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Revere Revisited

I recently drove through my old neighborhood, the Point of Pines in Revere. Much has changed, some good, some not so good.

Mood music:

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Let’s start with the house I grew up in. It seems to sag a lot more than I remember. The bushes that covered the concrete patio are gone, but the huge birch tree on the front lawn is still there. Always loved that tree.

A lot happened in this house. The memories of being up all night in the bathroom as disease ripped through my insides is still fresh. So are the memories of the house being crammed with people right after my brother’s death. My parents fought a lot here, and we had to abandon the place for a bit during the Blizzard of 1978. The National Guard evacuated us. I’d like to say it was cool, but the truth is I was pretty scared.

Some good things happened here, too. As a teenager I had the entire basement apartment to myself. I threw parties, smoked to my heart’s content, and found some refuge. The downside was that every time a coastal storm came along I had to worry about the ocean flooding out my domain.

The condominiums they started to build behind the house in the 1980s was eventually completed. It sat unfinished for years, and I used to enjoy throwing rocks through the windows from my backyard. I’m not sure the neighbors liked it so much.

They shoved a couple other condos and townhouses in corners of the neighborhood I never would have thought big enough to build upon. Yet someone found a way.

The small, white Catholic Church closed down, was split in two and turned into a couple over-sized, rather ugly houses. The park is still the same. It looks pretty much the way it did back in the day, except for a bit more graffiti on the playground equipment.

Leaving the neighborhood and driving up Revere Beach Boulevard, I noticed the parking area on the beach side had been done away with, replaced by a sidewalk. No more of people parking and hanging out on hot summer nights, but I’m sure the residents like it better that way.

Driving up Revere Street, I noticed the Paul Revere School had been torn down and was being replaced with a new school. Good thing, too. That place was falling apart when I attended junior high there. I still remember the smell in the basement, where the cafeteria just happened to be. It was not a pleasant smell.

My dislike for the place also stems from being there during some tough times. No offense to those who taught there and studied there. Many of them are good friends today.

Squire Road is pretty much the same, though the Pewter Pot was torn down and replaced with what I think is a furniture store. The Kentucky Fried Chicken burned down at some point.

It’s nice to visit the place once in awhile. I certainly love the people.

But Haverhill is home now, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Revere is where I survived.

Haverhill is where I healed.

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The Third Brother

Remembering Peter Sugarman, another adopted brother who died too early — but not before teaching the author some important lessons about life.

The first time I met him was my second day as a reporter for The Stoneham Sun. He was an oddball who wore a jacket and tie to go with his sneakers and sweatpants. He was rail thin with a mustache that could comfortably hide a pound of whatever crumbs got caught there.

He wore a a strange-looking hat over a thick mop of hair. I was absolutely certain from Day 1 that the hair was fake, but never asked about it.

This is the tale of Peter Sugarman, another older brother who left me before I was ready. But he taught me some important lessons along the way and — oddly enough — his death was the catalyst for me finally getting the help I needed for what eventually became an OCD diagnosis.

My friendship with Peter really blossomed over the course of 1997, though it was a year earlier when I had first met him. I was in a bad place. My best friend, Sean Marley, had recently died and I had just taken a job as editor of the Lynn Sunday Post, a publication that was doomed long before I got there. I just didn’t realize it when I took the job.

I worked 80 hours a week. To get through the pressure I binge ate like never before and isolated myself. I had no real friends at the time because no one could compete with a dark room and a TV clicker.

But Peter was a bright spot, even though he was infuriating my editor side. A lot. His writing could be off the wall and opinionated when I was looking for straight, objective articles from him.

He once wrote about a blind man who, instead of offering a story of inspiration and living large in the face of adversity, led a bitter existence and talked about that bitterness during his interview with Peter. I opened the story on my screen for editing and saw the headline “Blind Man’s No Bluff.” I let the headline go to print, though I shouldn’t have. But the dark side in me thought it was funny, and the higher ups weren’t paying enough attention to The Post to notice.

He would write one story after the next questioning the motives of city councilors and the mayor. He would tag along with firefighters and write glowing narratives portraying them as heroes. That would have been fine if the assigned piece called for opinion. But it didn’t, and I edited it heavily.

That Sunday, I found a voicemail from Peter. He was furious, ripping into me for letting the J-School in me take over and ruin a perfectly good piece of journalistic brilliance.

I quickly got used to getting those messages every Sunday.

At the same time, we became constant companions. Whenever I left my dark bedroom, it was either to be with Erin, by then my fiance, or Peter. We hung out in every coffee shop in Lynn. He showed me the dangerous neighborhoods, introduced me to the city’s most colorful characters and showed me hidden gems like the Lynn Historical Society, where I was treated to boxes of old correspondence from former Mass. Speaker Tommy McGee, a colorful pol who, like many a Speaker who followed, eventually left the Statehouse under a cloud of corruption. I wrote about the old correspondence and interviewed McGee in his Danvers condominium. I couldn’t help but like the guy.

Peter and his wife, Regina, became constant dinner companions. When I finally escaped from The Post, our friendship deepened. I still hired him for the occasional freelance article in the Billerica paper I was editing. He would show up to cover meetings wearing his colorful collection of hats, including one that had “Yellow Journalist” emblazoned across the front.

He became my favorite person to talk politics with. He was at every family gathering. He and Regina were a constant presence when both our children entered the world. They were at every kid’s birthday party. They were here for our Christmas Eve parties.

Peter was in bad health, though, and was often in the hospital. His colon had been removed long before I met him and he continued to smoke. He was also a ball of stress when traditional J-School editors were tampering with his writing. I would call him and he would rage at whoever the editor was at that moment.

I enjoyed the hell out of it. His tirades always entertained me, whether I was the target or not.

I ultimately came to understood what it was all about. He wasn’t in journalism to write the traditional reports people like me were taught to write. He was in it to root out the truth and help the disadvantaged. He was a man on a mission to right the wrongs he saw. And he did so cheerfully. Even when his temper flared, there was a certain cheerfulness about it.

In the spring of 2004, he developed shingles. He grew depressed, though not beaten by any stretch. Regina later told me he was “bolting” down his food. Swallowing quickly without chewing because the shingles had irritated the heck out of his mouth and throat.

One night, he choked on a piece of chicken. He lost his breath just long enough to cause insurmountable brain damage.

He lingered for about a week in the hospital, essentially dead but still breathing with the aid of life support. For the first time in our friendship, I saw what he looked like without the hairpiece. I was right all along.

In the months following his death, I really started to come unhinged. The OCD took over everything. Fear and anxiety were constant companions.

I finally reached the deep depth I needed to realize I needed help. In the years that followed, I got it. It hasn’t been easy, but then I can always remember that things weren’t easy for Peter. And yet, he carried on with that warped cheerfulness of his.

I’ve endeavored to do the same. I’ve also come to understand the value of the writing he tried to do, and have embraced it.

Thanks, Peter.

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Marley and Me

The author describes the second older brother whose death hit harder than that of the first.

Mood music:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/48842027″ iframe=”true” /]

It doesn’t seem right that a friend’s death would hit me harder and fuel my insanity more than the death of a biological brother. But that’s what happened.

This is the story of Sean Marley, who introduced me to metal music, taught me to love life, and whose death was one of the cattle prods for my writing this blog.

I had known Sean for as long as I could remember. He lived two doors down from me on the Lynnway in Revere, Mass. He was always hanging around with my older brother, which is one of the reasons we didn’t hit it off at first.

Friends of older siblings often pick on the younger siblings. I’ve done it.

Sean was quiet and scholarly. By the early 1980s he was starting to grow his hair long and wore those skinny black leather ties when he had to suit up.

On Jan. 7, 1984 — the day my older brother died — my relationship with Sean began to change. Quickly. I’d like to believe we were both leaning on each other to get through the grief. But the truth of it is that it was just me leaning on him.

He tolerated it. He started introducing me to Motley Crue, Ozzy Osbourne, Van Halen and other hard-boiled music. I think he enjoyed having someone younger around to influence.

As the 1980s progressed, a deep, genuine friendship blossomed. He had indeed become another older brother. I grew my hair long. I started listening to all the heavy metal I could get my hands on. Good thing, too. That music was an outlet for all my teenage rage, keeping me from acting on that rage in ways that almost certainly would have landed me in jail.

We did everything together: Drank, got high, went on road trips, including one to California in 1991 where we flew into San Francisco, rented a car and drove around the entire state for 10 days, sleeping and eating in the car.

This was before I became self aware that I had a problem with obsessive-compulsive behavior, fear and anxiety. But the fear was evident on that trip. I was afraid to go to clubs at night for fear we might get mugged. When we drove over the Bay Bridge I was terrified that an earthquake MIGHT strike and the bridge would collapse from beneath us.

I occupied the entire basement apartment of my father’s house, and we had a lot of wild parties there. Sean was a constant presence. His friends became my friends. His cousin became my cousin. I still feel that way about these people today. They are back in my life through Facebook, and I’m grateful for it.

He was a deadly serious student at Salem State College, and his dedication to his studies inspired me to choose Salem State as well. Good thing, too. That’s where I met my wife.

In 1994, things started to go wrong for Sean. He became paranoid and depressed. He tried to hurt himself more than once. I didn’t know how to react to it.

That fall, he got married and I was best man. I wanted to be the greatest best man ever. But I was so self-absorbed at the time that there was no way I could effectively be there for someone else, even him.

Over the next two years, his depression came and went. He was hospitalized with it a couple times. By the summer of 1996, he was darker and more paranoid than I’d ever seen him. But I was so busy binge eating and worrying about my career that I didn’t pay enough attention.

In November 1996, I got a call at work from my mother. She had driven by Sean’s house and saw police cars and ambulances and all kinds of commotion on the front lawn. I called his sister and she put his wife on the phone. She informed me he was dead. By his own hand.

I spent a lot of the next 10 years angry at him for doing such a thing. He had everything going for him. And he chose to end it. I didn’t understand it, even as I was descending into my own brand of craziness.

The reason his death hit harder than my own brother’s is complicated. I think it’s because I had been burned for the second time, which is always worse than the first. It’s probably that I was an adult the second time and had a greater awareness of circumstances behind his death. Or it’s probably just the nature of the ending.

It took my own struggle with depression and OCD years later to truly grasp what he had gone through. I wasn’t there for him, but by sharing my own struggles I can hopefully be there for others.

Life has been good in the years since his death. I married a wonderful woman, followed a career path that’s produced many Blessings, found God and had two precious children.

We named our first son Sean Michael Brenner. And with that, I guess I was able to move on.

My son is every bit as smart as the man he was named for. His wit tickles me every day. And he’s caring beyond his years.

You can bet your ass I’ll be watching him like a hawk to make sure he doesn’t become too much like the man he’s named after.

Continued in “Death of a Second Sibling“

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http://www.theocddiaries.com/2009/12/22/ocd-diaries-12-22-the-ego-ocd-built/
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Scaring the People in Your Life

The author is hearing from a lot of old friends shocked to read about his past. Thing is, basket cases are good at hiding their craziness in public.

To most of my family, the stories I tell in previous posts aren’t all that surprising. They were there. My in-laws may not have known everything that was going on back in the day, but they saw my quirks.

Mood music:

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Even at work, my quirks were easy to see. It surfaced in the form of my over-intensity on deadline; my habit of hovering over page designers; my overbearing nature toward the reporters I managed on the night shift.

But I was much better at keeping it together — on the surface, at least — around most friends back then.

Which brings me to another truth about people with mental illness and addictions: We do most of our suffering and self destructing in private.

There’s a scene in a “West Wing” episode where Leo McGarry, recovering alcoholic and chief of staff to the fictional President Bartlet, tells someone: “I don’t get drunk in front of people, I get drunk alone.” I ate alone. And I ran through my darkest, most obsessive-compulsive thinking alone. Most of the time, the two went hand in hand.

But there were times in my life where I hid it well.

As a student at North Shore Community College and later at Salem State College, I was really coming into my own in terms of my look and attitude. I played up the long-hair and metal image, stayed thin through bouts of starvation and read a lot of books so I could talk about them and appear smart.

That’s not to say I was walking around with fake skin. I was who I was at the time. In many ways I’m still the same guy. It’s just that I waited till the door to my room was closed and locked before I let the Devil out.

Despite what I’ve written about being the crazy-ass guy in the newsroom, I’ve been pretty good a lot of the time at putting on a calm, cool face, especially in more recent years. As I was diving deeper and deeper into the food addiction to dull the unpleasantness of going through therapy, I was being prolific as hell at work, writing a ton of breaking news and doing so with a smile.

At one point, a boss at the time marveled that I was so relaxed and zen-like for a guy who had just spent 12 hours covering a big news event. I laughed hard at that. I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, but zen-like was a new one.

On the drive home that day, I ordered $35 worth of junk in a nearby fast-food drive-thru and downed the contents of the four bags by the time I got home.

I was also pretty good at hiding my depression. Part of that is because my brand of depression has never been the suicidal variety that essentially makes the sufferer close down. Mine was more of a brooding depression in which I internalized my feelings and withdrew as often as I could. But on the job, I pushed all those feelings into the proper compartment and went on with life.

There’s light at the end of this tale. The therapy, medication, Spiritual awakening and loss of fear have gone far in making me the calm, zen-like guy on the inside as well as outside. I still carry the restlessness of OCD, but I manage it all better and don’t let the condition get in the way of the precious present nearly as much as before.

To those who knew me in the late 1980s and early 1990s: Don’t worry. I’m basically the same guy you knew back then.

The difference is that the man inside has gotten a lot better at being the man on the surface.

But make no mistake: I still have my bad days. I am human, after all.

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Fear Factor

In this installment, the author describes years of living in a cell built by fear, how he broke free and why there’s no turning back.

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” — Franklin Delano Roosevelt

This morning I led a meeting of Over-eaters Anonymous, a task that included standing before a room of people for 30 minutes to tell my story of OCD, addiction and recovery.

It was my third time “qualifying” at an OA meeting this past year. Meanwhile, I did a fair amount of public speaking for my day job as senior editor of CSO Magazine. I sat on panels at security conferences and did solo presentations in front of various information security groups around the country.

Five or so years ago, the notion of me getting up to speak in front of people would have been laughable.

I was too busy hiding in my cage of fear to do such things. Fear will rob you blind, forcing you to avoid life and retreat into the sinister world of addiction.

Breaking free of it was a gift from God. But it took a long time to figure out how to unwrap it and realize my potential.

For me, fear was one of the many byproducts of OCD, something that went hand in hand with anxiety. It kept me away from parties. It scared me out of traveling. I turned down a lot of living in favor of lying in my bedroom watching TV. There are a couple examples in particular that I’m not proud of.

1991

One summer night I was hanging with two friends in front of Kelly’s Roast Beef, a popular eatery on Revere Beach. As we started walking the mile back to my house, we noticed we were being followed by some 15 punks. It was clear they were looking for trouble. I panicked and ran to a nearby bar. As I looked back, I couldn’t see my friends.

The punks had circled them and started kicking and punching their guts in. I called the police and the beatings ended quickly, but I couldn’t get over the fact that I ran away. Worse, it marked the end of my walking along the beach at night for many years to come.

It was a huge fear-inflicted injustice. I grew up on that beach and loved the place. I walked its entire length daily. It gave me peace and clarity. And I allowed some punks to scare me away.

2001

A week after the 9-11 attacks in New York and Washington, Erin and I were scheduled to fly to Arizona to attend a cousin’s wedding. The night before were were supposed to leave, I gave in to my terror at the prospect of getting on a plane and we didn’t go. It’s one of the biggest regrets of my life.

There are smaller examples in between and in the years after, but those are two of the more vivid memories.

Fear also fueled the binge eating and kept me from standing up for things that were right in the family and workplace. It was better to keep my trap shut, I thought. To do otherwise would put my job in danger or have me blackballed.

Then there was the fear of loss I wrote about a few blog posts back — fear that if I didn’t overprotect my kids I might lose them to some imagined beast; that if I spoke my mind during a spousal spat my wife might walk out on me. In hindsight, these were foolish ideas. But in the grip of fear, you think this way and act on it even though you really know better.

When I began getting treatment for the OCD the fear actually accelerated for a while. If a toe went a little numb I’d think I was suffering from a blood clot. A headache would leave me wondering if a tumor was growing inside my skull. A pain in the chest became fear of a heart attack.

I can’t remember when the fear finally began to lift. I think it was in early 2007, shortly after I began taking Prozac. Once the medicine untangled the chemical imbalances in the brain, situations I had feared suddenly seemed manageable. It was pretty weird, actually. I didn’t know what to do with this new feeling. Or maybe it was the year before, when I converted to the Catholic Faith and increasingly let God into my life. When you have God on your side, there’s really nothing to fear, right?

Then little milestones came along. There was a business trip to California that would have consumed me with worry a few years before. There was the first time giving a presentation in front of a room full of security people who were almost certainly smarter than me. The computer holding my PowerPoint presentation went on the fritz and I was forced to present sans slides. I told the audience that I was just going to wing it and that broke the ice.

Today, I look for opportunities to give talks in front of crowded rooms. I have work to do on my speaking skills, but I want more. The more I do, the more my confidence grows and the smoother and more organized the presentations get.

I look for opportunities to fly as well. And though I work hard on the business at hand, I ALWAYS make a point of building in a day to go out and explore, especially if there’s a piece of history to see up close. I want to see it all. Staring at the hotel room TV will no longer do.

Sometimes I worry that the fear will return and I’ll again retreat to my old cage. I don’t think that’s going to happen, though, for one simple reason — the world has been opened up to me. I’ve experienced too much joy these last couple years to go back to the way I was.

I couldn’t go back if I tried. Not that I would want to try.

To be clear, I still worry about things. But I don’t let it shut down the rest of my life. Instead of being engulfed, I can put the concern in its proper mental compartment and move along with my life.

There will be difficulties ahead, I’m sure. That’s life. But I feel more ready to deal with what may come than I’ve ever been before.

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The Bridge Rats of Point of Pines, Revere

In this post, the author reviews the imperfections of childhood relationships in search of all his OCD triggers. Along the way, old bullies become friends.

I used to blame childhood bullies and name-callers for all the things that led to an adulthood with OCD. I was bullied, you ask? You betcha. I was called a lot of names related to being fat. Some kids gave me the occasional beating. But I was no better than they were.

Mood music:

[spotify:track:2uqAPEdeZxmOqIuH9ejdgv]

For every five kids who picked on me, there were five other kids I picked on to feel better. In high school, there was one kid everyone called Stiffy because of something unfortunate that happened to him in the locker room shower. He had a speech impediment that caused him to talk in a low, tone-deaf drone. He was freakishly thin. He had double the body hair that I have today, and that’s saying something. I’m pretty sure he got a few beatings along the way.

There was the classmate in elementary school who got beat up a lot. I beat him up once because he was the only kid in the schoolyard I could take down.

So in one sense, the childhood vitriol that came my way was poetic justice. The other thing is that you grow up and realize all kids do stupid things, but most of us grow up.

I remember a gang called the Bridge Rats. They were all about my older brother’s age and hung out under the General Edwards Bridge connecting the Point of Pines neighborhood in Revere, Mass. to the neighboring City of Lynn. They smoked pot, sucked kegs of beer dry and bullied the crap out of me and some of my friends. Among their many works of graffiti under that bridge was a corrupted version of the Ten Commandments. Since I was a believer in God even as a kid, I was pretty certain they were all going to burn in Hell, and I wanted to be their bus driver.

In high school, when I wasn’t picking on Stiffy, I got my share of fat jokes thrown my way. And I was never allowed into any of the little groups that form among classmates. I even had trouble fitting in with the headbanger crowd.

Then I lost a bunch of weight in what was, in hindsight, the stirrings of athletic bulimia, where eating binges were followed by days, weeks or months of starving myself, existing on black coffee and Raisin Bran, and working out three hours a day. I grew my hair long. A few people started to actually think I was cool.

The trend continued into the college years, where I kept the hair long, got involved in all the extra-curricular groups and for the first time started making a lot of friends. I drank and smoked pot, the same things I used to think the Bridge rats were going to burn over. I chain smoked. And for most of college, it kept me thin and cool.

Of course, inside the empty hole in my soul was starting to grow, gathering up all that was dark in me to form the mental disorder that would stalk me in adulthood. The addictions were what I used to try filling the hole.

But on the surface, I was doing a decent job of holding up my facade.

Fast-forward to more recent years, when I turned to therapists to help me peel back layer after layer of what ultimately fueled my OCD. There was the family tragedy and childhood illness. There was the loss of dear friends and the constant fear that more loss was right around the corner.

But a funny thing happened in therapy: The memories of schoolyard bullies and Bridge Rats didn’t come bubbling to the surface. I now know why — because they really weren’t traumas at all. We were all being stupid kids, and since I was guilty of the same behavior, I wasn’t entitled to harbor resentments. If anything, I plunged into a period of self-loathing over the memories of things I had done to others.

But here’s the great part of it all: Those I’ve since reached out to have been pretty forgiving. We’ve also become friends. As for those Bridge Rats: I’m connected to many of them via Facebook and we often look back at those days and laugh. Most of us are too busy with our spouses, kids and jobs to lament past misdeeds. We learned from them instead. And we grew up.

I lost track of Stiffy after graduation and hope he’s ok. I am at least at peace over the fact that I did befriend him in our senior year and renounced what I had done to him.

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The Freak in the Newsroom

A tale of terror in newsrooms across the state of Massachusetts.

I love my job. I love the subject matter (IT and physical security, emergency preparedness, regulatory compliance). I love the people I work with, many of whom I’ve worked with at other points in my nearly 19 years in journalism. And I love my daily dealings with some of the smartest, passionate security professionals on the planet.

But it wasn’t always this way. Work used to be something to dread, binge eat and get sick over. And I had no one to blame but myself.

For me, one of the main triggers for obsessive-compulsive behavior was work. I was driven to the brink by a desire to be the golden boy, the guy who worked the most hours, wrote the most stories, handled the most shit work and pleased the most managers.

Golden Boy

I got my first reporting job at Community Newspaper Company, covering the school system in Swampscott, Mass. It was part time, but I put in more than 40 hours a week. Not terrible. I liked the people I worked with and felt pretty dang good about having the job even though I was still one course shy of earning my degree. But I spent much of the time in fear that I wouldn’t measure up. My head would spin at 3 a.m. as I tried to come up with things to write about and prove my worth. My weight soared from 230 pounds — already too much — to 260.

Sullen Boy

The next job was full-time as reporter for the Stoneham Sun. I pretty much worked around the clock, trying to show the editor, managing editor and editor-in-chief (all friends to this day, BTW) that I was THE MAN. Late in my tenure on this beat, my best friend killed himself and I binged as much on work as on food to bury my rage. It didn’t work. I gained another 20 pounds and wrote a column about my friend’s suicide, naming names and describing the method of death in way too much detail. To this day, his parents and sister won’t have anything to do with me, and I can’t say I blame them.

Lynn Sunday Post and Peter Sugarman

This was a bad year. My best friend had just died and I was given the task of editing The Lynn Sunday Post, a newspaper that was on its deathbed. You could say I was chosen to be its pallbearer. There was barely a staff. Few people read it anymore. My only day off was Monday. And my only reporter was an eccentric guy with a cheezy mustache: Peter Sugarman.

He infuriated me from the start, writing epic stories dripping with his personal passion and political agenda instead of the objective writing I was taught to follow in college journalism classes (Peter would call it my J-School side, and it wasn’t a compliment).

It was only natural that he would become my new best friend, another older brother who was always tring to get me to see the light (his way of doing things).

He and his wife Regina were a constant presence from that time until he choked to death in May 2004, three weeks after I started my SearchSecurity job. But while he was around, I learned a lot about using my writing as an agent of change, a force for good, and about thinking about the readers instead of the higher ups I had been trying so desperately to please.

Another person put in the right place at the right time by God.

Interlude

Much of the same behavior while editor of The Billerica Minuteman, though there was some level of stability during this period.

Deep Slide

During this period I was night editor at The Eagle-Tribune.

Before I go further, I should mention that what follows is HOW I SAW THINGS AT THE TIME, NOT NECESSARILY HOW THINGS ACTUALLY WERE.

For a year and a half of that I was assistant editor of the New Hampshire edition. It started off well enough. But this was a tougher environment than I had experienced before. Editors were tougher to please and often at cross purposes with each other. Part of the task I was handed was to be the bad cop that called reporters late at night to rip them over one perceived injustice or another. I sucked at it. I mostly came off as an asshole, and it never made a difference for the better.

The most insidious, bitter part of the experience was during my time on the New Hampshire staff. The managing editor I worked for directly seemed to relish cracking down on reporters, putting them down and ripping their work to shreds. And he expected me to do it the same way, exactly as he did it.

To be fair, the guy wasn’t without a soul. He tried to do the right thing most of the time and genuinely cared about the people under him. But he was also consumed with the idea that all the other editors on staff were out to get us and undermine our efforts. Everyone was a back-stabber. Whenever I had the impulse to collaborate with editors from other sections or let some things slide, he came down hard.

More than ever, I was being the editor he wanted me to be and not who I really was. I called reporters at all hours. I put them down. I fought with other editors and hovered over the page designers on deadline.

I also came as close as I had to an emotional breakdown at that point. I started calling in sick A lot. I’d wake up with the urge to throw up. By mid-afternoon, the urge switched to binge eating.

That managing editor eventually moved on and I returned to the night desk. By then, I was burning out, a shell of the man I once was. By the time I left there, everyone on staff was evil in my eyes; the cause of everything that had gone wrong.

I was wrong for the most part. Fortunately for me, most of my co-workers from the period looked past my insanity and today many of them are among my dearest friends.

Working a Dream Job But Trapped in the Mental House of Horrors

For the next four years I wrote for SearchSecurity.com, part of the TechTarget company. The job was everything I could have hoped for. Excellent colleagues, a ton of creative freedom and plenty of success came my way.

It also coincided with another emotional meltdown as I started to wake up to the mental illness and the fact that I needed to do something about it.

I think I hid it from my colleagues pretty well, except for my direct editor, Ann Saita, who became something of a mom to me, a nurturing soul I could spill my guts to. I’m pretty sure God put her in the right place at the right time, knowing my time of reckoning was at hand. During this period, I untangled all the mental wiring, started taking Prozac (See “The Bad Pill Kept Me from the Good Pill“), officially became a devout Catholic (more on that later) and finally started to feel whole.

Managing Editor, CSO Magazine and beyond

My current job is truly the best I’ve had. I get to work with people like Derek Slater, Joan Goodchild and Jim Malone, who was my editor-in-chief during my first reporting jobs at CNC and one of the folks I went out of my mind trying to please. A side note that amuses me greatly: Peter Sugarman used to drive him nuts, too.

The most noteworthy thing about the last year and a half is that a personal focus has been to get a handle on the eating. In 2008 I discovered OA and started to regain the upper hand. I quit flour and sugar and started putting all my food on a little scale. My mind cleared.

Here’s the best part about my present situation: From Day 1 at CSO, I have not once worried about being a people pleaser. I’ve just focused on the projects I believed in and my bosses have been content to let me have at it.

I don’t work much more than 40 hours a week, and the funny thing is that I’m more prolific now than I ever was before.

Business travel I used to dread has become a joy. Speaking in front of people has gone from something to fear to something to do more of.

Now, five years into my stint at CSO, I’m headed for a new challenge, focusing all my writing and editing skills on the security data at Akamai Technologies.  I feel no dread, only happiness and glee.

And to think — All I had to do was get out of my own way.
Eagle-Tribune staffers

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The Most Uncool Addiction

In this installment, the author opens up about the binge-eating disorder he tried to hide for years — and how he managed to bring it under control.

I don’t beat myself for having engaged in addictive behavior. That kind of thing is obvious for someone with OCD. If there’s a compulsion to be rubbed raw, you go for it, no matter how destructive it is on body and soul. Then you wake up the next day and do it again.

But on occasion I find myself wallowing in this question: “Why, oh why, couldn’t I be addicted to something more common like alcohol or heroin?”

Hell, many of the musicians, writers and political leaders who’ve inspired me drank to excess, smoked nonstop or even used needles.

Winston Churchill spent every waking hour of WW II buzzed. He dipped his cigars in brandy and port. Phil Lynott (Thin Lizzy) and Nikki Sixx (Motley Crue) almost made being a junkie look cool. It wasn’t cool, of course. But that’s how I think when under the haze.

In my case, the addiction is food, something we need to survive. It’s not the least bit cool. Certainly not a “normal” addiction.

That food would be my problem makes perfect sense. As a kid sick with Chron’s Disease much of the time, I was often in the hospital for weeks at a time with a feeding tube that was inserted through the left side of my chest. That’s how I got nourishment. I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink anything. At a very early age, my relationship with food was doomed to dysfunction.

It didn’t help that I was from a family of over-eaters who would stuff themselves for comfort in times of stress and fatigue.

In our society it’s considered perfectly OK to indulge in the food. Time and again, I’ve heard it said that overeating is a lot better than drinking or drugging. But for me, back when I was at my worst, binge eating was a secret, sinister and shameful activity.

Here’s how it works:

You get up in the morning and swear to God that you’re going to eat like a normal person. You pack some healthy food for the office. Then you get in the car and the trouble starts before the car’s out of the driveway. Another personality emerges from the back of the brain, urging you to indulge. It starts as a whisper but builds until it vibrates through the skull like a power saw.

The food calls out to you. And you’ll do whatever it takes to get it, then spend a lot of time trying to cover your tracks.

Before you know it, you’re in the DD drive-thru ordering two boxes of everything. It all gets eaten by the time you reach the office. You get to the desk disgusted, vowing to never do that again. But by mid-morning, the food is calling again. You sneak out before lunchtime and gorge on whatever else you can find, then you do it again on the way home from work.

You pull into McDonald’s and order about $30 of food, enough to feed four people. From the privacy of the car, the bags are emptied. By the time you get home, you wish you were dead.

The cycle repeats for days at a time, sometimes weeks and months.

For many years I hid it well, especially in my early 20s. I would binge for a week, then starve and work out for another week. That mostly kept the weight at a normal-looking level.

Call it athletic Bulimia.

In one inspired episode, I downed $30 of fast food a day for two weeks, then went a week eating nothing but Raisin Bran in the morning, then nothing but black coffee for the rest of the day. After the cereal, I’d work out for two hours straight.

In my mid-20s, once I started working for a living, I kept up the eating but couldn’t do the other things anymore. So my weight rose to 280. In the late 1990s I managed to drop 100 pounds and keep it off through periodic fasting.

Then I started to face down what would eventually be diagnosed as OCD, and I once again gave in to the food. The gloves were off.

The binging continued unabated for three years. The weight went back up to 260. I also started to run out of clever ways to mask over all the money I was spending on my habit. I was slick. I’d take $60 from the checking account and tell my wife it was for an office expense or some other seemingly legitimate thing. But she’s too smart to fall for that for long.

Then I discovered Over-eaters Anonymous (OA), a 12-step program just like AA, where the focus is on food instead of booze. I didn’t grasp it immediately. In fact, I thought everyone at these meetings were nuts. They were, of course, but so was I.

Thing is, I had reached a point in my learning to manage OCD where I was ready to face down the addiction. If it had to be through something crazy, so be it.

Through the program, I gave up flour and sugar. The plan is to be done with those ingredients for life. Put them together and they are essentially my cocaine. I dropped 65 pounds on the spot. But more importantly, many of the ailments I had went away. I stopped waking up in the middle of the night choking on stomach acid. The migraines lessened substantially. And I found a mental clarity I never knew before.

I can’t say I’ve slaughtered the demon. Addicts relapse all the time. But I have a program I didn’t have before; a road map unlike any other.

My odds of success are better than ever.

But before I could get there, I had to unravel the wiring in my head, learn to live with a mental disorder and then make a bold change in my way of eating.

It’s not cool at all. If you’re laughing because I let the food drag me to such a state, I don’t blame you. In a way, it is funny. Crazy people do stupid things. And stupid is often funny.