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Rest Re-defined

The author finds that he gets the most relaxation from the things he once feared the most.

Mood music 

A strange thing happened to me on the way to recovery: I started finding peace and relaxation in the very things that used to fill me with fear and spark anxiety attacks. [See Fear Factor]

It used to be that relaxing meant holing myself up in the bedroom watching endless episodes of Star Trek. I watched a lot of the news, too, which instead of relaxing me would send my brain into an endless spin of worry about things happening at the far corners of the world.

Lying on the couch all weekend — sleeping for a lot of it — was relaxation.

Then Sunday night would arrive and I’d go into a deep depression about the tasks that awaited me the next day at work.

Writing — the very thing I earned a living from (and still do) — filled me with dread. Oh, I loved being a journalist even back then, but I was always in fear of not getting a story perfect. I would sit on a story for hours; writing, re-writing, polishing and reading it aloud multiple times to make sure it “sounded” perfect.

It drove my co-workers nuts. [See The Crazy-Ass Guy in the Newsroom]

If I had to make a business trip, the heart would pound. I’d obsess about the travel itself and whether I would actually make it there alive. Conferences filled me with dread. What if I didn’t manage to cover every piece of news coming from the event?

Oh, and when writing, it had to be absolutely silent around me. Noise would interrupt the gears in my mind — except for the sound of my voice when reading my articles aloud.

I would go crazy about getting the kids to bed by 7:30 so I could lie comatose in front of the TV. If my wife wanted to talk instead, rage would build inside, though I would try not to show it. I sucked at hiding it, though, and in my own passive-aggressive way, she knew she wasn’t getting through. And yet she stuck around anyway. (See: The Freak and the Redhead: A Love Story]

I’m not sure when things changed. But here’s what relaxation and peace mean to me now:

–Family time. Of course, I’ve always craved being with my wife and children more than anything else. But it used to be that I wanted us all sitting around the house doing nothing. Now I love experiencing things together. Trips with Erin to Campobello Island off New Brunswick, Canada, the mountains of New Hampshire or Newport, R.I. for the Newport Folk Festival. Trips with kids in tow to Battleship Cove, Old Sturbridge Village, The N.E. Aquarium, The Museum of Science. I always cherished my time with them. Now I cherish it more. A lot more.

— Writing. For the life of me, I can’t figure out the reason for this, but writing is relaxing now. Other than when I’m with my wife and kids, writing is when I’m happiest. And I no longer re-read my stuff over and over again. I decided that’s what editors are for. Sure, I’m an editor. But every editor needs an editor. And no, I don’t read ’em back to myself anymore.

–Writing WITH music. In another bizarre twist, I went from needing quiet while writing to needing music. The louder the better. Henry Rollins. Motley Crue. Metallica. Thin Lizzy. Cheap Trick. All perfect writing music.

–Travel. Instead of fearing travel, I now relish it, though I don’t like being away from my family for too long. I start to miss them the second I hit the road. They’re on my mind the whole time I’m away. But I love to go places, see things, experience cities outside my own comfortable Bostonian walls. Last year alone, I visited Chicago twice, Washington DC twice, and went to San Francisco, Nevada, Arizona and New York.

One of the DC trips was in an RV with a group of IT security guys. That was the trip back from the Shmoocon security conference. It’s a 12-hour ride and it’s cramped. But I get to hang out with some of the smartest people in my industry.

Thursday, I leave on the RV for the trip down to DC for Shmoocon 2010. I’ll do a lot of writing for work this weekend. But I’m going to have a blast doing it. I’ll get impatient to be home by Sunday afternoon. I’ll miss my family. But I’ll be a better journalist for making the trip.

Wherever I go, I always try to carve out time to see things, especially items of historical significance. Especially in DC.

I’m determined to take the family to DC this year. There are logistics and financial realities to work out, but it’s going to happen.

I don’t spend much time wondering how I came to enjoy what I once feared. I know the answers.

Erin and the boys teach me something every day about living, whether it’s Erin showing me courage by quitting a steady job to try and make her own business work or Duncan, the youngest son, convincing his older, more skittish brother to go with him on a camping trip with the grandparents because “It’ll be fun, Seaney!” That was a couple years ago. Since then, Sean, who has overcome a lot of fears himself and made his Dad proud, relishes those trips as much as Duncan does.

But above all — and the family examples are a huge part of this — I think the transformation came with my conversion to the Catholic Faith. My bringing God into my life, everything has changed for the better. That includes my concept of rest.

To me, rest is not about lying down and shutting off. It’s about living to the best of your ability. When that living gets scary, I put my trust in God. And that makes everything come together.

Make no mistake: I still have a lot of work to do on these things. But I’m glad to be making the journey.

As Henry Rollins once sang:

No such thing as free time. No such thing as downtime. There’s only lifetime. It’s time to shine.

Kick-Ass_button_blog

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Rat in the Church Pew

The author has written much about his Faith as a key to overcoming mental illness. But as this post illustrates, he still has a long way to go in his spiritual development.

The scene is the parking lot of All Saints Parish, just after today’s 9:30 Mass. Father Mike Harvey greets the Brenners and the conversation somehow turns to the kids listening to their mother and father.

Father Harvey: Remember kids, if your mother asks you to do something or tells you something, she is always right.

Me: Does that rule apply to me?

Father Mike: Yes. You always should answer her with “Yes Dear.”

Me: I’m an editor so I always try to make do with fewer words. So instead of “Yes Dear,” I shorten it to “Whatever.”

I have to be honest: While Sunday Mass is always a place for me to find peace and get closer to God, sometimes I ruin it for myself. I’m not a special case, because we all have our good days and bad days, but it’s worth noting here because it shows that while I’ve come far in conquering my demons, sometimes I backslide.

Case in point: I woke up cranky as all hell this morning, and as a result I went to church with a lousy attitude.

I didn’t hear the Homily, or the Gospel, or the Readings. I stood stone-faced during the Prayers of the Faithful. I got annoyed with the school principal sitting in the pew in front of us because her perfume was inflaming my allergies. I looked with disdain at a couple people who were reading the church bulletin during the Homily. It’s not my business, and I was as poorly-focused as they were. I was being judgmental, something I need to work on.

What’s this have to do with managing OCD? Let me explain:

Even though I’ve come a long way in managing my demons, there are still going to be days where I’m not as on top of things as I should be.

This is normal. Sliding back is part of the process.

It’s also easy to get caught up in parish politics and attitudes. Sometimes we get pissed because we feel someone is judging us. Yet we turn around and judge them back.

Today was a reminder that my mental tools are only going to remain effective if I keep working to perfect them. That includes the eating plan at the center of my recovery for binge eating.

The battle against the demons is never completely won. It’s a battle that continues until death.

I like to think of it as something more positive: a journey.

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Have Fun With Your Therapist (A.K.A.: The Shrink Stigma)

Mental-illness sufferers often avoid therapists because the stigma around these “shrinks” is as thick as that of the disease. The author is here to explain why you shouldn’t fear them.

Mood music for this post: “Just Another Psycho” by Motley Crue:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko23M-4AAbg&hl=en_US&fs=1&]

It’s a funny thing when I talk to people suffering from depression, addiction and other troubles of the mind. Folks seem more comfortable about the idea of pills than in seeing a therapist. After all, they’re just crazy “shrinks” in white coats  obsessed with how your childhood nightmares compromised your adult sex life, right?

Since I rely on a therapist and medication as two of MANY tools in my recovery, I’m going to take a crack at removing the shrink stigma for you.

I’ve been to many therapists in my life. I was sent to one at Children’s Hospital in Boston as a kid to talk through the emotions of being sick with Chron’s Disease all the time. That same therapist also tried to help me and my siblings process the bitter aftermath of our parents’ divorce in 1980.

As a teenager, I went to another therapist to discuss my brother’s death and my difficulty in getting along with my stepmother (a wonderful, wonderful woman who I love dearly, by the way. But as a kid I didn’t get along with her).

That guy was a piece of work. He had a thick French accent and wanted to know if I found my stepmother attractive. From the moment he asked that question, I was done with him, and spent the rest of the appointment being belligerent.

That put me off going to a therapist for a long time. I started going to one again in 2004, when I found I could no longer function in society without untangling the barbed wire in my head. But I hesitated for a couple years before pressing on.

The therapist I started going to specialized in dealing with disturbed children and teenagers. That was perfect, because in a lot of ways I was still a troubled kid.

She never told me what to do, never told me how I’m supposed to interpret my disorder against my past. She asked a lot of questions and had me do the work of sorting it out. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what a good therapist does. They ask questions to get your brain churning, dredging up experiences that sat at the back of the mind like mud on the ocean floor. That’s how you begin to deal with how you got to the point of dysfunction.

She moved to Florida a year in and I started going to a fellow who worked from his house. I would explain my binge eating habits to him, specifically how I would down $30 worth of McDonald’s between work and home.

“You should stock your car with healthy foods like fruit, so if you’re hungry you can eat those things instead,” he told me.

That was the end of that. He didn’t get it. When an addict craves the junk, the healthy food around you doesn’t stand a chance. The compulsion is specifically toward eating the junk. He should have understood. He didn’t. Game over.

The therapist I see now is a God-send. He was the first therapist to help me understand the science behind mental illness and the way an inbalance in brain chemistry can mess with your thought traffic. He also provided me with quite an education on how anti-depressants work. Yes, friends, there’s a science to it. Certain drugs are designed to shore up the brain chemicals that, when depleted, lead to bi-polar behavior. Other meds are specifically geared toward anxiety control. In my case, I needed the drug that best addressed obsessive-compulsive behavior. For me, that meant Prozac.

That’s not to say I blindly obey his every suggestion. He specializes in stress reduction and is big on yoga and eliminating coffee from the daily diet. Those are two deal breakers for me. Yoga bores the dickens out of me. If you’ve been following this blog all along, I need not explain the coffee part.

I also find it fun to push his buttons once in awhile. I’ll show up at his office with a huge cup of Starbucks. “Oh, I see you’ve brought drugs with you,” he’ll say.

Thing is, he’s probably right about the coffee. But I’ve given up a lot of other things for the sake of mental health. I’m simply not putting the coffee down right now.

I think part of this is about testing him, too. I can’t help but push the buttons sometimes just to see what I can get away with.

But on balance, it’s a productive relationship that has helped me to find a lot of peace and order in my life. I thank him for that.

He kind of reminds me of Dr. Keyworth, the shrink who counseled Josh Lyman and President Bartlet on “The West Wing.” He took their crap with a straight face, not the least bit concerned that these were powerful, intimidating people.

The main point of this post is this:

There are good therapists and not-so-good therapists, just like there are good and not-so-good primary care doctors; just like there are good cops and bad cops.

But if you feel like you need to talk to someone objective and you hold back for fear of being in the same room as a quack, well, then you’ll never know what you could have accomplished.

I chose to talk to a professional despite my deepest reservations. I’m grateful that I did.

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Courage in the Crosshairs

The author has been thinking a lot about courage lately. Some have told him it takes courage to write about his OCD battles. He thinks it’s more about being tired of running.

Over the weekend, I got this e-mail from an associate in the IT security industry I write about for a living:

“I’ve been reading your OCD diaries lately. This is perhaps one of the most courageous blogs on the planet and the work is stellar. Sometimes, insanity and the brilliance are intertwined. Your writing is meticulous and it’s a gift. That which the madman downs in, the mystic swims in. Same stuff. Keep swimming.”

A few people have told me it takes courage to write this blog. But I’m not so sure about that.

When I think of courage, I think of my grandfather. He was a career military man who propelled himself toward danger many times. He parachuted behind enemy lines in the hours leading up to the D-Day invasion of France in WW II. He was among those pinned down by the Germans at the Battle of the Bulge. He took a bullet in the leg during the Korean Conflict.

That’s courage: Putting your life on the line for the greater good when chances are better than average you’ll be coming home in a box.

I inherited a lot of things from my grandfather. I have his over-sized nose and ears. I wear a hat that was his. I like cigars. And on my desk at home I keep some of his service medals in a glass case, and I have the flag that was draped on his coffin when he died in 1996:

But I certainly am not risking my life to write this blog. I’ve never been in a firefight, and can’t be sure how I would handle myself under such circumstances. So it would be stupid for me to suggest I inherited courage from him.

When I really stop and think about it, I’d say this blog is less about courage and more about me being tired of running.

I got tired of keeping this disease to myself because of everything I’d been told about jeopardizing career and friendships by being too honest. I’ve seen too many good people go down in flames by keeping the affliction to themselves.

I just came around to realizing that when you rip your biggest skeletons from the closet and toss the bones into the sunlight, they turn to dust and you can then be free.

I’m not afraid of damaging friendships, because I’ve been open about my OCD to them all along. And it’s not like they couldn’t tell before that something was amiss.

I’m not afraid of this damaging me at work. The law protects me from discrimination. But what’s more is that I work with some great people.

Given that lack of fear, I’d have to say courage has nothing to do with it. Courage means pressing on in the face of fear.

I do think this is something God wants me to be doing. And I do see it as an act of service.

Service helps make me feel whole. And that’s reason enough to keep at it.

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The Mood Swing

Back in the day, when I was throwing parties in the basement of my house in Revere, Mass., I would reach a certain level of intoxication around 2 a.m. where I’d freeze in place, yell “mood swing!” and throw candy and other food items around the room.

People seemed to enjoy it, so I kept doing it. Even then, the ego was there.

Looking back, I now know that those mood swings, which were real, were the beginnings of some mental damage.

To this day, I experience it, even with the Prozac.

I can wake up in a perfectly good mood. Then, two hours later, a wave of melancholy will hit me for no good reason. Then I listen to some angry music and it eventually passes. Other days I’ll wake up with a feeling of dread for no particular reason and an hour later the mood turns sunny and I’m ready to take on the world.

It’s been happening more frequently in recent weeks, which I’ve come to realize is the winter effect. Minimize my sunlight and throw a lot of cold, gray weather my way and it gets a little tougher to hold it all together.

I started taking an extra 20 MG of Prozac last week, the idea being that I take a higher dosage for the duration of winter and dial it back to where it was come spring and summer.

It’s just starting to have the desired impact. The mid-afternoon mood swings I was having last month have gone away. But I still get up on a morning like this one, where I feel the brooding impulse for no particular reason.

And so I put on music like this:

[spotify:track:2yWOMbhPN2XJAiVy46Bhvz]

And now I feel better.

That’s how it works.

A tricky thing to manage, but it’s much, much better than it used to be. For that I Thank God.

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How To Play Addiction Like A Piano

The author admits that when an obsessive-compulsive person puts down the addiction that’s most self-destructive, a few smaller addictions rise up to fill the void. But what happens when the money runs out?

Mood music:

http://youtu.be/fKZRcIGnaqE

I hear it from addicts all the time. They put down the thing that’s caused the most chaos and heartache in their lives, but then they find themselves latching onto smaller addictions to fill the hole. Chain smoking, for example.

That hole inside is what compels us to harm ourselves in the first place. Fail to address the source of the pain you’re medicating and the demons will be back. You end up pushing down on all the different addictions like the keys on a piano.

I’m lucky in many respects, because I started dealing with my pain source years before I even tried to address the addictive byproducts. I also have a powerful ally in God, and got a lot out of praying the Rosary on the hour-long commute to work this morning. I can also indulge in some perfectly harmless and always therapeutic metal music.

But truth be told, I still struggle with other addictions when the big one is under control, just like everyone else. They are the less destructive kind, but troublesome all the same. Especially when you can’t afford them the way you once could.

My addiction to coffee is well known. No apologies there. At this time, I have no desire or plan to kick it, no matter what the therapist tells me. It’s cheap. It doesn’t impair my ability to function. It’s really the most harmless addiction I will ever have.

The computer, the BlackBerry, the social networking sites — all addictions. But like the food this is a tough one, because all of those just happen to be vital tools of my trade. I can practice putting them away on nights and weekends, but banishing them completely is simply out of the question.

I also have a habit of spending money on stupid things when I need a quick fix that’s no longer satisfied with food or alcohol. Maybe it’s on a book I’ve already read and really have no reason to buy. Some of the desk trinkets were most certainly purchased on a spending jag.

Now we’ve arrived at the problem.

I have massive urges to spend money these days, but I have a powerful reason for mostly abstaining. Unlike previous spending sprees, the money simply isn’t there. OK, it probably never was there. But Team Brenner is down to one steady salary and a spending binge now could keep essential items from being paid for.

This isn’t a complaint. In fact, it’s a gift. Not one I wanted, but one I need. If lack of money is what it takes to put down another addiction, so be it.

Erin is worried about the money supply, as am I. We haven’t struggled to make ends meet in a long, long time. But we both chose this path willingly because starting the freelance business is something Erin simply must do, just as I simply had to pursue the career I’m now enjoying. I don’t regret it for a second, and in the end I know all will be well.

God’s Plan can certainly be infuriating at times. But I’m going to keep following it to see where it leads.

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Growing Pains

Despite all the progress I’ve made in managing OCD, there are still times where I forget to use my skills — momentarily, at least.

This morning is a good example.

I woke up depressed. Two hours later I was angry. Maybe I was getting tired of the winter outside my window. Maybe I was just plain tired. I was snapping at Erin and the children. I realized I was letting the crazy side loose and went upstairs to the bedroom because I didn’t want to lash out at my family for things that weren’t really their fault. Even if it were, lashing out is not my preferred way to deal with it.

The kids came into the room one at a time to see if they could do anything to make me feel better. Then Erin came in and we talked through it.

I feel no need to explain what exactly triggered my inner demon this morning, though through talking it over with Erin I figured it out. The important thing to point out here is that I can now see how I am managing things better than before.

1. I retreated to the bedroom instead of blowing up at those I love.

2. Instead of keeping it inside, I talked to Erin about what I was really feeling. She deserves much of the credit for bringing me to a place where I can purge the darker emotions.

3. I told everyone involved that I was sorry.

Now I feel better, and I can move on and have a better rest of the day.

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Welcome to Hell

OK, not my own personal hell. I’ve already gone on at length about that, and while I have my good days and bad days like everyone else, I think it’s safe to say that I found my way out of my personal Hell a long time ago.

But when I see other people going through theirs, it still hits me. Some of it is the old fear of loss I mentioned earlier. Some of it is that when I see someone else going through grief, pain and depression, my own bad memories bubble to the surface.

I feel like an idiot when this happens, truth be told. It’s a typical reaction for someone who gets self-absorbed, which is one of the basic ingredients for someone with OCD.

At the end of the day, it’s important that I take a step back and let others do the talking (or writing, in this case).

In that spirit, I direct you again toward the blog “Penny Writes … Penny Remembers.”

As I mentioned earlier, Penny and her husband Dave recently suffered the worst possible variety of tragedy: the loss of a child.

I used to work with Penny at The Eagle-Tribune. I’m sure I was no joy to work with. I even remember calling her house late one night with a question on a story she wrote. Dave answered the phone, and while I don’t remember exactly what he said, I remember he was not happy. I don’t blame him. Night editors can be as irritating as any blood-sucking insect.

We didn’t work together long. She left for another job about a year after I started working there. We connected on LinkedIn and Facebook, but never really communicated much beyond that.

That was more my loss than hers.

I’ve had a few communications with her since the death of her daughter, though I probably have no business bothering her. I wasn’t much of a friend before this. Wasn’t really a friend at all. Isn’t it funny how everyone wants to be your friend when you go through something terrible, though most go back to their own lives after the wake and funeral.

The point of all this is that she is writing vivid accounts of what she is going through in her blog, and it’s something you all should be reading.

There are important lessons in there on what to say and WHAT NOT TO SAY to someone who is in the middle of Hell.

Leave my blog now and go see what she has to say.

I can’t possibly say it better than she does. Because I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO COMPREHENSION of what she is going though.

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Prozac Winter

The author discovers that winter makes his depression worse and that there’s a purely scientific explanation — and solution.

My therapist and I recently agreed that my Prozac intake should go up a bit for the duration of the winter.

I’m doing well for the most part, but there’s a three-hour window of each day — usually late afternoon — where my mood slides straight into the crapper.

The reason is simple: People who suffer from chemical imbalances in the brain are directly impacted by daylight levels. When the weather is dismal, cold, rainy and the days are shorter, a lot of folks with mental illness find themselves more depressed and moody. Give us a long stretch of dry, sunny weather and days where it gets light at 4:30 a.m. and stays that way past 8 p.m. and we tend to be happier people.

There are lessons to be had in the history books:

— Abraham Lincoln, a man who suffered from deep depression for most of his adult life, went from blue to downright suicidal a few times in the 1840s during long stretches of chilly, rainy weather. [See Why “Lincoln’s Melancholy” is a Must-Read.]

— Ronald Reagan, a sunny personality by most accounts, was a man of Sunny California. Once, upon noticing that his appointments secretary hadn’t worked time in his schedule for trips to his ranch atop the sun-soaked mountains of Southern California — and after the secretary explained that there was a growing public perception that he was spending too much time away from Washington — Reagan handed him back the schedule and ordered that ranch time be worked in. The more trips to the ranch, he explained, the longer he’ll live.

The WebMD site has excellent information on winter depression. Here’s an excerpt:

If your mood gets worse as the weather gets chillier and the days get shorter, you may have “winter depression.” Here, questions to ask your doctor if winter is the saddest season for you.

Why do I seem to get so gloomy each winter, or sometimes beginning in the fall?

You may have what’s called seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. The condition is marked by the onset of depression during the late fall and early winter months, when less natural sunlight is available. It’s thought to occur when daily body rhythms become out-of-sync because of the reduced sunlight.

Some people have depression year round that gets worse in the winter; others have SAD alone, struggling with low moods only in the cooler, darker months. (In a much smaller group of people, the depression occurs in the summer months.)

SAD affects up to 3% of the U.S. population, or about 9 million people, some experts say, and countless others have milder forms of the winter doldrums.

So this worsening of mood in the fall and winter is not just my imagination?

Not at all. This “winter depression” was first identified by a team of researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health in 1984. They found this tendency to have seasonal mood and behavior changes occurs in different degrees, sometimes with mild changes and other times severe mood shifts.

Symptoms can include:

  • Sleeping too much
  • Experiencing fatigue in the daytime
  • Gaining weight
  • Having decreased interest in social activities and sex

SAD is more common for residents in northern latitudes. It’s less likely in Florida, for instance, than in New Hampshire. Women are more likely than men to suffer, perhaps because of hormonal factors. In women, SAD becomes less common after menopause.

Here’s where the Prozac comes in for me:

As I mentioned in The Bad Pill Kept Me from the Good Pill, Prozac helps to sustain my brain chemistry at healthy levels. Here’s a more scientific description of how it works from WebMD:

How Antidepressants Work

Most antidepressants work by changing the balance of brain chemicals called neurotransmitters. In people with depression, these chemicals are not used properly by the brain. Antidepressants make the chemicals more available to brain cells like the one shown on the right side of this slide:

Photo Composite of Neurotransmitters at Work

Antidepressants can be prescribed by primary care physicians, but people with severe symptoms are usually referred to a psychiatrist.

Realistic Expectations

In general, antidepressants are highly effective, especially when used along with psychotherapy. (The combination has proven to be the most effective treatment for depression.) Most people on antidepressants report eventual improvements in symptoms such as sadness, loss of interest, and hopelessness.

But these drugs do not work right away. It may take one to three weeks before you start to feel better and even longer before you feel the full benefit.

I’m convinced the drug would NOT have worked as well for me had it not been for all the intense therapy I had first. Developing the coping mechanisms had to come first.

I’ve also learned that the medication must be monitored and managed carefully. The levels have to be adjusted at certain times of year — for me, anyway.

So next week I’ll start taking the higher dosage and let y’all know how it goes.

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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:

[spotify:track:78iMIaSjeVlUoNa7rehPOU]

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.