Yet Another Mental Health System Rant

Just heard a bit about another segment of the healthcare industry that I hadn't really had much experience with except with the occasional client and it got me thinking.   And wow, has my troubled mind gone off on a tangent about it.  So, I decided to go ahead and write a bit about it, even though my last blog post only received a measly 24 views.  :)

When one finds a small lump and it is determined that it needs a biopsy, one goes for a biopsy. During this whole process, one is treated with great respect and friendliness.   At that point the cells get read by pathology.  If the result is cancer, ones tumor is screened a whole team of experts who decide on the next possible treatment.(in my community's main healthcare system)  Additionally, one is assigned a patient navigator who helps one navigate the future treatment and appointments.  They will even go to doctor's appointments with you and follow you until remission or death.

Due to great strides and money into research for cancer, there are many cancers that are highly treatable and have good success rates if caught early.

Contrast this with treatment resistant mental illness which often has higher equal or higher death rates than certain cancers.  With treatment resistant mental illness, one is shuffled from one provider to the next.  Sometimes you are treated by someone who has no expertise in the field.  Imagine a cancer patient only being treated by their primary doctor with no input or time with an oncologist. Some therapists say that certain illnesses are too difficult to treat unless they are better controlled by meds, but then the meds aren't working either so you are left in hopeless limbo land.  Some doctors then might try to shuffle you on to ECT where one can become severely brain damaged. There is no team of experts that tries to figure out the best course of treatment and one receives NO navigation to help you with the system even though ones decision making and thinking skills are highly impaired by the illness. One is often treated in a condescending and disrespectful way by many professionals who get frustrated that one isn't 'getting better' and that their magic bullets are  not working. And since the treatment is often initiated in our medical system, providers are not taught to help people connect with solutions that might not fit tidily into the medical model. (like trauma treatment or community resources)

These illnesses are NOT highly treatable and many go from medication to medication to therapy to therapy with absolutely no relief.  In the US, 41,760 women died from breast cancer in 2019 and 48, 344 people died from suicide.

When one gets diagnosed with cancer, one gets casseroles, sympathy, and often an outpouring of support.  When one gets diagnosed with a mental health condition that is not very treatable one gets pushed away by their community who certainly doesn't want you to talk about your condition or know how to support you so they choose just to ignore you or let you fade away.

Those of us with these types of mental health conditions need a team approach that is holistic, respectful and kind.  We also need navigators that will help us connect to medical and community resources as well as find alternative non-medical solutions when there are no good medical solutions.   Treating our conditions deserves the same respect, time and effort as treating cancer. Instead of isolation, we need community and help with navigating the system just as much as any cancer patient.  It enrages me to see the disparity in treatment between the two, both on a community level and a medical level.

Disability Musings During a Pandemic

Imagine learning you won't be able to work and it is unknown when you will work again.  Not hard to imagine right now, is it?

Now, imagine knowing that there will never be an end to the situation that finds you out of work and that you will never return to work.

 Many of us with disabilities find ourselves in this situation and most people don't even notice or think about the devastation and grief that this causes for us.  There is a feeling of no ground underneath our feet, a feeling of deep fear and dependence on a system that we discover quickly doesn't work well at all. Additionally, we are taught that our work IS our worth and without it, we often feel and are taught that we have no worth.   In fact, doctors and others, are often uncomfortable acknowledging our inability to work because they somehow think we are being manipulative and just lazy.  This reaction from people in and out of the system, friends, family acquaintances reinforces that feeling of worthlessness and creates feelings of both shame and hopelessness.  In my 20 years working with people with disabilities, the majority of people I have met who find themselves in this situation want to work and grieve the loss of who they were and who they hoped they would become.(myself included)

Many people I have educated about the system have some assumption that there is a safety net for people with disabilities.  There really isn't much of one.  For many, it takes years to get a positive disability decision from the federal government and while they wait, they often have NO income.  In our state, some qualify for something called Aid to the Needy Disabled that they can get while they wait for their decision.  The amount is $217.  Imagine knowing that you can't support yourself and knowing that you will will either get nothing for a a few years or a measly $217 with a pittance of food stamps.  Many with disabilities end up homeless for this very reason. (imagine trying to find a place to rent on $217/month) And even if they get federal disability, the amount is not enough to afford rent and subsidized housings lists are years and years long. This situation will only be worse now with the pandemic and state and federal governments being completely strapped. It is not exactly a situation one enjoys finding oneself in, nor is it any kind of a situation where one feels secure or safe or even able to fulfill basic survival needs.

Not only is there little to no safety net, but for many of us, there is no treatment or cure for our conditions.  For many conditions the 'treatment' is sometimes worse than the cure or the 'treatment' does nothing to help and often creates other conditions.  (for example, psychiatric meds that cause conditions such as tardive dyskinesia or diabetes) Many become uncomfortable with our lack of ability to comply or fit in with regular society and think we aren't trying hard enough to find our miracle cure or that we have given up.  When, in fact, many learn that reaching out to our medical system often just creates more and more frustration and depression as one realizes one won't be returned to that elusive 'health' that society so wants for us.  Many of us might be able to work if we lived in a system that had more flexible work options and support to help us contribute through work or volunteering.  But, the system doesn't make this easy when, for some, you can lose health insurance if you work, or lose the benefits that took years to acquire.  We have systems set up to help people with disabilities find and keep work, but these systems are often overloaded and many get very little help from vocational rehab and other types of work assistance. 

It all leaves one feeling like there is no hope or reason to move forward when homelessness or complete financial devastation and bankruptcy may be the only answer.  And even if it isn't, the feeling of dependence on charity and others is depressing at best.  When I hear all this talk about the hope of returning to work and returning to 'normal', remember that for many of us, there is no 'normal'.  The normal for some might be a daily feeling of terror when one leaves one's house if one's skin color is anything but white.  The normal for some of us might be the feeling of fear and panic about how we will survive waiting on benefits that we don't even know we will get or how long we will have to wait. Or, most appallingly,  the normal of knowing that the elderly and the disabled were far too easily thrown under the bus by many in our society during this pandemic as a 'necessary' sacrifice for our economy.  And finally, the normal of knowing that we are deemed unworthy by a society that finds worth only in work and in 'persevering' in spite of obstacles. Some of us have tried to persevere, but for some, just surviving another day is persevering. 

This is all I have on all of this right now.  It leaves me with something I've known all along.  Our society does not truly care for the most vulnerable.  In fact, we are hidden away and, especially if we have mental disabilities, we are not spoken about.  Right now,  some just hope to kill us off.  People want to pretend there is a safety net so that they don't have to reach out and care and help others around them or even think about those who are faced with little to no safety net.  We want to pretend that work is what makes a person's worth instead of acknowledging the inherent worth in all of us. When you return to your new normal post pandemic, please don't forget that there are many of us out here who are, at times, unable to leave our homes, to participate in 'normal' day to day life, to work, to 'produce'.  We are here, we deserve more of a safety net and we are worthy of life and love.

Desperate for Change

Last year, around this time, I presented on mine and my daughter's struggles with the mental and physical health system to a group of community leaders in my county.  At the time, I didn't post my speech, but am posting a hybrid that adds and subtracts a bit after a year of reflection and another year of things only getting worse.  

I am a person with mental and physical disabilities, who has a daughter who also does and who has worked for almost 20 years with people with disabilities who have also struggled with the mental health system. For the past few years, my lifelong depression has increased in intensity along with PTSD and extreme anxiety. One of the things I struggle with the most is conveying my struggle to others.  It's sometimes easier to talk about my ongoing pain, but when I try to talk about my depression, I often feel shut down and misunderstood.  Sometimes it feels that no-one wants to hear it.  Like my chronic pain, it does not seem curable and this frustrates people who want to fix my pain.  Depression feels like a slow slog through a darkness where it seems impossible to reach out, and often impossible to live another day even though I know I must.  And when I do reach out, I feel like I have had doors shut in my face because the 'treatment' that's out there has not helped my chronic pain or my mental health issues. I feel the burden is mine alone to carry with very few answers. In fact, knowing the ins and outs of the system due to my career is a bit of a curse because I know all the limitations of our current system..  For both my daughter and I, who have both hit dead ends, this life without hope for a better future is both debilitating and lonely.  It is not for lack of trying, but when one suffers from baffling and debilitating conditions, the constant struggle of reaching out and falling back down gets exhausting. I do try, but I don't know if folks who haven't been there understand how hard it is to keep trying.  

I struggle with telling my own story because the judgment towards mental and physical limitations is still very much a constant in our society.   We value productivity in our society so intrinsically that when one cannot work, it is hard not to have an added layer of shame.  Somehow, in my own depressed and irrational mind, I also feel like I have failed my oldest daughter because she, too, cannot seem to move forward in a traditionally successful way or find help for her ongoing medically baffling issues.  I do hope that sharing my story helps others who are in similar situations, so I keep trying.  

Do conventional treatments work? Sometimes.  Are they easy for most people to access? Almost never. From early childhood, I struggled with depression and anxiety. After great trauma at age 16, my depression became so severe that I stopped eating and almost died from starvation. My parents, who were certainly good parents, did not get help until I was close to death due to the shame, stigma and denial. I was eventually hospitalized.This hospitalization traumatized me in many ways. The treatment was mostly behavior modification treatment and felt extremely punitive. It made me feel worse about

myself than I already felt. I received the little real ‘treatment’ here. The only thing it did for

me was leave me with a determination to change the system, to never be hospitalized again

and left me with a deep distrust of medical and mental health providers.

Fast forward several years and in one very abusive dysfunctional relationship when my oldest child was born. Imagine trying to recover from your own trauma from an abusive relationship with a person with significant mental illness, while also struggling with lifelong depression and having a child who has extreme mental distress from the time of birth.  Imagine trying to find treatments that work for her only to hit dead ends. To watch this child escalate into terrifying explosive behaviors and extreme emotional distress in adolescence. To reach out for help through crisis lines, clinics and more only to be told: ‘you have to wait at least 6 weeks for an appointment with a doctor’ or basically getting very little true help. To have to tell her much younger sister that there are no magic answers and that we just have to survive through this chaos with hope that maybe someday we will come upon something that will help. And to explain insurance to this same sister and the fact that money and type of insurance limit the amount of care and types of treatments her sister can get. Imagine watching this child grow into adulthood, experience ‘mental health holds’ where she went in desperate for help and got little treatment and no follow up.  Imagine seeing this child find the only med that helps the most severe part of her illness and see that med destroy her quality of life through chronic ongoing fatigue.  Imagine going to doctor after doctor trying to get help to address these physical and mental health issues only to run into doctors who saw her for short time periods that never looked at the whole history or took the time to really figure out the best interventions.  Imagine knowing that this brilliant creative child’s dreams have been scaled back to just surviving through another day. This child is trying to heal. This child is trying to love. But she has been failed by our system. Over and over again. 

Imagine once you can breathe a little being hit by your own unhealed issues. PTSD, depression, chronic pain and other physical issues , most, a product of abuse suffered many years ago.  Imagine trying to find help and finding few doctors that understood chronic pain and being dismissed because of your history of mental health issues.  Knowing that your pain is interlinked with your mental health and past trauma but finding few providers that know how to address this. Imagine having physical conditions that preclude the use of psychiatric and other meds, but finding out that most providers see meds as the only tool in their tool box and don’t seem to understand that meds don’t work for everyone and that side effects are worse when one has certain physical conditions.  

I am trying to recover in the face of these obstacles. My daughter is trying to recover in the face of these obstacles. But, we are not finding the help we need and due to lack of money and type of insurance, we are stuck with limited options. 

We need a system that has long term transitional options post-crisis for people that desperately need them and respite for families who are enduring the day to day struggle of living with someone with significant mental health issues. We need a system that understands the interrelated connections between physical and mental health issues and treats both with respect. We need a system that has true coordination with all medical and mental health providers to treat the whole person rather than separating body and mind. We need a system that truly understands and knows how to treat trauma. 

We need a system that, instead of penalizing people that are unable to make it to appointments due to physical issues, works together with them to find a way to makes things work. We need a system where front line people who like receptionists, police, hospital staff are well trained and know how to treat people going through crisis with deep respect. We need a system that doesn’t shame people for trying alternatives when conventional methods fail to work. We need long term and transitional housing options for people with psychiatric disabilities. Trying to heal when one is homeless is next to impossible. We need workplaces that destigmatize mental health issues and work with people to ensure equal access for all disabilities including psychiatric disabilities.  We need a system where people experiencing extreme mania or psychosis are treated with dignity rather than being turned away or treated in a punitive manner. People experiencing these issues should be treated no different than someone experiencing an acute physical crisis. 

We need a system that supports the whole family of someone living with mental illness and gives them real solutions. We need a system that sees ALL people as contributing members of society and encourages participation in work, volunteering, etc rather than enabling isolation and segregation. Finally, we need a system that treats each individual with deep respect and dignity and does not look at those with mental illness as ‘separate’ but rather as fellow human beings. People need to reach out and include us rather than avoiding us and avoiding talking about difficult issues. It needs to be understood that so many of us are out here trying everything we can just to live another day, hanging on by a thread and hoping beyond hope that things will get better. We are your sisters, your mothers, your brothers, your fathers, your friends, your coworkers and we are people who deserve respect, connection, friendship, love and treatment that works, that is individualized and that is easy to access. Most importantly, we need hope and as it stands now, that hope can be hard to come by for many of us.  

10 Years Gone

My friend.  Will this day or other triggering days in February ever change for me?  Ten years later, I can still feel absolutely gutted by your loss.  You were more than a friend to me, you were a soul sister.  And I know that I will never have that kind of bond with another human.  This has made me feel completely unmoored since the day I knew you were gone.  

The days go on.  I have lived 10 years of life since you died.  10 years filled with other kinds of losses and other joys.  I have lived these 10 years with your friendship, only one sided and in my head.  I have ‘felt’ your presence at times and dreamt about you.  

The memories bring me joy at times and laughter.  I miss that shared history and with you, I miss it a lot, because your memory for details was always much better than mine.  You were a consummate storyteller who brought vivid detail into the minds of those who you were sharing the story with.  

Grief has often gutted me and led me into many dark paths where I have come close to being completely lost. My lifetime propensity towards depression has often been triggered by the grieving of you and the grieving of the other losses I have experienced since your death.  I do believe that all of this has taken a physical toll as well and I sometimes wonder how much more of a ‘toll’ I can handle. 

It is almost impossible to describe this grief journey in words.  Somehow, I have managed to make it this far without you.  I have tried to live in a way you would have been proud of, but have fallen short many times.  There are things I have done that I know you would have been just shaking your head at, but I did them anyway. (not much different than when you were alive)

I love you, my friend.  Although you were a super private person, many other people now know how much I love you every single year to the point that many on social media surely want to unfriend me due to my many maudlin grief posts.  

I try to honor you by being present with my kids.  By truly enjoying the natural world in spite of my physical issues.  By loving books as much as you did.  By being a friend to others when I can be. 

Your friendship taught me more than anything, the value of friendship.  Being a good friend is a lifelong ‘value’ of mine, but one that is so difficult to fulfill due to my physical and emotional limitations the past few years.  I want to be the kind of friend you were to me.  To listen to who each person is and reflect back to them the ‘truths’ that they know inside but sometimes refuse to listen to.  To be a friend who helps others see their own worth when they can’t see their own.  To be able to laugh together with someone to help things seem just a little bit lighter.  To touch and love people the way you loved me.  

The ironic thing is that type of trust and friendship is so hard when you lose someone suddenly.  Your loss ripped out a chunk of my heart that will never grow back.  And shut down parts of it that are still very hard to open again.  

I wish that you were here to know my 4 crazy dogs, to see the amazing humans my daughters have become and so much more.  But you’re not and acceptance will never be there, but I am just learning to carry the pain somehow and keep living.  

On the Eve of My Daughter's 25th Birthday

25 years ago today, I started on a grueling and rewarding parenting journey. This journey has blessed me with some of my highest highs and lowest lows.  It's always a learning experience, but some of these lessons have been gutwrenching and feel often like my heart is being broken sometimes almost daily.

They say you are only as happy as your saddest child.  I have to say that most of the time this is true.  This becomes even truer when you feel like there is absolutely nothing more you can do to help.

Imagine being 25 years old and unable to leave the house on most days due to horrible fatigue, pain, and anxiety.  Imagine having your sleep schedule completely flipped and being unable to even go on a walk around the block on most days.  Imagine going to doctor after doctor and taking medication after medication with not one thing helping whatsoever. Imagine having no-one understand.

After telling a doctor or others the things I have shared above, I cannot tell you how many times people have asked me if she is working. The ignorance of this statement floors me.   We are telling them her illness is so overwhelming she cannot leave the house on most days and this 'work' question shows me how little understanding they have of anything we are trying to explain.

Imagine feeling, as a parent and as the daughter who is suffering, that it is impossible to explain and how this increases feelings of abject isolation and aloneness.

Imagine watching all of this as a parent and feeling hopeless to change anything.  Imagine being reliant on state health insurance and feeling so incredibly guilty for not choosing a career where I could have more wealth, where I could throw more money at trying to find her solutions. But, I am not wealthy and the answers are probably few anyway. But the guilt I feel at not being able to afford more solutions is intense and wrenching.

Imagine watching others of the same age start careers and families only to know that my brilliant and caring daughter may never have either career or family.

Today, I pondered, if I should just 'radically accept this horrible disability and give up hope of her ever having any kind of a different life.  After all, this has been ongoing off and on for 10 years with steadying worsening of symptoms, instead of improvement.  I don't know that I can accept that this kid, who has much to offer the world is just stuck in a small room in a very small world the rest of her life.

Talking to people about this has become a nightmare.  The other day when leaving yet another message for a grandparent letting them know she couldn't see them, I broke down in tears.  This message has happened over and over again and her grandparents struggle to understand. I know they also feel equally as hopeless and powerless to change this circumstance for the granddaughter they love dearly.  Talking to friends about it gets old as well as nothing changes and I know they don't understand unless they, too, have been there and most haven't.

My heart breaks today, the day I started my labor with her to start her journey into this cruel world. It wears on me day after day and it colors my perception and every aspect of my life and relationships.  For our little family of 4, it is heart wrenching and effects all of us in different ways.  For my girl, I can't even imagine how painful this must be. But, for the rest of us ,we also hope daily for an end to this nightmare while also being weighed down and exhausted by the pain of it.

I don't know how to tie this up with an easy ending.  There is no easy ending in this case. Some of this heartache can be tied to failures of our healthcare and mental healthcare systems. But, that is for another post. Perhaps the only thing to do is keep hoping that around some corner there may be an answer.  In fact, this is part of why I talk about it on social media, on the outside hope that maybe someone somewhere will be able to help or have answers.  So, far, I have had no luck.  But, for now, all we can do is treasure what she gives us when she can.  Her vibrant, creative, caring self.  Her movie loving, art loving, family loving, amazing writer self.  She is still those things, even when she cannot share them with many.  And all we can do is keep loving her and each other through it all. Happy 25th my girl.  May life get easier for all of us.  

We will not be silent-1/20/2017

Today is January 20, 2017.  The day of the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States.  I have not written a blog post in over a year. But, today, I feel the need to write something, to say something.

Since the election, I have felt heartsick.  My body actually mirrored this emotional heartache by becoming more fatigued, in pain and depressed than I have ever been in my entire life.  For those who know me, that's a bit of a frightening thought as I almost died from depression 30 years ago this spring.

I hurt.  I hurt for my daughters.  All three of us have fought to recover from the legacy of abuse and manipulation by someone who has manipulated, neglected and emotionally abused them all of their lives, and me, most of my adult life.  Even though my contact is completely limited with him, he still haunts me.

As I have written before, our trauma lives.  Our trauma lives in the daily severe physical and mental sickness of my oldest daughter.  Our trauma lives in my pain, in my fatigue,  in my inability to be vulnerable, to open my heart to others when I need to.  Our trauma lives in my youngest in ways I probably do  not know or understand, because she has chosen to push forward in life with single minded positive determination.

And now, we have elected someone who reminds us so much of this abuse and manipulation we have endured. My ex may be on the fringes of society, but he shares many characteristics of Donald Trump. The belief of being 'special' or unique, the entitled attitudes, the inability to self reflect and instead blame others for their problems, envy, and emotional manipulation are all characteristics they both share.  Additionally, my own history of sexual violence is triggered by Trump's many attitudes, comments and actions towards women.

I dreamt last night of one of my heroes, the poet, Andrea Gibson, someone who gives voice to all of these issues in ways I can never dream of doing. Perhaps it was my subsconscious pushing me forward into greater creativity, telling me how to fight this very real threat that is upon us today. I know that both of my girls also have deep wells of incredible creativity within them. All of us, with our collective creativity can fight this threat if only we can avoid succumbing to escapism and fight with all of our creative hearts.

When the three of us see our new President, we can't help but be triggered as millions of other men and women probably are also triggered. But, I know all of us cannot be broken by this.  So many of us have suffered at the hands of a narcissist and survived and sometimes thrived in amazing and courageous ways.  Others of us have given up. For those voiceless ones who are out there and feeling hopeless. I stand with you. I am you. But, somehow deep inside I know we can all find the hope and the courage to get through this just have we have learned to get through and confront our own abuse. We must push forward and figure out healthy ways to resist, to confront abuse when we see it and keep working towards a healthier future for everyone; a future that includes a societal recognition of the deep wrongs of abuse and a commitment to NEVER let another abuser rule our country, be it in Congresss, the presidency, or local government. We cannot excuse this, we cannot normalize this, and we will not be silent.

Guest Blog From A Friend: Taking Crazy To A Whole New Level

Talking to anyone about my inner demons is hard for me. I talk to myself plenty. I have long-winded dialogue with myself almost every minute that I’m not conversing with another human being. A lot of those inner conversations are ugly, unvarnished truth. However, admitting my vulnerabilities to others has never been part of my make-up. From where I sit, the world, particularly in the individually-driven country in which I live, tells us to handle our own business. I try not to pry into the personal affairs of other folks unless I’m asked to, and I generally don’t like it when people pry into mine. 

It’s a glitch in my programming. I’m not much of a talker unless I really, really trust the person I’m sharing with, and there aren’t too many folks I trust. That’s somewhat unwarranted, I suppose, but the people I open up to seem to understand.

When my dear friend started this blog, part of me shuddered at the notion of her openly sharing, in vast detail, her struggles with not only addictions, but various other emotional and mental struggles. I wanted to caution her to keep her demons close to her vest, but she arrived at an epiphany long before I did. She called it like it was, which filled me with admiration and awe, but also with a tremendous fear.  The potential stigma - at least that’s what I perceived it to be - seemed so great to me that I feared what I thought would be the resulting damage to her anonymity, privacy, and reputation. I saw the inherent value in her sharing her own struggles so that others might not feel so alone, but my brief flirtation with following suit and writing my own story was quickly tempered by trepidation.  I resolved to follow her lead at the time, and then rapidly retreated into the safety of hiding my own significant “craziness.” After all, I rationalized, I was doing OK. I was sober, getting by day-by-day, maintaining a comfortable façade of respectability, and rationalizing my near-daily anxiety as just “something to deal with.” Sure, I worried about things, and I checked the stove, lights, and doors a few more times than normal before leaving the house, but I was working hard, exercising, and doing my best to be of service to others. My internal fears and obsessions were nobody’s business but my own. I didn’t feel like there was much reason for me to open myself up to the potential ridicule from those who wouldn’t get it. 

I can no longer, in good conscience, be governed by that fear. You see, about a month ago, my mind decided it had had enough. Out of nowhere, an overwhelming remorse and shame for my past met with an intolerable surge of anxiety about my future, and the ability to maintain the facade became not only a difficulty, but a complete impossibility. My pride in four years of continuous sobriety suddenly became meaningless as I tried desperately to find some way to quiet the steady drumbeat of voices in my head. I tried many responsible ways to keep at bay what was quickly becoming a monster that was all-consuming. I walked for miles, praying the entire time for the pain to go away. I got down on my knees three or four times a day, praying earnest and pleading prayers that brought little to no relief. I tied literally dozens of flies at my work bench for trips to the river with my fly rod that couldn’t materialize, thanks to the frigid cold. I cleaned my house incessantly, laundering clothes that hadn’t been worn. I volunteered for extra work at the office, although my lack of concentration should have dictated that I choose the opposite course. The solution that I once knew to work so well - a stiff drink or two - began to occupy my thoughts almost as much as the loneliness and anxiety. To put as fine a point on it as I can, my mind and soul became hopelessly sick. In retrospect, I’m disappointed in the choice I made, which was to reach for a solution that I knew would provide at least a temporary respite. When the respite was over - too quickly, I might add - I was back to self-hatred and hopelessness.

I’ll admit it without reservation. A constant flow of booze long ago became the only solution that ever worked to stop the squirrels from sprinting endlessly in my mind. At the risk of suggesting that alcohol is a solution to anxiety - which I am definitively not doing - it always seemed to work. Obsessive worries always disappeared when I got good and drunk. This occasion was no exception. The first gulp of vodka I took brought instant relief: a nice, warm glow in my chest, a comfortable burn, a demonstrable slowing of my heart rate, and most importantly, the damn squirrels stopped running so fast. I don’t know about you guys, but when the squirrels in my mind start running and don’t stop, getting them to at least slow down causes me to cast reason aside. Never mind the damage I’m doing to my liver, stomach, heart, esophagus. Who cares? I just want some peace.

Peace, of course, never lasts very long when it’s alcohol-induced. Pretty quickly, it became obvious to me that I was on the course for death…again. By this point, I had skipped a week of work, and just assumed I’d be fired, not knowing that I had two bosses who were worried sick enough about me to call the police and send them to my house to check on my welfare. A co-worker suddenly sent a request to be friends on Facebook, with a simple note of “concerned about you.” I was so far gone that I waved off the officer at my door with some lame excuse about just being “under the weather.“ I got to thinking that dying wouldn’t actually be so bad. Waking up every day with a new worry or obsession in my head had grown to be an exhausting routine, and now I‘d essentially cast aside everyone and everything - a good job where my bosses clearly cared about me, a family that has never given up on me, and relationships that I had spent four years cultivating and treasuring. 

The resulting shame led me to a conclusion that I never in a million years would have expected from myself, and that was that life was no longer worth living. A mere two months ago, I’d have told you that I was happy. Then, with no warning, obsessive thoughts came from nowhere, and with no comfort level to share them with anyone, I had quickly spiraled into an unwarranted sense of foreboding and hopelessness. The thoughts had entered my mind without any warning, and I couldn’t let them go. The only way I knew to stop them was to drink them away, which doubled my shame and put me into a familiar cycle of self-destruction. Feeling as though I had thrown away everything I’d worked to achieve, I started thinking of the softest way to simply disappear. Suddenly and inexplicably, I no longer wanted to live, let alone fight or struggle to simply endure what was temporary, but certainly not unfamiliar mental anguish. 

With no firearms in the house, I found myself having to think creatively. I hopped online and started researching how to tie a proper noose. I couldn’t find any rope, so I thought maybe some excess telephone cable might do the trick. In my state of intoxicated apathy, I found myself unable to get the noose tied properly, and in any event, there didn’t seem to be any beam or bar that would support my weight.

I tried cutting my wrists, but I simply didn’t have the nerve to go deep enough, and the knife I tried seemed frustratingly dull. The outer scars are faint now, visible only if I look carefully enough. The inner scars will be with me for some time.

I finally surmised that taking enough of any kind of pills would bring about the result I thought I wanted at the time. I didn’t have anything really powerful in the house, but I did finally find a bottle of old, expired blood pressure medication that I had been prescribed long ago but rarely bothered to take for some reason - benign neglect, I suppose. I swallowed a handful with a vodka chaser and waited for the end, wondering the entire time if it would be enough, or would simply add some vomiting and diarrhea to my already pathetic condition.

Here’s where something happened that was either spiritual or simply medical, or maybe a combination. I briefly left my house for no other reason than to take one last look around outside. After a half hour or so, I had to return quickly, as the toxic brew churning in my gut felt as though it was going to expel itself from my body. I raced to my bathroom and there, in black ink, was a long paragraph of text on the bathroom floor. It was a message from my father, and not just a simple “don’t do it,” but a long letter, written in stark detail and demonstrating intimate knowledge of the issues that had been plaguing my mind for days on end. I can’t remember the exact wording, but I can best describe it as a loving rage, questioning on the one hand why I would choose such a selfish solution, but including an offer to walk through whatever fire was burning me up inside. I glanced to the right and saw another long message from my mother. I remember even less of what her letter said, but it was clear that my death would take a piece of her with me. I began to walk around the house, and suddenly realized that the carpets, tables, doors, and walls were covered in messages from my two oldest nephews, my siblings, friends, and even some that were signed by people I’d never heard of or met. Members of my twelve-step home group had left lighthearted notes designed, I assume, to ease my burden in the only way they knew. In all, they were pleas for me to reconsider, expressions of love, suggestions for new career paths, and personal stories of anguish-turned-triumph. 

I made it to the front door, and read one last message, written by my friend and author of this blog. Unlike any of the other notes, this one expressed a vivid, prescient understanding of exactly what I was going through. It was a message of empathy. Not sympathy, but empathy. She understood, and her note urged me to find another way. If my current approach, which had worked so well but no longer seemed to do the trick, wasn’t the way, then certainly there was something else to be tried. When I saw her later, in the days after my attempt at stopping the damn squirrels for good, she simply encouraged me to “get at the root” and seek the right kind of help.

I pulled out my cell phone to take pictures of the letters, and just as suddenly as the messages had appeared, they vanished, and I sunk into my easy chair, exhausted and confused.

As it became clear to me that my attempt at drifting away into irrelevance was going to do nothing other than make me sick and more twisted, I started trying to process what had just happened. At first, I suspected that a friend and mentor of mine had intuitively known what I was going through, and had orchestrated the entire event using some kind of special ink that would disappear after a certain amount of time. When my sister and brother in-law suddenly showed up at my door and exposed my obvious intoxication to the light of day, I opened the floodgates and confessed to my days-long battle with my own mind. I began to quiz them as to how everyone had gotten in the house so fast in my brief absence and written such detailed notes to me in disappearing ink over every square inch of my home. Obviously, neither had any clue as to what I was referring. I expected anger and dismay. Instead, I received kindness, but saw sadness and worry in the eyes of my sister. 

I’m guessing now that the messages, at least in logical terms, were simple hallucinations. Still, I have to wonder if the God I believed in, but lacked faith in, had a hand in all of it as well.

After a night in the hospital, I spent the next week with family, recovering. At long last, I began to share the worries and shame that had started what now seems like a ridiculous chain of events. What I got from this was not ridicule, but perspective. The sins of my past were overblown, they said, and in any event had been forgiven. The worries about the future were surmountable at worst, and opportunities for growth, at best. I quickly saw things in a new light, a light that would have shined vividly before any damage had been done had I bothered to simply tell someone. In the weeks since my nightmare, I’ve had the benefit of medical care and healing, with the opportunity now to seek real professional help for an obvious, if undiagnosed, mental illness. 

The real point of all this, if there is one, is not to simply recount a horror story and admit that I, too, suffer from mental illness. I’m extremely fortunate to have family, friends, and resources to now move forward and not only learn, but heal. My siblings both work in mental health, and they’ve gone to great lengths to point me in the right direction. In plain English, I’m lucky. I wonder what would have happened had I not had the chance to finally tell someone, without judgment or fear of aspersion, troubles that had seemed so real to me, yet so manageable to an objective listener. In my travels, despite my own obvious sickness, I’ve met people who have the same demons, but no family to share them with. I’ve taken other alcoholics to the hospital, desperately hoping they could get some real help, only to watch doctors and supposed substance abuse “counselors” cast them back into the wilderness without so much as checking their blood pressure or blood-alcohol content. During my recent stay in the hospital, the security guard charged with watching me was by far the most compassionate, kind person I encountered during the entire process. He brought me food, and apologized profusely when the kitchen sent up a turkey sandwich instead of the roast beef I had asked for. I couldn’t have cared less that my order came back wrong, but the man actually wanted to send it back so I could have roast beef! I laughed and declined, so he sat in the room offering encouragement as I tried to get him to see the writing I was seeing on the hospital floor – clearly more hallucinations that were visible only to my eyes. I was uplifted by his kindness. That man did more to start me on the road to healing than anyone else, simply by showing some obvious, heartfelt compassion for the town drunk. 

In her post entitled “My Daily Nightmare,” my friend wrote: “Other countries have more expanded options for people with mental health issues…our pharmaceutical lobby is so powerful that we often destroy the lives of people with mental health issues, treating them like guinea pigs when there are other interventions available that are never tried…community supports are often few.” My hope is that recounting my story might serve as a small bit of that community support. I want people with troubles to share them with supportive family, if they have them. I want our society to start taking mental health seriously. Not with derision, but with compassion. If my story can give just one person some hope, then I’m overjoyed. I hope others will set aside their fears and share their own stories. It’s high time that the stigma of being “crazy” goes away, and if my story can help move that process forward, it’s well worth any remaining apprehension I have with sharing it.

In the weeks since my own sudden, unexpected nightmare, I’ve alternated between hope and hopelessness. I’ve taken far too many over-the-counter sleeping pills, which seem to do no good whatsoever and, I think, are simply tearing my stomach apart at this point. Anxiety rears its head nearly every morning at 5 a.m., like clockwork. My heart races, my pulse quickens, and I try my best to breathe deeply and go back to sleep. Usually, I end up just getting out of bed and starting my day. I spend my days working as much as possible, because it seems like that’s the one thing that can distract me enough to make the days manageable. Quite frankly, there are days where I ask God to spare me any further time here. Somehow, I get the impression that those pleas are being deferred because I’m supposed to still do something better. 

Still, it helps to know I’m not the only one. In the recent days, I’ve simply started to share what happened to me with people, few holds barred, in matter-of-fact terms.  Both bosses, and several co-workers, have shown nothing but compassion and thankfulness that I’m back at work. Some have even opened up about their own struggles with Bi-Polar disorder, depression, and anxiety. 

As I’ve taken the time to get this off my chest and share it with the world, I’ve been trying to think of what the overall point has been. Maybe the point has just been to put it out there in hopes that someone else won’t feel so alone. Maybe the point is that there shouldn’t be shame in seeking help. Maybe the point is that there just flat out isn’t enough help for us “nut-jobs.”  Or, maybe the point is that there is help, but we just don’t seek it out. I don’t really know for sure. What I do know is that pretending it wasn’t an issue didn’t work for me, and succumbing to the idea that it’s shameful isn’t an option any longer.

To those reading this who suffer, I wish you all the things I wish for myself - some joy, contentment, and relief. Know that my heart aches along with yours, because in many respects, I’m there with you. Our demons may be different, but our pain isn’t. Maybe sharing it with each other is the best medicine we can hope for. I hope I’ve done my part.