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A Message from the ‘Obsessive Poster’

Today I got a first since starting this blog — someone on Facebook who told me he was unfriending me because of what I write here.

 

I won’t tell you the person’s name, though I will say I used to work with him at another company. Since his anonymity is intact, I’ll share the rest of the letter:

Subject: why I’m unfriending you

“Bill, I’ve grown to find your OCD posts too painful and am going to unfriend you. You realize you are an obsessive poster, I hope? I wish you luck, but I think you need help and compassion, not exposure. I have a daughter who’s mentally ill, so I am particularly sensitive to watching people flay themselves alive. I wish you all the best, really.”

Fair enough. But I have a few things to say:

First, I totally understand this man’s need to unfriend me. I don’t take it personally and I can see where my more recent posts were probably hard to read.

Since his daughter is struggling, I can understand his raw nerves, especially when I write about the challenges of my own children.

He’s a good man and I wish him and his family the very best.

Now, am I an “obsessive poster” as he says? Sure I am, though I don’t think people realize that my daily posts run on a largely automated cycle. The idea is that there are three traffic cycles in a day on social networks. Some do their online reading first thing in the morning, others at lunch, others right before dinner and the rest do it between 8 and midnight. It’s a lot like when TV networks rebroadcast certain programming a few times a day.

There’s also a lot of content coming from me from two areas: This blog and the security articles I write for my day job.

I post those things, along with the occasional amusing things my kids say or what kind of music I might be enjoying at the moment.

People either like that stuff or they don’t, and they are always free to unfriend or unfollow.

Personally, I have a low tolerance for people who constantly go to Facebook to whine about their romantic dramas or tell us everything they cooked for breakfast, lunch and dinner. There are also those who trash talk other people online, be it an ex-spouse or a friend of a friend. Those people make me sick.

But we’re all consumers, and one person’s treasure is another person’s trash.

For those who don’t know by now, here’s why I started this blog:

1.) I needed to write more as part of my own program of recovery. When you type out your feelings on paper or in a forum like this, it’s very freeing. You don’t keep stuff inside and you can move ahead more easily.

2.) I decided to go public with my struggles because:

A. I decided that for me, bringing my problems to light would make them smaller and weaker — and easier to manage. I was absolutely right.

B. I know most people suffer with their own issues and live in greater pain because it’s the sinister secret in their closet. I figured that if I came clean about my own frailties of character and more medically-based struggles, people who live that way would at least know that they don’t have to be alone, and that they can get to a better place.

Truth be told, I never expected this thing to grow as it has. Readership is increasing all the time, and I’ve received thousands of notes from people urging me to keep going.

Others ask me to cover very specific topics they are dealing with.

I always try to end a post — no matter how dark the subject — on a positive note, because for every bad experience I’ve learned there’s a way to grow and be a better person.

I don’t always pull it off, but I always try.

Also, I frequently ask you all to keep me honest.

After getting this message, I had lunch with a dear friend. My friend gave me advice on how I should make a point each week to put something upbeat in here. He also noted, correctly, that my posts have been on the darker side lately. 

But I can’t structure the blog that way. The goal was never to make it “a little something for everyone.” It never will be.

It’s the ongoing story of my struggles — successes as well as failures — with mental illness and addiction.

It’s never going to please everyone.

Sometimes, it will piss people off.

You either follow my journey because you want to, or you don’t.

For the former, I hope you will keep the communication going and ask me about specific topics you’d like me to address. I’ll never have the opinion of a good medical professional, and you always need to seek them out. But I can tell you how something affected me and what I learned from it. Hopefully, that’s something useful.

For the latter, the unfriend button is at the bottom left of my Facebook profile. Use it and we can all move on.

Thank you.

–Bill

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Well, That Was Stupid

Almost every time I visit the therapist, right after he asks if I’m taking the same Prozac dosage as I was at the last visit, he glares at me through his glasses and says: “Remember, never put yourself in a position where you run out.”

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRat644_o_k&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

Those words ring through my head every time I travel. I’m always paranoid about it and the first thing I do when packing is put the pills in the bag.

This time, I failed.

I got through airport security and sat down at the gate, and opened the bag to grab my evening dose.

Nothing.

Clearly, I left them in the hotel room.

My first instinct was to panic. But panicking never works out for me so I’m doing the only thing I can do: nothing.

It’s three hours ahead of me back home and the pharmacy is closed until 8 a.m. So when I get home, instead of crashing like I need to because I have a fever and sweats coming on, I have to deal with that first thing when I get through the door.

This really pisses me off. But it’s my fault.

There have been rare occasions when my doses would be disrupted because of one reason or another. One example is that when I get a bug and need antibiotics or other cold and flu medications, the Prozac doesn’t work nearly as well. Once or twice in the four-plus years I’ve been taking it, I simply forgot.

Sometimes you get bone tired and it happens. 

I’ve been fried this entire trip, so clearly my attention span wasn’t firing on all thrusters.

The other times the dosage was disrupted, the damage was minimal. I’d have a moody day or two (Sometimes I have those even when I’m on top of things). I’m hoping this instance will be the same.

This was a successful trip in terms of work productivity and networking. I did a lot of writing and met up with a lot of professionals in my industry. But emotionally this outing has been less than stellar.

A dark mood has been hounding me. I explained why in the last post.

God has been with me, though. He has graced me with some wonderful friends in this business, and they look out for me. That can be a rare thing on the business side of life.

I’ve also been through enough hard therapy over the years that I have other coping tools to get me through that I didn’t have a decade ago.

For all that, I’m thankful.

I can no longer boil over the things I can’t control. When I passed to the other side of airport security, with my flight time ever closer, I effectively lost the ability to control things.

Now I have to do what addicts in recovery are trained to do: Let go and let God.

I’ll be on the plane soon, and chances are better than average that I’ll sleep the whole ride, thanks to the bug that’s coming on.

I’ll just have to wait until I’m home to fix this one, and that is that.

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When Honesty Is A Lie

I’ve figured out another reason for my sour mood in recent days, and now is as good a time as any to get it off my chest.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/6YzKLRM-pr4

A lot of people have been coming up to me here in San Francisco praising me for being “so honest, open and courageous” in this blog. It was a similar thing when I was in Washington D.C. for ShmooCon a couple weeks ago.

I appreciate those feelings. I really do. But when I look in the mirror lately, those words don’t ring true.

Maybe I’m being too self-critical, maybe not.

But the feeling is there. And it stings.

Here’s the thing: I do open up about a lot of things on here. That’s why I do this thing. If one person can open up about himself, I figure, others will be less afraid to be honest with themselves and they’ll be happier for it.

But don’t think for a second that I tell you everything.

I still have trouble sometimes being honest with myself and other people. It’s not that I hide anything particularly insidious. It’s the more typical things:

If I run into a PR person who wants to pitch me something I’m not interested in, I often lack the honesty to tell them I’m not interested. That strings them along and gives them false hope, and it’s not fair to them.

When I talk to people about how I’ve cleaned up from an addiction, I’m not so revealing about the other addictions I still let control me (computer gadgetry, for example). Sure, I wrote about that and just linked to it. But I think I’m far more hooked on technology in ways that make life less manageable than I initially let on.

I’m also not honest enough about just how hard it is sometimes to be social and sober-abstinent at the same time. Last night I stayed in the hotel because I wanted nothing to do with people.

I’m not saying what I’ve written before was a lie. It wasn’t. But it wasn’t the full, naked and ugly truth, either. I hold little details back. Some things just feel too private to share.

I guess that’s just part of being human.

Whatever the case may be, I don’t want people thinking I’m better than I am and inflating my head with high praise.

Instead, just help keep me honest.

(Image originally appeared on the SodaHead site )

 

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RSA 2005 (Fool in the Rain)

As I cover RSA Conference 2011, I can’t help but think back to my first RSA trip in 2005. This isn’t about security trends then and now. It’s about my state of mind back then.

Mood music (because I was listening to this one a lot back then):

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGshAiRp64Q&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

I had been writing for SearchSecurity.com for less than a year, and I was in the middle stages of an emotional breakdown. I just didn’t know it at the time.

Here’s what I do remember:

–Back then I was so afraid of the world that the very thought of getting on an airplane to cover this event made me stagger. I had several anxiety attacks in the month leading up to the trip.

–The plane ride was rough, and I had a four-hour layover in Denver. By the time I got to San Francisco, I wanted to crawl into a hole and die.

—Pleasing my bosses and proving to them that I was the golden child was everything to me at that point, and I approached the conference with a “produce 10 stories or die trying” attitude that was wrapped in the fear of falling short.

–It rained constantly during the entire trip, and another thing I didn’t realize then was that bleak weather fueled my depression.

–I was sick for most of the trip. On the first full morning I woke up with a 102-degree fever and wondered how I would get out of bed. What got me up was a desire to spend as little time in that hotel as possible. The place was all concrete and brick, and I remember being terrified of what would become of the place in an earthquake. I wrote more than a couple stories that day.

–I was listening to Motley Crue’s comeback compilation, “Red White and Crue” nonstop for comfort.

–Once I got home, I was emotionally and physically sicker than ever. And in response, I binged and binged until I had packed on nearly 30 extra pounds.

That period was the lowest of the low.

In hindsight it was an important year in my growth as a human being, because I was finally starting to deal with the fact that something was seriously wrong with me and that I had to do something before I tore myself and my family apart. 

Today, I’m staring out a rainy window from the 14th floor of the hotel I’m staying in. The rain still has a depressive effect, but my program of recovery is keeping it manageable. My eating is strict and clean, and while I have done a lot of writing so far for the job, I’m not doing it to please the masters. I’m doing it because this is what I do and I love it.

I do miss my wife and kids, but that’s always the case when I’m away.

In any event, I’m in a much better place now than I was six years ago.

I’m grateful to God and everyone around me who makes it possible.

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Snake on the Plane

Tomorrow I get on another plane to another city — this time San Francisco. It’s time to go cover the RSA and B-Sides security events. I used to be a raving lunatic the day before a flight. Not anymore. Still, I feel uneasy this morning.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwzGvMwO-yg&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

My mind has been raw all week for a multitude of reasons. Mostly, it’s a case of winter getting to me. The sun is setting later each day, which is good for me, but the cold and snow have done their damage and plunged me into a depression.

I’ve pushed myself hard with work and at home I’ve been a slug. I forget to do simple things and I just want to collapse on the couch. I sigh a lot and swear even more.

It’s not fair to my family. But I can’t seem to help it.

On a positive note, I’ve kept my recovery intact. That’s real progress, because this kind of mindset used to make me binge my brains out. Those days were so much worse.

That doesn’t make me satisfied about my current state of mind.

On one hand, I’m excited for the coming trip. I love the fast and furious writing and the copious networking that gets done. I love seeing friends I usually only see on Twitter and Facebook.

On the other hand, I feel terrible about abandoning my family for four days.

It’ll all work out. I know this. But the uneasiness is still there.

I don’t dive into bouts of self-hatred in moments like this like I used to, and that’s very good. I’ve learned to see this mood for what it is: A mild-to-moderate depression that hits after a serious lack of sunlight. Duncan suffers from it, too, though not in the same ways.

It’s just something we have to keep working on.

The depression hit me later this time than it usually does in winter. The happy lamp, proper Prozac dosage and program of recovery have served me well. But I’m starting to realize I’ll probably never be able to go an entire winter without feeling this way.

Tough shit. That’s my cross to carry, and I just have to keep getting better at managing the load without complaint and without becoming useless to those around me.

My Faith will see me through. 

My wife and kids will see me through, even if they’re not happy with my impending travel at the moment.

The 12 Steps of Recovery will see me through.

And once I get to San Francisco, the work at hand will see me through.

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Some Days, I Don’t Have My Shit Together

A lot of people read this blog because I always try to put a silver lining on tough stuff. But some days I fail to live up to the image. Yesterday was one of those days, when I let a 7-year-old get the better of me.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mX8n5IiSB-8&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

You see, Duncan is like me in that too much winter messes with his mental balance. He’ll get goofy, sad and every emotion in between at the drop of a hat. And he has a terrible time focusing.

We’re not sure what it’s about, but since it happens every year between December and March, it’s not a stretch to conclude there’s a winter-related cause.

Like father, like son.

Yesterday he was unfocused when he needed to be getting his homework done. He had a Cub Scouts meeting early and that put some added pressure on us. When he does his homework, you really need to stand over him. But I always struggle with this, because the OCD pushes me to do seven things at once, especially on a tight schedule.

So Duncan kept fooling around and doing his homework in an excruciatingly slow manner.

So my voice started to get a little louder every few minutes. And Duncan still stayed all over the place.

So then I really snapped at him.

I didn’t hit him. We don’t believe in hitting our kids. But I yelled. A lot.

I nixed his going to the Scouts meeting. That was appropriate, since he still had too much homework left and that comes before the fun stuff.

To some or most of you all this may read like a typical afternoon with children. Kids get a little out of control and the parent in the room has to open the can of whoop-ass.

But to me, it was a loss of control. Worse, I feel like I should be A LOT more patient with the boy, since he’s under the same spell I’m under.

Whatever it was, I didn’t feel good about it.

I am thankful for a few things, though:

–We’re getting Duncan evaluated by a medical professional to see if he has any disorders. Whatever the verdict, we’ll get some direction on how to help him along.

–Duncan is a sweet boy, and it’s impossible to stay mad at him for long. Especially when he gives you a big hug and apologizes for being difficult.

–Erin was a calming presence, reminding me that this is a particularly bad winter and everyone is on a short fuse because of it. 

–At the end of the day, I kissed my wife as she was leaving for a school board meeting, I tucked Duncan into bed and got some one-on-one time with Sean.

–There isn’t the thick, stinking cloud of rage hanging in the air. Love wins out over anger.

Because of all these things, this family is going to be just fine, thanks.

Even if I can’t always get my shit together.

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The New Slavery

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.

How did this happen? The easy answer is my job.

I write about technology — information security, specifically — and I have to use all this stuff to know how it works and, obviously, how to write about it.

But to blame it all on the hazards of work would be an over-simplification and a cop-out.

The bigger truth is that the same hole in my soul that led me to the other addictions has wrapped its thorny fingers around technology.

I don’t regret it the way I regretted the binge eating and the alcohol I used as a crutch while bringing the food under control. The fact of life is that a lot of good reading has shifted online. That’s now where I go to read various newspapers, get the weather report and watch the news.

We used to turn on the TV to get the weather and watch the news. A favorite Sunday pastime used to be reading a stack of newspapers on the living room couch. It was a way to be informed and unwind at the same time.

Now I can do all these things from my laptop AND my Android phone. But to the passers by, I have my face buried behind a screen while the world hums along around me.

There’s definitely a perception issue. But I won’t lie. A lot of my computer use is obsessive, compulsive and addictive.

Imagine how easy it is to spend hours on porn sites in the middle of the night. Fortunately, porn isn’t my thing. I know a priest who suffers from that addiction, and I pray for him all the time. But I know a thrice-convicted pedophile who, last time I checked, was visiting the library Internet centers and looking at all that stuff while friending teenage girls all over Facebook.

Ah, yes. Facebook. I don’t know about you, but I can never let a day go by without seeing who is doing what on there. The funny thing is that most of what happens on there is the stuff we always got along without. We’ve always been busy enough with our own family dramas. Now we have to read about everyone else’s. Wanna punish someone for annoying you? Nothing says “Fuck You” like unfriending someone on Facebook or unfollowing someone on Twitter.

The whole addiction-to-technology thing came up a couple Saturdays ago while I was in Washington D.C. having breakfast with my friends James Arlen and Martin Fisher. Martin was recording the conversation for a podcast but somewhere in the conversation we veered away from security and started lamenting our dependence on our devices. I was lamenting, anyway.

James said something I hadn’t thought of before: Our phones and social networking tools have become like another sense. So instead of five senses, we now have six.

Make a person do without their phone or laptop and it’s like you’ve cut off an arm or deprived them of smell, hearing, taste or vision.

What’s so perfect about that description is that addictions in general are like that. The addiction becomes another sense of sorts. Deprive the addict of what they need and horrible withdrawal pains result. I experienced it when I put down flour, sugar and alcohol. And I experience it when I have to shut the phone.

I guess the reason I’m not more ashamed about it is that practically every person I know has the same problem.

Misery adores company. There’s nothing more comforting than the knowledge that you’re not alone in your stupidity.

So what do I do with this newfound clarity?

I don’t know.

A good place to start is to minimize my laptop use when I’m home. But I have a feeling I’ll fall short.

Meet the new slavery. Not quite the same as the old slavery, but still a bitch.

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Depressed But OK With It

Actually, I’m not going through a wave of depression right now. But it does come and go and I’ve had to learn how to be OK with it. A new friend who found this blog told me she’s struggling with the concept.

This post is directed toward her. It’s my attempt to answer some questions she asked me about it.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:3p7XSsT6AFs9lCkv6FtLbj]

You mentioned that you have frequent bouts of depression medication and therapy don’t seem to touch, and that you’re at a point where you’re learning — trying to learn, anyway — how to live with it and be happy, even though you’re kind of resigned to the notion that true happiness is beyond your reach.

The answer is complicated, but it goes something like this:

First, I should mention that I still have my ups and downs and always will. Bad things will still happen, but I know beautiful things will happen, too.

My addictive personality still pins me to the wall sometimes. I’m not binge eating or drinking like I used to, but the temptation is always lurking nearby, taunting me. I’ve learned to manage my OCD pretty well, but it still escapes from its cage on occasion. My wife will testify to that.

Too much OCD out of control will almost always send me back to the depressed place.

A couple years ago I started to wonder if I’d ever understand true happiness in the face of these chronic conditions. The answer, I’ve found, is yes. Sort of.

I don’t think I’m happy in the conventional sense. But I don’t think anyone really enjoys that kind of happiness.

And that’s the problem.

We have an overdeveloped sense of what happiness is supposed to be. I call it the Happily Ever After Syndrome. We have this stupid idea that if we can just get the right job, find the right mate, accumulate the right amount of material things and have as little conflict with people as possible that we’re going to be on cloud nine for the rest of our lives.

Deep down we know that’s bullshit. But we reach for it anyway.

It’s a battle of false expectations. And when we can’t reach those expectations, it’s a huge let-down. It creates a hole in our souls that we try to fill with more material things and with alcohol, food, drugs or a combination of the three. For others, porn works, too.

That stuff makes us feel better for a few minutes, but before long we feel worse than ever.

I think that hole is still in me. But through the Grace of God it’s gotten a lot smaller.

My faith is part of it. Some people shut right down when you mention faith, but I can’t avoid the subject, because believing in a higher power and fighting tooth and nail to devote myself to Him is something that filled me with a peace I didn’t have previously.

Some people have told me it’s a waste to live that way because after death there’s nothing but darkness. OK, let’s supposed their right. I still have no regrets, because living this way is better than living with the shame I always felt when I was all about me. I’ve also noticed something about people who think I’m crazy for that: They never seem to be happy, either. But I try not to judge them. I’ve done enough wrong in my life to know that I’m in no position to do so.

That doesn’t stop me from being an ass at times, thinking I’m better than the next person. But it helps.

The biggest thing, though, is that at some point I changed my expectations. Some might say I lowered them. More accurately, I think I just discarded expectations altogether. Sometimes the expectations still swell beyond reality, but they’re much more in check than they used to be.

And through that process, I’ve discovered there is happiness. In being more accepting about the low points, I can deal with them more quickly and move on.

I used to grope around for eternal happiness in religious conversion. But some of my hardest days came AFTER I was Baptized a Catholic. I eventually found my way to abstinence and sobriety and got a pretty good handle on the OCD. But there have been plenty of sucky days since then.

I like to think of these setbacks as growing pains. We’re supposed to have bad days to test the better angels of our nature. We’re supposed to learn how to move forward despite the obstacles that used to make us hide and get junked up. When you can stay sober and keep your mental disorders in check despite a bad day, that’s REAL recovery.

This is where I consider myself lucky for having had Crohn’s Disease. That’s a chronic condition. It comes and goes. But you can reach a point where the flare ups are minimal.

It’s the same with mental illness and addiction. You can’t rid yourself of it completely. But you can reach a point — through a lot of hard work and leaps of Faith — where the episodes are minimal.

Accepting all this for what it is lets me be happy.

Prozac, therapy and the 12 Steps have helped me immensely. But they don’t take the deeper pain at your core away. These things just help you deal with the rough days without getting sucked back into the abyss.

The depression I experience now is more like a flare up of arthritis or a passing headache than that desperate, mournful feeling I used to get. It’s a nag, but it doesn’t break me. It used to break me all the time.

That’s progress.

Maybe I’m not happy forever after, but that’s OK. My ability to separate the blessings from the bullshit has improved considerably in the last five years.

That’s good enough for me.

I hope someday it’s good enough for you, too.

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Mental Illness and Cybersecurity

I want to flag you all to a post I just wrote in my security blog, Salted Hash, on CSOonline.com. It’s based on the opening talk at the ShmooCon security conference in Washington D.C.

The speaker, Marsh Ray, uses the fragile mental condition as the basis of a talk called “A paranoid schizophrenia-based model of data security.”

The post I wrote could easily work as a post in this blog. But the most appropriate audience this time were the people I write for in my day job.

Please check it out here, and thanks.

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Do TV Shows About OCD Make Me Angry?

A friend asked what I think of how OCD is portrayed on TV. The answer isn’t as cut and dry as you might expect.

This is actually a good time to tackle the subject, because yesterday I got the following message from someone who read my “Red Bull Blues” post:

My name is Rebecca and I’m a casting producer for the TLC show “Freaky Eaters.” We’re currently looking for ADULTS ADDICTED TO ENERGY DRINKS for Season 2 of the show.

For more info or to nominate someone, please send an email to pickyeaterscasting@gmail.com with your name, age, number, and brief description of your daily consumption of energy drinks/caffeine.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Sorry, Rebecca. I won’t be auditioning for that one.

It’s not that I don’t think there’s a useful case study to be had in the stories of people addicted to energy drinks. I just don’t think most of the reality shows are doing it right. The goal is always to show the viewer a train wreck purely for the sake of the train wreck. I never walk away learning anything new about what to do if you have such an addiction.

As a recovering addict, I know the real answer is years of often painful, often mundane and always complicated therapy and building of coping skills. I have yet to see a 30- or 60-minute reality show that pulls it off.

If a mental illness is going to be tackled in a reality TV show, give me something I can use. I don’t need drama for drama’s sake.

Another question is if I get angry about shows that poke fun at people with OCD. No, I don’t.

If you can’t laugh at it from time to time, you can’t successfully fight it. Let’s be honest: Some of the habits of an OCD head case like me are amusing. It’s hard not to crack a smile at the sight of someone checking their laptop bag seven times to make sure the computer is really in there. I do that all the time, and I don’t mind if someone finds amusement in it.

Then there are TV shows like “Monk.” I was never a consistent viewer of that one, but I always liked what I did see. What’s not to like about an OCD guy who solves crimes?

Bottom line: Most programming about OCD is harmless. Sometimes you actually learn something valuable. Sometimes, the program is nothing but crap that was made for the sake of drama.

There is a movie being made that I think is going to change the way people look at OCD cases.

A reader pointed me toward the website for “Machine Man: The Movie” last month, and I’ve been digging around the site, totally captivated. There’s a “why we’re doing this” clip on the site that sounds a lot like the reasons I started this blog.

The website is chock full of useful information on the illness and I think the project is going to help a lot of people understand what this is all about.

Film maker Kellie Madison deserves a lot of praise for taking on this complicated beast.

She could also use everyone’s help to fund this project.

From the Facebook page:

“We are raising all of the money for this movie through donations and fundraising! Our hope is to demystify some of the stigma attached to OCD and encourage people to seek proper treatment and get their lives back! Be a part of making this project happen!”

At the very least, you should “like” the Facebook page for the film and share it with friends and family. They will learn a lot.

Bottom line: There’s a lot of crap about OCD on TV, but for someone like me to get uptight about it would just be a waste of time. There’s also a lot of useful programming on the disorder, especially the news-based programs.

But good or bad, I don’t get offended. The folks who are serious about getting an education in mental health know where to find the valuable stuff most of the time.

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