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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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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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Oddly Enough, This Day Will Not Suck

I’m snowed in again and both kids are home. By 6:20 a.m. they were already fighting over the family laptop. I’m dead tired. But despite it all, I’m thinking this day will NOT suck. Here’s why.

–The first reason is that I started the day by listening to one of my favorite Boston bands, The Neighborhoods, covering one of my favorite Cheap Trick songs:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3QHFAPcYTM&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

–The second reason is that I got a particularly damn good cup of caffeine by my side. Since there have been storms where the power went out before I got my first cup of coffee, I consider this a blessing of massive proportions.

–The third reason is that I just found an amusing article about a woman busted in the airport security line for trying to smuggle 44 iPhones in her stockings. I have a bit to say about that in my security blog.

–I can spend the work day in my bathrobe and tattered gym pants if I want to. I probably won’t, because at some point I’ll want to change before going out to shovel the driveway. But I could if I wanted to.

–Having Sean and Duncan in close proximity as I try to work won’t be easy. But at some point we’ll break to watch some Star Wars. And for an hour or two, I can be a kid again.

–It’s always nice to have a work-at-home day with my wife, though it’s always nicer when the kids are in school. But it’s still quality time, so I’ll take it.

–I have my sunshine in a box on the table nearby. That makes the darkness of winter a little less glaring to my imbalanced mind. 

–The close proximity to the kids all day makes it likely that I’ll be writing a “Stuff My Kids Say Part 4” later on.

Don’t let the snow get you down, people. Things can always be much, much worse.

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Never Trust a Sushi Place Built into a CVS

Last night was one of those dinner experiences that tests someone in my type of addiction recovery program.

The scene: I’ve just checked into my hotel room in Washington D.C., where I’m attending the ShmooCon security conference. I venture downstairs in search of dinner.

I run into a group of friends from the security industry and they invite me out with them for dinner. I’m glad to see them and I’m hungry, so I accept.

I have a pleasant 1/2-mile walk to the restaurant. After 14 hours riding an RV through five states, it’s good to stretch my limbs.

We arrive at the location to see a CVS drug store. On second glance, the restaurant is literally a hole in the side of CVS’s wall. But we’ve eaten at odder places, so in we go.

They keep us waiting what seems like a long time for a table that looks like it’s been clean and ready for awhile now. OK, maybe they have their reasons. And I am enjoying the company I’m with.

But it’s been a long day and I’m really starting to fade. Dinner after 8 is risky when you’ve been up since 4 a.m. One friend notes that I’m quieter than usual.

We finally sit down and I look at the menu. There seems to be very little I can eat with my food program, but I chalk it up to not being well versed with sushi. I play it safe and go for a pork dish, because it seems like the best choice at the time. It’s waaay after 9 p.m. before they put a narrow plate in front of me with two tiny skewers of pork and a bowl of rice.

Meanwhile, I look at some of the sushi dishes my friends have ordered, and I realize some of those selections would have been a much better fit for my program. I fidget with my phone, because in a situation like that I get particularly fidgety.

I sit there feeling like the dope that I am at that moment. I’m also pissed because it got too late to call my wife, who I hadn’t seen since the night before. When I’m away, we almost never miss catch-up time on the phone.

I did what I needed to do: Paid for my part of the meal and got out of there as fast as I could.

The night ended with my program intact. But it was a reminder that when you can only eat certain things, you have to plan ahead.

A wise person once told me that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

I’ll add a new one for you: If you see a restaurant built into the side of a drug store, walk past it and choose someplace else.

The night still ended on a high note. Like I said, I enjoyed the company of my dinner companions. I got to run into some old friends later on in the hotel bar.

And I lived to fight another day.

 

Sometimes, that’s how I roll.

But it was a close call for a reformed compulsive binge eater.

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Even in Sobriety, Life Must Go On

I’ve been posting lately about some of the dysfunction I encounter among people in AA and OA. I name no names, because our anonymity is vital. But some things are worth a rant or two.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpzIlWIF24k&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

I’ve ranted about folks who shove passages from the AA big book down my throat even when it’s obvious that they’re still messed up (See: Readings from the Book of Crap).

I’ve also ranted about folks who let their program of recovery become just another addiction. (See: When Recovery Becomes The Addiction).

This line of writing may seem harsh. And at the end of the day I know I have to pay attention to my own side of the street instead of getting fixated on what other people are doing.

But what the hell. As someone working the 12 Steps, I have to live with these people, and for those who are in the abyss of addiction and want to clean up, it’s useful to know about some of the quarks the program has. As long as it doesn’t scare you away. I don’t want to do that, because I owe my life to my recovery program, and I love the folks I share meetings with to death. They’ve helped me in so many ways — by sharing their stories, offering me guidance and just being friends.

I should also note that even for those who turn recovery into another addiction, it sure as hell beats the shit out of the old addictions that made their lives utterly unmanageable.

This post and the ones I mentioned above are about the few people who can screw things up for everyone else.

I’ve gotten a ton of feedback from folks in various LinkedIn forums, especially those who read the post about recovery becoming addiction. Some of that feedback simply must be shared.

I think the biggest point to be had is that recovery should be about helping an addict clean up, gain wisdom and then live life to the fullest.

It should also be about getting clean so you can be there for friends and family in need.

If you decide it’s more important to attend six AA-OA meetings in a week instead of doing your job or helping your kids with their homework, there’s something wrong with you. Sorry. That’s how I feel.

One of the folks on LinkedIn, Taunta Beanie Taylor, agreed, writing, “I have the same kinds of feelings about AA. I love it in that it works GREAT for some people, but I also hate it in that some people become so attached to the program that they allow it to interfere with the rest of their lives. ‘My Sponsor suggested I not go so I’m not, even though it will hurt people in my family’ kinds of attitudes. Or they HAVE to do a meeting, so they don’t give aid to a friend in need. They often lose the line between suggestion and requirement. Recovery (from whatever addiction) becomes a form of religion, and like religion, some people get confused about the fact that we were all created unique and individual, therefore having unique and individual needs.”

Not everyone will agree with that statement. Some will tell you that recovery is a matter of survival, and if they choose an extra meeting over some dysfunctional family events, that’s how it has to be.

I understand that point of view fully. One of the reasons I’m not on speaking terms with my mother is because she’s too big a trigger. I don’t want it to be that way, but yeah, it’s survival.

Indeed, there are many difficult balancing acts to be had in recovery.

I’m not the voice of perfection. Lord knows I got my own issues.

But this is another challenge on the journey that’s worth being aware of.

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Need More Proof It’s an Addiction?

My new hero is a fellow Bostonian, Michael Prager. I mentioned him briefly yesterday as proof of what I’ve been writing here for the last year — that addictive behavior can latch onto food in destructive ways.

Long before I realized I could only beat my addiction if I started treating it as such, and long before I started this blog, Prager was well on the road to recovery I now find myself on.

There’s a great article on him in The Washington Post you all must read. So hit the link and go learn from this man.

Conquering food addiction

Sitting across a Starbucks table from Michael Prager a few weeks ago, I’d never have guessed that he once weighed 365 pounds. Or that he’s an addict.

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See? I Told You It’s a Real Addiction!

I’ve focused hard in this blog on blowing false notions to smithereens. One of those is the idea that compulsive binge eaters aren’t true addicts; that they’re just gluttons who lack discipline.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fV-5eE_gpU8&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]

My argument — already supported by a growing chorus of medical and mental health specialists — is that this is a true addiction. I’ve lived it. I know it. And the only program that worked for me is the same exact one alcoholics and drug addicts use to turn it around.

Addictive behavior comes in many forms: Food, drugs, booze, the Internet, porn, and usually a mix of one or more. The root cause is always a hole in our souls that sends us in search of comfort in the most self-destructive ways.

People always struggle to include food in there because it’s something we all need to survive. You don’t technically need drugs, booze or porn to survive. Addicts only think that they do.

Well, a column in The Washington Post tackles the issue head on. In “Is food addiction real?” author Jennifer LaRue Huget notes that “for all the fanfare surrounding food addiction, the condition isn’t fully embraced as legitimate in medical and psychological circles. Some argue that our complex relationship with food can’t be easily boiled down to an addiction, as so many factors are in play. Others maintain that allowing for “food addiction” ends up absolving people of the personal responsibility to manage their food consumption. And some experts say the science to support the notion of food addiction remains incomplete.”

But she goes on to write that “for some overweight people — including Michael Prager, author of the book “Fat Boy, Thin Man” — viewing one’s troubled relationship with food as an addiction is the first and necessary step toward improving that relationship. Prager, who once weighed 365 pounds and for the past 20 years has weighed 210, was reluctant to accept the idea that he was addicted to food, but once he did so, he found that treating his addiction as an addiction led to his finally shedding those extra pounds and keeping them off for the long term.”

She admits that she was among the skeptics who felt food addiction was a copout. After meeting Prager and reading his book, however, her opinion shifted.

“Being addicted to food doesn’t mean enjoying big quantities of delicious treats,” she writes. “It’s more like being a slave to food, adjusting your schedule and compromising relationships with other people to accommodate your cravings, needing more and more of certain foods to achieve the satisfaction you seek, and not even particularly enjoying the food you cram into your mouth. Those all sound like addictive behaviors to me.”

Amen, sister.

Thanks for articulating what I’ve been feeling for a long time.

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When Recovery Becomes the Addiction

I’ve noticed something interesting in the halls of recovery: Some folks cling to their program so tightly that their addictive behavior latches on to the program itself. In my opinion, this can get unhealthy.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvXkAIfJOEQ&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]

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

For them (not everyone, but quite a few people), there IS NO OTHER WAY. If you’re not following the food plan outlined there, you are not abstinent.

There’s also the mindset that you HAVE TO ABSTAIN FROM FLOUR AND SUGAR and have nothing in between meals to be abstinent. Eat an apple in between lunch and dinner and you break your abstinence and have to start over.

To me, this is an extreme that causes a lot of people to fail. In fairness, some people need the most rigid plan available to be well because their mental state demands the most brutal discipline to stay clean.

I get and respect that.

What I don’t get or respect is when someone following that plan tells someone they’re not being abstinent if they’re doing their own plan differently.

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

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

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

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

Don’t get me wrong. If doing it that way is what you have to do to stay away from the binges that made your life unmanageable, more power to you. It’s certainly better than the type of addictive behavior you displayed before finding the program.

What makes me uncomfortable is when that person tries to force their way onto everyone in the room.

There are also sponsors who insist you do your program exactly as they do, with no differences whatsoever. Even if another medical condition forbids you from eliminating all flour and sugar, these particular sponsors won’t work with you. That’s their choice, and they’re entitled to it. Some believe they’re not qualified to guide someone with a plan that’s different from their own. In some cases, that kind of sponsor comes off like someone on a power trip.

In some cases that’s true. In other cases, those folks are just afraid of breaking their own abstinence by letting a sponsee do something different. I understand that fear completely. Nobody wants to have a relapse. That’s the recovering addict’s biggest nightmare.

The problem is that when you give a sponsee no room to do it differently, you’re doing them more harm than good. Someone hungry for recovery gets turned off and walks away to resume their self-destructive behavior.

I sponsored four people at one point, and I eventually decided I had to take a break from it because I was worried that I wasn’t in the best position to tell these people what to do.

Call it the fear of making someone worse while trying to help them.

I decided to pull back and re-organize my own side of the street to prevent that sort of thing. 

It just goes to show that addictive minds never heal completely. When you put down the addiction that made you into a monster, you tend to redirect your compulsive nature onto other things — including the recovery plan itself.

This isn’t a criticism of people who are like that.

It’s just an acknowledgement of how hard and complicated recovery can be.

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Am I Too Hard on Myself?

A friend asked that question yesterday. I’ve certainly been accused of being too hard on myself before. My step-mother reads this blog and told me I should give myself a break. Steve Lambert, former editor of The Eagle-Tribune, said I was too hard on myself when I wrote the “One of My Biggest Regrets” post.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:0OXjHxbrmrkpvqudvzWlDR]

The short answer is that sometimes I am, most of the time I’m not.

When I was at my absolute worst, I knew my soul was in deep trouble and I hated myself for not having the will to do something about it. I call it my long road through self-hatred. Back then I would be hard on myself by wallowing in the corner or, more accurately, in my car, where I would go on many, many binges.

If I had the ability to cry it out back then, I would have probably binged less. But I’ve never been good at crying, so I’d let the rage fill me and I’d do my best to destroy myself. It’s not that I wanted to die. It’s that I hated and wanted to punish myself. Giving in to my addictions was a lot like taking a thick leather belt and lashing myself a few hundred times.

That’s what happens when mental illness and addiction burn wild with no management. You end up being hard on yourself, and nothing good comes of it. In fact, it just makes things worse.

Today I’m hard on myself in a different way. I come on here and write about what a shithead I was the day before, and in the process I fix my course and work on doing better. That’s much more healthy.

I was feeling stupid yesterday because I purchased a new pair of boots and a pair of pants on Amazon.com. I needed the boots, but not the pants. It was a splurge with money we don’t necessarily have. Call it no big deal, but I know better. Sometimes, when I’m not letting the food addiction or wine guzzling control me, I let the spending addiction control me. Or the Internet addiction.

That’s when I have to remind myself that I’m being a jerk. And then I try to do better.

When I put up my wall and fail to let family in, I need to come on here and remind myself that I’m doing something wrong so I can fix it. Same thing when I’m thinking about things in absolutes.

In the final analysis, I see nothing wrong with being hard on myself as long as it leads to self improvement.

It’s the brand that leads to self pity and self destruction that’s the problem.

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It’s a Disease, Not a Choice: Part 2

The Sunday night step study meeting I wrote about yesterday gave me more to think about than I could cram into one post. Another thing that stuck with me is how society continues to mistake addiction for choice.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cECTX3mPu1o&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]

I’ve tackled this subject many times in this blog. In the first “It’s a Disease, Not a Choice” post a few months back, I noted that the addicted brain works differently.

My problem was binge eating and a growing dependence on wine, further complicated by the variety of pain pills I was prescribed for the aches and pains caused, ultimately, by my bad habits. I was a less-than-ideal husband and dad. You just couldn’t rely on me. I’d sneak around feeding my addiction and then cover my tracks. Sometimes I would blatantly lie about it. [See “The Liar’s Disease“] I didn’t lie to be evil. I did it because the shame was too much for me to handle.

You might also say I didn’t know any better.

One thing’s for certain: I didn’t wake up one morning and decide it would be a laugh riot to slowly destroy myself and hurt everyone around me in the process.

To someone watching a loved one in relapse, the question is always “How the fuck could HE/SHE do this to ME?”

Here’s the ugly truth: Alcoholism — addictive behavior, period — is a disease. Nobody chooses it. They are chosen instead. It controls you like a puppet. You know as you’re doing that addictive action that it’s wrong and you hate every second of it. But your motor skills have taken over and you CAN’T stop.

Sure, we can shake it in time and find recovery, but relapse is a natural part of the disease. In fact, relapse is something I probably worry about the most, because I’ve been relatively lucky up to this point in my 12-Step program.

I know it can creep up on me and regain control at any moment, before I know what hit me.

In one of my favorite TV shows, “The West Wing,” Leo McGarry describes where the mind goes:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ma3d-YdLjCs&version=3&rel=1&fs=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1]

“My brain works differently,” he says, followed by,” I don’t get drunk in front of people. I get drunk alone.”

It’s the same way for a food addict. You can’t have just one slice of pizza. It has to be the whole box. I once joked to a friends that I can’t eat just five. And when I really wanted to numb my frustrations in a bag of junk, I always went peddle to the metal out of sight from others; typically when I was alone in my car.

At Sunday night’s meeting, someone brought up another thing about addicts and choice: We all have choices in life, but when we become addicted to something, choice is destroyed. We become slaves to an evil force that’s far more powerful than our sense of reason, right or wrong. We become slaves to the substance. We have no choice but to feed it.

But the story doesn’t end there. 

My own experience is that there is NEVER a point of no return. Slaves sometimes break free of their captors. On rare occasions they come back with a shotgun and kill the bastards. Most of the time the slave just runs away, hoping to avoid recapture. In a world where addiction is the captor, relapse is when the oppressor catches up to you and puts you back in chains.

I broke free. But I always have to watch my back.

A family friend has a dad who has suffered a long time with alcoholism. He achieved years of sobriety, only to relapse. Now he’s in a very bad place.

He’s a slave again.

I’m praying for him.

Even when the addict is returned to slavery, they still bring something to the table that the rest of us can learn from:

They show you what it’s like to suffer, and their example serves as a warning.

Make no mistake about it: This is some seriously complicated shit.

I’m just glad to be free today. I managed to see through the haze one day and I got my choices back.

Here’s hoping I don’t lose them again.