Archive for July, 2009

The Eternal Drinking Temptation

{ July 7, 2009 @ 3:04 am } · { coping with Schizoaffective Disorder }
{ Tags: , } · { Leave a Comment }

Over the fourth weekend my fiance, Jamie and I went up to South Haven Michigan to be with her extended family. Her aunt and uncle have a beautiful house on Lake Michigan up there. Her family is very close and a lot of fun. We laughed all weekend long.

On Independence Day Jamie’s two uncles, her brother-in-law, and her barely-underage twin cousins started throwing back beers in the early afternoon. After spending some time at the beech, the holiday festivities moved to the hot tub in the back yard. Classic rock blared from the iPod as the men continued to pound ’em amidst the bubbly foam in the tub.

I was the only male conspicuously missing from the hot tub party. I was sitting amongst the women laughing at the crazy conversations the guys were having. Finally, they coaxed me into the water. As I lowered myself in, the water spilled over the sides. The tub had exceeded capacity. Jamie’s uncle Marcus, a guy known for his quick wit and his ability to turn every family function into a raucous free-for-all told a story about rubbing elbows with a world famous musician. Marcus traveled in elite circles because of his family fortune. In the short time I’ve known him, he has boarded a private jet to the ’08 Final Four, and has met President Obama. I wasn’t about to dismiss his latest tale as hearsay despite his drunken state.

“You know, I played tennis against the great Yitzhak Perlman. Yeah, I mopped the court with him!” There was a pause and then billows of loud laughter filled the yard. Pearlman happens to be handicapped and confined to a wheel chair. Despite its crass nature, the joke went over well and it was vintage Marcus. Then Neal Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” blasted from the speakers. Someone in the tub called Diamond the Jewish Elvis and everyone busted into their rendition of the classic song. The lyrics echoed through the entire subdivision, the guys were having a great time. I smiled and hummed along. I kept wondering how I would have related had I shared their blood alcohol levels. They kept offering me beers and I kept turning them down, all the while envisioning myself as drunk and happy as they were.

The doctors said that I had no alcohol dependency when they were diagnosing my illness. Does that mean I’m in the clear? Can I have a few beers on occasion? They always warned me that alcohol in any amount could disrupt my stability. The temptation will always be there. This is something I have to live with. The difficult part will be remaining sober at our wedding in December. After the booze fest that was July 4th, I’m not so sure I want to be the sober one forever.

Drinking Games

{ July 7, 2009 @ 2:42 am } · { symptoms and warning signs }
{ Tags: } · { Leave a Comment }

I think about drinking at least once a week. Mostly when I’m out with Jamie and friends on weekends. Alcohol use has become so commonplace in our society that it is assumed everyone drinks, at least a little. I used to drink a lot. I wouldn’t say that I ever had a drinking problem, but I was definitely a binge drinker throughout high school and much of college. I did it because it made me feel good and assisted me with some of my social insecurities. Drinking was so embedded into the high school and college culture that I never thought twice about it.

After being diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder, more than a few doctors told me that using recreational drugs or alcohol could cause symptoms to resurface. So I completely cut drinking out of my life. Do I miss it? A lot! But as of now I am managing okay without it.

Jamie asks me quite frequently if I’ll have a drink with her. She likes to unwind with a glass of wine when we are out to dinner. I’ve never sen Jamie out of control drunk, but I do see her slip into a more relax state after several cocktails. I explained to her that I don’t drink because it could disrupt my stability. I’ve told her that mixing alcohol with the medication I’m on could be a problem. She understands my situation but I know she would really enjoy getting a little tipsy with me. After all, drinking is fun, that’s why so many people my age do it.

It becomes a little more uncomfortable when I have to explain to a friend that I don’t drink. “At all?” Is their question. “Not really,” I say. I always include that ‘really’ in my response to lesson the shock on my peers that they’ve acutally met a young, seemingly healthy guy who doesn’t put down the occasional Miller Light. Actually, my beer of choice was Blue Moon when I started drinking again a couple of summers ago.

I was single at the time, so was my brother and a roommate of ours in our Lincoln Square apartment. We started having bachelors’ nights when we’d go to the bars, get plastered and try to pick up women. We were all successful on both fronts, drinking until we lost all inhibitions, and scoring with nice looking young women. I kept it up for more than a month. We’d often go out three nights a week. I remember consulting my older brother at the time. He was a Psychology major in college and has expansive knowledge about the various functions of the brain. “If you do it in moderation, you’ll be fine,” he said. “Well what’s moderation?” I asked. “Just don’t abuse it, do it to have a good time.” And that was the green light I needed, it became my justification for getting drunk. At the same time, the doctor was adjusting my medication, trying to find the lowest effective dose. The drinking and the med change were recipes for disaster. I’m not going to lie, those days in September of ’07 were some of the best times of my life, but they became dangerous very quickly.

First I had trouble sleeping, then I started hearing voices and experiencing hallucinations. I quickly stopped drinking and the doctor increased the medication. I don’t know if the symptoms manifested because of the med change or my late night benders, probably, it was a combination of both. I still think about returning to my drinking days but I know if I start with a beer to unwind, it will lead to five and eventually all out drunkenness.

Learned Optimism

{ July 3, 2009 @ 10:48 pm } · { sources of inspiration }
{ Tags: } · { Leave a Comment }

I caught a rerun of Michael J. Fox on Letterman last night. The original segment aired on April 2nd. He was promoting his best selling book Always Looking Up. It is an autobiography of him contending with Parkinson’s Disease, a horrifying illness that makes your body shake and spasm uncontrollably. The book is one of the most meaningful and uplifting works I have ever read. The title, as Fox explained, has dual meaning. It is a reference to his learned and eternal optimism in the wake of his PD, and it relates to the way he has been “vertically challenged” his whole life, being forced to literally look up at the people he meets. He jokingly said that he could have called it “asses and elbows.”

The fact that he can keep his sense of humor throughout his struggles is a testament to the optimism he claims to be responsible for the way he copes with the hand he has been dealt. Watching him squirm around in his chair was extremely disheartening considering my memories of the larger than life roles he played in the timeless Back to the Future films. I grew up watching him as Marty McFly give and epic rendition of Jonny B. Good on stage at “the dance.” Now he has been reduced to a shadow of his former self, randomly victimized by a debilitating disease.

Similar to Fox, I try to keep my sense of humor, finding time every day to smile and laugh. It is easy to succumb to mental illness and allow it to control your life. It is difficult to look on the bright side of things and be thankful for what you have–Fox has inspired me and scores of others to do just that. I have a beautiful fiance, a loving family and a strong team of supporters. Our similarities don’t end with an optimistic outlook on life. We both suffer from an illness that, without proper medication, can take over our cognitive abilities. Though Fox’s life might ultimately end prematurely, we both know what it is like to have little or know control of our thoughts and actions. I couldn’t help but to reflect back on my psychotic episodes as I watched him helplessly shift form side to side in his seat.

When I first experienced delusions and hallucinations, I was blindsided. I had no answer for what was happening to me, and worse yet, I didn’t think anything was wrong. A three month stay in Vegas, a stint in a Texas prison and time spent in a psych ward convinced me that there was in fact a problem. Fox woke up one morning years ago and couldn’t stop his finger from twitching. He knew that he needed medical assistance. The realization that you need help comes slower for those contending with mental illness. Still, the outlook of consistent optimism can be a recipe for success.

Until recently, I kept my illness a secret. I have always been concerned with he stigma attached to mental illness, worried about how people would judge me once they found out I suffered from Schizoaffective Disorder. Consequently I told very few people about my affliction. Those in the know included my fiance Jamie, my best friend Mike and my immediate family. Conspicuously, my extended family, present and past employers and countless friends have no idea about my illness. I somehow managed to keep incarceration and institutionalization in the dark. My close extended family thinks I suffered from a quarter-life crisis and my old friends think I’ve become antisocial. Have I conned these people? Have I taken the coward’s way out? Hopefully this forum speaks to the contrary, and dealing with Schizoaffective Disorder is something that my close family and friends will eventually know all about.

Emotional Disturbances

{ July 3, 2009 @ 10:46 pm } · { challenges in education, coping with Schizoaffective Disorder }
{ Tags: , } · { Leave a Comment }

So I’m sitting in the back of my LSI 446 class where we are learning about differentiated instruction. Specifically, we are learning strategies and methods of teaching children with special needs. It is another stop in the two year program to become a Master of Secondary Education. This particular class is a bit dry and I have been so provoked and inspired by the blogosphere that I decided to jot down an entry in my spiral notebook.

We learned in our last class that disabilities really do run the gamut. There are fine motor disabilities, comprehension disabilities, learning disabilities, writing deficiencies, autism, mental retardation and finally, emotional disturbances. I may have missed a couple but there is basically a disability and diagnosis nowadays for everything under the sun.

As I listen to the lecture, distracted by this posting, I get to thinking, am I special? Does my illness garner special education? There have been moments during my pursuit of this masters when I wanted to divulge aspects of my illness to a professor or classmate. In each situation though, I stayed mum. I was afraid of the obvious, that said classmate or teacher would think differently of me. I wonder what types of accommodations would be made. Would I get leniency on grades or deadlines? Would the professor take it easy on me? If so I could have benefited from some of these accommodations in my Poetry course last quarter.

Each time the professor says emotional disturbances I think of a high school version of myself. The illness might have presented itself way back then when, during my senior year I had all kinds of trouble sleeping. So much so that I missed a lot of school. I also struggled with the first signs of depression at that time. Should there have modifications in the curriculum I was in? What if an English teacher approached me and said, “Listen Josh, I know things aren’t great for you right now so if you’re too tired to finish all of Great Expectations, I will take a paper on what you have read thus far.” Would that have been the encouragement I needed to pursue education as a career before my 30th birthday?

Though doctors have warned me about searching for the impetus of my mental illness, fearing that the search would be endless and frustrating, I come back to the same precursors to the illness every time I introspect. I was raised to be honest, forthright and to follow the rules. As a freshman in high school I experimented with marijuana for the first time which led me down a dark and lonely path. Suddenly, I couldn’t identify with any of my family or friends. I had broken stride with everything I was raised to be. I was now a bad seed and I truly believed that, and became resentful of my poor decisions. I was contemptuous of the young man I would become and regretful of the fast times and partying I did clear into my mid twenties. I often pose rhetorical questions in my posts, and so here’s another one: were the drugs and alchol enough damage on my brain to cause a life long mental illness? The doctors don’t know and I don’t either but my speculation will never seace.

Back to my queries about emotional disturbances in education. Part of the reason I want to go into teaching is because I feel that my educators deserted me when I most needed them. I showed signs of depression during my high school years but no one, not even a family member reached out to me. I would have deep conversations with my father from time to time but it was no respite for the pain and anguish I felt every day. If a teacher noticed my symptoms and took action, I might have achieved at a higher level during those times of trouble, giving me needed confidence. Assigning blame is often counterproductive. I’ve done a lot of blaming myself for pulling bongs and istening to Dave Mathew’s Band as a teenager. I’ve done a lot of blaming my educators and parents for not noticing my symptoms. It hasn’t gotten me far. It wasn’t until I fully accepted my illness as my own problem that my recovery from it began.

I hope I can make a difference in my students’ lives so that they won’t be searching for scapegoats and culprits during their formative years. Rather their searches should be about finding inspiration in my lessons and becoming the people they want to be.

Fleeting Delusions

{ July 3, 2009 @ 8:42 pm } · { coping with Schizoaffective Disorder }
{ Tags: , , } · { Leave a Comment }

Phil was speaking to me!

Phil was speaking to me!

I am sitting in a Panera following a very productive visit to my therapist, Dr. Levisnon. We covered a great deal today. He is very good at what he does and he always seems to make me reflect on my thoughts and feelings more than I thought possible. I mostly wanted to talk about my new outlet, this blog. He asked me what I have been posting about and I was honest with him. In therapy, the more truthful you are, the better it works. I told him I have posted about school, and my outlook on the way things are going. I told him that one of the things that struck me as I perused others’ blogs was that several bloggers writing about coping with Schizoaffective Disorder admitted to having minor delusions even in times of stability. That got me thinking about my own recovery and the thoughts that I encounter which I am reluctant to share with others, even Dr. Levinson.

I told him that I feel that I harbor fleeting delusions, as I termed them, on a daily basis. As usual, the doctor didn’t request that I share these with him, he allows me to process things and share them when I am totally comfortable; this to me is one of the reasons we work so well together. He asked me why it is easier to write about difficult or embarrassing topics than to talk about them. I told him that when I write I am able to formulate things in a poignant way. When they come out on the computer, they are in their purest and most vital form. When I verbalize them though, I have to contend with various ideas that often get me sidetracked from the real issues.

So I told him that I can tell that my delusions are not real, hence terming them fleeting delusions. I told him this process is different than the one I went through back in ’03 when I was psychotic for much of the year. The delusions then seemed real and I acted on many of them. “These are ego dystonic delusions,” he started. “They are delusions that you can separate from reality. Other people believe in conspiracy theories and ‘crazy ideas’ that they believe to be true. These are called ego syntonic delusions. Some people harbor certain thoughts about terrorism following 911. Back in my day it was paranoia bout Communism. These are all ego syntonic.”

Then there was a long pause. We are past the point where pauses or lulls in our conversation become uncomfortable. Then I was ready. “I have these beliefs that my cousin David is like ‘Big Brother,’ watching my every move,” I confided. David is my first cousin who I stayed with during one of my psychotic episodes. He was fighting white collar crime at the time in Vegas as a member of the FBI. While I was staying with his family in December of ’02, I was hallucinating and extremely manic. To this day I wonder if he knew that I was suffering from an illness. He has always been a role model to me, I’ve always emulated the way that he always seems in complete control, nothing rattles him. “Now I feel as though he is tracking my emails, even this blog and following my activity from his FBI office,” I continued. “I know that he probably has the means to do all of that, but I also understand that he has real FBI work to do that extends far beyond monitoring his cousin’s behavior.”

“Ego dystonic,” Levinson said. “You know that this delusion is not real.” Now I had a term for the thoughts I have been having for years. I was glad that I was finally able to express these concerns with the doctor. Further, I was glad that there was a category for the delusions I was having, that they weren’t completely off the map. “As long as the thoughts don’t cause you anxiety or unrest, there is nothing wrong with them,” he said in a calming way. I told him I shared these delusions with Jamie and she said it was nothing different than her believing that her father is watching her every move. He passed away two years ago. “People who don’t believe in the hereafter would call my spiritual beliefs delusional,” she intimated. “I guess you’re right,” I agreed.

It feels great to have such a strong team of support. Both Jamie, Dr. Levinson and my older brother Benjy for that matter, never make me feel completely wacko because of the things I think about. They are the three people in my life that I confide in the most.

In a conversation I had with Jamie the other night, I shared my other main delusion with her. I didn’t get to it in the doctor’s office because we ran out of time. During my manic and psychotic episodes, I thought and believed that Phil Jackson, the great coach of the LA Lakers was communicating with me. I always had a great deal of respect for him and marveled at how he meshed egos and personalities into championship caliber teams. I plan on coaching basketball when I finish my teaching degree and there is no other coach that I would rather model my coaching style after than the Zen Master himself. While I was symptomatic I read all of his books and adopted most of his Zen Buddhism philosophies. At times I felt as though he was calling me out to LA to try out for the Lakers and play for his squad. Looking back it was scary that I believed all of this, dangerous as well considering that I set out west on two occasions with no end in sight. With the right medication and therapy, these extreme delusions slowly dissipated.

I followed the Lakers throughout the playoffs this year and watched them win yet another championship, their fourth under Jackson’s tenure as coach. The whole time I couldn’t help but think that they were a team of destiny because I was finally in a good and healthy place. Somehow I felt that Phil knew that I am well and blogging and looking on the bright side of things so this was the time for him to finally break Red Auerbach’s record of nine rings and immerse himself in eternal coaching lore. Sometimes I would even look at him on the television and hear his voice. None of this bothered me because they were all ‘ego dystonic’ delusions, or I could tell that they were rooted in fantasy.

Dr. Levinson said some people believe that the son of G-d was the messiah and they worship a holy spirit as well, different from his and my belief in a monotheistic G-d. “We are all different and delusional in our own right, it is when the thoughts become harmful and inhibit your functionality that problems ensue.” In essence, the good doctor told me that I can continue to dream and believe and remain somewhat delusional as long as the thoughts do not become destructive like they had in the past.

Introduction

{ July 3, 2009 @ 8:35 pm } · { coping with Schizoaffective Disorder }
{ Tags: } · { Leave a Comment }

I was diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder, Bipolar Type, in early 2004 after suffering for over a year with psychosis, delusions, hallucinations, and several manic episodes. I have been realtively stable for the last five years thanks to medication and weekly psychotherapy sessions. I am a firm believer in therapy, without it, I don’t know if I’d be able to function the way I do. I have found that when others write about mental illness, one of the main things they struggle with is functioning on a day-to-day basis. My illness is never completely in check, but with the support of good friends and family and regimented therapy, I feel as though I am functioning at a very high level. My goal is to provide needed hope for those struggling with their own demons as well as increase awareness of those coping with mental illnesses of their own. I am currently working on my second masters degree, and plan to pursue a career in eductaion upon completion. My first masters and career was in journalism but due to paper cutbacks and an asshole of a boss, I decided to change careers last summer. My personal life couldn’t be better. I am currently engaged to be married in the fall to a beautiful and magnificient girl with whom I have been open and honest about my past, and who hasn’t judged me for a second. My past includes a stint in a Texas prison for breaking and entering, an episode I experienced while delusional and hallucinating, and short stays in a psych ward and an impatient psych recovery center in Texas which I credit for turning my life around. I hope that good things are ahead. Througout the time I have grappled with my illness, I have used writing as my main outlet. It has provided me with insight I never knew I had. My blog is about coping and I plan to write about daily experiences that are difficult to confront because of the illness, but do not set me back because I refuse to let my debilitating illness define me.

Next entries »