the happy face bolted on tight.

When I write about how life is so much better now that I’ve learned to (mostly) manage the OCD and related addictions, I mean every word. I’m one of the luckiest guys on Earth.

But that doesn’t mean things go smoothly every day.

Sometimes I still let the worries get the better of me. And when that happens, I whine. Just like all those Facebook friends I mocked earlier.

There’s a lot I want to whine about right now.

It pisses me off that in order to keep my most self-destructive addictions under control, I have to let myself be controlled by other addictions: Coffee. Cigars. Internet.

It makes me angry when I can’t spend money on unimportant things, which is another addiction. We’re so broke right now that I simply can’t afford to do that. I still have done it on a couple occasions, typically in the form of music downloads from the iTunes store. Fortunately, as readers here know from the mood music I put with most posts, all the music I could ever want is available for free on YouTube.

The lack of money is probably my biggest bitching point right now. We have never needed much, Erin and I. We don’t have expensive tastes, unless it’s the occasional splurge during a vacation trip.

Even then, we stay in the cheap hotels, and we’re fine with that.

But lately the basics are getting hard to cover. Bills are getting paid late. We’re not used to paying bills late. Erin has always been very much on top of that.

The cause is a deliberate choice we made over a year ago: That Erin would quit a full-time job and attempt to get a freelance copy editing business off the ground.

She’s handled it like a champ. She works her ass off every day, and her clients are always happy with what she delivers. The trick is finding enough of those clients to stay afloat.

We sometimes find ourselves in the position where bills come due before the money she’s owed arrives in the bank account. But we usually manage to muddle through.

I also take comfort in the fact that money is tight for everyone these days. Hell, even my father is broke. And he’s the best there is when it comes to money management.

I’m also a firm believer that if you hold onto your Faith, God will always provide. And He always has, even when we don’t realize we’re getting what we need and not what we want.

But lately, the money problem is becoming a mountain we’re not sure we can climb. I think we’re going to figure it out and I have no doubt all will be well.

I just hope reality matches my optimism.

How’s that for a bitch fest?

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Flour and Sugar: A Tale of Slavery

The author has been asked how he gets by with no bread, pasta and all the other flour-sugar substances. Here’s his answer.

Update: A recent New York Times Magazine article on sugar as a toxin is worth reading as a companion to this post. Article summary: “That it makes us fat is something we take for granted. That it might also be making us sick is harder to accept.”

Mood music:

A reader of this blog wrote me over the weekend and asked how on Earth I’m able to exist without flour and sugar. No pasta? No bread? What else is there?

A woman in OA who I start sponsoring today asked the same question in a Saturday-night phone call. She said she’s hit rock bottom with the binge eating and is ready to do what she must to get better. But really, she asked. Does she HAVE TO give up flour and sugar?

The answer is no. Being in a 12-Step program for compulsive overeating is about one simple goal: To stop eating compulsively. There is no official OA diet.

I also tell people new to the program that sponsors are not doctors. We share the details of how we became abstinent and sober. But what works for us will probably not work for the next person.

No two addicts are the same. That goes for the substance we get addicted to, the manner in which we let it destroy our lives and how we come to the point where we realize it’s time to turn it all over to God or die by our own hands.

I know people in the program who are diabetics or who have intestinal problems that make them very sensitive to raw vegetables. Their food plans have to be different.

But it is true that most people in OA recovery abstain from all foods that have flour and sugar in the ingredients. Including me.

In my case, those ingredients were at the root of my addiction. Flour and sugar mixed together were for me what heroin was to Nikki Sixx or what vodka was to Ozzy Osbourne.

Not only did I put on an atrocious amount of weight binging on these things — I was 280 pounds at my worst — but I started running into some serious medical problems. I was waking up in the middle of the night throwing up stomach acid, for one thing. I was also experiencing an increased frequency of migraines, chest pains and deep fatigue.

I’m not a scientist or a nutritionist but I know this — days after I stopped eating flour and sugar all these things stopped happening to me.

That’s when I realized how enslaved I was to the stuff.

I also dropped more than 50 pounds on the spot. By four months in, the weight loss was 65 pounds, and I’ve maintained my current weight for nearly two years.

The wild thing is I lost the weight and have kept it off eating way more food than I ate before I got abstinent.

Almost everything I eat goes on a little scale. Four ounces of protein. Ten ounces of vegetable. Two ounces of brown rice or potato. Ten ounces of veggie is a lot.

My goal wasn’t really to lose weight. I didn’t mind being a big man. Hard to believe, perhaps. But it’s the truth.

I sought recovery for the sake of my sanity. My grip on reality was getting looser and looser, and without action I was going to fall into the abyss.

The weight loss was a bonus. And I won’t lie: I’m much more comfortable in this body than I was before.

Do I still wish I could eat a slice of pizza or have pasta once in awhile? Well, I thought I would have to fight back those urges. But I haven’t.

In fact, the sight and smell of McDonald’s or Papa Gino’s now makes me want to puke.

I never expected that. But I’ll take it.

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Others Who Fight the Stigma

This isn’t the only blog trying to poke the stigma of mental illness and addiction in the eye. Check these out:

Mood music for this post: “Head Full of Doubt/Road Full of Promise” by The Avett Brothers:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E22HprMQN8M&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

I’ve been lucky to run across a couple other blogs this week where others are doing their part to break the stigma of OCD and binge eating. These finds make me happy because I’d hate to be the only one out here trying to fight the good fight. This is a stigma that’s hard to kill, after all.

So let me show you three blogs. Two are stigma-fighting blogs and the third actually glorifies all the stuff food addicts can’t touch.

I include the latter because the gals who write it always give me a chuckle, and laughter is an important tool of recovery, too.

EXPOSING OCD

What’s great about this blog is the level of detail the author gets into about every aspect of her OCD. While my blog casts a wide net on OCD, addiction and all the things that go with it, the author of “Exposing OCD” focuses like a laser beam on the compulsive behavior itself. it’s also chock full of information about the coping tools and organizations that have been a valuable resource for people like us.

The author says the following about herself:

I am a 40 something woman living in the Northeastern US, who took the average 17 years to find out I have OCD and even longer to actually find someone who knows how to treat it. I am sharing what has worked for me, as well as my current challenges with Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy. I hope you find this blog helpful!

I do find it helpful, and I thank you.

PEBBLES IN THE ROAD

This one focuses specifically on the challenges of compulsive overeating. The author takes a real diary approach in this one, while my blog — though the word “diary” is in the title — usually strays from the format.

Her writing is really about taking things one day at a time, focusing on each OA meeting, each day of abstinence from compulsive overeating and how she gets through things like traveling without losing her head. She stumbles, of course, and she doesn’t shy away from that. Here’s what she says about herself:

The is the journal of my road to recovery through Overeaters Anonymous. I have been an obsessive-compulsive personality for most of my 40 years. I had lived most of that time working to cure my disease. Through the years, I have practiced and changed almost all of my OCD behaviors to a livable standard, except compulsive binging. Food was my most powerful compulsion and when I hit bottom on May 13th, 2010, I finally I decided to join Overeaters Anonymous. Little did I know then that this was the answer I had been looking for all along. I have been abstinent from my compulsions since May 15th, 2010 and I have never felt so free.

KTEBCDOG’S BLOG

The ladies who write this one are friends of mine from the IT security industry: Christen Rice Gentile and Katie Boucher. Both work for Kaspersky Lab and Threat Post. Theirs is an unlikely blog to be included here.

I can’t eat a thing that they write about. They write about wanting to eat entire rooms full of kettle corn. They have more to say about beer than I ever thought possible.

But I’m at a stage of recovery where I can read about stuff I can’t have, be OK with it and even enjoy it. Besides, I’m a sucker for this comic direction they take.

Their colleague and my former boss, Dennis Fisher — an avid runner who can eat all this shit and stay thin — is quoted in the tagline as saying “serious food blogs suck out loud.”

Funny… I always felt that way about serious runner blogs. Except for this one. 😉

Go figure.

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An OCD Incident

As good as the author has gotten at managing OCD, some days it still comes crashing down.

Mood music for this post: “You’re Crazy” by Guns ‘N Roses:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1wmwud1DXQ&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Today was not one of my better days, folks. I had an OCD moment at work. My boss was pretty forgiving about the whole thing, but I’m still pissed with myself.

Before I go any further, this is not a bitch-about-work post. For starters, I have nothing to complain about. I have a great job and work with some of the best people I’ve ever worked with. Every morning I wake up excited about getting to work. Call me crazy, but it’s the truth. And if I did have a problem with someone in the office, it would be between me and them.

No, this is a post about me being an idiot. Pure and simple.

I came into work itching to post two articles I wrote yesterday and did so even though my editor hadn’t had a chance to read them yet. In my head, it was safe to post them because I hadn’t heard back about any changes being necessary. Which meant I had the green light to push them live.

So I did. Now, the editor was very cool-headed about it. He’s one of the nicest guys on the planet and doesn’t yell. But I could tell he wasn’t happy. Not realizing what I had done, he had started doing his own edits.

I went back to my desk, feeling like a first-class asshole. I immediately sent him an e-mail apologizing profusely. He told me not to worry about it. But I worried about it anyway.

Because from the moment I saw the frustration in his face, I knew I had just allowed the OCD to run wild.

These weren’t time-sensitive articles. It really didn’t matter if they ran today or next week. But somewhere in the dark corners of my brain, the urge to control overruled my better judgement.

So here I am, making a much bigger deal of it than it probably deserves.

I’m doing so because there’s a lesson to share.

No matter how good a person with OCD gets at managing the disorder, once in awhile things still go haywire.

For me, this was a minor incident. But it was a sobering reminder that I must take care.

The good news is that I handle these things much better than I did a decade ago, when the very same incident would have caused me to do the following:

— Blame everyone but myself

— Brood for days, possibly weeks

— Let the brooding paralyze everything else, which meant all real productivity ceased and I’d spend time complaining to co-workers instead.

— Allow the stress of the situation to drive me into another episode of binge eating.

This time, the aftermath was happily different. I made my apology, accepted the forgiveness that came my way, and I moved on. I had a pretty productive afternoon of editing to boot.

I had the abstinent lunch I had packed for myself instead of running to the nearest junk-food joint for a binge.

After work was done for the day, I came home, did some chores and enjoyed a nice evening with Sean and Duncan.

And I still find myself looking forward to the work that awaits me tomorrow. And it’ll be a busy one crammed with editing, interviews, more writing and an evening meeting of the National Information Security Group, of which I am a board member.

These things may seem small, but for someone who used to come unhinged over his mistakes — especially the work mistakes — the progress is huge.

So instead of brooding, I’m making a simple course correction: From now on, I don’t publish anything until someone above me signs off on it.

Lesson learned. On with life. And grateful for th ability to put things in the proper perspective.

Some crazy stuff, eh?

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Parental Estrangement

The story of a relationship ruptured by mental illness.

I told myself never to write this one. Too many people would feel burned. Then I remembered those who won’t like this are already angry with me. This is a critical piece of my journey through mental illness, addiction and recovery. So in I go.

Those who know me well know I haven’t gotten along with my mother and step-father for a long time. It’s been more than six years since our relationship imploded. There really is no blame to be assigned. No one person is completely innocent or at fault. Depression, addictive behavior and anger run deep in the family line, and ruptured relationships are often the tragic result.

I take full responsibility for my wrongs along the way. I also hold out hope for a reconciliation, despite several failed attempts in the past three years.

My mom yelled a lot when we were kids. She was capable of serious rage. She could speak in a threatening and cutting way. As a kid, I was completely incapable of understanding the pain she was going through. A failed marriage that was as much my father’s fault as hers. The death of a child and life-threatening illness of another child.

I remember her worrying about me endlessly and sitting beside my hospital bed for weeks on end as the Crohn’s Disease raged inside me, and dragging herself to her wit’s end taking care of my grandparents and great-grandmother, all of whom could be difficult.

We often look at abusive relationships in black and white. There’s the abuser and the victim. But it’s never that simple.

I forgave my mother a long time ago for the darker events of my childhood. I doubt I would have done much better in her shoes. Her marriage to my father was probably doomed from the start, and the break-up was full of rancor. Me and my brother were sick a lot, and one of us didn’t make it.

I didn’t fully appreciate what a body blow that was until I became a parent. After Michael died, she became a suffocating force in my life. I did the same to my own kids until I started dealing with the OCD.

I think she did the best she could under the circumstances.

So why aren’t we talking today?

There are many reasons. Some her fault, some mine, and a lot of other relationships have been bruised and broken in the process.

There’s a lot I can get into about this, but the simplest answer is that this relationship is a casualty of mental illness and addiction. This one can’t be repaired so easily, because much of my OCD and addictive behavior comes directly from her. She is my biggest trigger.

This is an old story. Mental illness and addiction are almost always a family affair. I was destined to have a binge-eating addiction because both my parents have one. They were never drinkers, though my stepfather was. Food was their narcotic. And so it became for me.

The fatal rupture in this relationship came in the summer of 2006. I was two years into my treatment for OCD and the binge eating was still in full swing. I was an emotional mess that summer. Late that July I had surgery for a deviated septum and was lying around drugged up all week. The kids were home and Erin was trying to do her job and take on all the stuff I couldn’t do around the house. So I asked my mother to come over for a few hours and play with the kids.

That morning, the phone rang.

“So tell me again what you need me to do when I get there,” my mother asked, after going on a tirade about what an inconvenience this was for her.

“I just want you to play with the kids for a few hours while Erin works,” I said. It seemed a reasonable request, since she was always on me about seeing more of her grandchildren.

“I’m coming up there so YOUR WIFE can work?” she asked.

That was the breaking point. I got angry and hung up. I figured it would blow over. What followed was a brutal e-mail exchange where she ripped my wife to shreds and blamed her for everything. There were also a lot of swipes in my direction about how I was the laughing stock of the family and that my wife had me whipped.

Since then, we’ve tried a few times but failed to repair the relationship. Our differences are simply too deep.

As far as she’s concerned, I’m a heartless, selfish bastard who does everything my wife tells me to do and that I’ve denied her the right to see her grandchildren. As far as I’m concerned, I need to keep my distance from my OCD triggers, and she is the biggest trigger I have.

I’ve wrestled with this mightily. My Faith tells me I need to honor my mother and father. Every time I go into the confession booth at church it’s the first thing I bring up. One priest put it this way: “Honor thy mother and father doesn’t mean you roll over and allow abuse to continue.” Still, I wrestle with it.

More than one person has asked me why I can’t just accept the disagreements and love my mother despite it.

That’s complicated.

I do love her. That’s never changed. But we both see things in each other that we can’t tolerate. That’s the best explanation I’m capable of giving right now.

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