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Meet My Demon

Why the author treats his demon like an imaginary friend, and how it helps.

It won’t give up

It wants me dead

God damn that noise inside my head

From today’s mood music, “The Becoming,” by Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDfyR22u_gI&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

At last night’s OA meeting, I saw quite a few people with heavy weights pressing on their minds. I won’t share details, because these meetings are all about anonymity. But it got me thinking…

You see, for all our awful behavior, there’s one thing we addicts do exceptionally well: self-criticize. If you want to meet people who are good at focusing on their own vulnerabilities and venting shame, we are the best there is.

It doesn’t really help us, mind you. It just makes us feel worse and, in response, lose ourselves in our chosen addiction. In OA, the addiction is compulsive overeating. But it’s the same with booze and narcotics.

We often describe it as our inner demon. The demon comes to you when you are feeling low and taps on your shoulder. Then he suggests you sooth your anxieties with a pile of junk.

Many of those who suffer from mental illnesses — mine is OCD, which fuels my addictive behavior — tend to give their demon a persona.

Winston Churchill called it his Black Dog.

I call my demon The Asshole. That’s what he is, after all. He’s my dysfunctional imaginary friend.

I got the idea of making my demon an imaginary friend from my kids, both of whom have imaginary friends. I believe Sean used to call his “Rexally.” Rexally was a sperm whale, by the way.

So let me tell you about The Asshole.

He’s like one of those overbearing relatives who will constantly push food on you when you drop by for dinner.

The Asshole: “Try that slice of pizza. It’s wonderful.”

Me: “No thanks. I’m full.”

The Asshole: “Come on, try it. It’s really good.”

If I’m not in recovery, I shove the slice of pizza down my throat, followed by another 10 slices. When it comes to binge eating, I can’t have just five of something, whether it’s pizza or potato chips. I have to have them all, and when they’re gone I’ll keep pushing other things in my mouth, no matter how vile and shameful I feel two hours later.

When I am in recovery, which, thank God, I am now, I tell The Asshole: “Piss off. I’m full and got things to do.”

Facing The Asshole used to fill me with fear and anxiety. I was the weakest person in the room when he was around.

But in the years since I entered therapy for the OCD, found my Faith and started taking medication, the relationship has changed.

Now The Asshole is more like an annoying cousin; someone I keep at arm’s length. I don’t shut him out of my life completely — I can’t, really — but one day I stopped fearing him, and that made a world of difference.

He still taps my shoulder just about every day. But with the fear gone, I’m able to go about my business.

Another thing that’s changed: What he has to offer just can’t compare with the other parts of my life: My wife and kids. My writing. A good book.

But I’m not stupid. I know he’s never going to go away. He’ll always be there, lying in wait. He’s like a terrorist, that old Asshole. He may lose most days, but he keeps trying, knowing that one of these days he might just pull off the attack.

And, truth be told, I’m never more than a few minutes away from the relapse. It’s that way with anyone in recovery.

And so I must be careful.

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A Little Bitter

The author on three of the 12 Steps he keeps tripping over.

Mood music for this post: “A Little Bitter” by Alice in Chains:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3qpF9xUTT0&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

Of the 12 Steps of Recovery, there are three  I keep tripping over:

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

To be fair to myself,  Step 10 isn’t a huge problem. No one is better at taking personal inventory and focusing on all my vulnerabilities than me. Promptly admit it? All the time. That’s why I have this blog.

The problem is that I have a tough time taking the other two steps, particularly the part about making amends to those I’ve harmed.

The pastor at my church, Father Nason, once joked that those who have trouble making amends suffer from Irish Alzheimer’s disease: They forget everything but the grudges.

I’d like to think I don’t hold grudges. I know there are people I have forgiven for the past, and I’ve tried to ask for forgiveness when it’s called for.

But I admit to some confusion over just who I’ve harmed and what they need from me. With that confusion comes a little bitterness.

Let me make a list of those I think I’ve harmed and see how I’ve really done at making amends:

The Marley family. As I’ve mentioned, the family of my late friend Sean Marley — the mother and sister, in particular — hate my guts because I revealed too much about his suicide in a column I wrote shortly after it happened. I don’t blame them for being angry. I did a lot of stupid things back then. My intentions weren’t bad, but the results were. I took their raw wounds and ripped them open even wider.

So here I am again, admitting it.

I’ve tried to make amends over the years, but I’ve gotten silence from the Marleys along the way. So there are a few damaged relationships that will stay that way for now.

I guess this is a case where trying to make amends would indeed be harmful to others.

My Mother: This one is so complicated I wouldn’t know where to start untangling the mess. I’ve hurt her big-time, along with a lot of other people from that side of the family.

I won’t get into the tit-for-tat, but the biggest problem is that we both have OCD and hers triggers mine. We just can’t get along these days, though we have made a few attempts to move on,. But the bullshit keeps getting in the way. I’ve long since forgiven her for things that happened in the past. But making amends for the more recent stuff is proving more elusive at this point.

My addictions: In this case, I’m the one I’ve harmed by engaging in slow-motion self-destructiveness. I’ve been forgiven for this a thousand times over by my wife, church and friends.

I need to make amends with myself on this one, which means making peace with the fact I have to permanently abstain from compulsive overeating and alcohol. It’s not easy because having to abstain makes me bitter sometimes. Not so much in terms of the food because I was happy to shake that devil, but the wine is something else. Not being able to have any really sucks sometimes, especially when I’m traveling. But I have no choice.

I know the coffee and Red Bull are replacement addictions and, though they don’t make my life unmanageable like the other stuff did, I know that from a physical health standpoint I’m going to have to dial it way back at some point. This makes me a little bitter, too.

Or you could say playing whack-a-mole with addictive behavior makes me bitter.

The good thing about bitterness is that the taste never lasts. Eventually I’ll find the solution to what keeps me from succeeding with those three steps.

It may take years, but the whole process is for life anyway.


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Pieces of Mind

This happens every time I have a week of travel.

By the time Sunday rolls around, I reach a point in the afternoon where I sit in the chair by the living room window as my brain cracks into pieces. I feel a buzz, even though I’m sober. I feel some bloat, even though my eating has been clean.

Mood music: “Ace of Spades” by Motorhead:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxJwP0izGgc&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

I feel like a wheel that’s spinning so fast that it looks like it’s completely still.

I feel the need to go into hyper-active mode, even though that’s the last thing I should be doing today.

It’s been a good day. Good Mass this morning, a fun Lego run with the kids this afternoon, and the weather is spectacular.

But I’m preoccupied.

I’ve gotten to do a lot of writing the last two weeks and now I’m looking at a week where there will be a lot more editing than writing. Deadline for the May print edition of CSO Magazine is coming up soon and I got a week behind while I was in California. There are guest columns to edit and post, and a book proposal to tweak.

During the RSA security conference, an editor for a security book publisher approached me about writing a book. But my idea veers too far from their normal content, and I’m doing some tweaking to fuse my idea with some of what they’re looking for.

If it doesn’t come together, so be it. But until then, I’m going to preoccupy myself with ways to come up with something they can sell.

One way or another, the book is going to get written. It’s in my head and will scrape the inside of my skull until I let it out.

Then there’s Source Boston, one of my favorite annual security conferences, which is coming up the week after next.

My want is to work the conference hard each day and write a lot of articles from it, but that aint happening because Sean and Duncan are on school vacation that week. It’s also Sean’s birthday and there will be a kid’s party to help pull off somewhere in there.

It’ll all work out fine. It always does. But planning how to balance the work thing with family has always been a challenge for me.

In the end, Sean’s birthday will win out. It’s more important than the other thing. Wife and kids come first.

All these things are examples of me obsessing about things beyond my mortal ability to control.

I manage that instinct a hell of a lot better than I used to, but it never fully disappears.

The fear-anxiety part did disappear, and that’s made each day a gift.

But lying around care-free? Not gonna happen unless I fall asleep.

Ah, the life of a control freak.

As long as I keep it from becoming a control freak-out, it’s all good.

Welcome to my world.

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The Priest Who Came Clean

I’ve met many priests, some good and some not-so-good. People criticize priests because they’re athiests or they’re angry about the sex abuse scandal. Father Dennis Nason made a believer out of me by coming clean about his own sins.

You would have to be sick in the head NOT to be outraged by the sex abuse, and especially of the cover-up. In the end, though, people forget that priests are human, with all the sin-making embedded into their genetic code just like the rest of us.

When a priest is able to lay his own flaws bare for all to see, I think it takes an extra level of courage, since there has to be a lot of pressure around the lofty standards they are held to.

Father Nason rose to the occasion.

I met Father Nason about 11 years ago. He took over our parish, All Saints, when several other churches were closed down and consolidated into the All Saints Community.

He had a lot of angry people on his hands. One’s church becomes home, and when you close it and force them to go someplace else, trouble is inevitable.

Then the priest sex abuse scandal burst open like an infected sore, shaking the Faith of a lot of people like never before.

I started going to All Saints regularly in 2001, the year my oldest son was born. It would be another five years before I chose to convert, but by then the church had become a source of comfort at a time where my mental health was starting to snap off the rails.

At one point over the summer, Father Nason vanished. Few knew why.

Then at one Mass, the deacon read an open letter from him.

In the letter, Father Nason revealed that he was in rehab for alcoholism. It would be several months before he emerged from rehab, and while he was there the sex abuse scandal really began to explode. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks also happened around that time, and people’s souls were tested like never before.

Once he did emerge from rehab to rejoin his parish, there was a new sparkle in his eyes. It was like a weight had been lifted. Then another weight dropped on him. It turns out one of the priests in our parish was one of those sexual predators we had read about in the papers.

Something like that would test the sobriety of anyone forced to come in and deal with the mess. Father Nason met it head on.

He was angry with his archdiocese over the fact that pedophile priests had been enabled for all those years; cases swept under the rug like dust. You could hear the anger in his voice and see it in his eyes. He would rage about it in more than one Homily.

His reaction is a big reason I stuck with the church instead of bolting.

Around that time we also had trouble hanging onto the other priests. One left after less than two months, apparently freaked out by the amount of work this parish demanded of him.

Through it all, Father Nason kept it together and brought his parish through the storm.

I don’t always see eye to eye with him. Sometimes I think his administration is disorganized and that his Homilies are all over the place; though when he nails it, he really nails it.

But those are trivial things. When he came clean about his addiction, it hit me deep in the core. At the time, my own addictions were bubbling in my skull and preparing to wipe out what was left of my soul. I just didn’t know it at the time.

His honesty kept me going. And now that I’ve spent the last few years getting control of my own addictive behavior, I have a much better appreciation for what he went through.

This post isn’t meant to put him on a pedestal. He is only human, after all, and he sometimes misses the mark like the rest of us.

It IS meant to thank him for the time he came clean, inspiring me to do the same.

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Lessons from ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’

Me and the kids are watching Tim Burton’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” for movie night. I like this version about as equally as the 1971 Gene Wilder classic, which we watched a few weeks ago.

Mood music:
[spotify:track:36znenHji82rUYJTgfkc4Z]

 

That viewing actually inspired me to write down a post. I’m rewriting it here, because I’m having the same reaction to the newer film as I did the old one…

The author watched Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for the first time since cleaning up from a binge eating disorder. What a trip.

Yesterday the rain was coming down sideways, so the Brenner clan decided to put in a DVD of Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. It’s still a great movie, but since my main troubles with addictive behavior stem from flour and sugar, which I gave up on Oct. 1, 2008, watching it this time was kind of weird.

Weird because I didn’t sneak out of the house afterward to buy $20 worth of candy to stuff down my throat on the 3-minute drive from the gas station back to the house. I just went to fill the cars with gas and buy a loaf of bread and some Red Bull.

The scene in the film which best fits a mind unhinged is where they are traveling the chocolate river on a boat.

Looking at the characters in the movie really reminded me of the multiple personalities I can have as an addict. Those kids were punks as individuals and got what they deserved.

Now, for a little fun, let’s squish them all into one, multi-personality monster and see what we get. By the time we finish, you’ll get a pretty good idea of what one person is like when their addictions run wild.

Charlie Bucket: This is the good side of the soul, the part that wants to be honest and do the right thing. For me, this side won out in the end — well, for now, at least — but being the quiet, well-behaved kid, he’s always in danger of being pushed to the back of the line by these wretched children:

Violet Beauregarde: The third kid to find one of Wonka’s elusive Golden Tickets, this little scamp is a compulsive gum chewer. That compulsion gets the better of her and she blows up into a giant blueberry. Been there, done that.

Augustus Gloop: The Deadly Sin of Gluttony personified, this poor kid is encouraged to eat like a slob by his parents, who are just as devoted to their own binging habits. Hell, his old man eats the top of a microphone and doesn’t seem to notice. The kid takes it too far by shoving his bloated face in Wonka’s chocolate river.

Mike Teavee: I know this kid. He lives for TV, especially the violent programs where a lot of bullets are flying. His parents sit there and let him indulge. Now blend him with Augustus and Violet and you get a kid who sits in front of the tube shoving all kinds of junk down his throat.

Veruca Salt: This kid is so selfish and mean that you want to spill tears of joy when she goes down the garbage chute with the rest of the rotten eggs. I like to think of her as the glue that holds the rest of the beast together. The other kids make up the guts of the poor soul who is owned by his or her addictions. Veruca is the skin.

What makes the movie so great is that Charlie comes out on top. It’s a dream of most people to have the good triumph over evil.

In this movie it does.

In my own life, it has.

But I have to be on guard at all times because, contrary to what Wonka says at the end of the movie, the guy who gets everything he wants DOES NOT live happily ever after.

You’re always seconds away from letting Veruca or Violet back out.

The good news is that if you are truly serious about being well, there’s no shortage of loving souls who will stick with you and keep you on the path to Heaven.

You might loop back through Hell a few times along the way, but you’ll end up in the better place if you keep working at it.

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Like Father, Like Son

The author finds that OCD behavior runs strong among the men in his family.

It’s been said that certain crosses run in the family. Addictive behavior. Depression.

Yesterday my father had three long stents inserted into his leg. Apparently the entire leg was full of blockages. He eats compulsively, and this contributes to the problem. In 1998 he had quadruple bypass surgery, but the bad eating continued.

He’s always been able to bolt down the food. That trait was passed down to my brain, where it mixed with OCD, depression and other nasty byproducts.

I put my binge-eating addiction down well over a year ago and embraced a 12-Step program through OA, just like you do if you’re kicking alcohol or narcotics.

But OA isn’t my father’s style. Never has been. Never will be.

I’d like to think I’m doing better than my father when it comes to taking care of myself. I kicked binge eating and alcohol, am maintaining a 65-pound weight loss without doing all the stupid things I used to do to stay thin.

But I’m no dummy. I know this family inheritance is still with me.

With addictive personalities, it’s always something. I’m completely addicted to caffeine, including Red Bull. Yesterday I drank two of them in the afternoon, after a morning of swilling the coffee. Then there’s the fact that I like cigars.

I don’t fret about it much because it beats the hell out of the addictions I put down; the ones that had made my life completely unmanageable and hurt the people around me in a variety of ways. And any addict will tell you it’s always going to be a struggle where you put down one thing and pick up another so you don’t go back to that first item. That’s a cross we bear for life, and the goal is to keep working to be better than the demons.

I also know there will come a time where I have to put away the cigars and cut back on the caffeine.

My life is Blessed beyond belief. It took many years to beat down the compulsive eating addiction. Longer still because it’s harder to acknowledge a food addiction than it is to come clean about something like alcoholism. No disrespect toward my friends who are recovering from alcoholism. I love them and am proud of what they’ve accomplished. I’m just saying that in our culture, some addictions are more glamorous than others. Binge eating is anything but glamorous.

Of course, any addict knows that their behavior is never glamorous behind closed doors, whatever the poison. Locked up alone with the demon, it’s a world of filth, shame and sickness.

I can’t say that my father has an addictive personality. I’m not in a position to judge him. I only know that he can put away the food, and the results have been bad.

He’s been through a lot in his life and still managed to be a kind, generous soul. I hope he sticks around for many years to come. But it’s not up to me.

I’ve noticed something else recently: Sean, my oldest child, is displaying OCD characteristics. When the boy gets into something, be it a computer game or Legos — especially Legos — he goes in deep and lets the activity consume him. In other words, he approaches these things compulsively.

The good news is that he’s otherwise much healthier than I was at his age. And he’s smarter than I ever was.

He also has another powerful advantage I didn’t have.

I’ve been far down the road he’s traveling and picked up a lot of coping skills along the way. Those skills have made all the difference.

And I can pass them on to him.

This makes me happier than you could possibly imagine.

 

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The Short, Strange History of Skeptic Slang

The author is tells the story of his 2 years as lead singer of a little-known band called Skeptic Slang.

I avoided this for as long as I could. I don’t like to admit that I used to sing in a band. For one thing, my singing really sucked. For another, the band never went anywhere.

But some pictures of me from around that time have been unearthed, and people are starting to talk.

Here’s the picture of me with hair halfway down my back, in the center:

403340_2980651961770_1033186547_n

I’m bald now, but I still have all that hair on my back. Erin doesn’t mind, so neither do I.

The other thing that has sparked curiosity is this poem I found in an old foot locker last month. It was written by a long-lost friend, Joy Affannato, before she married my best friend, Sean Marley:

“Blessed and Black Clad, Dedicated to Bill Brenner”

Clad in black

with a black-lined heart

like the charred edges

of our burnt society

Gathering the ash

to sift through and find

some satiating solution.

…A poet

with a doctrite of humanity

But, no one really has the answers:

Every question is relevant

And using words of metaphor

he transforms the WRITTEN WORD

At the bottom left of the page she scrawled the logo for Skeptic Slang.

So ok, then. Let’s talk about this band.

Members:

Bill Brenner: Vocals

Chris Casey: Guitar

Elias Andrinopolous: Bass

Joe Gentile: Drums

We got together in the spring of 1992. It started as me and Chris. We’d sit in my basement and write songs, thinking we were the shit. I was going through my chip-in-the shoulder angry phase and was writing all kinds of lyrics about how much I hated my mother and hated that my brother was dead.

There was the song “Knife,” with this jolly refrain: “Knife… You’re my best friend.”

The songs about my mother were called “Tunnel Vision” and “You’re Dead” The song I wrote about my brother was called “Rest.”

Let’s fast-forward for a second: I should point out that today I do not carry a knife and I don’t hate my mother. I love her, despite our inability to get along.

Back to the past: Chris and I were smoking buddies with a lot of the same anger at life. We were a natural fit. Then Elias came along; a peaceful, friendly soul who was in many ways the opposite of me. Joe joined later, but he was older than the rest of us and was in and out of the band.

At the time, I was also working at the legendary Rockit Records, and being a musician was sort of an unspoken bonus.

We went out and bought a bunch of gear at Daddy’s Junky Music on Route 1 in Peabody: Amps, a mixing board, PA system, monitors. We didn’t know how to use any of it, and we were on a payment plan as if we had purchased a new car together.

But it looked cool and made us loud in the bomb shelter beneath the garage that we practiced in. This was in the house in Lynnfield, where I lived from late 1992 to late-1995.

We wrote a lot of songs and practiced. And practiced. And practiced. Elias was the least experienced on his instrument, but quickly became the best musician of us all. I was the worst. I couldn’t sing to save my life.

But I could write lyrics, and that was all that was required.

When it was time for a break, we’d go out into the woods and smoke pot. In fact, the last time I smoked pot was with them. I stopped when I started dating Erin.

We played a couple acoustic sets along the way at Roosevelts, a hang-out in Salem. We did a couple performances at North Shore Community College in Lynn.

Then we did a battle of the bands event, and it was a disaster.

Elias’ bass was way out of tune as we launched into the opening song. Instead of just rolling with it, we panicked. it was all hell from there.

We retreated to the bunker and did more writing and practicing. Those songs would never be played live. Joe had a kid and had less and less time for the band. Chris burned out and left. After awhile it was just be and Elias. We tried to keep it going with a new guitarist, who played wonderfully but could never settle on anything. We kicked him out, and Elias and I continued on for awhile longer.

Then it just sort of stopped.

But I’ll tell you what: That band, bad as we were — or I was, anyway — was a Godsend. I was going through a lot of depression back then and clashed with everyone.

The band gave me an outlet to vent those emotions. It couldn’t save me from my addictions, but it saved me from my worst instincts, one of which was to go out and destroy things, whether that meant kicking a dent into the side of my dark-blue 1985 Monte Carlo or throwing stuff around in my father’s warehouse.

It wasn’t meant to last, but it was there when I needed it most.

After the band disintegrated, the music store bought back all the gear, Elias went on to study classical guitar and I went frantically forward in my pursuit of a career in journalism.

A tape of our songs is probably kicking around somewhere. Someday it will surface.

We’ll listen and have a good laugh. Not at the guitar, drums and bass, which were very good. But at the rest of the package.

To Chris, Elias and Joe: Thanks for the memories.

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Red Bull Blues

The author learns once again that when he puts one addiction down, he picks up another.

I realized something awhile back. I guess I already knew, but this just made it crystal clear for me.

I was at the airport, en route to Santa Clara, California. There was no Starbucks nearby. My other choices were Dunkin’ Donuts or coffee served at a breakfast place across the way.

Certain that both choices would fall far short of the kick I get from Starbucks, Peets or one of the other high-grade coffee providers, I went with a can of Red Bull.

My latest addiction.

I never thought I would start drinking this stuff. But here’s how it happened:

During the 2010 RSA security conference, I was feeling a bit edgy because living through a conference without enjoying all the free booze was something I was still adjusting to, even though I’ve been sober and abstinent from binge eating for quite some time. On the show floor, the Threatpost “clubhouse” had a fridge stalked with free soft drinks, including Red Bull.

Free caffeine in a can. And there’s a sugar-free version, which helps, since I gave up flour and sugar for the binge eating problem.

Drinking it removed the edge, and having a can in my hand instead of a coffee cup somehow made it easier to exist around all the people with beer, wine and stronger cocktails in their hands.

Game over.

Since then, I’ve been drinking at least one every afternoon or evening. Erin said she was getting annoyed finding random empty Red Bull cans around the house and in my car.

The funny thing is, she used to express it the same way when she found evidence of an eating binge under the car seats. Guilt bags, she called them.

Now they’re empty Red Bull cans.

And thus we have another example of what I call playing your addictions like a piano. You pound on one key until it breaks into pieces. You realize it was stupid to do that and you stop it. Then you do the same thing to another key further down the board. The process repeats until you’ve smashed every key on the piano.

Then you find another piano and repeat the process.  It’s a kind of purgatory addicts live in.

Am I angry about picking up an addiction to Red Bull?

A little.

It pisses me off that I can’t picture myself without SOMETHING in my hand to somehow fill the soul hole. Over time that hole has gotten a lot smaller, allowing me to put down the most destructive addictions. But there’s just enough of a chasm left that other, smaller addictions come into play.

Here’s what I’m going to do about it:

NOTHING.

For now, anyway.

That’s because I have to focus on Priority-One of my recovery program, which is to stay away from the addictions that crushed me and made my life unmanageable.

Those addictions were binge eating and, as a smaller byproduct, wine.

If the caffeine helps me stay away from those things and allows me to keep my life manageable, that’s how it must be.

Update: Last week I was in San Francisco again for RSA Conference 2012. Red Bull was available everywhere I went. Much of the time I drank it from a glass, which threw people for a loop. A lot of folks never see the stuff out of the can, and are surprised to see that it looks like lightly-carbonated whiskey or beer.

I was the sober man in rooms packed with the pleasantly buzzed. But, holding my glass of Red Bull, I really felt like part of the crowd.

Fucked up, I know. But there it is.

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The Long Road Through Self-Hatred

The author has learned that it’s damn hard to like yourself at the beginning of sobriety and abstinence. The feeling will pass. Eventually.

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/TP06kxW_M3I

A friend and fellow 12-Stepper just hit a major milestone in her recovery: 90 days of abstinence. In the world of compulsive overeating, think of this as 90 days of back-to-back sobriety.

She worked hard for this and has every reason to be bursting with joy. Yet she’s uneasy.

She doesn’t feel quite right in her skin.

She’s going through something a lot of us go through when we kick our addictions. To call it self hatred might be a stretch. I don’t think she dislikes herself. But now that her mind is clear of the intoxicating haze, she sees things about herself that she doesn’t like. She’s suddenly aware for the first time that she has some flaws that are tough to look at in the mirror.

For a lot of people, it can become a matter of self hatred. It certainly did for me.

Truth be told, I disliked myself way before I cleaned up.

I hated how I looked. I thought I was the crappiest son/sibling/friend on the face of the Earth. Certain relatives would tell me just that, and I believed them. There’s no question that I was a lousy friend when my best friend, Sean Marley, was sinking into depression and I was too worried about my career to notice.

That’s WHY I gave in to my addictions.

Even though my mental illness included a lot of fear and anxiety over getting sick or dying, I did a pretty good job of trying to kill myself. Not in a suicidal way. Not deliberately. But in the end, addiction is a compulsion — an ache — to repeat dangerous behavior even though you know what the likely consequences are.

It’s the weirdest irony there is.

But when you start to fight your demon head-on, you do become super-aware of your own vulnerabilities. For awhile, I became paralyzed by mine. Then I figured out how to get beyond it. But it took a lot of dirty work.

In his book, “Symptoms of Withdrawal,” Christopher Kennedy Lawford writes that after he kicked drugs in 1986, it still took him awhile to actually become a good person.

Those around him weren’t always happy he was sober, especially since that meant he couldn’t make the cocktails at family gatherings like he used to.

He writes about having to learn how to be a decent human being and be clean at the same time. You would think it’s easy. But it’s not.

In the book, Lawford writes:

“There is another great fiction of recovery — that is, once you stop using your life becomes a bed of roses. Anybody who has stayed sober for any length of time knows that living sober is about learning to live life on life’s terms and a good part of life is painful. When I got sober someone said to me that I would get to realize all my greatest fears in sobriety … You know what? He was right, and it’s not half as bad as I imagined.”

The man speaks the truth. And, by the way, I highly recommend his book to anyone struggling with addiction as well as the clean up:

I had a lot to learn, and I’m still learning. Learning how to be completely honest with my wife and drop my emotional wall was hard. I’m much better at it than I used to be, but I still have a lot of work to do there.

Being more disciplined with money is something I need to be better at. After all, spending is also an addictive behavior.

The list goes on.

But while the work goes on — and will continue to go on — there’s an important point to be made.

Somewhere along the way, I learned to like myself.

Today, I can honestly say I’m happy with the man I’ve become, even if I’m still pretty damn far from perfect.

But then perfect people don’t exist. If they did, they’d be pretty boring.

self hatred II by ~xiaoD
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Portable Recovery

Though addiction will follow the junkie anywhere in the world, the author has discovered that recovery is just as portable.

Mood Music for this post: “Turn the Page” — the Metallica version:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOibtqWo6z4&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

I’ve seen interview after interview where musicians describe their drug habits and how being on the road made them so much worse.

One of the best examples was Motley Crue on the Girls Girls Girls tour, where the four band members’ addictions were well past the point of manageability — not that an addiction is ever really manageable. That was the tour where Nikki Sixx kept a diary chronicling his increasing heroin use.

In fact, sit in front of the TV and watch a “Behind the Music” marathon and you’ll see most bands tell a similar story.

It’s a similar tale for any businessman who nurses an addiction while doing a lot of travel. Every city is flowing with whatever material feeds one’s vice, whether it’s drugs, alcohol or, in my case, binge eating.

I can tell you from experience that it’s true. During my travels to San Francisco, Washington DC, Chicago, Las Vegas and points in between, the opportunity to binge on free junk and alcohol is limitless.

But here’s what I’ve also learned: You can take your recovery everywhere, too.

In all of the cities I mentioned above, I’ve been able to hold firmly to my 12-Step program and related plan of eating. I know what I can eat, how much, and which ingredients are essentially my cocaine (flour and sugar).

There are 12-Step meetings in every city and town, whether it’s OA or AA, and there are phone meetings available around the clock.

And, if you’re like me, you’ve told enough people about your challenges that they’ll watch out for you. That was definitely the case for me in San Francisco last week.

It really comes down to what you want. If you want your junk, you’ll always be resourceful enough to find it.

If you want recovery, same deal.

I’ve found it also helps to read blogs from others in recovery when I’m on the road. One of my recent discoveries is a great blog called “Conquering Crazy” by Greg Dungan. Like my OCD Diaries, Greg’s blog is a recent start-up. He focuses like a laser beam on the core craziness as he experiences it. It reads more like an actual day-by-day diary, whereas mine is more a collection of longer narratives with a lot of focus on the byproducts of my affliction.

Like me, music is important to him, and he is also a seeker who is trying to find the core of his spirituality. I especially love his first entry, “OK, So I’m Crazy.” Here’s an excerpt:

“I have exhibited symptoms of OCD for as long as I can remember. Recently, these symptoms have intensified. What used to be the “things that make me unique” have become the “things that make me crazy”. This blog is about my struggle with this demon. This is where I will record my day to day thoughts and struggles – my defeats and my victories. I have two choices at this point in my life – roll over and die or fight my way out. I’ve never been one for rolling over and I’m not about to start now.

“You’re welcome to walk this valley with me. If you are living with OCD or if someone you love is, take heart. There are brighter days somewhere, and we will find them together.”

Brighter days ahead? You bet your ass there are.

I’ve experienced it. I’ve been to the valley and the mountaintop.

I started blogging about it after I had been on the journey for a few years. Greg is blogging his journey from the start. That’s courage.

And like addiction, depression, Faith and recovery, courage is portable, too.