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Hitting Bottom and Staying There

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about hitting bottom. Specifically, after I hit bottom, how long did it take for things to start looking up? I got bad news for those craving the quick fix.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/yUSn0u2GIjE

The first point worth making is that I didn’t hit one bottom like you usually see in the movies, where the addict falls so low that the clouds part and they see the light in huge, dramatic fashion. Reality is slower than that — and more boring.

I didn’t just hit one bottom. I hit a series of bottoms. And I stayed down there for a while each time before I even considered pulling myself up.

One crash was a couple months after my best friend took his life. I was binge eating with more zeal than ever, and I don’t think I cared at that point if my heart gave out. I was too crushed to care much about anything.

I had just been handed the job of editor for the Lynn Sunday Post, a paper that was already dying. I would be its pallbearer. The job included double duty as a writer for North Shore Sunday. I worked 16-hour days, six days a week.

Work was all I had at that point. Erin and I were engaged (realizing life is too short, I proposed a month after Sean died), but I was still trying to please my masters, so work came first. On Sundays, my only day off, I was sleeping through the entire day.

By the summer of 1997, I realized I had to push back or end up in an institution somewhere. Fortunately, my boss at the time saw that I was physically deteriorating and stepped in.

In December 1998, I was 285 pounds and collapsing under the weight. My father was too, and wound up getting quadruple bypass surgery. That was another slap in the face to warn me that I had to clean up. I lost 100 pounds, though I did it through unhealthy means that would blow up in my face several years later.

In late 2001 I realized that I was never going to please the managing editor I worked for at The Eagle-Tribune. He was forcing me to be the type of manager I didn’t want to be — an asshole. So I told him I was going higher up the food chain to get reassigned. And that’s what I did. They put me back in the night editor’s chair, which helped for a short time.

By late 2004 I was out of The Eagle-Tribune and in a job I loved. But I was putting enormous pressure on myself and the physical toll was showing. All my personality ticks were in overdrive: the obsession with cleanliness. The paranoia over my kids’ safety. A growing sense of fear that kept me indoors a lot.

That was probably the deepest bottom to date, the one that made me realize I needed to get help from a therapist; help that led to my OCD diagnosis.

The next bottom was in late 2006, when I had developed many of the mental health tools I use today. But my brain chemistry was such a mess I couldn’t get past the fear and anxiety attacks. That’s when I decided to try medication, which has worked far better than I ever thought possible.

The last bottom was in the summer of 2008. I was finally finding some mental stability, but I surrendered to the binge eating during therapy and was back up to 260 pounds. And it was hurting my health in a big way. I kept waking up in the middle of the night, choking on stomach acid. I couldn’t find clothes that would fit me. I was getting depressed again.

And so I started checking out OA and by October was headlong into my 12-Step Program of Recovery.

All these events were bottoms. And I lingered there for weeks and months at a time.

There are reasons the bottoming-out process takes a long time:

1. You usually fall to the bottom slowly, so slowly that you don’t notice the movement.

2. Once you crash to the floor, you become so out of sorts that you don’t realize you’re in hell. It’s just another shitty day, followed by another, and then another, and then another.

3. It’s usually those around you who realize you’ve arrived in a bad place. But you’ve been causing them so much pain for so long that they don’t even realize it immediately.

Once you hit the bottom, the depression and self-destructive behavior intensifies.

http://youtu.be/zBEo5ZGGsO4

Then you wake up one morning and decide you’re so sick of life that something has to change. And you start making changes.

The changes end up taking a long time, too.

That’s probably not what you wanted to hear. But it does get better.

OCD Diaries

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Boredom: An OCD Case’s Worst Friend

Last year I wrote about how boredom is one of the most dangerous things an addict can encounter. It’s equally true for someone with OCD.

Mood music:

The mood music today is especially fitting for the topic. Like the addict who is bored, the OCD case who is bored gets an itch and restlessness that causes you to search and destroy.

I’m a street walking cheetah
with a heart full of napalm
I’m a runaway son of the nuclear A-bomb
I am a world’s forgotten boy
The one who searches and destroys

The opening lyrics apply. For the OCD sufferer, the heart full of napalm is the uneasy, anxious feeling that comes over you in the absence of activity. It makes you search and destroy — in my case, I search for things to worry about. The root of the problem is an OCD sufferer’s inability to live in the present.

This shouldn’t surprise readers of this blog. I’ve described it before. OCD is very much about worry spinning out of control. If it’s something routine, like sending an editor a flawless story, it’ll eat away at a lot of precious time. I used to write a story, read it back aloud, polish it, read it aloud again, then I’d still be afraid to file it for fear that it wasn’t absolutely perfect. I got home late many nights and lost a lot of sleep because of it.

When it was about health, I’d make myself sick for real by fixating too hard on what MIGHT happen. That’s when the anxiety attacks would come. In 1991, after a colonoscopy to monitor the Crohn’s Disease, I was informed that my colon was covered with hundreds of polyps — more scar tissue than polyps, but something that had to be kept an eye on. I was advised to get a colonoscopy every year to ensure it didn’t morph into colon cancer unnoticed. Good advice. So I let more than eight years pass before a bout of bleeding forced me to get one. Until then, I wasted a lot of time in fear that every stomach cramp, however small, was colon cancer. I’d spin it in my head repeatedly, rationalizing why I shouldn’t get the test. Just following doctor’s orders in the first place would have saved me a lot of over-thinking. That was clear when I had the test and found out everything was fine.

I can remember being a kid, always daydreaming about the future: what I’d look like and how cool my life would be if I were thinner, the clothes I would wear, the girls I would date and the music I would write.

As I sat in my basement pondering such greatness, I’d be binge eating, drinking and smoking and wasting the moment.

I’ve spent too much time thinking about plenty of other things. It ages you.

Boredom is a major troublemaker because left with nothing to do, you start thinking about everything that can possibly go wrong with your life. I would get into the negative thinking described above during the busiest of times. You can imagine, then, what happens inside my head when I’m bored.

It leads to the addictive behavior I described in “Boredom: An Addicts Worst Friend.”

I’m better at living in the present than I used to be.  But I still make sure I’m busy at all times. The alternative ain’t pretty..

Besides, there’s joy to be had in the kind of tired you feel after a day lived well.

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R.I.P. Betty Ford

Former first lady Betty Ford has died at age 93. I wanted to honor her here, because her honesty and bravery about her own battles with substance abuse went far in smashing the stigma attached to addiction.

ABC News said it best in its obituary:

She lived in the White House in an era during which she was expected to simply serve tea and host luncheons but instead, she fought for women’s rights and spoke openly about her battle with breast cancer.

She was best known for her willingness to go public about her dependency on prescription medication and alcohol — and her determination to help others with the same problem.

There’s still a lot of work to be done. Stigmas still surround mental illness and there’s still much people don’t understand about addictive behavior.

But thanks to Betty, we are in a much better place.

PHOTO: President Gerald Ford and First Lady Betty Ford share a happy moment as they hug each other in the White House's Oval Office, Washington DC, December 6, 1974.

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Social Anxiety, Alcohol And Whatever Else Numbed Me

Addicts often become the way they are because they suffer from severe social anxiety. To carry on in a large group setting is as painful as having a leg sawed off while wide awake.

I know the feeling very well.

 

Item: It’s December 2001 and I’m at the home of the big boss for the annual Christmas party. I skipped out on this celebration a year earlier because talking to co-workers about anything other than the work at hand terrified me. I came up with a good excuse, though I can’t remember what it was. I couldn’t get out of two in a row, so off I went with Erin to the party. For the first hour I stood there like a stone, not knowing what the hell to say to these people, many of whom I was butting heads with at the office.

I’m offered a glass of wine. I suck it down in two gulps and start to loosen up. So I have another. And another. And another. Conversation becomes easier, so I have another.

I walk away realizing that enough alcohol will numb that itchy, edgy feeling I get around people. So getting drunk becomes standard operating procedure.

After awhile, the social settings are no longer enough. I need to numb myself every moment of every weekend, then every night after work. When I’m back on the newsroom night desk I stay up late on Sunday nights watching TV. Wine is a necessity, followed by a nice food binge.

Item: I leave that job and go to a company full of young, just-out-of college party hounds. The company likes to have long offsites where the free booze flows like tap water. Being an addict, I make sure to get my fill, followed by my fill of food. There’s nothing quite like a food binge when you’re drunk. For someone like me, it’s heaven for the first hour, followed by shame and terror over my utter loss of control. I gain up to 50 pounds in this job as I binge my way through the social discomfort I feel in a setting like that.

Item: It’s 2009 and I’m several months into my abstinence from binge eating. I’ve dropped 65 pounds on the spot and my head is clearer, but the defect in my head is still there, so I go looking for other things: Wine — lots of it. It becomes a necessity every night with dinner. I get itchy when the supply is cut off. By Christmas I realize wine is no longer compatible with a clean life — the kind I have to live, anyway. So I take my last sip on New Year’s Eve and put it down.

Two things are worth noting here:

1. I was never a fall-down drunk. There was always a line I refused to cross, to that zone where you become stupid and incoherent. But I needed to have some. Not having some led to that feeling like your skin is either two sizes too loose or too tight. The OCD behavior worsens, and I’m twitching, pacing and bouncing off walls and furniture until I have some. THAT is addiction. You don’t have to be smashed and stoned 24 hours a day to qualify. All you need is that unquenchable thirst; the kind that drives you mad until it’s fed.

2. My need to fill the hole in my soul with food and drink has almost always been connected to social anxiety. It’s not just the big work party settings. It’s the small family settings, where I feel the pressure to say something useful every two minutes. I stopped drinking and binge eating, but other crutches have emerged to take their place. I stare at my Android phone or flip through a book. I break off and take walks to be alone for a few minutes. I don’t think it’s awful behavior. It’s certainly better than what I used to do. But it goes to show that you never heal 100 percent.

I’m much better with people settings than I used to be. One reason is that in recovery I’ve come to enjoy people more. I even enjoy watching a little dysfunction.

I can speak in front of a room full of people and often do for work. That’s better than when I would be terrified to do so. I can certainly express myself in writing in ways I could never have done a few years ago. But when I’m at a family gathering or with friends I haven’t seen in awhile, the social anxiety still sets in.

I know a lot of people with social anxiety. Some think they are freaks. Others think they’re either too intellectually inferior or superior to those they are with. Others don’t beat themselves over it. It simply is what it is.

The key is wanting to get better, then doing whatever it takes to get there.

I’m better, but I still have a lot of work to do.

It’s like they say in the halls of AA and OA: I’m not yet the person God wants me to be, but I’m not the person I was, either.

Progress is progress.

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Fear and Self-Loathing in San Francisco

Just got to my hotel in Santa, Clara, Calif., with a few random memories shifting around in my head — memories that illustrate who I was and who I am now.

Mood music:

It was July 1991 and I was with Sean Marley on my first trip to the west coast. I didn’t really want to go because I was afraid of everything and everyone. But Sean was red h0t about the idea, and back then I was always out to impress the man.

So off we went, on a 10-day California trip that would take us as far north as Eureka and as far south as Los Angeles. We lived in the rental car the whole time except for L.A., where we stayed in a friend’s apartment.

I remember the plane going in for a landing. I looked out the window and saw the Bay Bridge below. It was a gorgeous sight from that height, with the bay glistening in the summer sun. I saw the same view this morning and felt warm and energized. Back then was different. I thought of the Bay Area earthquake two years before, with TV coverage that included a live shot of a piece of the bridge collapsing and a car driving off the newly created edge into the abyss.

I knew we’d be driving over that bridge at least twice.

Terror.

I was afraid of talking to strangers.  I was afraid to go to clubs at night for fear we might get mugged so far from home.

In L.A., we hooked up with a guy who used to live in the Point of Pines in Revere. I didn’t remember him, but he and Sean were tight as kids. Michael was his name. Michael took us to visit a couple of his friends who were living the stereotypical Hollywood lifestyle. They had a band, but sat in their cramped bungalow all day, surrounded by towers of empty beer cans and cigarette boxes, watching all the bad daytime TV they could feast their eyes on.

One of them asked me where we were from. The Boston area, I told him.

“Dude,” he said through the cloud of cigarette smoke encircling his head. “That’s a pretty long way from here.”

The statement filled me with more terror.

A pretty long way from here. From my safe place in the basement apartment at 22 Lynnway, Revere, Mass.

Terror.

That’s pretty much what the trip was. Sean ate it all up and had the time of his life, despite me.

I didn’t know back then that I suffered from OCD-induced fear and anxiety. I was still many years away from the therapy, medication and spiritual conversion. I had no idea what the 12 steps were when I was 21. Too bad, too, because I SHOULD have had the time of my life on that trip, too.

But that’s what fear does. It robs you blind. Robs you of everything that should make life worthwhile.

Thank God I’m done with that shit.

I’ve made this flight many times since then, always on business. But I’ve gotten the chance to enjoy the surroundings and experience the culture along the way.

In small steps, I’ve tried hard to make up for lost time. That gets me in trouble sometimes, because I forget to pace myself. That happened last time I was here in February, and my family paid the price.

Let’s see if I can do better this time.

And maybe one of these days, instead of coming here for work, I can come here for fun. Maybe Erin will live out of a rental car with me for 10 days.

What do you say, honey?

OCD Diaries

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A Recovery Under Pressure

The coming days and weeks are going to put my recovery program to the test like nothing I’ve experienced since getting the OCD under control and bringing my binge-eating addiction to heel.

That’s not a complaint, or a cry for sympathy. It’s simply the way it is. It’s life. By being honest with myself about what’s coming, I stand a better chance of holding it together.

Yesterday I visited my father, who’s been in the hospital since having a stroke two weeks ago. As is the case with stroke patients, recovery is a long road with a lot of ups and downs.

This past weekend he sounded more lucid than he had in a long time. That was an up. The ups fill you with a lot more hope than you should have when the best thing to do is take things one day at a time. Such hope makes it all the more devastating when a down day comes.

Yesterday was a down day.

He was seeing and talking about things that weren’t there. He kept telling us he wanted to go to the Beth Israel where he needed to be, not really buying the reality that he was already there.

He kept reaching out to us to hand us his keys. Of course, he had no keys.

He kept telling me to take a folder from his hand and put it on the table next to him. I pretended to take the folder that wasn’t really there. Then I was pissed with myself for playing along. But when I’d tell him the truth — that the things he saw weren’t really there, he grew agitated. The IV bags full of various liquids above him became hazardous chemicals in his mind, and he started pulling at the chords.

In that scenario, the only thing you can feel is helpless.

Physically he seems OK. The blood pressure is up and down, but his breathing and heart rate appear good. For him, the big crisis is in the brain.

I’m used to mental illness. I have a lot of personal experience there. But this is different. This is something that was sparked by a stroke, whereas my issues were the much more gradual result of disjointed brain chemistry and rough experiences growing up.

That’s my territory, and from that perspective I can give a person advice until hell freezes over. But the thing with my father is out of my league.

When something is out of my league, I feel out of control. When you have OCD, control is something you desperately crave, especially when the going gets tough.

I’m not feeling the urge to give in to my addictions, which is usually what this state of mind leads to.

But I know it’s coming.

That’s the test in front of me.

Now that I’ve acknowledged it, I feel more ready to keep it all together.

I have my tools: An OA sponsor, a network of friends and family, a food plan that’ll keep me out of trouble as long as I cling tight to it, and my faith. Whatever happens, Jesus has my back.

I just have to remember that.

I also have to remember that, as Mister Roger’s mother once told him, in times of trauma always look for the helpers, because they are always there.

At the same time, I need to be one of the helpers, because others will need that from me.

I’m still trying to figure out the best way to be a helper.

I figure God will lead me in the right direction.

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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.

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Say Hello To My New Friend

One of the great things about writing this blog is that it puts me in touch with some cool people. Yesterday was one of those days. Meet my newest friend, David Vanadia.

He contacted me yesterday after seeing my post about how flour and sugar nearly destroyed me. It turns out he was a sugar addict who gave it up in 2005 and has been blogging about it ever since.

Check out the blog, Sugar Blog: Stop Being Sweet, HERE.

While sharing his background with a sugar addiction, he goes a step further and offers some concrete activities for those who want to cut the sugar from their lives. There’s a Weekly Sugar Challenge, for example.

I’m going to enjoy the hell out of his blog. And soon, he’ll be talking to me about the effect of sugar on OCD. When that happens, I’ll stare y’all to it.

I particularly love his page called “Why Quit Sugar?” because he sums up my own experiences in simple bullet points:

When I eat sugar I:

• Feel drowsy
• Can’t make decisions
• Can’t wake up easily
• Sleep heavier
• Stay up late at night
• Act moody
• Am more gassy
• Am more thirsty
• Crave sweets
• Find that my teeth ache
• Find my teeth coated with sugar
• Often have bad breath
• Feel depressed & helpless
• Only feel satisfied by sweets
• Have evil and irregular poops
• Have to nap during the day
• Lose control and crave sweets
• Need chocolate every day
• Feel bad about eating junk food

• Overeat and use food as a drug
• Get “sweaty butt”
• Reward myself with sweets
• Soothe myself with sweets
• Feel like I’m in a daze
• Medicate myself with sweets
• Feel odd in my joints
• Pee alot
• Eat just about anything
• Can’t have fun without sugar
• Support the sweet system
• Spend money on sweets
• Eat out more often
• End up eating lots of chemicals
• Don’t know what is in my food
• Act hyper and annoy people
• Worry about everything
• Wake up feeling bloated
• Use sugar as an upper

When I avoid sugar I:

• Feel much more even
• Make clearer decisions
• Wake up more easily
• Sleep calmly and thoroughly
• Don’t need a midday nap
• Don’t act so moody
• Am satisfied by veggies and fruit
• Have regular and elegant poops
• Am not parched all the time

• Don’t crave sweet foods
• Don’t lose control
• Feel good about myself
• Think everyone eats junk
• Read labels more often
• Am more aware
• Often make natural foods
• Don’t feel bloated
• Feel tighter in the mid-section

When I avoid sugar for long periods I:

• Feel even and calm
• Wake up energized
• Need less and lighter sleep
• Have increased stamina
• Want to get out and do things
• Am not parched all the time
• Don’t crave processed products
• Think food products taste bad

• Am grossed out by sweeties
• Feel better about myself overall
• Feel more attractive
• Am more confident
• Want to visit the dentist
• Focus better on long-term goals
• Am a happier person overall
• Find natural food delicious

Check it out.

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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.