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How the Recluse Became a Road Rat

Since my OCD and anxiety used to make me deathly afraid of travel, it’s kind of weird that I do so much of it now without giving it much thought.

Mood music:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A47HVhzF6No&hl=en_US&fs=1]

This time, me, the wife and kids are driving down to the D.C. area. Not a White House tour like we had a couple months ago, but good times all the same. The family will stay with relatives in southern Maryland for a couple days while I drive on to DC to work two security conferences: Metricon 5 and one of my faves, the USENIX Security Symposium. After I’m done writing all there is to write down there for CSO Magazine, I’ll retrieve the family in Maryland and head home.

I still take my precautions, of course. I’ve enlisted people to look after the house while we’re away so someone will be here. I write about security. I can’t help but think of these things.

But the fact that I’m making this drive twice in one year really flies in the face of how it used to be, when I felt complete terror if I took a wrong turn and got lost in a city other than my own. Even getting lost in Boston would freak me out.

This week I’ve been driving all over Boston, taking side roads in the city to avoid traffic hell on I-93 as I traveled to and from Haverhill for SANS Boston 2010. It hasn’t bothered me one bit.

I used to have a fear of flying, too. Not any more. I get on planes all the time now. In fact, I start to get a little crazy if I go too long without leaving Massachusetts for a few days. It’s always for work, but I ALWAYS make sure I build in some time to experience the city I’m in.

Frankly, it would be easier to fly to and from DC on my own. But I treasure these long drives with the family as well, so it’s all good. I’ll be fried by the end of next week, but it’ll be worth it. And as a bonus, I’ll have several security articles to show for it.

This makes me happy. And it makes me feel weird.

These are just more examples of how I now crave most of the things I used to fear most.

I don’t have to over-analyze it. I just thank God and make the most of the gifts he gave me.

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The Pedophile, Part 2

A childhood-friend-turned-convicted-pedophile was kicked off Facebook a few days ago, much to my relief. But his case makes it uncomfortably clear just how dangerous social networking can be in the hands of an addict — including me.

Mood music: 

Before I go further, here’s the original blog post I wrote about this guy about a week ago. That’ll give you all the background you need for what follows.

After talking to him on the phone, I had a decision to make: Unfriend him on Facebook or stay connected to keep an eye on him? I chose the latter.

Sure enough, despite what he told me about cleaning up his act, he was “friending” scores of teenage girls from such far-flung places as Indonesia and Thailand. I was able to follow the conversation threads he was having with these girls:

“You’re pretty.”

“Can you IM (instant message) me?”

And so on.

My friend, Kevin Littlefield, started to quietly notify our Facebook friends. I alerted the authorities that they should keep an eye on him and reported the activity to Facebook. Since then, I’ve learned that several other friends were on to him and alerted Facebook as well. One of us got through, because by the start of this week, he was gone from Facebook.

It’s been sobering to watch this guy. I consider myself very lucky that my addiction was binge eating and, to a lesser extent, alcohol.

At least with those addictions, you have a fighting chance to redeem yourself and fit into society. For someone addicted to sex — especially pedophilia — you’re all done once you’ve been caught and convicted. You have to register as a sex offender and tell all your neighbors.

That’s as it should be.

It’s one thing to have an addiction in which you slowly destroy yourself. It’s quite another to prey on another human being and damage them for life because your addiction makes you do something to them instead of yourself.

He doesn’t belong in society. Pure and simple. We all have a chance to redeem ourselves to God, but justice means the punishment for some crimes has to be permanent for as long as you remain on this Earth.

That old friend of mine is getting exactly what he deserves.

That doesn’t mean I feel good about it all. As an addict, I know how powerful things like Facebook can be. I’m not on there trying to pick up women. But I do find myself on there for long periods of time, simply curious about how other people’s lives are going. You can find a page for everything — favorite bands, favorite topics like history and politics, in my case. It’s very easy for me to put the blinders on and just stare at it for an unhealthy amount of time. I’m working on that one.

I’m not a special case here.

But in the spirit of this blog it is noteworthy.

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A Lesson in Anger Management

As I’ve told readers before, I used to have a vicious anger streak. A big trigger used to be getting stuck in traffic. So I was surprised by my reaction yesterday when a sinkhole on I-93 North turned a 45-minute ride into a nearly 3-hour ordeal.

I left the SANS Boston conference at 1:30 p.m., planning to finish up some work projects from home for the rest of the afternoon. I hit the traffic jam and heard about the sinkhole on the radio. It was at Roosevelt Circle and the two right lanes were shut down.

Photo by Jim Davis, Boston Globe

Let’s rewind to about 21 years ago. It was registration day at North Shore Community College, where I was enrolled for the fall semester. I was just out of high school and angry at the world for a variety of reasons. I had been working long hours in my father’s warehouse in Saugus and was rubbed raw. I was frustrated because a girl I liked was getting cold feet about the idea of hooking up with a loose cannon like me. It didn’t take much to trigger a temper tantrum.

That day I was rattled hard by the long lines of college registration. I wasn’t expecting it and was full of fear that I wouldn’t get the classes I needed. Not that it really mattered, since my major was liberal arts.

Two hours in, I realized I had to give them a check for the courses I was taking. I had no money and panicked. They allowed me to drive to Saugus to get a check from my father. I was in full road rage mode on the drive there and back.

By day’s end, I was in supernova mode and breathing into a bag between the chain of cigarettes I was smoking.

There are many more colorful examples of my temper back then:

– Hurling a fork or steak knife at my brother in a restaurant on New Years Eve 1979 because he made a joke I didn’t like. The more dramatic among my family members say it was a steak knife, though I’m pretty sure it was a fork.

– Lighting things on fire out of anger, including a collection of Star Wars action figures that would probably be worth a fortune today. I would pretend they were kids in school who were bullying me. Never mind that I bullied as much as I got bullied.

–Throwing rocks through windows, especially the condominium building that was built behind my house in the late 1980s.

–Yelling “mood swing!” before throwing things around the room at parties in my basement. It came off as comical, as I intended, and nobody got hurt. But there was definitely an underlying anger to it. I was acting out.

– Road rage. Tons of it. I was a very angry driver. I would tailgate. I would speed. In the winters I would intentionally spin out my putrid-green 1983 Ford LTD station wagon in parking lots during snowstorms. While in college, I nearly hit another car and flipped off the other driver while my future in-laws sat in the back. Traffic jams would infuriate me. Getting lost would fill me with fear and, in turn, more anger.

There were a lot of legitimate causes of rage for me. The drug I took for Chron’s Disease had a lot of nasty side effects, including violent mood swings. A brother and two close friends dying — one by suicide — gave me a lot of anger. Being stuck in the middle of turf wars and working late nights while at The Eagle-Tribune certainly made me a a walking ball of fire.

I’m also sure the fear and anxiety that came with my OCD contributed to more anger.

So it was an absolute blessing for me that after three hours in traffic, my sanity was in check. Not once did I punch the steering wheel in anger or flip off someone in the car next to me or in front of me.

I don’t even think I dropped an F-bomb. I don’t remember doing so, anyway.

I got home, went upstairs and was just happy to see the kids. I emptied the dishwasher, folded some laundry and set the table for dinner. I was in OCD mode for sure. But sometimes it’s best to just let the OCD run hot. It always passes.

Just another example of how I’m not the same person I used to be.

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Riding The Blue Pill

Today an experiment begins. Though it’s still summer, I’m going back up an extra 20 MG on the Prozac. The goal: Avoid the deep slide into depression that usually comes just in time for the Christmas season.

Mood music: “She Rides” by Danzig:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnizbRoqv84&hl=en_US&fs=1]

I was at 60 MG for the winter and most of the spring, but dialed it back to 40 in May. The reason I’m going back up, though I feel fine, is because August is when the days start to get noticeably shorter.The therapist believes upping the dose now will prevent a repeat of the usual blue moods that hit me when the sunlight becomes more scarce.

It’s interesting that this experiment would begin on Aug. 2. Twenty years ago today, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and all the talk about Saddam Hussein being a new Hitler threw me into a deep, fear-induced depression that August. Back then my OCD always manifested itself in a fear of current events. In fact, it was only about four years ago when that brand of fear eased off.

That summer was actually the closest I came to suicidal thoughts. Ironically, it was Sean Marley — a man who would take his own life six years later — who talked me back to a certain level of sanity.

Most recently, in 2005, I had a long panic streak over the bird flu in Asia, which was predicted to be the next great pandemic, as deadly as the one in 1918-19. I would read every magazine and every website tracking all these world events as if my personal safety depended on it. If a hurricane was spinning in the Atlantic, I would watch with deepening worry as it edged closer to the U.S.

Though those fears are gone now, I still have the blue-to-black moods to contend with from time to time, so it’ll be interesting to see how this experiment works.

If it goes well, I may actually have a Christmas season I can enjoy, instead of walking around alternating between haze and craze.

The trick, meantime, is to avoid the short-term mood swings that go with a dosage change.

We’ll see.

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Marley’s Ghost

I’ve written a lot in this blog about Sean Marley, my friend and brother, who took his life in 1996. It’s been unavoidable. He left a huge mark on my life in ways dark and wonderful. Yesterday was all about the latter.

Mood music: “Hollywood” by The Runaways:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWSoOnSfk_8&hl=en_US&fs=1]

With Erin working and the kids camping with their grandparents, I found myself in the rare situation where I had a lot of time on my hands. I used it wisely, visiting a couple dear friends who wouldn’t be in my life had it not been for Sean.

First, I drove to Lynnfield and visited Stacey Scutellaro Cotter, Sean’s cousin. I met her when I was 15 at one of the Marley family gatherings at their house on the Lynnway in Revere, which was two doors down from me. She spent her junior and senior years at Northeast Metro Tech, where I was going, and senior year I would drive to Winthrop to pick her up and drive her to and from school in my battered green Ford LTD.

We had a lot in common, most notably a love for metal music. Most importantly, we had Sean in common.

We fell out of touch after Sean died, but reconnected a couple years ago on Facebook. She got married the same year as me and Erin, and, like me, has two sons.

It was great to see the beautiful family she’s built with her husband, Tim.

From there, I went down to Revere to see Mary, another friend I met through Sean. I used to have a Thanksgiving Eve tradition where I’d go to her house and shoot the breeze with her mom. Her mom had a heavy Irish accent and all the word color you would expect with that. One of my favorite lines from her was that Mary “could use a good blow” — Irish-speak for a slap in the face. I can’t remember what Mary did to get that response, but we laughed hard, and I still do. Now Mary lives in Revere with a great husband and son. Her husband, Vinny, is a biker type, exactly the kind of guy I expected her to marry. I say that as a compliment.

We had a great visit. I love talking to her 5-year-old son, Johnny, who is currently having the obsession with Thomas the Tank Engine that Sean (my son Sean, not Marley) and Duncan had a couple years ago, before they decided Legos and Indiana Jones were way cooler. Johnny is a sweet kid. He gets it from his parents.

The ghost of Marley inevitably came up during both visits. We always revisit the same questions: Did we do enough to help him? Would he still be alive today if there wasn’t so much secrecy surrounding his illness back then?

Had you asked me those questions a decade ago, you’d have gotten different opinions than what I’d tell you today.

I spent the better part of 13-plus years convinced that I didn’t do enough to help him; that I was too wrapped up in my own little world to notice what was happening. I was also angry with his family, because I felt that they were far too secretive about what was happening, feeding the stigma and making it impossible for Sean to get the help he needed.

My opinion on these things has evolved in the last couple years.

I’m no longer angry about the secrecy. Was more openness and honesty required to deal with the unfolding tragedy? Absolutely. But Sean’s parents are a product of the world they grew up in. Back then, if you had a mental illness you were usually locked away. It wasn’t understood back then that this is a legitimate illness that can be treated.

I think the treatment Sean got was the best treatment available in the 1990s. Unfortunately, treatment wasn’t as good and effective as it became a decade later.

He suffered in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But he lived a good life and I wouldn’t have survived without his guidance. Before he fell ill, he lived life at 1,000 miles per hour. He left no stone unturned in his quest to understand the meaning of life.

And while his death cut me to the core, he left me many gifts as well.

I’m glad I got to appreciate two of those gifts yesterday.

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Friends Who Help You Heal, Part 2

For a lot of years, I didn’t have many friends. It’s not that people didn’t like me. It’s just that I chose to isolate from the rest of the world for a long time. People with mental illness and addiction do that sort of thing.

Mood music: “Damn Good” by David Lee Roth:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mIP7ySBXBg&hl=en_US&fs=1]

I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately, because these days I seem to be spreading myself thin making plans with a lot of people. It’s a problem that’s well worth having. A blessing, for sure.

I’ve gotten some good quality time in this week with my friends,  the Littlefields. They’re staying in a beach house on Salisbury Beach and invited me over.

I spent all Wednesday morning there and some of last night. I’ve learned a few things about this family: Kevin’s oldest daughter, Courtney, has a razor-sharp wit. She keeps her old man on his toes, much to my entertainment. I’ve also learned that Matty, the 5-year-old, likes to run around outside in his underwear and that seagulls are terrified of him. He also kicks serious ass on the Xbox.

I’ve gotten the chance to catch up with many more friends this summer. Some of this is the Facebook effect, reconnecting with a lot of people from the past. But for me, there’s a lot more to it.

For a long time I preferred to hole up in my room or in my car. It was easier to go on a binge that way. People always get in the way when you’re obsessed with getting junked up.

It was also too painful to talk to people. I was way too self-conscious to pay attention to anyone else. I was 280 pounds at one point, and didn’t want to be seen that way. I also had little in common with people in general. I was so isolated that all I did was watch science fiction shows on TV. Life can be limiting when all you have to talk about is Star Trek or Star Wars.

I filled up the rest of my time with work, trying hard to please the masters and working 80-hour weeks. That too is a great way to isolate. You don’t have to talk to too many people when you’re holed up in an office all the time.

Why Erin stayed with me through that period is beyond me. But she did.

When did the isolation break? Probably a few years into my recovery. Once I reached a point in therapy where I could start to manage the OCD and shed the fear and anxiety that always hung over me, I suddenly found myself hungry to see new places and meet new people. I’d say that turning point came sometime in 2007. I haven’t looked back.

I travel frequently for work, and when I do I always make time to see friends who live in whatever area I’m visiting — San Francisco, Chicago, Toronto, Washington DC, New York, etc.

As time goes on, the list of people to visit is getting a lot longer.

I didn’t see that coming.

But I’m not complaining.

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The Pedophile

Some people deserve to spend life in a box. But even they have a shot at redemption.

As a dad, I have zero tolerance for anyone who hurts a child. So when I discovered someone I’ve known for many years spent a decade behind bars for pedophilia, It was like a knife in the gut. Further complicating matters is that as a recovering addict, I can’t help but feel bad for this guy. But only a little bit.

He’s addicted to sex and that addiction drew him to kids. He certainly got what he deserved: Hard jail time in the midst of hardened criminals who draw the line at crimes against children. People like that wouldn’t think twice about killing a pedophile in their midsts.

So this guy has been back on the streets for a year. He’s homeless, has found it nearly impossible to find a job and is constantly watching his back. He’s required by law to register as a sex offender, and to inform people living around him that he’s a convicted sex offender.

My first instinct was to tell him to fuck off when he contacted me. But after he described his evil instincts as an addiction, I paused. As I’ve said before, when someone is in the grip of addiction, sanity and logic no longer apply.

I had to hear the guy out.

He understands why people shun him. He doesn’t blame them. He’s been working hard at putting his life back together and curses the day he was born because he hates the side of himself that led to three convictions for assaulting a minor.

In talking to the guy, I found myself thankful as hell that my addiction took the form of binge eating. I think even a heroin addict is more fortunate than someone addicted to sex, pornography and especially pedophilia.

The latter addictions hit a person like any other addiction. You hate that side of you and want to change. But you find it impossible to stop unless you’re lucky enough to find recovery. And recovery is back-breaking, emotionally-draining work.

To have a sex addiction like that has to be sheer terror and hell for someone who isn’t evil at his core.

My Faith also tells me that no person who is sorry is beyond redemption. So you pray for them and hope for the best.

That’s where my sympathy ends.

I once had a debate with my friend Ken White about the death penalty. He’s for it, I’m against it. I argued that it’s hypocritical for the state to take a life. Ken argued back that some people don’t belong in society and have to go. That includes pedophiles. Maybe they’re not evil people, but their actions are evil and if they can’t function in society they shouldn’t be in society.

It was hard to argue back against that logic. Thing is, I tend to agree with him now.

Should this guy on the streets be back behind bars or dead? I’ll let others debate that. All I know is that I’m never, ever going to meet this guy in person or create a situation that lets him anywhere near my kids or anyone else’s.

Walking around with a big scarlet letter on his back must really suck, but it’s for the best. Even he knows that.

In the years following the Manson murders, the four who carried out Manson’s orders turned against him and turned to God. They completely renounced what they did and Charles “Tex” Watson even became a minister behind bars. They sought and received forgiveness from God. But they will never get out of prison.

They may have a right to forgiveness. Everyone does. But they did the crime and have to take the punishment. They gave up their right to live among the rest of us. That’s justice.

The pedophile now on the streets probably deserves a similar fate. But for whatever reason, they let him back out.

But he doesn’t have his freedom. He’ll always be watching his back. That too is justice, I suppose.

Writing about this was not comfortable. I wrestled with myself over whether to even tackle the subject. I decided I had to because I know the evil things addiction will make you do.

I saw this as a necessary tale of caution.

I’ll tell you what: I’m just extremely grateful that my addictions revolved around food and substances. People around me were hurt along the way, but it’s easier to receive forgiveness for those things.

It’s a bitch having to relate to someone who has done far worse than me.

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What’s Crohn’s Disease Got to do With it?

I’ve gotten notes lately from folks who’ve read enough of this blog to know I have Crohn’s Disease. They have it, too, and seemed to appreciate that they’re not alone. Some ask what the disease has to do with the mental illness and addictions at the heart of this blog. And so I’ve made this compilation of posts where the Crohn’s is a major factor:

The Lasting Impact of Crohn’s Disease: The author has lived most of his life with Crohn’s Disease and has developed a few quirks as a result.

The Bad Pill Kept Me from the Good Pill: Perhaps worse than Crohn’s Disease itself is the drug you take to quiet the flare ups. How the side effects from Prednisone later kept me from taking the medicine I needed to control the OCD.

Needles: The author knows what the needle feels like going in. But this isn’t what you think.

The Migraine: When the author gets a migraine, he’s reminded of what every day used to be like.

Shamed to Death: Why do people with mental and physical illness choose a slow, painful death over recovery?

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The Kid Sister

The 80s weren’t all bad, thanks to the kid sister who came along.

Mood music: “Nobody Told Me” by John Lennon. I used to sing the “Everybody’s smoking, and no one’s getting high” line to my kid sister, much to her dismay.

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

I’ve written about a lot of the darker parts of my childhood and teen years and how they factored into an adulthood of mental illness and addiction. But those years were brightened by a particularly strong ray of sunshine. Here’s the story of my kid sister, Shira.

Shira’s 15 years younger than me and was born nearly two years after my brother’s death. I was sick with the flu the day she was born and was also going through a Crohn’s flare up.

To say she brightened the mood at 22 Lynnway would be an understatement. She was an especially adorable baby and was a welcome distraction from everything that was going on at the time.

She’s grown up now and I don’t see her much these days, but last night we got a chance to catch up at my father’s birthday dinner. She was telling me about her current job teaching English and how she wants to use her teaching skills to work more with the disadvantaged. She recently got back from Mexico, where she lived for several months. Before that she lived in South America for quite awhile, teaching the locals.

She’s quite a kid. If not for the big chip on my shoulder, I might have been more like her in my 20s. I’m happy with how my life turned out and believe I had to go through the dark stuff to get here. But Shira has really been an inspiration to me. She crisscrosses the globe without fear and has an easygoing way about her that’s nearly impossible to crack. I know, because I’ve tried.

I’ve always been the teasing sort of brother. I tell everyone who will listen that I remember when I could fit Shira in a beer mug. I remember once, when she was about 4 or 5, she told me to stop teasing.

“I can’t help it,” I said. “I tease you cause I love you.”

“Then don’t love me,” she shot back.

Naturally, I told everyone about that exchange, and with more than a little glee.

Around the same time, I was having a lot of parties in the basement of the Revere house. The morning after, Shira would often make the rounds, stopping at the various friends who would be passed out asleep on my bed, on the couch or on the floor.

Even back then, no matter how much I drank the night before, I would always wake up early so I could sneak cigarettes without being seen.

I’d always enjoyed watching her make the rounds. My guests didn’t always enjoy it, but that was fine with me.

She brought a lot of joy to a family that was reeling from a string of bad breaks. She brings a lot of joy to the family today.

This post is my little thank you note to her.

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Lessons of a Thirty-something

The author is reflecting a lot on things that happened in his 30s.

Mood music: “Lunchbox” by Marylin Manson:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5Fo57AXW3w&hl=en_US&fs=1]

Since my 40th birthday is next month, I’m thinking a lot about the last decade. In many ways, I’m not the same guy I was when I was staring at my 30th birthday. This has been a decade of healing, with a lot of broken scabs along the way.

At the start of my 30s, I started to come undone. The symptoms of what would eventually become an OCD diagnosis suddenly grew in intensity. The binge eating addiction entered a new era of viciousness. Some relationships imploded while others were renewed.

In my early 30s, the OCD manifested itself in some insidious ways. I was obsessed with pleasing people, especially my bosses at The Eagle-Tribune, and my mother. I was also obsessed with keeping my weight down in the face of the binging. So I exercised like a madman. In the process, I was just masking a physical decline.

At 31, I was busy being something I’m not good at — a hard-ass. My bosses demanded it. I would get wound so tight that I became impossible to work with. I was also busy trying to keep my mother and step-father happy, which was almost always impossible, especially when it came to their personalities clashing with that of my wife, who had given birth to Sean a year before.

I celebrated my 31st birthday with my mother, stepfather, in-laws and Erin at the Legal Seafood in the Peabody mall. I didn’t want a cake. My mother went nuts about it, because on someone’s birthday you give them cake. She couldn’t understand why I didn’t want it. She was going to ask the waitress to bring me a cake anyway, but Erin put her foot down, because, as I said, I didn’t want a cake.

The next day, my mother called:

Ma: “I just wanted to apologize for not having a cake for you.”

Me: “But I didn’t want cake.”

Ma: “I tried to get you one, but YOUR WIFE wouldn’t let me.”

It always came back to Erin. She was always the scapegoat for decisions I made that my mother didn’t like. And yet, I pressed on, trying to make everyone happy.

By 2006 I was long gone from The Eagle-Tribune, but was still obsessed with pleasing the masters at TechTarget. And I was still trying to please my mother. It was getting a lot harder to do, since I was two years into therapy, newly diagnosed with OCD and spending a lot of time digging back into an abusive past for clues on how I got the way I did. A lot of it came back to her. And so in the summer of 2006 that relationship broke apart.

Why go on about these things? Because some important lessons emerged from the experiences that were instrumental in my healing.

First, I realized that no matter how hard you try, keeping people pleased is impossible.

Second, I realized that the only way to achieve mental health is to be true to oneself. For me, that meant surrendering to a higher power and dealing head-on with the addictions. It also meant being honest about my limited ability to control OCD without medication.

And while some relationships fell apart, others that were damaged in my 20s started to heal in my 30s, especially in the last year.

To that end, I think of Joy, Sean Marley‘s widow. She’s remarried with kids and has done a remarkable job of pushing on with her life. She dropped out of my world for nearly 14 years — right after Sean’s death — until recently. The contents of our exchange are private, but this much I can tell you: I was wrong all these years when I assumed  she hated my guts and wanted nothing more to do with me.

I have to be careful with this last reconnection. I still have a lot of questions about Sean’s final years and the OCD in me wants to know everything now. If I’m lucky, some answers will come in time. But I’m not going to push. I have no right to.

Besides, simply being reconnected is, as Joe Biden might say, “A big fucking deal.”

I used the Marilyn Manson song above as my mood music today because I think of “Lunchbox” whenever I get angry about my limitations. By the time the song is over, I usually feel a lot better.

But while the kid in the song has his metal lunchbox and is “armed real well,” I got my tools of recovery. So you could say I’m armed much better than that kid.