Rev Left Radio - An Open-Ended Discussion about Mental Health

Episode Date: November 25, 2022

David Icenogle (from No Chaser) returns to the show and joins Breht once again to have a frank, open-ended, wide-ranging discussion about their experiences and struggles with mental health. This is not meant as medical advice, nor scientific analysis; it is meant to simply be two human beings and close friends sitting down and discussing their direct experiences in the hope that it might resonate with, or otherwise provide comfort to, people out there who struggle with this stuff too. Check out Dave's YT channel about his struggles with addiction and his road to recovery here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrmDFdoZQU0CgAZm67Do4BQ Check out our previous episode with Dave titled "On Alcoholism, Relapse, and Recovery" here: https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/dave

Hello everybody and welcome back to Rev Left Radio. On today's episode, we're back on the show, my close personal friend and a repeat guest, mostly on the Patreon, I think, but a couple episodes publicly. David Isonogel from the YouTube channel No Chaser. He's been on, I think the last public episode you were on was in regards to alcoholism and recovery surrounding addiction, which a lot of people resonated with. now I'm having you back on to kind of have a broader discussion of mental health and mental health issues, some of which dovetail, obviously, with your experiences of addiction, but just in and of themselves are an issue that you've struggled with, that I've struggled with, that people out there listening have almost certainly struggled with

or know people right now in their lives who are struggling with some form of mental illness. So, of course, when we're talking about an issue like this, I just want to launch a little preface by saying neither David or I are medical experts. We're going to be talking about our own experiences. We're going to be examining those experiences with the goal of hopefully letting people out there who are struggling with this stuff, know that they're not alone, first and foremost, and hopefully saying things that will resonate with people who have or are currently going through it. But as always, if you have a specific mental health issue, definitely talk to medical professionals and get help on your specific problem and don't take anything that we're saying here to. tonight as medical advice for you because we are not medical experts and we're not doing that. Our goal here is just to talk about our shared experiences, make people feel less alone,

and just kind of wrestle with the complexity of mental health in the American context in particular. And what those processes of going through mental illness and trying to get help for mental illness often look like. And just to restate it, mental health issues are often very isolating. They're very alienating. often you feel incredibly alone and so if nothing else episode like this is meant to kind of extend a hand outward and let you know that you are absolutely not alone and in fact so many people kind of hide their mental health struggles for various reasons from the people around them which even add to that so hopefully we can at least kind of break down those walls a little bit and

let people know who are struggling with this stuff that they are not alone and there is light at the end of the tunnel. So with all of that out of the way, David, would you like to kind of just introduce yourself for people who might not have heard previous episodes with you and kind of just tell people who you are? Yeah, I'm David Isonogel, and as far as like my background, that's kind of pertinent to the topic at hand, I have family members that are, that deal with mental health and mental illness, not only as their own personal experience, but as professionals. I myself has some professional experience with it. I was a case manager. for, you know, the Community Alliance, which is part of our community that helps people in a transitionary period, you know, adjusting to life that have, you know, moderate to severe mental illness.

I've written for mental health-related publications such as Asylum Magazine, Tethered to This World, some way back in the day, personal, smaller editorials for NAMI. And, you know, I would say is what you discussed, most importantly, as a criteria of some sort of background, I have lived the experience and still live in. You know, and one thing I'd like to say, too, is you talk about the common but very true phrase that, you know, you are not alone on this. I kind of hope what to accomplish with this conversation is, of course you're not alone in the feelings you have, the deficiencies of mind that create moods or create, you know, cognitive problems. Of course you're not alone in that. But I really want to stress that you're also not alone in the experience of trying to get help because that's a shared experience in itself. I mean, I'm not just talking about dealing with the, you know, the issues and inflowling. of an impaired mind of that sort, but I'm talking about things like seeking help, having to

deal with the world of counseling, prescription drugs, having to deal with how you adjust to society, having to deal with even modern stuff that, you know, a curse today that has like vastly changed the landscape of mental health, you know, and just the, in the remedy, finding the search for the remedy of it, rather, that's an experience of it too. And I want people to know that, you know, even if it's smaller gripes or bigger things, as far as like finances or stigma, you're not alone in that as well. Yeah, absolutely. And maybe another thing to say before we get into your story as kind of a way to get into this broad ecosystem of issues through a narrative thrust of a personal

experience before we get into that, maybe we should talk about different kinds of mental illness and maybe if there's a specific kind that we'll be focusing on today, because I know I've dealt with things like depression and obsessive compulsive disorder and anxiety, but have not dealt with things like schizophrenia, for example. So when we talk about mental illness, it's a wide range of things with varying degrees of intensity and, you know, disabling aspects to it. So did you kind of just want to talk about maybe different categories of mental illness and what we might be focusing on more today? Right. I mean, I think, you know, of course there's always gray area, but I think you can really put into two hemispheres. There's sort of what

it's called as the mood affecting, you know, disorders and then the cognitive. of affecting disorder. So like the mood affecting one is what you consider as depression, bipolar, anxiety. And then, you know, thankfully, there's been some progress as de-stigmatizing those. I also think it has something to do with the relativity of it, as in other people kind of know what depression is like. And one quick aside is that, you know, a big problem is that, and I don't think it's always malicious or mean-spirited or even just like a forced ignorance. I think some people with mental health problems get really frustrated because people are like, I know how you feel. Because it is a relative thing. People know what it's like to be sad. Even in terms of like addiction,

like, you know, I'm addicted to the cookies or something. And I know what that's like. Anxiety, I know what, know what that's like. So people can kind of in their mind be like, I kind of understand what they have. People say, I'm feeling so depressed today or, you know, I'm totally just anxiety. No one's saying I feel schizophrenic today. And that's where you see the break off of that other hemisphere where what you're talking about is cognitive, where it's not, I mean, obviously affects the mood, but you're talking, I mean, in the mood ones, you're talking about the kind of the internal problems of dealing with yourself. The cognitive one is dealing with the world because, you know, you talk about disassociative disorders, identity disorders, and it's more kind of a battle with reality.

And that, like, as far as my background of working with people, that is mostly who I worked with as far as, like, you know, adjusting and being their case manager. It was people mostly, but those more severe cognitive ones. Now, however, there are some mood one, people that had mood ones of depression that was so debilitating, they'd go catatonic. I think one good way to kind of illustrate it is that one that you could maybe see as an in-between is obsessive compulsive disorder. Now, obsessive-compulsive disorder really at its heart is an anxiety problem. And so there's the mood part of it of anxiety that is being generated within you, but there's a, the cognitive aspect of how you deal with that or how you function because of it. It may,

in kind of cognitive ways where, you know, it comes in with the rituals, the counting, the kind of the behaviors of your mind where it's, you know, instead of just coming out in kind of the, quote, unquote, typical ways, that kind of goes over into, I start to believe this reality in a way that I have to do these things. And I think that's where it really you see if you, you know, like I said, it's a lot of its relative, but you'd see kind of a division a little bit between the two of how, what the experience is, or especially how they are approached in terms of help. Right. Yeah, I think that's really interesting, especially with the, mood side of that spectrum and the point that you made that people can at least relate to those

issues a little bit more because, like you said, everybody's been nervous, everybody's been anxious, everybody's been down in the dumps, depressed, even if they haven't had clinical anxiety or depression, there's a kernel of the human condition that everybody experiences where they can be like, okay, I can understand, like, having a bad day that doesn't end, or I can understand that feeling I get before I speak in front of crowds, but happening for no reason throughout the day. Whereas, you know, more advanced ones or on the other side of the cognitive spectrum might be a little more difficult for people to relate to. And a lot of stereotypes can crop up specifically around those, even when we're making advancements in society as far as awareness

and acceptance of certain disorders, there's still plenty of stereotypes, particularly on that end of things, the cognitive end of things that people have harder times relating to. That do persist. So those are all, you know, interesting things to put on the table before we get. get into this and before we move into your experience because i've talked you know about anxiety and depression on the show many times but i don't think i've talked about like obsessive compulsive disorder which weirdly i had more as as a kid so i had you know some weird things happened in my childhood nothing insane but um you know a step parent for a while that you know really believed in corporeal punishment was incredibly strict uh that kind of gave rise to uh like a stutter

that I had for a while. That was basically an anxiety issue of like a sensitive child being overly punished and overly controlled in an authoritarian way such that I feel like that stutter was a product of the precarity and uncertainty that came with living in that context. And when I left that context, the stutter disappeared. That's as a very young kid. But my entire childhood, I had obsessive-compulsive feelings like around germophobia where I would like, you know, know, seventh, eighth grade, I would be washing my hands so much that they would be bleeding anytime I touch like a grocery cart in a grocery store, for example, I would feel like my hands were full of like bacteria and disease. I wouldn't let anybody come into my room

unless they strip down from the clothes they wore to school or to work or out in public. You have to get dressed in your pajamas before you're allowed to walk in to my room. The thing when I'd walk home from school every day, I would have this thing where I'd spit on one side of my body, and I'd have to spit in the middle of my walk and on the left side of my body to balance it out or else I felt off. And I also remember, like, as a little kid, like 13, 14 years old as I'm going to sleep, the TV channel, the thing I turned the TV off on had to be something that wasn't disturbing or upsetting in any way. So there'd be like 10, 20, 30 minutes every night. I'd spend just trying to find a thing that I could turn the TV off on that would be the least disturbing to

me if that makes sense oh yeah so little things like that now and nobody in my life talked about obsessive you know compulsive they just thought it was a quirk of my personality you know nobody talked about anxiety or anything like that i certainly didn't get any help for this stuff um and kind of grew out of of that form of oCD into like generalized anxiety in my 20s but um yeah it's never really talked about that and so you know the struggles with oCD and their relation to anxiety i think is absolutely true well and i think that's you know what kind of um separates our ideas about them because a lot of this, it's just, like, I still classify that as an anxiety sort of disorder. What makes it kind of different in a way is the manifestations of it.

So if you talk about, like, depression or anxiety, you know, how people handle it, you know, kind of like isolating or more sometimes binge behaviors or addictive behaviors, sometimes, like, acting out, taking risky, you know, those are kind of more, I don't know, how you call it, like, palatable. I wouldn't say socially, like, acceptable because, like, you know, counting your key change. 40 times it's not as bad as like you know physically abusing someone right but all like the real difference is it's the same root problem it's just the how it manifests and so and you talk you bring up an interesting point about um how it was like a part of your life it was manifesting differently in a part of your life and i remember there was somebody i worked with who um it was severe oCD just because of what was needed and when i say what was needed is that they would um like one particular thing is that they would be looking at their alarm clock if they woke up

I'm going to be like, you know, 3.303 in the morning. They had to watch it and not look away from it. They had to watch it count to 330 or to double zeros. I remember I had something like that. Yeah, numerical, numerical symmetry. And I remember I had something like that where I just, I had this fear that my clock wasn't working. So I was like, I have to watch it tick before I can go back to sleep for whatever reason. But the manifestations are more needed because he, you know, he would even discuss like, I know this seems crazy.

and it is, but I have to do it. And here's the thing, it calms me. And that's that manifestation where this is what calms me and for whatever reason my brain is telling me another way of doing it. And I would say kind of one of those like in between sort of things

as you talk about a lot is like body dysmorphia. And that's also I think a little bit relative to yours in the sense of like that sometimes comes on a lot in people's lives for like a period. And then circumstances can change and they still kind of have the root cause now you know um dysmorphia can be brought on by anxiety or or like depression and you know

i think when you talk about rituals of of oCD or the like dysmorphia it's a those rituals are like little like very tangible even meaningless physical things that you have some sort of control over and that's like one big thing where if you read a lot about like you know people that have like anorexia they're like no i don't actually and this is not obviously for everybody you you give the preface and I'll give the same one. This is not any sort of actual psychological, like diagnosing advice or anything, just experiences people. But a lot of people are like, I'm not stupid.

I know I'm very skinny, but this is, I control this in a way. And even if it's like very off putting to people and it's my appearance is not about looking aesthetically well. This has become a physical thing I can grasp that's easy. The same thing is counting things. They're so simple that the big scariness of your anxiety can be kind of washed away and doing these physical things that you have acute control over. Yes.

And so. And that makes great sense in the context of my childhood struggles with it because it was, I believe in retrospect, precisely me attempting to get some control over an unstable home life. There's custody battles. I had my dad got married and divorced five times. So I had a whole array of step families at times, you know, like step siblings that I knew for a year and then never saw again.

And then my dad, age nine, he attempted suicide and chose of all people to call his nine-year-old son to tell him that I'm the man of the family now, right? So I'm in this context of like generalized instability and precarity and as a little sensitive child trying to gain, and this is obviously not conscious at the time. But yeah, these are ways that I could ground myself and feel like I have some control in a broader context in which I had, I had none. You know, so that that control part really makes a lot of sense with regards to my OCD. And when I grew up out of that context into my teens, we started. of getting more freedom and more ability to control my own life and in what I do it went away

you know so right and and or you know it can change and all that type of stuff comes from just on a broader sense of whatever weird preferences or maybe not weird but specific and just you don't even know why it's the same reason why people have specific phobias or specific sort of like aphelias or like you know things that are like weirdly attractive to them or things that weirdly bring them comfort, you know, things that, like, you'd probably see it all over the internet, like, just these things. Like, anybody ever, you know, like, slap the sod in a, like, um, a loz? You see a bag of sod and you have to slap it for some reason.

Or you see a bowl of rice and you have to put your hands in it, like a, you know, a dry thing or just, uh, my favorite was when I was walking the hallways of school, there'd be like, you know, the concrete bricks and the lines between them. And my finger had to trace the line inside of it. I had to go the whole hall. There's just little things like that. But when you're talking to where it becomes debilitating is obviously where it's, like, affecting your life and or you can consider it as this is an unhealthy way of coping because it's not

addressing the problem and you know it just based on our own like unique minds of what thing brings us a I mean a sort of of either comfort or remedy for the anxiety and for some people it's more I guess you would call like agreeable in a sense of like I understand that it could be drugs and alcohol which is a huge part of it or you know it could be codependency or things like that but then in some aspects especially if it's very like you know you talk about your experience and these were in different places when you're moving and it can change in that there's a different environment brings on a different thing of just doing this tangible thing obviously all unconscious especially at that age but just the doing of the thing even if you have that monologue in your head

going like why am i doing this goofy stuff it's just like i don't care just as that guy had told me it goes i know this is crazy but it it brings something i won't even say serenity it's not that strong but it brings something to watch the clock hit 30 you know yeah absolutely well i guess we can we can begin by getting into to your general story and that will be the sort of vector through which we explore many other issues related to to you know mental health in general so you can and particularly the onset of of any mental illnesses that you suffered and when that happened so if you can kind of just walk us through your story and take as long as you want because we're going to be touching on these topics on this outline throughout.

Yeah. So I think one thing I did want to bring up, and this is funny, we talk about kind of the two realms of like how relative it is to people and to be able to speak about, like, you know, mental illness or mental health issues is that I have this issue that was incredibly hard to talk to people about. And it's what's classified as maladaptive daydreaming. And it's not recognized as it's not recognized as it's, own disorder by the DSM, but I remember, and I still, I had it through all my adulthood where

I would create stories in my head of daydreaming, but, you know, and people would all say, like, if you do stuff like that, well, you do writing is probably part of the creative process. I go, no, I never had any intention of ever doing anything with these stories. And I'm not even talking when I was little like imaginary friends. I would, it went throughout the years as I was growing up. And part of some of the, like, people would see I would have unconscious facial kind of movement because of how hard I was daydreaming. Now, my dad and my brother and my dad's brother have severe ADHD. I don't have the age part, but I know it can be tied to that. But it wasn't even just doing stuff when I was bored.

And you talk about things that manifest. This is the reason I bring up. I use that. I remember I had some difficult parts early in my childhood with a, you know, a relationship with a certain person. and it I would kind of zone out you know sometimes I would do it on my own but I would zone out and then go into the story especially if I was feeling some sort of like internal discomfort and a lot of people have who who suffered childhood trauma also seem to have this thing that's you know maladaptive daydreaming the reason I just started out with that because I remember that I would talk to people about my depression you know like earlier on because as I'll always get into like it came on early and I would be okay with that there would still be some shame of why do I feel this way why can I enjoy life all that type of stuff but again you get into that where it's cognitive I felt like such a weirdo for this little world I had to myself and I didn't

I didn't first tell anybody until I was 22 and I but you were doing it all through your childhood no I was doing it all through my teenage and adulthood and it was like just to give a level of like how weird it was and how embarrassed I was I like I would when I started playing like football or watching football, I would create a different league in my head of the same type of stuff and I actually had these notebooks of stats I'd keep that are completely made up. I don't know

why, right? And I held these books, these notebooks of this stuff and I was like one day I'm going to need to show somebody this. And I never, I just kept them. So you just made up an entire league with an entire set of teams, an entire set of players with fake stats and everything. And I didn't, I knew it wasn't real.

And again, a lot of this stuff, I can't stress enough. This is not part of the creative process. plan to do anything with this and i would do it a lot when i like was trying to go to sleep i'd focus really hard on it when i was like quiet by myself and people noticed when i was little i was able to spend a lot of time on my own some people there was actually some worries that point about like my development because the amount of time that i'd spend alone and that is i just want to get to anybody you know just on this outset of like that there is something that when it comes to those cognitive things when it feels really like reality problems or like i am very

weird. Or even I talk about the manifestation, some things you might do to remedy the anxiety might be even really weirder. People are truly not alone in that. And I felt such a sense of relief when I finally talked about it. I mean, I would not say it was nearly as debilitating as depression, but it was there. That was just one thing I just wanted to get on. But as far as like what would become the major factor in my life, it really started as something where I can't like solidify this word enough abnormal. I was feeling sad when I was younger, but the sadness that I had was abnormal because I was probably about in third grade and it wasn't that I was sad about, again, this is one of the key things about depression. It wasn't that I was sad about things. Something happened. I invited

whoever to the dance and it didn't come through. I got cut from the basketball team or just, you know, I didn't get what I wanted for Christmas. It's some younger age. It came out of like nothing And it came out of these, like, really negative thoughts I have. And then even as I was, like, in fifth grade, I started to have, like, physical depression problems. Like, even as a Sprite young boy, I would just want to, like, sleep. And I'd want to sleep away this sort of discomfort. And I started, I remember this so, and I've done it throughout my life a lot. I remember just walking down a hallway full of, like, kids throughout school and just thinking to myself, like, I'm not like any of these people.

I'm not just really sad a lot. Like, I have these weird, like, dark thoughts and these, these things. thoughts kind of like spiral. And, you know, I think, and one thing where I, like, it really started to hit me. I think I've really only had what you would classify as one panic attack in my entire life. I remember it was when I was in sixth grade and I was in bed and I really grasped, grasped the concept of dying. And I've talked to a lot of people and people have a lot of those moments like that where they truly, and again, not think about, but grasped that God might not be real or even things of like when you find out that your parents are flawed or like

things like that. And I remember I had that and I was depressed before that, but these negative thoughts started to become very intrusive kind of after that moment. It could have just been part of my development because I'm heading into puberty, like, you know, pretty close at that point. But again, there was just this abnormals where I was like, I know people. I'm a being in this world. I know other people get sad and stuff, but mine feels weird. Can you tell, can you give us some examples of what you mean by dark thoughts? Yeah. So when like, intrusive thoughts? Intrusive, like, so it would just be these sort of negative thoughts where I would, you know, apropos of nothing, I would just be like, you know, what if, what if everybody thinks I'm really stupid?

It would be based off nothing. It would start a lot with self-esteem, but then I also, I would think about things like dying and like a, just a car accident from school. You know, I used to think of these things like, honestly, like maybe if I think we might get an accident, it won't happen. Because what's the chances of getting into accident if you're thinking, about it. And, you know, it would be, they would be morbid, but a lot of times when I say negative, they're just these, like, sort of distortions like that. Honestly, as, and again, what was abnormal as, like, how young I was, I was, like, the world's meaningless. Like, this stuff is stupid. Even when I couldn't grasp concepts of nihilism or things like that, just that general

sense of, like, you know, younger kids running around and they might deal with, like, heavier things, kind of like you had in your life, and they don't even know how to address it. But, like, yeah, I like playing kickball or something like that. Like, just kind of this innocence. it was just this dark space where I remember I talked to some people I let a little peep out of it and people would back away like why do you think about stuff like that I'm like oh never mind never talking again and you weren't able there's not just a weird thought here and there but you weren't able to shake them they became obsessive in your mind or you became fixated on these dark thoughts I mean in a sense where I wouldn't say it was like plaguing or they were relentless but they would just they would affect my mood and it would start to overcome it would start to overcome me and And then all of the sudden, I may not be thinking about it, but I'm in like in a depressed mood. And all of the sudden, that's some sleepover I was excited for. I wasn't excited for anymore. And again, I think the thing that was most alarming to me is the physical as well.

It was like, you know, you imagine when people have that kind of thing of depression and they do like the little real of it, like that you see on like commercials for prescriptions, it's like, you know, usually some like 40-year-old person in bed trying, you know, they have bags under their eyes and stuff like that. And a lot of it deals with energy, which is a big part. part of it. But I had that when I was like young where I was just like, no, I don't want to go to school or I like, I don't want to do this or I have like, you know, this later or history class is boring or anything like that. I was like, I don't want to get up. And even if like these might be a little bit more sophisticated like way I'm describing them, I mean, I think they're just

they were whatever in whatever like sort of context I was able or mental vernacular I had to describe it. But it was the sentiment was there. It's like, this is stupid. I don't, I would go through like just not caring about life like life in general and it was just it was it was you know and i know that one thing just as a quick aside is that the that maladaptive daydreaming also came it would work in tandem sometimes with the depression where even the stories i had would become depressing ones and you know it's just so kind of like when i was i was going through that quite quite a bit and i would there would be moments where i feel like I'd break from it.

I'm like, oh, I'm a normal boy or something. And then it would kind of come back. And then, you know, it's kind of like what you had described as far as anxiety where there was like, you know, I did kind of these OCD type things. And I still have it, but I kind of like, I don't know if you want to call it like matured version of it or how you deal with it. But the depression would still be surrounding just other things. So I was like, I started liking girls and stuff. I would have really negative thoughts about like, honestly, I'm like 13.

I'm like, I'm going to die alone. like you know and I so I mean even the subject matter so to speak would change even as you know those extremely like formative years kind of come but it would still be like depressive thoughts and you know I work as like kind of a I've always been kind of a class clown type person and I know there's always that stereotype it's not just because you're funny in class doesn't mean you're depressed unfortunately a lot of people are though and I didn't think of that as a defense mechanism I just thought that joking around and doing stuff like keeps me out of my own head and like that was like a a big thing for me. And I just, I was too, I was too aware of some of the dark realities of life at a young age. And I just, I thought about them too much. And I'm not saying by any means like, well, I was an advanced thinker. I was very inquisitive. Believe me, if you could replay these kind of the way I thought about these things, they're probably very stupid. But I, um, but I thought of them. And it's just, it was, it was, they were, they, they would just had an effect to where these thoughts would keep kind of like being present in my mind. And then it would just depress my

mood. Now, are these associated at any point throughout your childhood with any sort of attempt to take you to a hospital or get you seen out by a therapist or clinically figure out what's wrong with you? Or are you hiding these things in such a way that even your closest family members didn't register it or didn't register it as something that was particularly concerning? Well, so that's the thing. And this is like, you know, going to like the wider experience of it. So mine, you know, depending on the mental health struggles you have, again, as they manifest differently, the way you can quote unquote get caught with it or how hard it is to hide

can be difficult, you know, especially if some kids younger are struggling with anxiety that can manifest it like where they act out or they do certain things or they just look nervous or jittery and then of course a lot of people are like, well they have ADHD obviously no, but like mine, yes it was

hiding it but there was some points where I remember one teacher I liked especially you know, it's just like she was like you just you know, is everything all right? And she would like ask that. I'm like, yeah.

Honestly, as far as like my home life at this certain point, I was like, it is totally fine. And she would just be like, I know, but I don't know. Sometimes you just, you just look, she didn't use these words because I was younger, but like just disheveled or just a sort of like brooding, like worry about you. And you'll participate in class, raise your hand and it'll be fine. But that once you stop like basically talking out loud in class, just returned this thing and like I'm just kind of worried and I was brought up a couple times you know

like the guidance counselor sort of things but I mean as far as that went like I kept up all the other stuff like at the age of like played sports and did pretty well in school and kind of just did get by and had friends and stuff like that so I kind of just masked it you know with um yeah things things are all right because I felt shameful about it um especially because it felt not just like why am I'm a wimp you know kind of like at the time like a sixth grade great boy's mindset like I'm being a wimp. But I was also just like, I feel just different. I was like, I got to hide this and hopefully it would just kind of go away.

Or, you know, I've heard about like, oh, we grow up and I've grown spurts and hopefully I'll just like grow out of this. And so the real my like first, okay, we're actually doing something about this was when I was 14 and went into counseling, went to see a counselor. And that experience was, I mean, it's hard for adults to go to counseling for the first time. And with kids, or for whatever you want to classify as like 14 or even younger in the high school or even just high schoolers, it's difficult with counseling sometimes because there is a large sense with younger people that their problems don't really matter. Like, oh, he's heartbroken because like, you know, Susie broke up with them or something. Or he didn't, like, they're like, we have like grown up problems like mortgage and climate change and whatever. like they just have their problems I mean in one way you can look at that is that like

well that is their world though so if something comes crashing down in their world even if you think it's insignificant that's their world so it is important but I like the reason I bring up that sentiment is that I know with some people I talked with and what I had kind of felt is that like you know like we gotta work this out

either kind of like this is like a little facing or it's like are you sure you're not just kind of like hormonal like in the sense of like because this is like teenage stuff And there is kind of a larger notion of like teenagers, you know, some of them go goth and or they're always depressed or, you know, the classic trope of like the depressed, you know, teenagers, especially with, you know, women, you know, that idea that this is kind of phase-like. And sometimes that is true. But, but it's just like, you know, you got to start everything with the blank slate. But a lot of times people were just like, I don't know how seriously they took it. It's like because I didn't have like real world, quote, quote stresses, you know, this wasn't maybe seen as, as serious. You know, some people had very good experiences with counseling even at a young age. I mean, it's so much for lies. You just talk about the random, like, effects of your life, just a person that you get. I remember when I was like at

that age, I had a horrible counselor. And I even knew at the time, but I especially didn't take much years away from retrospect to be like, he's just awful. And I remember what he had done was that again kind of discounting my like whatever 14 year old problems he would keep like lecturing and doing these like he would start to like his he started taking more of the billable hours so to speak he would be talking more than I would and he was just it was kind of this like young man you know you'll you'll learn this thing about life and I mean I think that one one thing that comes difficult with it is because you know people younger people can go through this stuff and then it passes, there's an idea that's like, we're not quite sure if you actually have clinical

depression, or we're not quite sure this is going to be a lifelong thing. And say of what you will of that effect on the person, I just, I know, especially at my age, it just, it wasn't seen as taken seriously. Or then, on the flip side, it was taken really, really seriously out of, nothing. Like, if you kind of had even mentioned, like, self-harm, it's like, oh, he's a teenager, he's going to kill himself. And it was just this weird, you know, these two poles of, um, of, like, you know, your problems aren't really, but we'll get you out of this phase or whatever this may be,

or he's going to kill himself. Like, it was a really bad, like, sort of spectrum that just ping pong back and forth, like, not a lot in the middle. But I know, like, you know, as we kind of go over stuff like this with my experience, that a lot of people have quite an opposite experience,

especially with mental health of its onset, because as we, you know, it's a community at large nose, a lot of them come on at, like, this magic, the lucky number 23. I mean, it's usually, it can obviously vary, but a lot of people, especially like with bipolar, especially with schizophrenia, like it becomes acutely onset, like right in this, kind of like right before your frontal lobe is supposed to be fully formed. And some people have just been totally fine, you know, relatively, and then it just comes on. You know, I think it's, I don't.

I had the onset of anxiety after actually a drug experience at like 21. I think I told you this. had a friend from Europe who moved in next door he's a little bit older than me he bought fucking bath salts off the internet you know and he's like you should do him with me might

so I started doing them and like two days pass and we were just like binging on this basically speed you know is what it was like no sleeping you know like your barefoot walking around your neighborhood with your eyes looking like raccoon eyes and then after this two days of this intense

speedy drug experience of whatever the fuck what chemicals were that shit um a couple days later two days later after i come down um i just had this massive out of nowhere panic attack and i had never had one at that point yet i thought i was dying you know like i was at my girlfriend at the time's house like in her in bed with her and like i just started like getting real hot and you know my heart started beating and i was like i got to go i just jumped up and ran out like drove home like sticking my head out the window like am i dying like what's happening you know and then for the next six seven eight months um i just had generalized anxiety

all day every single day and then after that kind of with no help obviously because i didn't have money with that with well when that sort of fizzled out um then ever since then i've had these episodic experiences with anxiety and you know so it was like it was one of those onsets i was 21 so it was right at that time that you're talking about um but i always question like was was that always going to come especially given my oCD past or was that induced by this drug abuse that I was doing for this binge on speed that I did or was it always going to manifest

but the speed just kind of kicked open the door for it to manifest at that time you know I don't know but it is true that a lot of these mental illness issues can really pop onto this scene in this very crucial age between like 21 and 25 right yeah and like

man I just basalt so fucking stupid don't ever do shit you buy it's like PCP which by the way I always thought it was they called PCP angel dust like if you didn't know anything you'd like oh that sounds pleasant it's like monic dust absolutely it's not it's very eating faces in florida but i had a friend who died on pcp um not a friend but a friend of a friend who died on pcp here in omaha uh several years back

and it manifested in this manic he was behind the wheel and just went fucking wild with it and just you know traffic in midtown omaha or whatever just 70 miles an hour until eventually the crashed and he died just ripped off PCP but yeah that shit's dangerous i i think what you know what i've read and just testimony from other people like i think that you talk about like basically the question of like what if i never did that yeah would i would i have this at maybe obviously i would still have anxiety but i wouldn't have this form of it or something and i think that's true where i think you people have like potential for it to turn a certain way and then you know an experience can kind of shape, again, I'm sorry, we're using this word so much,

but it could shape the way it manifests at a certain point. Because my brother, he dealt with anxiety. He was like super, like he was, I talked about ADHD. He was like a hummingbird dude. And I always called us like ying and yang because I had depression and stuff like that, very quiet on my own. He was the exact opposite. But he had struggled with anxiety.

And then he, when he was in Iraq, he had any, He wasn't actually, he had a few hairy situations, you want to call it, where it was dangerous, but it, it wasn't during that. He just, when he was on base one day, and I just watched, he had this huge panic attack. And from that point on, like, not like very much, but he started having panic attacks, and he never had those before. He had anxiety problems, but he never had panic attacks before. And, you know, immediately when you hear that, you're like, well, yeah, I mean, you're

deployed in this foreign country as a young person with this, you're holding guns all day, and, like, there's dangerous you know you know people from just over that camp over there where two people died you know all of course maybe that's what induced it but i i would think of it more as maybe you have that potential within you and then it just takes a spark of something and then it can shape the way it comes out of you i mean that goes without saying and i'm not i'm talking more out of like a specific experience rather than trauma because obviously trauma is its own sort of impetus i it's i guess the point i was trying to make is trauma can create it i think with a lot of people, the potential's there. It didn't create it, but something spurned on a way that it would

manifest from you. Right, right, right. Yeah, absolutely. Well, then as you come into adulthood, what specific mental illness is? Have you personally struggled with and sort of how did that look as you get into your 20s and beyond? Right. So the, and this is, you know, obviously a huge topic and one that I also did have, you know, pretty heavy experience with is that what really changed things up and kind of changes their trajectory to what's like, who knows what, how things would have been is the involvement in drugs and alcohol. Because there was at a certain point where when I started, I didn't really get super addictive right away, actually.

And there was like, but it was like drinking and weed. And it was kind of an event to do with somebody. And I'm honestly, I got so blasted the first time. And I was like, there was nothing to enjoy. But. Blasted on alcohol and weed? Oh, yeah. Like.

First time you tried it. Yeah, the first time. And there were just a few events. But when I had gotten to like opiates as I had started out and I had that high, that changed things because that became a way that I was going to control it. And obviously there's just a like dual diagnosis is a huge, huge problem. Because obviously it exacerbates whatever, you know, internal and mental and emotional issues you have.

And it also does so many things to block you from being able to properly get help. I mean, it does it on every level. Like, one thing is that I know a lot of people, and I'll admit I had done this to myself, where I was just like, man, just counseling's not helping. It's like, okay, have you told them everything? Like, well, yeah, basically, it's like, do you tell them how much you drink? I may leave some stuff out of that, you know? And it's just like, the moment you start hiding something out from your counselor,

it's like, yeah, dude, it's not going to work. And especially you just want to talk about prescription medication, you know, if you're drinking or using drugs, that's not going to work. The type of, like, way you have to engage with therapy and, like positive behaviors, that's not going to work. So, I mean, if you can even think of it, even if the drugs and alcohol don't create more of the internal, like, turmoil, just think of it as just a roadblock anyways, though. Like, you're, it's, so I bring that up because, you know, I, I will say one thing is I brought

up the maladaptive daydreaming, like that type of stuff. That, that would start to get more out of hand, the harder I drink. Like, I would really go into it. To the point where you start. the line between reality and daydream starts to blur a little bit? Yes. So, like, that as one part where there was basically when I was about 23, I was diagnosed with schizoaffective. And that...

What is that exactly for people that don't know? Yeah. So schizoaffective is you basically, it's a little bit in between of schizophrenia where you might not have such acute sort of, like, audio and visual hallucinations. But it involves, like, breaks with reality in a sense. Like, it involves, again, some of those more cognitive things. and it's also like based on like a behavioral disorder where you know the influx of depression or anxiety so it's kind of like in a sense I'm not the exact way but one way you could describe it is it's kind of like a sort of bipolar but with those kind of cognitive or you know delusional sort of effects to it as well and that once you're diagnosed something like that that's a what a lifetime diagnosis that's well have this issue um I mean no I But it changes the game. And this is one thing we can get into as well, too, is that when I say it changes the game, when you cross into the more cognitive things, you know, again, the disassociative or identity or schizophrenia and stuff like that.

When you, again, and not if you actually have it, but when you cross into it, the drugs you're prescribed are different because they're because of the severity and the way, like they're not just like trying to alter mood, like things like serotonin and dopamine. they're trying to also remedy like cognitive problems that you have. From like antidepressants or anti-anxiety to antipsychotics. Exactly. And a lot of people too, like antipsychotic kind of is a scary word because like, you know, sometimes like people take like Sarahquil and it's like antipsychotic and it's like, you know,

you're not like looney tunes or anything like that. But so I just want to say that quickly. Like a lot of people aren't even unaware that they take antipsychotics, quote unquote. But to your point, yes, you start getting, like you start getting sort of like much more, how would I put it in like, much more effective sort of medicine and effective, I mean, the way it really affects your body and mind, because it needs to, in a sense, because usually it's for people with paranoid schizophrenia, where it has to, like, stop some of the, those cognitive things, like it's delusions and voices and just things like that. And the issue with me, and I take this fully on my own fault, is that I never really, you know, when I was dealing with, like, drinking and stuff where, and they knew, like, I had been admitted to psych words and stuff, and I finally, like, talked about my maladaptive daydreaming, but I never before with any other counselor, I never. So what they thought was that, oh, this is the onset of schizophrenia or something of that sort. And that was me because I just never talked about it. So it seemed like, oh, this is, it's coming on now. Well, because you just started talking about it.

Because I just started talking about it. And because I had, you know, and I had gotten to a level now where because of the amount that I was drinking, it was starting to affect me. Like a lot of people that are just, like, quote unquote, super normal people, they drink super heavily. It will actually start to affect them cognitively. Like they have a thing like, you know, alcohol delirium. And they have the DTs, delirious tremors. Like it actually will get to a level where you start even, quote unquote, the most normal, normal people, you'll start seeing shadow people. any like withdrawals and stuff like that several times my dad went through it when he wouldn't withdraw from

hardcore alcohol use right who call me and think i'm his brother and talk about some shit happened 30 years ago or just you know off just incoherent so you can imagine this sort of trident of things coming together where i i finally have achieved a level to where the amount of drinking if i go through any sort of withdrawal will cause that i have this thing that i actually had all my life that is this quasi sort of cognitive thing again it's it's its own little like maladapture daydreaming seems more of a symptom. Like I said, it's not in the DSM or anything. But I never talk to anybody about that. And now I'm like being hospitalized. So like those three things that's like, oh, this is clearly, you know, he's reaching that age now. It's about 23. He's reaching that age. This is

when his, we'll put it as schizoaffective, but this is when it's like schizophrenia is coming on. And or this is when, you know, this more severe mental illness. So schizoaffective would be like a level of intensity below schizophrenia proper or paranoid schizophrenia. It's some of the characteristics, but not that full-blown, I guess, for lack of a better word. Yeah, honestly, and I think there's a more qualifying and probably better definition of it, like, textbook-wise. Sure, sure. But for the most part, I mean, I'm just relaying it of how it was, like, basically diagnosed for me.

It was just like, yeah, you got some of these sort of, I hate to use the word, but psychotic features, like breaks with reality and stuff like that. and obviously you have like a mood disorder of a sort with your depression and I would also go through like mania when I drink you know just in a sense of too like some people have mania when they drink they go all crazy and stuff like in the sense of like they're excited and stuff but I would have that so they really thought in your last episode on alcoholism you talked about I don't know if it would be mania proper but like you know random spontaneous road trips to different states with no plan right like stuff like that oh for sure I actually think that that that That wasn't bipolar mania, but that is mania proper because that's the things people doing, just get up in the car and go, just stay up for days without sleep. Yeah. Yeah. And so at that age, right at that time, all of that was coming together where, and like, that's

why I wanted to bring this perspective because I have this sort of weird relationship with, like, the more severe mental illness, even though it would ultimately kind of be incorrect. But I'd also say that, you know, I mean, I don't want to say it's just on me, but I don't blame it on the people I worked with either. It was just this, it was this problem where I didn't admit the things I needed to. and I was like trying to get help but I was still drinking and then I just let it like in the any sort of like any sort of gains that you have in your mental health and then you like if you start drinking or using again it sets it all back and that's what's so difficult for a lot of people you know you talk about younger people with the you know kind of the epidemic of mental health issues that we have with younger people you know I don't know if like drugs are being you know used more like than it was 20. 20 years ago, but one thing that is proven is the drugs are much stronger and much more, like, influential on your mental and emotional state. I mean, drinking is still the same, but with a lot of drugs, and not even just fentanyl, but you talk about, like, the qualities of weed and stuff like that.

They've done, like, things for the 70s weed as compared to, like, wheat today. Fuck the weed when we were kids. We had Reggie, we call it brown frown. It was sticks and stems and, or seeds, and it was seven, it's almost fucking hempy. Sometimes you just smoke a blunt of it and get a headache. We just smoked a Rougla. Yeah. And we had this thing called Kind Bud that once in a while somebody would have that we could get.

This one's different because it has THC. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's what made it kind, dude. But nowadays, nowadays you have fucking concentrates and wax and you can fucking dab 90% THC straight to the dome. Yeah, that is intense. It just has like a reaper on it. It says mental colonoscopy. What does it even mean?

I don't know. I'm to smoke it. But, um, so. that's what like one thing that I wanted to cover because I know I talked about a lot on your last podcast but and so I'm not doing it because this is kind of my area I'm doing it because truly the dual diagnosis and you talk about comorbidity with alcohol and drugs involved in mental health it is I mean it's just a it's a destroyer I mean it destroys everything because like I said it impeded you from progress it'll take away progress you made it's it blocks you from

stuff if you're actively drinking and using, you know, you can't take prescription medications. You're not going to be really into therapy if you're going at all. Or it's basically, as I'd put it useless, you know, it's like, not the therapist's fault or it's not the psychiatrist's fault. And if I don't tell them everything that's going on, what are they supposed to, it's like going to a doctor and not telling them the physical thing that's with you. And then being mad that they didn't diagnose you with whatever like ailment you had. And, you know, I don't want to put blame on anybody, but that's just one of the struggles

that happens with a lot of people, you know, in the. And, like, sometimes I wondered, you know, it's because it came on depression, as I'm speaking, because it came on early and I felt its effects without drugs and alcohol, because I felt it, too, in times of, like, sobriety, you know, there was times, though, where I'm just, like, at a certain point, I'm like, you know, I feel, I say I'm going through depression right now, but, you know, I'm, like, actively, like, a raging alcoholic. The life of a raging alcoholic is depressing. It would be weird if I wasn't depressed. you know so like maybe this isn't depression it's just my life is shitty and you know so there's a lot of things like that that kind of block the help that you're seeking because it just it derails you know of course you're not trying to do it I mean you're just actively trying to find some remedy from the the sadness or the worry or the turmoil precisely and on the other side of that coin is dealing with this stuff without recourse to any sort of help at all which I've talked about at length you know going through periods of depression and extreme anxiety. I've never been able to have access to medicine or therapist or anything like that. And so then I actually turned to drugs, specifically marijuana, as a way of coping with specifically depression. For me, you know, marijuana was like a medicine that I resorted to in lieu of any other help that during depressive episodes that would last for many months, it would be like

I can smoke this stuff and at least it's like having your mouth come above the water. a little bit and take a breath because of that mood lift and that general sense of like kind of well-being that marijuana gives for me. So literally like smoking weed to deal with my depression because I have no recourse anywhere else, but then also having a compulsive relationship with marijuana for the rest of my, you know, up until today, because of having to rely on it so heavily in those times, you know, so I think like, yes, drugs can be a, drugs and alcohol obviously are a block and an exacerbator of so many things. And it probably exact. exacerbated something, maybe like anxiety within me while I'm trying to treat depression.

But on the other hand, given our brutal health care system and the lack of access many people have, they can sometimes turn to substances as a way to try to manage the symptoms of mental illness, you know, which can sometimes work, but it's kind of like whackamol in the sense of like if I'm using high, you know, high intensity marijuana to, you know, rocket me out of a depressive episode for a few hours. It could also maybe lead to the emergence of an anxiety. issue because I'm drowning, you know, drowning my brain and THC every day to control one thing it gives rise to something else. Or, you know, you're drinking alcohol because you're stressed or you're trying to deal with anxiety before you know it. You're doing it compulsively. It makes

you depressed, right? So it's like, I'm trying to use this substance because I don't have access to anything else to alleviate the symptoms of this thing. But once I'm getting a grip on this thing, because I'm using the substance, it produces another thing, you know? Oh, 100%. I mean, It's, it's difficult enough. But, like, I should at least, even though it didn't work out at all, I'm just grateful that I had the option of going to a counselor. A lot of people don't have any of that stuff. And you talk about like downtrodden,

impoverished communities. Like, it's already a learned behavior in a lot of them drug and alcohol use. It runs in the family. And so if you have a person that has a predilection towards mental illness, maybe they wouldn't have become a drug or alcohol user, become substance dependent. But because that's their environment,

because of such a lack of other resources or support, that is the way they're going to solve it. And like I have said previously, there's sometimes where once you let drugs and alcohol hijack your brain, at a certain point, now it doesn't matter. Like, let's say you sort of, quote, get out of like the struggle, you find some way to get in a different tax bracket status

and you can now get these things. Once you've started the path of addiction, though, that's, you have to go into overdrive to get some help because now you've learned a way It's like, this is how I'm going to cope with anxiety or the, you know, even to those cognitive ones, when I'm starting to feel weird, like, I will, you know, a lot of, like, paranoid schizophrenics love meth because of the way it embraces the paranoia. I mean, it sounds crazy in a sense, but it makes them more comfortable with if they had a sober mind, it would be more bothersome that they have these thoughts, you know, like that, that causes a lot of discomfort in the, you know, like, some of the schizophrenics that I had worked with is that, that cognitive dissonance of having, like, the voice. or having these delusions, but also aware, like, these aren't real, though, but I believe them, but they're not real.

In the same way, a lot of panic attacks are where you go, I know I'm not dying, but I'm dying, you know, that struggle of like, and so a lot of people, they like the drugs and alcohol because it blurs that. So it's almost in kind of a way, it's like, screw it, we'll go off in this adventure. I'll embrace my paranoia. I'll, you know, I'll do all this type of stuff. And, you know, going back to your point on that societal level, though, yeah, if you don't have access to any sort of mental health services or just opportunities for something

and drugs and alcohol take the wheel I can tell you personally it's hard to course correct when because I got to say one thing drugs and alcohol they sure work not long term right man do they work absolutely absolutely so you said earlier the schizoaffective diagnosis that you got was ultimately I think you implied was a was a misdiagnosis or that you I think you implied that It's actually, you don't, you don't feel as if you do have schizoaffective disorder, some 10 years after that initial diagnosis. Right. And, yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where it's like it's hard to sound offensive without being defensive. Or it's hard to be defensive without being defensive.

It's like, I swear to guys, I'm not crazy. Yeah. No, I mean, I, the reason why it's a misdiagnosis is that the time I've spent sober, I don't deal with breaks with reality or delusion. The breaks with reality, that type of stuff, like I even talked about with the maladaptive daydreaming stuff, I still. still was aware that it was in reality. I just liked these stories, or I needed to felt like I needed to create these stories, but I never believed they were true. It was only during the heavy, intense, like, just full mood swings and sort of mental swings

that came from, like, hard alcohol use. And sometimes not even just, like, particularly hard alcohol use, but just, like, drinking so much over a amount of time, your body deteriorates. You're not getting any sleeve, you know, just, so things start crumbling. And so those psychotic features of my mind. mine, they only came out with not only the help of alcohol, but with like very sort of acute events to it. You know, one of the things that I've worked with my psychiatrist and like as far as, you know, like readjusting the diagnosis or, you know, even take away diagnosis, readjusting the type

of help like medication wise and therapy that I need, you know, kind of coming to this is like, this stuff does not occur if I'm not in the full blown alcohol, active alcoholism. It never, that's one thing. It never occurred soberly or, quote, unquote normally. There's never any onset of that. People with schizoaffective, that occurs whether they're drinking or not. Right. So in lieu of the drinking, what mental health issues have you come to realize you actually do have, even without alcohol, being present? Depression for sure. And that's one thing that would be hard to keep away from drinking, you know, in the sense that it just, it feels so pervasive and that like it won't go away.

And then, you know, another thing is just those negative thoughts. You know, depression, it can be, take the physical forms as far as the low energy low libido low basically everything that makes you active like the one awesome trap of depression is that it takes away your ability to do the things you need to get better and going out

being social exercising I mean just trying to get out in the world in any way you don't have the energy and the motivation is completely absent so you get into this negative spiral of I don't want to fucking do anything so you don't do anything so you feel worse etc. Right I mean there was times honestly

where I'd be doing fine and sober for a little bit and then a wave of depression would hit and I'd feel worse physically than I did when I was drinking every day like even from the hangovers or the exhaustion that comes with doing that stuff and it was just like this these you know it was the same thing

where I you have like quote unquote authentic depression and then you have what you feel the chemical imbalance or the clinical or whatever you want to call it and I know the difference between that because one of the big things for me I should say by the way if I ever say you or anything like I don't mean to sound like advice or something

Just know that, like, every time I'm giving advice, I'm really just talking to myself in the past. Sure, sure. But, like, the difference I feel is that with, like, quote-unquote, normal sadness and things like that, or disappointment, there's emotion tied to it. That's one way I know that this is the depression, because there's not really emotion tied to it. It's more so of, like, a sort of apathetic hopelessness, of, you know, just a lethargic nature, not only to you physically, but to you, like, kind of mentally and emotionally. And that's kind of like one sort of like, I don't know, barometer I use is when I know it's more like this sort of like clinical depression is that there's not emotions behind it. Yes, yes. And that was particularly one thing of what drinking too was hard to stay away from because it also quote unquote made me feel alive.

And then one last thing is that the maladapted j-dreaming, that type of stuff is still there. But like as I get in a better like mental state, I'm able to just kind of blow it off. but you're able to put it where it properly belongs as mere daydreaming because you're sober and your sober mind allows you to make those distinctions and not let the bluriness start yeah and well and honestly not even let myself normal daydream i don't think i have that ability i just i don't do it if i start doing it i just have to remedy it by being active with something else um just had a curiosity how long how long is uh your sober streak so far um i believe today is 86 days nice man congrats i i think i can't remember which one it was maybe

it was a patreon episode where you had come back after a relapse fairly soon but 86 days that's awesome are you still are you feeling good you feeling different this time i know you've talked about or i've seen me and you go exercising a lot we go hiking and doing you know we did a cold plunge in the a lake last week pretty fun so i see you're being active seems like things are going well oh yeah i mean and they completely are you know like when I had that much longer stretch of sobriety if there's almost like seasons to it sometimes you're like I completely changed my life and then like a month later like uh man I'm never escaping this terrible state I might as well drink you know you can kind of go back and forth but I feel really great now because I'm still struggling with stuff then there there is still

depression there but I just feel more capable in fighting it and I would say honestly you've been a huge part of being like being able to have a friend and someone to do like these proactive and actually fun not just because they're healthy but like fun activities is important. I mean, that's something we can also maybe get into later as far as mental health is concerned. The community, social, and friendship, you know, is so important. But, um, but yeah, like, that's one thing, again, where I kind of go to that drawing line of, like, this is clinical or is this just life stuff? You know, I can, I can kind of feel those heavy clouds kind of clog my head where I just think kind of these negative cynical things

and I don't want to do a whole lot. And I just like, you know, whatever about life. I don't even, I don't hate you life. I don't, I just, I, nothing you life. You know, that type of indifference. I feel those come on, but I feel definitely more equipped to deal with them. And I not only just avoid them, sometimes distraction is good. But I sometimes with, like, mindfulness and stuff, I take them head on. And I feel like I get some resolve from doing that, too. But it takes upkeep, though, too.

You know, it's not like there's been any, like, code that's correct. Honestly, these things that have helped me, I've known all along, just whether being able to apply them is just a huge difference. Again, you talk about depression or, you know, mental health problems, you know, even with anxiety, it debilitates you from being able to do the things that you need to do. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I've used mindfulness to very interesting extents with regards to mental illness. And obviously suffering itself got me interested in Buddhism and the practice associated with it.

But even recently with the death of my father, I was already going through a prolonged period of like deep sort of suffering and depression. I think we've talked about it before that feeling. You mentioned it a little bit earlier in this episode, that feeling of complete, hopelessness. It almost sits like a ball of iron in your stomach of like when you talk about a wave of depression, you know, that would manifest as this like feeling in my, this physical sensation in my stomach of like a lead ball sort of thing. I don't know. No, I got you. Yeah. It's the heavy empty. How could something that's so empty be so heavy? Hell yes. So I actually used and I don't even know this kind of is getting off into speculation land, but because my father,

I loved him so deeply, but also he was a core of especially a lot of the childhood precarity and uncertainty that I dealt with. And it felt like when he passed, as hard as that was, and I still grieved to this day over it because I loved him so deeply. But when he passed, it felt like there was an opportunity spiritually to kind of address some stuff that had been waming down since childhood. and specifically long periods of practice on the feeling of hopelessness itself, on the staying with that iron ball in my stomach, for protracted people,

we're talking weeks and months, not just something you do once, right? And eventually I had this very interesting moment within a meditation session when I felt that ball of iron that was synonymous with hopelessness. You called it perfectly the heavy empty. I felt it dissolve.

And it felt as if my staying with it as opposed to running from it trying to distract myself or cover it up through drugs and alcohol or the earlier coping mechanisms that I would have used but the staying with it and the watching it and perhaps the passing of my father marked an opportunity for me to address it and I felt it sort of dissolve. I felt like this moment in a meditation session where that it grew it grew, it grew as kind of like a star goes supernova explodes and then what's left is you know nothing you know you know like it's gone and uh i had that an amazing experience with the help of of a sort of spiritual teacher that i would reach out to and talk to as i went through this

stuff and she was very encouraging and it was basically saying you're doing the right thing this is a serious moment when you've confronted a thing that you've been carrying since childhood probably definitely related to you know your relationship with your father and through this practice you've been able to look at it in the eyes and move on from it and sort of like deal with it really fully and the torment that I went through for several weeks was the inevitable process of dealing with it if that makes sense. Oh yeah. I mean the consequences of looking at in the eye is not an immediate sense of well-being. It's like, no, you have to travel through the dark forest before you can come out the other side, you know? Absolutely. And I think that's one thing too. Like as far as you're talking about, I mean, you talk about the dissolving of it. And in some cases where that even seems impossible or not at the, not in the near future even. impossible. Sometimes a big thing is like reframing. And so if you can get yourself in a good enough

headspace, like, you know, as I mentioned, I would have like a preoccupation with death, especially in more depressive moods. And not just, when I say that, not just like I want to die, but it would feed into like the finality and brittleness of life and it's all stupid and pointless. You know, just those like pissy thoughts, you know, sort of things. It would feed into that and, you know, Using through mindfulness, you know, using through like counseling and talking with other people, it was helping me able to reframe it where I could kind of use the finality of death to help me get through the mundane and boring. Instead of death being the thing that haunt you, it could actually be seen as a thing that can liberate you from certain fears or anxieties or ruts that you're stuck in. Or the biggest thing is even the mundane, because sometimes you just need a rest.

from that. Like that, sometimes if you're just mind as sedentary, you know, I mean, it's a hard to, as you've probably talked about many times, the eroding slog of job work and that sort of system you talk about. And, you know, it's not exactly just like super

negative emotions, but it's just like the feeling of being lost. Like, I'm doing this stuff. This is what most of my day is, type of stuff. Like, I can use the feeling of death and its strong, scary finality of it to kind of inject a little bit bigger of just even trying to enjoy the day, even if I'm doing something that's boring,

like trying to actually weaponize those feelings that are brought on by death in a good way, where it's just like, you know, this all goes into nothingness. It's kind of like in ways people talk about there's a bad nihilism and there's a good nihilism. Or maybe there's not either or, but it could be used in the way. You know, trying to talk about that reframing of things that I can use this to now. It's like when depression was set in and it would linger very hard in my mind, especially during those mundane, you know, throughout the day, just like I'm just being a low-grade morphine drip of depression, just going throughout the day, trying to use that to be more engaged with life and active in life. And I know that one that's a little bit different, but that a lot of

people use as far as reframing is, is that they have, like, struggles and mental health issues that just seem like, what is the point of this stuff? Like, what am I going to, how am I going to reframe delusion, like, struggling with stuff? How am I going to reframe just, like, this absolutely, like, bitter anxiety that I feel all the time. And, you know, one way people try to do it is through alterism and through helping out people that have the same sort of suffering. It was like, if anything, this has given me experience, I can use to help other people. And I just think about that as you talked about dealing with the grief and the angst that comes with the relationship of your father and using the mindfulness where, as you put it, like, you take it head on and

you look at it. And that's the only way you can begin to reframe things as if you actually approach it. And in my case, it's hard to. It's hard to approach those depressing feelings and it's hard to like no let them stay or let them ride the wave so to speak it's like i don't want to because it's just i feel like i'm thawing you know like i'm just like i'm a sturdy ice cube and i'm just melting under this i'm just feeling more like a sad sack and i just hate this and it's like and feel it and see if just even getting some sort of energy even if it's negative from the feeling of it embracing it and being like all right i will let this hit me like a wave. I got to feel something from that, right? You know, I don't know.

That's just kind of more abstract, but that idea of reframing. And there is, as we all know, no single silver bullet. And, you know, what works for me in one instance won't even work for me in another instance, let alone for anybody else in any other given instance. So it's really like a toolbox. I feel like I think about it in terms of like going through mental health struggles my entire life off and on. And now I'm in my, you know, approaching mid-30s. There's a toolbox of coping mechanisms that you kind of gather up along the way like the first time depression hits you in the fucking face you are completely at sea like you you've never experienced it before so you have no coping mechanisms if you don't have anybody in your life that can relate to you or help

you through it you're even worse off and it really does feel insurmountable it feels like your brain is broken um but after going through depressive periods multiple times you know over and over and over again you do kind of construct for yourself a toolbox of coping mechanisms, some on the less healthy side, some hopefully on the more healthy side, that you immediately start turning to when you feel it coming on the next time. I feel like every cycle of depression or anxiety that I've gone through I have, because of the necessity of trying to find a way out, developed and searched and sought out and created ways for me to not get rid of the thing but to blunt the sharpest edges of it such that I can make it through and the experience of going through multiple times shows you

that there is an end like you know in the midst of a depression episode of a dark one for example it can really feel like I'm never getting out of this it really feels like I'm going to be like this for the rest of my life what is the point but when you feel like that several times and you come out of it then that next time you go in and you had that same thought and feeling, you can temper it. Yes, I'm thinking that thought and it does feel like an attempting thought and there might be some truth in it, but I've thought that before. And every time I've thought that before, I have come out the other side, you know, and that's kind of a way to kind of help yourself not lose hope when you're in the midst of

something. Having gone through it so many times, like not one time in my history of depression and anxiety has it never left, you know? Every single episode I've had with either of those illnesses. As bad as they've gotten, they eventually subside. They eventually release their group. And maybe a couple years later, I go through another period, but I'm more equipped. I know that these things pass. I have better coping mechanisms in my toolbox. And I can at least navigate this in a way that the first time or two or three that it happened, I had no fucking way to navigate it. And I have over this, I don't want to get too details because it's not my personal story to tell, but a niece of mine, very struggled with deep, deep depression recently and made an attempt

on her life and called me, of all people, and after she had already consumed a fucking smorgas board of pills, and I was able to get her help acutely, get her, you know, go over there, you know, more or less with 9-11, and the emergency responders save her life. then have been able to take my extensive experience with the exact thing she's going through to help her to help her navigate that in a way that I never had when I went through my first depression episode it felt completely isolated completely alone so scary and I know she was going through that I know damn well what she feels like and so walking with her talking with her saying I've been through this exact thing you will come out the other end etc now she's doing great

you know she's really got her feet back on the ground has you know her life has shifted the pandemic has ended right but she was robbed of her entire eighth grade school year and was forced to go into ninth with no social friends whatsoever like it's brutal so that was probably a contributing factor um but i have been able to turn my terrible experiences with it not only into better coping mechanisms for myself but as you said earlier turning that suffering into real help for other people that are going through it and turning that suffering into compassion turning that suffering into assistance for other people instead of, you know, letting yourself be consumed by your own suffering. I don't know.

It's nice that I could be for her what I wish I had for me at that time, you know, and I hope it contributed to saving her life. Well, absolutely. I think, you know, you talk about it contributed to that. Like, at the very least, it contributed to her quality of life. You know, she has some, like, guidance is so important to receive some sort of guidance. talk about like dealing with it alone i remember when i felt it when i was younger like if someone could just verbalize it for me and not not just a counselor or somebody not reading out of a textbook but like a friend someone at least kind of close to my demographic someone could do that

wouldn't fix it by any means but it would it would be i would be seen as like that aloneness is what makes it so burdensome and hopeless because it's just like and again it's just this thought distortion like i'm the only person in the world who could ever feel this way and you know you could look on that and be like why would you ever think that it's it's like well because i'm the only one that lives in my head i don't live in other people's heads i don't know what their experience is like and you know i i mean it's awesome that you could have been able to to do that for her and you know the other thing is that you talk about using that experience as far as benefits it's an absolute win-win because it's not only just

helping the person but it helps you tremendously absolutely sometimes you with people joke was like this is helping me probably more than it helps you in this sense of like you know not something obviously as like drastic as that but like you know just in general being able to help people or at least feel like you are now of course there is a proper way to do that i mean we if i don't know if not we'll get into the rigmarole of some of the pitfalls of like improperly trying to help um but properly sharing your experience having that sort of um a connected sort of struggle to where you don't feel alone and you feel that your your problem has become at least sort of free range like there's a chance for it to not just stick next to you and just haunt you in that way but

it's like oh this is and also and this is as kind of you know um drastic as it may seem also just to see another person who has described this exact same thing that I have and they're doing all right yes oh my goodness they're not doomed to because you know if anything it's like I might not be the only person who has this but the other people that do kill themselves or are crazy homeless people you know and you kind of your immature mind that's what you could think or your depression field thoughts can easily tend in that direction 100% and so like to see a person especially probably with you um that she admires or has respect for and you go oh they i kind of want things that they have in their life and they have this too so it's not impossible you know like that's a huge

thing a lot of times the way you like live can be a benefit to people if you just have these moments where you talk every once in a while but they can see you from afar and they know you struggle with the same things that can be helpful extremely helpful as well. Absolutely. And there's one thing I wanted to touch on when you were talking about where one thing that's, you know, it's a big struggle, but it's a huge part of it. You were describing where, and you're right, where like that everything is temporary in the sense of like these waves of depression will pass. They always do pass.

In the same way, even if you're addicted, the cravings that are going to last forever will pass. And yes, you can build more, I don't know, faith in quote unquote, the problem. process whatever you want to call the process you can build faith in the process because you go i had thought this was forever and then it wasn't and i've done that like five times now exactly right but here's one thing on the other side of it just getting to another layer of it though is that i've been through that as well where i'm like i know these things pass but you talk about the importance of quality of life because at times where i'd be hopeless and suicidal is like sure this will pass but my life as it is is not worth going through more of these things

like that's the thing about quality of life where it's just like fine it's not all you know it won't be this bad but i i can't predict how much my life will be you know plagued by these sort of thoughts but my even my medium or my sort of like basic cable of my life is not very enjoyable like that's i think where some people get really hopeless where even if people like you know people and i've thought this sentiment in my head what people are like dude it's temporary or pass was like even when it does pass i don't really like my life that much or it doesn't see you worth it to go through all this stuff and like one you know big thing that I think about is a lot of the the aspects of seeking help with with mental health that is you know it it's not based on the more like therapeutic clinical things but like getting help like it just as you know you talked about earlier like the stuff that we've been doing whether it's the stuff we've been doing or the friendship has been hugely beneficial in this kind of not just run for sobriety but run for my well-being in general. And you talk about this system, whatever you want to call it,

or society as a whole, and people dealing with mental health problems and they're being such a lack of community or a lack of ways of people to enjoy themselves. Well, the only way they know how to enjoy themselves is alcohol and drugs or destructive behaviors or relationships. Like, that can be such a struggle because even if you're not in more of your, like,

acutely awful phases of whatever, like, mental, illness or disorder you have, if you don't have any good quality of life, you feel like it outside of that, it can become a tremendous struggle as well. Because it's like, all right, it might not always be super awful, but my life's always medium awful, and I don't want this anymore. Even without this shit, my life sucks. Right. I mean, essentially, that's what it is. And I've been through that where I, like, you know, even sober, I'm like, I don't even know if I count waves of depression anymore. Maybe this is all just, this is not a wave. This is a current. Just bobbing in the ocean of it. Yeah, like, this is just a current. It's like,

I guess it's a wave. Is it a wave if I've hated it all the way through? You know? Yeah. And I bring that up because that's, you know, if people are listening, I try to bring up sentiments that I know other people have had. It's like, yeah, I've heard that, you know, this stuff passes, but those even in-between times don't feel worth it.

And I don't know how to elaborate on that. That's just kind of thoughts that have crossed my mind during it. And if you thought it, other people out there have definitely thought it. I do want to kind of move or talk a little bit about medication for this. this last example I gave with my, with my niece, part of her getting out of that deep hole was actually medicine. It created a foundation where she could, you know, it didn't solve the problem in and of itself, but it sort of when you're totally lost in it, it was enough to lift her up just enough where other things could then become effective that weren't earlierly effective, you know.

And medication, I've had a really complicated relationship with medication because when I was young and I, you know, went to the psych ward for suicidal thoughts and deep clinical depression. I was prescribed medication. And I didn't feel as if it really worked. And maybe it's because I was young. I didn't give it enough time. But after a couple months of using it, I just, I still felt really depressed. And so I kind of gave up on it.

And then when I started having anxiety at one point, my dad came into town and he did pay for me to go see a doctor one, like a one-off visit to see if we can get anything. and um and he paid for it so we did go there and i got i fucking forget the name of the medicine um but it was supposed to be like a an anti-anxiety medicine that is kind of in the realm of anti-depression as well i'm not quite sure but i was delivering peaches at the time well like okay i'm going to start taking my medicine and i popped you know the first pill of this bottle i got to deal with my anxiety and i went through this it was a fucking drug high what happened was i got this extreme elevation of mood like scarily good like

into full mania while I'm at this has all happened in one fucking shift at work insane fucking mania so I was like delivering pizza music turned way the fuck up felt fucking great like I just popped three Adderals you know like I was living it and this only lasted for like 30 minutes though and then boom this insane this one time use insane fucking crash uh to the point where I was full on panic convinced I was dying went to the ER because I was like I am dying I took this pill and it also like when you deal with anxiety and you're like okay i feel like i'm dying but i know i'm not is one thing but when it's brought on by a pill like okay well maybe it is the pill maybe i am really fucking dying

maybe it did do something because there is actually a thing i can point to that i took earlier that i could be dying you know so i i went to the emergency room they like gave me a volume and then you know i kind of stabilized went home whatever i never touched that medicine again like fuck that you know i do not even want to risk that and ever since then i've i've i've just been personally, and this is not advice for anybody else, is my personal hangups over it, been very, very scared of any of these medicines and have really recoiled from them completely ever since that experience, for better or worse. But other people have had completely different experiences, right? Like, I just said my niece was really helped out by the medicines that her

doctors gave her, because it catapulted her into an area where she could at least start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and was a foundation for her to completely appreciate. Now, I, talking to her mom and stuff, like, okay, but this should be temporary, right? I don't want her because she went through a terrible experience at this teenage year, you know, situation, and she got out of it with this medicine to now be a lifelong user of this medicine. I feel like six to eight months of a medicine in her circumstance, and every circumstance is different, is enough to kind of get her out of the rut and let her life go forward and she can leave it all behind. I wouldn't want to see her taking the same medicine at 30, right?

It would seem antithetical to any logic that she would need to be still taking this thing. But other people do need it. And other people swear by it. And other people say, I need it every fucking day. And if I don't get it, I really will start spiraling. And so I completely accept that as well. So all of that complication on the table and understanding that these medications, especially these anti-depression medications, are blunt instruments.

And the individual is so individual. unique that what works for one person can actually be a horror show for another and vice versa. So I'm just wondering what your experience and, you know, what your experiences with medication are and if you're still on medication right now. Yeah. So, I mean, this is, you know, another press aside. Like, I'm not going to talk about the, like, the efficacy of like particular medications or, you know, it's just going over the experience of trying to get it right, trying to use it, the pitfalls, the benefits, stuff like that, you know. I mean, I mean, you know, you brought up a point in just what you're talking about where, you know, you haven't gone back to it because of that experience.

And the biggest thing about medication is, is that, of course, we don't take them unless we need to. Like, they're not like multivitam, is there anything, you know? So, I mean, in your, like, experience, like, you haven't gotten to a point where it's just like, the things are so bad. I have to go back and try it. And that's totally fine. That's kind of the way we do most things with our life, right? And like... That could still be ahead of me.

I could, in my 40s, go through some horrific thing and, you know, be very very. very open to going back and trying out in different medication or something. Now you sound like my brain. Always to the negative. But yeah, so that's the thing, right? So what I was going off about the neat thing is that one of like the initial issues in the pursuit of medication is that you never start medication when things are pretty good. Right?

And basically when it comes to any sort of psychoactive medication, or at least antidepressants, at least antidepressants, when it comes to those, anything that happens instantly is bad, even if it's like that whatever, that Adderall hot. It would have been so funny, by the way, if you were just been like, I can't remember what the medication was, oh, 40 milligram atoral.

No, it was not that. No, I know. So I had to crack at least one. That makes sense. Yeah. I did crack at least one. But, no, the, anything that happens instantly is a,

I mean, I'll just say it is not a good thing because that's not how they're supposed to work. So, like, usually, like, I mean, just what you described, getting into like you know everybody always jokes which is morbid but it is kind of funny where the commercials for antidepressants is like first thing

when they have to list side effects may kill yourself yeah exactly because it's like wait a result in suits yeah it's like to one of those things like diet pill side effects you may get fat as hell wait what but um but the thing is and like when you talk about stories like that one thing and this is just the way human nature works too

is that they are rare but of course they're novel like they're the ones you would talk about so like how many people talk about like, it was pretty good. Yeah, yeah. Or I felt nothing. Right. You know, like no one is going to talk about things.

So yes, you get a lot of talk about side effects and there are a huge problem. And you won't get talked for people that works. But, you know, in a sense, people are going to take them if they feel they need them, right? But when you feel that you need them, what I talk about, like only like not great things happen instantly, the way it's supposed to work is like gradual. It is such a, I mean, I don't know if there's like a real sort of academic. point to make about it but it just sucks because you're in you you you reach out to look into medication because obviously you're in a bad place and then you and this is my first experience of it was like it was just like coming to the to the psychiatrist office and it's just like dude i've

you know i've been depressed before but man i've i've really started thinking about like the scary sort of hopeless ideas like you know suicidal ideation and it's been just oh man it's it's been really difficult and I just kind of the point now where I don't know I just I need some sort of help like chemically like with medication and basically essentially the psychiatrist would be like all right here's what I know you're in this really dire state here's what we're going to give you um this thing could take four weeks for it to work we don't even know if it'll work and also it may have side effects that you hate yeah see you know I don't mean like to dog on it to make it sound like it's at all a bad idea to do that But that's the reality of it, though, right? That's why it's so, like, man, it sucks because these things are slow acting. And at the point where, you know, you don't reach for the life preserver when you're swimming just fine. And so you're at this low state and you're just like, wait, I have to wait how long. And that's if it works.

And it's not even going to be that, like, effective. It's not going to make me instantly happiest. Fuck this, dude. Like, you know, it's a harsh, harsh reality. And the truth about, like, you know, and I. And I depressants is that it's weird. It's almost kind of a paradox in the sense where it's like, no, they're not going to make you 100% better.

And I don't know what way you don't want to quantify it. I always thought about they help you. They give you the opportunity to be well. They will not make you well, but it gives you the opportunity for it. In a sense, it's like. Like I said earlier with my niece, it lifted the floor. The foundation, yes. And the funny thing is, is that in a way it works.

Let's say it makes you 10% better in a sense, right? but the thing is it gives you the opportunity because it can be a chain reaction like remember I discussed before is that the trap of a lot of these things is that it makes you not want to do the things you need to do you could still be in a

probably will be if you immediately start taking them in a depressed state not in a great place but now with the medication you might be able you might have just just enough energy

to go out and do something for yourself to shower we're not even talking about exercise to do basic stuff you can start doing that you build a little bit off that. And now at a certain point, it's not even the medication. It is in its own way, an

indirect way, but it's not the medication propelling you to go from being able to shower and brush your teeth to being able to go to work for a little bit, being able to talk to people. It's not doing that. But because you've started to improve little by level with those things, you can move on to higher, like, things of help or activity you can do. And it all started because you were able to do it. Exactly. It's like the impetus of a positive spiral. We talk about depression leading to this negative spiral, it could be just enough to have an opening to where you can maybe start turning that spiral upward. And then, you know, that's the real help that it offered you, you know. Right. Because it's, it's all, like, it's, that's what

it's supposed to do, right? Where, you know, it's, it's kind of alarming if some people are like, yeah, I just started taking insert medication and I felt immediately better. And you're like, day one, like, yep. And you're like, hmm, okay. I mean, that's cool. If I, like, I mean, that's cool. I wish the best for you. I hope it's that one drug from Brave New World or wherever where you feel great and you're gone from there. But that also wasn't a very good book in the sense of how it turns out. But, you know, like the sense of it really has to always go in tandem with other things too.

And there is a sense. And this is just a sort of like a consciousness of at least the American society. But a lot of them too were that instant gratification thing or that I want it and I need it now. like you pop the pill and it solves the thing and that's the other thing too is that we're actually kind of used to that in some respect you pop the allergy medication you pop the thing for your low grade headache

that goes away you do the thing for what have you your strep throat like all that stuff so we've almost built that into our mind so now you have the pill it's for the inside boo-boos the inside ouchies my low-grade headache about existence

but I pop that and it goes away and it's like no it doesn't and as you said and it's just it's like if there's one thing everybody can agree on is that like there's no prediction of how it's going to affect people in the sense they have predictors of this will be better um better applied to you where there's higher chances and such but you just have to honestly you have to try it and see and a lot of people when they even get it you talked about in your story like your dad had to basically like paycheck advance for you to

get mental health health and like you know a one-time thing too not any consistent treatment right and you talk about that and a lot of people like you go with the try and see thing and it's like they don't have any real safety net to keep this going and like we tried this once we're done like we like you have to try different medications like things like that and it's just like a lot of people don't have the ability to do that and not even talking about the more external things like about like financial ability or the resources but also some people don't have the mental ability to stick with it because during that try and see part part of it it's really hard or again if you have the alcohol and drugs involved there's one thing that works

really fast and this thing that works really slow if it even works at all and by the way it's not going to make you high or it's not going to change everything you still have to do 90% of the work. Let me ask you this about prescription medication costs because obviously in America we're triply fucked in this regard and I

like I said I haven't done medicine for a long time but if you don't have insurance you might not have the answer to this but if you don't have insurance what is the cost of maintaining SSRI fucking prescription? Do you have any sense of that? How much does meth cost because you might as well start doing that um so what's insane that was a joke don't don't do

math guys i've 100% i've been holding back on some jokes but don't keep it all you can let them rip fuck it we're over uh almost an hour if you're still listening you're now into the daves zone no but um the thing is is that medications pricing makes no sense nobody has any idea how like any of the shit works it's all the it's all ambiguous artificially they make it complex on purpose and what essentially happens is so like if you most people a lot of work I did when I was doing case management is making sure people can get on the government program so they can be able to get medication like that was always priority number one for sure and of course it's an insanely difficult process which by the way the difficult

process should be finding the medication for them in that process not just like you know you filled out this form so six more months with untreated schizophrenia that's the thing with every social safety net quote unquote program in the US is it's really hard to get on it and once you're on it they're constantly trying to purge you they're constantly trying to find little things you didn't turn this paper in on time or whatever and then that lack of continuity when it comes to fucking food stamps or housing security or medicine can throw your entire life in turmoil just because you caught a bad break or maybe you had insurance but you got fired from your job because there was a fucking pandemic you couldn't control that shut down your your industry and now you don't have the money

to fucking be able to afford the medicine so then you know the continuity is is cut off once again so and here's the thing too like there's this sense that it's it's basically this is almost kind of the societal feeling you you get from the system where this is something i experienced a lot was that hey you better be a worthless loser or it's going to be more expensive in the sense of like if you're not fully covered on like medicare or medicaid or some you know incredible incredibly contrived, like, you know, social thing, where at least it is available, if you're in a middling job, some sort of working class or one that I was in, I mean, just retail, stuff like that, it makes no sense because the, okay, so the better paying jobs you have, the prescription and shit is cheaper, and the less better paying jobs you have, it's more expensive. So there was legitimate times where I was looking at, you know, like it said, the process is arduous, I mean, to go through and find what works for you. You know, it's like, we hope this will, this will affect you.

I mean, you're talking to even crazy things as far of medication as, like, how your body metabolizes it, how it processes. I actually take medication for that, so because my, I didn't have a good, like, system of actually just, not even in the brain, like, re-uptake, but, like, just metabolizing it in my body. So you have a separate pill to help metabolize it. Yeah, it's like, it's methollate and it's prescribed a lot. But with that being said, so it's an incredibly hard process, and it's like good if you can find the one thing. I can't tell you how many times where it was in the office, clearly clack, look, and. it up okay with your insurance it's going to be about this month i'm like guess we're not doing that you know like literally we finally crafted these could work best for you for your mental

well-being it's like wait do you have blue cross blue shield or do you have like you know what do you have and it's like well maybe we'll get something else and this this is a bigger problem in our society when it comes to the social safety net because it makes like what we would call and i don't like this term because i think it obscures class relations but the middle class they can get very angry at the poor because the poor get benefits that they don't have so if you're rich enough it's not a problem you get all the anything you fucking want in this country if you're poor enough you can tap into things like medicaid or food stamps but if you just earn just a little bit mutt you know too much where you're still abjectly struggling you obviously need help especially

access to what i would consider human rights medicine and fucking doctors and housing and stuff like that then you can't get it but you see somebody that's a little poorer than you be able to get it. And so you often come across these, you know, not very politically informed people who will just have an intuitive sense of rage at the people below them. Like, oh, they can get help, but I work a job. I'm actually going to work every day. And I fucking need help, but I can't get it. But that person that doesn't go to work every day is getting the government help. Right. You see this all the time with any social program. It's often racialized, but class is at the core of it. So you set up a situation in the U.S. around health care.

where, you know, working or middle class people will feel fucked over and sadly and irrationally, in my opinion, aim their rage downward toward the people that can get help. Well, I'm paying taxes to pay for that person's food stamps or that person's Medicaid, but I can't even fucking get healthy food or I can't even get my prescription filled. And so you have this divide now. What would be the solution of that problem and what would prevent that turning around and hating those below you would be universal programs? that allow every single person, regardless of income or status of your job, to have access to at least the basics of life, housing, health care, medicine, food, right?

And in a universal program, you would cut out the elements of these convoluted programs that actually pit various lower classes against each other, you know what I'm saying? Well, and I hope your audience knew it. But that's what I was talking about in that voice of just like, well, unless you're a worthless piece of shit. Exactly. That's what I meant by that, because that's the kind of the tone it takes on. Like, one of the saddest realities

was that when I was working as a case manager, we had terrible health insurance for medical stuff. It was an abomination, dude. We struggled. And there was actually some of the case managers like, this motherfucker can get this stuff, but I'm working. I'm the one helping him and I don't get it. I mean, it just broods

within you. And, you know, it's of course not the poor people's fault. It's the system's fault, but it's easier to aim your hatred at the poor people. And this is, I mean, this is totally opinionated, but I think it has a lot of merit in the sense of, like, to universalize, like, psychoactive mental health medications. Because, like, one of the things I said initially

is that people talk about, you know, abuse of the health care system. One thing that would make, like, mental health medication safe from that is nobody wants to take them. People aren't going to be like, well, now that I got this thing, I'm going to take Prozac and Afexer and Serequil. You know what? Throw in a couple of those more antipsychotics. Like, put it on my bill.

Like, no one wants to take these things. Like, the idea that there'll be abuse is absurd as just with medications. I mean, I don't, you know how I feel on that anyways. But just with medications, this is a thing that people don't want to abuse because as we can get into as well, the issue of side effects. Like, and also the issue of your idea of autonomy where people are like, yeah, I don't want to be on this the rest of my life. or like people are, I mean, one of the hugest problems in the field of mental health is people stop, stopping taking their medications.

That's a whole other topic, like, of why. It's like, no, no, no, no. There is a reason. But that idea that, yeah, it's not universal. It's just like, you have a product that I would say, again, opinion, but I would say is absolutely, like, abuse proof because it's not a thing that people, unless you start, like, putting in, like,

pain killers or stimulants in the field of mental health drugs, it's not going to be abused because it's not things, it's not like extra dental checkups. or like elective surgery or anything it's stuff people don't want to take exactly and of course the reasoning behind the the crafting of these policies in this entire system isn't really about concern over whether or not people will abuse those pills right the ultimate real reason is of course this system and the way things are set up makes a small amount of people incredibly rich who then take those wealth and disproportionately affect the political system to continue their interests right

the pharmaceutical companies, the insurance lobby, a health care insurance lobby, right? They keep this system intact because they benefit financially from having this system as convoluted and bullshit as it is in place. And it would be a existential threat to their profits if we made things like health care and medicine universally accessible to people. And that's why these things quickly result in a critique of, you know, capitalism more broadly. And on this show, of course, we're going to point that out. Right. And the thing that it gets down to us, and I talked about abuse, and I don't mean, like, the abuse of the actual drug itself, but I mean people abusing the system of overusing, you know, the, like, overusing the medication as a sense of, like, overusing their health care. Like, you're going to have way more pointless hospital stays and it's just like, no, no, no, no.

People don't want to do this stuff. Like, and, you know, and people could get into the spat about it. Like, maybe they're faking or whatever, and that's a whole crazier other topic. But just the idea that the medication for mental health is. isn't universal, it's just like that is if people use it too much. And the system we have now, so I think I mentioned this on the previous, like, you know, public podcast was my little issue. I don't know why I'd say little, but I was taking a medication that.

And again, you talk about like the disingenuousness of like four people. And it's like they do everything to prove that it's not that. Because every mental health practitioner, every person that even just advocates for it or anything like that has the most basic iceberg lettuce amount of ideas about mental health say never, never, never abruptly stop taking your psychiatric medications. And yet there are so many ways in the system where you can be cut off. It would be Defcom 9 when I was working with some people because some fucking paperwork thing happened and now they're cut off from their medication.

And so what happened to me was I was and again, I will. Universal access solves that problem as well, but go ahead. Oh, yeah. but like just not being fucking evil solves it too but like so what happened I think I told this I'll just go over it briefly again was that I had this medication um

that I was that was taking and I found it to be helpful I mean not incredibly helpful but for me I just I had real problems with getting any I didn't have a lot of side effects they just there wasn't any effectiveness there was no efficacy of it it just I just felt like I was taking nothing and I had won that it seemed like it was helping and I'd been taking it I'd been sober and taking it for

almost a year and a half and then it just stopped. It was like, there's a problem with your insurance and I'm like, what, no, this is,

I didn't change over. I didn't make any adjustments. And then the problem with the insurance is they couldn't get the medication. Medication was just like out. And I was like, uh, what?

And they were just like, yeah, we're just waiting on it. I was like, is this a Walgreens thing? Is this, if I go to CBS and they're like, no,

it's just out. I'm like, there's not like a, like an SSRI famine. Like, how is this like out? Like the field workers picking the like effectser or like on strike like what are you talking about and it's like it went

out you know how bad it went out so the the the drug was called vibrant this is how this how you know how much they fucked up they actually created this program through vibrant that was subsidized where you could actually sign up not through any government stuff you could sign up to get extremely extremely subsidized vibrant after this happened because everybody was just like Once they found out, like, every person I saw or I'd heard of it was just like, oh, you know, there is this program that's brought to you by the prescription company. It's not. But that they've been subsidized because they had people that had been using it were cut off. And they were like, well, fuck this then.

Because that's what I did, too. I was like, I'm not going back to it because I was cut off for almost a month. And at that point, I stopped checking on it. And I didn't even know what to do with myself. Did you go through withdrawals? or symptomatic symptoms of the of the sudden stop just a sort of I wouldn't even call it withdrawals I would just say the effects it was doing it for me weren't continuing and I found a helpful which I'm lucky because of course there's like getting off of it I had that once happened with the medication where it wasn't useful for me and I thought I tapered pretty well I was kind of being dumb about it you know and it still was like devastating like I felt it in my bones like this weird way and I was just like yeah so I mean I guess I guess I'm lucky for that, but, you know, I was already in a fragile state. This was kind of towards right the tail end before my relapse after that amount of time.

And again, I'm not blaming it on that. But it was certainly a factor. And it was just this, this pointless bullshit of like, it was just taken off the table. And just there was, I mean, it's not a hugely wide use drug. But enough people were using it where that's devastating. You just take this thing off, especially if it's like working. Was it a supply chain issue during the pandemic? Do you ever get to the bottom of what the fuck caused this?

what happened was is that best to my knowledge and it was hard to sift through because no one's talking they just created this program was like all of a sudden we'll give you this super subsidized like wow

out of the kindness of your own heart or that you fucked over a ton of people but it was at least what I heard that it wasn't getting as widely spread as possible so they didn't make a lot of it

and then there was a mismatch between how much doctors were actually yeah so they just they weren't They hadn't made enough. And instead of like, and the issue was that they could have made more, but they cut back costs. It was like, well, we don't need to make this much.

Right, right, right. And their pricing, they were afraid it was going to change, so they just like had stuff. And not like indefinitely, but just during this time period. Sure. I mean, insane. And what you're talking about, these are drugs that are the well-being of people's minds. And it's just like, and this is, I mean, that is just a personal anecdote, but stuff like that has happened, stuff like that where some stupid thing occurs with insurance.

and now it's... Yes, that happens all the time. You have people that are barely scraping by. Or just like I said earlier, losing your job. Oh, yeah. I mean, not even that. I mean, this is even more... That's awful, too, but this even more just technical...

Made out of thin air bullshit where... This is another thing that I had gone through, but many people as well, too, where you're barely scraping by, and it's like, man, this is already like $80 a month. God damn. And then just one, like, you know, two months later? Oh, it's now 100. Why? Fuck you. That's why.

I mean, basically, they can tell me on... Just fuck you. you. That's why. We want to make more money. It's like, well, you know what? I can handle the $100, but I can't handle is the uncertainty. Because what if next month it's 120? What of next month it's 130? Like, do I need to pull like the, like the rip cord now

and just now pursue a new one? Not because it's not working, but because financially, like, the idea of that, there's like, we don't know. The shoulder shrugging of like how shit will turn out. How the professional psychiatrist, not their fault, but how they talk to you about it? Like, it should be all right. And it's like, should like this is supposed to be something that at least is prescribed for a prolonged amount of time like where it just it can just change that's the opportunity for profit

because if pharmaceutical companies have no regulation nobody that they answer to which they fucking don't they control our government as opposed to vice versa you have a situation in which they can see very clearly and they have all these equations and fucking people working on these problems all the time to make sure that this is true that these people need this medication We have nobody stopping us. We can raise it $20, $30, $50, $100, knowing that people will absolutely go out of their way to pay it because they need it.

Now, we can't make it $10,000 because then people just 90% of our market would dry up. People could just not afford that so they would just cut it off. So you can't get crazy with it. But you can continue ratcheting up to price, squeezing people for more and more profit on these substances, these pills that you know people absolutely depend on daily. to get by. Insulin is a great example of this. Around the world, governments have checked their pharmaceutical companies. They've bargained with them or in various other policy moves made it such

that insulin can be affordable to people knowing that they fucking need it and knowing that corporations driven by the profit motive will do whatever they can to rack up those costs or the prices so they get more money. In the U.S., we don't have that. So you have the situation in which people can't afford their own insulin insulin which is very cheap to make it's not even like well there's so much that goes into it i mean come on like the the overhead cost of just producing one pill is so high we have to charge this amount it's not like that at all it is an obvious example of price gouging and profiteering off of human need and human desperation i mean that is that is the evil inherent not in like bad people but in a capitalist structure that says if you want to

remain CEO of this company, you need to maximize profits for our shareholders. The moment you stop doing that because you get a little misty-eyed about caring about the babies that might die, we'll replace you with somebody that's willing to cut the fucking throat. They're like, hey, Phil, we're not going to eat the cost of you having a conscience.

Yeah, exactly, right. We can't eat the cost of empathy. Exactly, we'll cut you loose, but. And that's the thing, too. And again, it goes back to the initial thing I'd said is that people don't want to take these things. So even in this market, whatever you want to call it, it's not like a product and the best wins, it's bullshit because

doctors are prescribing you this. Like, the whole thing is that, yeah, you kind of nickel and dime and then raise it up little by little, and it's not like, well, it's still the best product in town. It's just like, no, my psychiatrist is trained professional, who is, has most of the time the right frame of mind

is saying, you can't stop taking these. Right. But I, and again, you were made to feel a fool of like, so you're going to, like, risk your well-being, your mental well-being, because you wouldn't pay 10 more dollars. It's like, no, you don't understand they've kept doing this and like I'm not like you know it's that one thing where they can make you feel foolish because of like what this amount of money like just little it's going to make

you like take a risk of getting on a brand new medication it's like you don't understand dude like there's still real life things still have functions like there's still dollar signs and there's still dots and decimals and what I can't afford there's still the green and there's still the red on my bank account like you don't this is bullshit and the worst thing is it's not even it's like well no one else of the market is making this or no one has like you know been the superior company or a capitalist like you're not even you're not even

selling this shit we are told to take this for good measure by people who mean well and if we don't the effects are dire and precisely to your point about these offering of products and like the ideal in the way that the free market has pitched us

is competition is what controls prices you have a lot of competing firms in an industry they're going to compete to undercut each other to get more business. But in every major sector of American economy today, you have monopolies. So when you have monopolies in the pharmaceutical industry, which we absolutely fucking do, then they don't have competition that would, in a idealized free market with plenty of competition, reduce those costs through competition.

There is no competition. And so they can price gouge all they want. And that's just in the pharmaceutical industry. But if you go to the food industry, you go to, manufacturing, you do any other industry in American society, you will see a small group of corporations controlling everything in that market, such that the free market libertarian ideology that they pitched to us that really highlights competition is completely eradicated. That does not exist. There is no competition in these markets. And if you and I wanted to start a business,

you think we're going to be able to start a small entrepreneurial business that can go up against Pfizer? No. You think somebody's going to be able to create a their basement a company that's going to go up against Amazon or Walmart? No. They have monopolies. They've cornered the market. They've eliminated all competition, which is actually, unlike the fairy tales, we're told about capitalism, an inherent incentive. Because if you're one of these competing firms in a free market, right, you have every incentive in the world to gobble up or put out of business your competition such that you can corner the market and make as much profit as possible. So it's inherent in the logic of capitalism.

that monopolies over time will absolutely form. And these are some of the consequences we see when those monopolies form in the sector of health care and pharmaceuticals. And in a just society, at the very least, we'd have government step in and be the forced competition there, right? Say, no, we're just not going to let you do this to the prices. We're going to make you sell them at this fucking price. But our government is controlled by those corporations such that it doesn't and can't do that, you know? I mean, we've got to talk about capitalism on a rev left. No, no, I'm saying I'm just, I'm going to text my psychiatrist to up the dosage of my antidepressant because, fuck, man.

It's that, um, uh, it's the old quote, which is funny because it's been used both against socialism and capitalism, but it's the idea of, you know, the, well, you want the government to run anything. You want them to do anything, like, at least this way it's better. And it's, it's the old quote of like, you have to break a few legs to make an omline. and it's like, where the fuck's my omelet? I'm just seeing a lot of broken eggs around here. You're just breaking eggs and like, you know, you're like, it's going to be sunny side up and you're like, you fucked up again, and you throw it on the floor and, like, they'll clean it up.

It's like, where's the omelet? Like, where is this system? Like, you know what? Even the government fucks it up. That is to suggest you aren't. And there's something also, even if there was limited choices, the uncertainty when it comes to, I mean, insulin, Jesus Christ, but the uncertainty as well when it comes to psychoactive,

medications is just abhorrent. It's like the idea that people aren't sure if they're getting this stuff. It's like, you know what, why not drink and use drugs? Hey, at least the drug dealer's reliable. Yeah, you know what? He's playing a bad game, but he's not rigging it. He just, he'll sell you. You know what?

They've upped my Wilbutrin over and over again, but he never up that dime bag. And McCormick cost the exact same. It did 10 years ago. I didn't hit that because people were mad at Russia and they actually thought McCormick was in Russia. No, something like that. Just idiots throwing out plastic bottles. It's like, this is like, it's like, I'm never drinking vodka again. It's, it's called, it's, it's so stupid.

It's like St. Petersburg vodka, and it's just like, you could clearly see made in China on the bottom of it. It's like, this is for Ukraine. You fucking morons. That's hilarious. It's very sad, actually. Now, is there anything else you want to talk about side effects here? Oh, you know, just one important thing, too.

Again, I talk about this a little bit more for, like, you know, when it comes to stick, where especially like the severely mentally ill people it's like one of the biggest problems is people stop taking their medication and immediately goes to those idiots that's stupid great now we have these roving homeless people and these homeless people committing crime and these you know because they stop taking their medication and you know all that type of judgmental crap that goes on and and one thing is is that like just to put it blind bluntly, side effects are not anything to sneeze at. Yeah. Because, you know, one, one that's just heard all over. This is one, like, real sticking point with people that have, like, bipolar 1. They, you know, they have to work on curbing the mania and sort of the swings. And so a lot of people get into this state of, you know, it's, everything's lowered.

So, like, the lows are supposed to raise up a little bit. The highs are come down. Like, a lot of people talk about the sentiment of misdemeanor. missing the manic times and things like that. But it's trying to correct, and there's no, like, exact science to this stuff. So some people feel like they're just kind of, like, in a blank slate. And it's like, I guess I don't have any real lows, but I don't feel like I have any highs. And, like, you know, that's just the way the medication functions, you know.

And so it's a real, some people are unsure, right? Now you start to throw in side effects that, like, what I mentioned earlier when you talk about quality of life, you start to talk about things like weight gain. And again, some of these are kind of cast, side is like well that's that's vanity and it's like no it's not you're talking about people that struggle with self-worth self-image um and just being healthy by the way uh you start to talk talk about effects where it like sexual effects of like libido and not even just a libido of like you know having sex but just a natural sort of energy that that comes from it talk about things

of like starting like food taste funny i mean you talk about these things and they're you know I mean, it's right in the title of it, side effects. And people sometimes, you know, because, again, the pill is not going to fix your life. Sometimes it's just a very small, like, change that you can't even capitalize on sometimes. And it's just supposed to give you the opportunity to do stuff, right? And so they're not choosing a thing that cures my depression, but without these side effects. You're talking about something that you're hopeful is working. It might be working.

But then it has this tangible, I know these things that's creating that I don't like very much. I mean, basically the point I'm getting at here is like there's a lot of people that will stop taking stuff because of side effects and outwardly you could be like well that's really stupid their depression got worse or they're you know like and you want to talk about side effects when you talk about the more severe mental illness

is the more severe side effects and not even just like side effects of like really sort of like drastic stuff like immediately suicidal but a lot of clients that I had worked with where you know they were kind of just as I call it like just a drowsy volcano. You can tell

there's some life in there, but there was nothing coming out, and they were just flat, and they hated being flat. Maybe the delusions and hallucinations went away, but they were flat. And some of them, in their mind, were like, I'd rather deal with that stuff than be this way. And so you have that, and then you throw on stuff

of, like, rapid weight gain, not really having any sort of sexual energy, starting to have bad habits. Trying to have, like, body discomfort, starting to have itchy, these things that come with it. And people would just be like, oh, it's just side effects. It's like, well, it's it's starting to tear apart quality of life and again these things aren't a cure all so some people just go you know they just do like a triple beam balance of like for the amount of effect i think this has for my well-being to the amount of stuff i know it's causing me you know i'm going to stop taking it and it just i basically kind of bring up this point about like side effects just so people may have some empathy of like why some people stop taking it you know side effects can be they can be huge like i had stopped taking a medication now granted i don't i didn't really feel it's working that well um um

But I was just, I was gaining a lot of weight and I was just like, and I was still exercising and trying to do stuff. And I was like, I don't think I can do this. And I felt internally like, wow, David, you're gaining some weights so you're going to stop taking this stuff. But in my mind arguing back and forth, like a real sane person, like in my mind arguing back and forth was like, but I don't even think it's that effective anyways. And so it's just, it's really difficult. You talk like side effects, again, in the title side effects, but they can be, they can be deal breakers for people taking medication or not. And I know this has hit you hard as well because on this. outline here it says that some of the side effects of your medication has been a drastic reduction in penis size and you already didn't have a lot to work with in that realm so i mean you're talking three inches down to one that could really be a quality of life issue am i right it's basically an in any at this point i'm happy as fuck but it is like i mean it's it's not even at baby carrot status dude we're talking like tick-tack i'm smiling all the time but i got

tick-tack dick all right i'm sorry guys i'm so sorry everybody but we're in the Dave zone at the last quarter in the last quarter of this like the reggae air horn the Dave zone holy shit dude all right I don't get back on okay sorry let's move on let's talk about suicide but like so the side effects and I wanted to get back to this you talked about like medication I'm taking how I'm like I will say a big part of the medication I'm taking right now I find beneficial because of its lack of side effects and I don't think that it totally improves my mood so to speak which you'd be like okay well what does it do? I notice that when I take it regularly that I don't have a lot of the physical

effects of depression. So I don't have, I may have depleted energy sort of like mentally, you know, that type of stuff. But the actual like physical energy or just the want to sleep, like there's a difference. Like there's one to sleep because you're depressed and you want to do like a little time travel nap. Like fast forward, maybe I'll feel better in two hours. But you're not actually sleepy. There'd be times where I'm depressed. I just want to sleep because I'm sad. And I could actually just fall right of sleep because I'm sleepy. You know, I still struggle with things. like that, but I don't have the physical effects. Like, I don't, I can't sleep within a turning, 30 minute time span anywhere I am in the

middle of the day. Like, honestly, I was at a point like that. And, you know, I'm not as like lethargic. And, you know, it's, it's, that's, that's truly helpful. Again, it gives me the opportunity to be able to do some things. And again, I'm with my history, like, just a lot of stuff has, has not worked. But there's not that much side effects and I'm good with that. Like, I'm good with my half-mento's pack.

But, yeah, and that is part of the whole thing of getting into medication as well, is navigating those side effects. Some things aren't worth it. Some things don't, you know, you're constantly kind of readjusting, especially in that first period until you find something that works for you. That was pretty good. What? The stupid penis thing you did.

Okay. I was trying to move on from that, Dave. I had been planning that for about 10 minutes while you were talking. Dude, that's a funny shit. Okay, well, anyways, let's... You got to intervene with some jokes once in a while. But kind of coming towards the end of this conversation, maybe we can talk about some healthy coping mechanisms. And I want to say kind of two things up front, which is us saying what has helped us is not saying what will help you, nor is what we're going to say as far as things you can do to kind of put yourself in a better position to deal with some of these issues, a substitute for other.

the thing. So I'm not going to say exercise. You don't need medication, right? Sometimes you'll hear people just be like, you just need to exercise. Just get out there. Just, you know, go to a movie, hang out with some friends. Get your mind off things. And people that are really in the shit are like, fuck you. Absolutely. Like, that is just the weakest shit you could ever tell me right now. And it just shows me that you have nothing of substance to offer me on this front. And that one thing, that comes from that, the relativity thing I talked about, that usually comes from people like that where they go, I've been sad before. So I get it. So it's just like, no, no, you understand it. I'm at a level of sadness where it's hard to brush my teeth, dude. Like, you're

talking about joining CrossFit. Fuck you. Again, it comes from those people that go, I know what it's like, because I've experienced a micro dose of it, basically. And yeah, so that's, yeah, usually people that have really been through the shit, they're like, no, I get it. It comes off as, yeah, it's condescending and just completely useless. But on the other side of that issue, and I have somebody who I love very deeply in my life, who does this, which is they, everything about their daily life is structured to make them depressed. Heavy alcohol use, you know, no exercise whatsoever, not a particularly healthy diet, and obviously nothing like meditation or anything like that at all, a hugely sedentary

life, poor sleeping habits and sleeping schedule, and they're depressed, and instead of maybe cutting back on drinking or trying to, you know, get some exercise or trying some other natural remedies before you move into medicine. And this is kind of a very American thing as well. It's like, give me the shortcut, you know? Yeah. So I'll just take the pill. And then there's like, okay, after several months, I still feel like shit.

I'm going to double my dosage, okay? Well, now I feel a little bit better. But for me, going through what I've gone, and this is somebody who I've talked very openly and honestly with about this, it seems like, you know, you're really stacking the cards against yourself here. can you you should at least often maybe in conjunction with medication and therapy do some other things in life that could that could help you now all of this is also in the context of those negative downward spirals we talked about earlier where you can't extract yourself from that

downward spiral and so I'm not you know putting anybody down who's in a downward spiral and is relying on medication but it does seem to me as if it's it's it's not rational to think that I can continue drinking heavily, I can continue never exercising, I can continue eating like absolute shit. And when I'm inevitably depressed, I just want to go to the doctor and say, can you give me medicine or triple my dosage so I can feel better again. And so you don't want to kind of fall into either one of those two extremes. And I do feel like there are, and I've learned this through my struggles with these things, there are things you can do that like medicine can kind of open up space to begin positive spirals and feedback loops instead of

negative ones and often those are the annoying things to hear like eat good have a consistent good sleep schedule get outside in the sun and exercise once in a while even if you don't feel like it try to go out and be social you know those are little things that will not solve the entirety of the problem but if you can get yourself motivated enough to start trying to do those things, they can create that, like we said earlier, lift the floor a little bit and give you an opportunity to start positive feedback. So with all of that in mind, with all of those caveats put up front, what would you say are some healthy coping mechanisms that you've been able to develop that you could, in good faith, recommend broadly speaking to other people?

Well, I mean, one thing certainly that has been a game changer of like how people have noticed like just a different me in this respect. I've been sober plenty of times, but a real different thing. And honestly, truly, it is about eating. And I don't mean in the sense, like, I really want to, like, break this down in the way that it's been important and not just in a sense of, like, I became vegan, or I started this all-meat diet, or I started, like, doing this thing. It's not about a specific function or a dynamic of eating, like some sort of diet or something,

but I realized there was so much of what kept me depressed. You talked about those things that are either barriers or slip and slides that let you slide down. You know, eating had, it had way more consequence

than I was aware of because, like, when it came to eating, one, you talk about the, like, something like weight gain or self-value or like even just your health in general. And, you know, me and you have talked about that where it feels too good to be in shape,

even if you're like, even if you have like some fat on your body but you don't like you just feel like in shape like you could be able to walk from a long parking line like some things like that like feel really good but i mean that's even just a small thing but there's some things towards self-image right there's also another thing where eating had such an effect on my mental health because i i would start engaging in in like binge eating even during times when i was sober and i like to a crazy amount but i was i was still dependent on it and it just

it made me feel physically sick it made me feel like mentally foggy you know sleepy or whatever and it just like even just emotionally like the psychological thing like just like you've just ate like a glutton and you feel shameful about it

and you're just like you're looking at the Arby's bag and you're just like oh my God dude what is what have I become you fight monsters you eat monsters long enough you become one dude but I'm a but no

and so like those things yes there's those benefits there. But then also another thing that was helpful about eating was just because it was difficult for me in a long sense of like to stop the binge eating, but also to stop like the snacking and things like that because it was so difficult to take it on and to see some benefits of it and to see it honestly as a sort of fight that I'm that I'm winning and I'm making some progress with. And it has all these side things that came with it.

And just a, like, I could destroy my day with, like, a food coma, you know, and I could, or I could destroy my night or my morning and, like, the effects of just, like, and so my thing is not about, like, some diet to get you into super shape or some diet that's been proven by some whatever person to, like, help you because of the fish oils in your brain or something. Yeah. I just mean in a general sense that you'll feel healthier, you'll feel a little bit more self-worth. You'll feel better. I felt better just when I look at the food I ate and I sometimes take an inventory of what I ate today Like there is like

Especially this is round like Halloween Everybody has like their things of candy Like hang out in like the buckets and stuff I'm like why are you doing this to me Like and you know just I got three kids so when they bring home the candy In good faith I can't let them out Well I pay them to do that

I'm trying to get you fat so But the There's all these again that Like all these things that had surrounded it And it just, again, as we talked about the kind of the chain reaction of positivity, it, just from eating, I'm able to do other things. And then even in some cases with eating, like, I always on, I mean, imagine how you eat on like a first date or something.

I mean, hopefully you're not just scarfing down ribs or something. That would actually be a power move. But, like, you talk about when you're with people and you eat socially, you can engage in conversation, you don't think about food so much. And like, when you're, when you're, when you're, aware of like how you're eating and just even little things honestly dude the aesthetic of some food looking at like a little something that you'd get at like sorry but like Walmart like just a cup of fruit and like I'll have that and just like this yogurt thing for lunch and even here's like man I want

something more honestly the fruit looks pretty like there's a weird thing where it feels like you feel better about doing it and this is just totally my experience but I have some evolutionary shit well and my whole point is that there is I think sometimes you can focus on an area of your life as long as it has like enough significance to it and it can affect way more things than you thought if you are you know if you really go into that some people it seems so daunting like I need to fix everything I need to do therapy I need to do exercise I need to eat I need to socialize I need to like all these eyes too much and then you don't do any of it exactly and sometimes like people get help because they really focus on a hobby that is beneficial to them.

In one way or another, it produces like stimulus. It can produce better habits to be able to do it. It can produce socialization to do it. And all they focused on was this hobby. But because it had enough tentacles in all parts of their lives, because they just focused on that one thing, it had tremendous benefit. And it helps out all,

it helps all the other things rise with the tide of it. That's a great point. And that's something I've actually learned in the last few years. There's been several times in my life where I'm trying to like get my shit together. and then you say I need to eat like this and this is what I need to do to sleep and I need to exercise and I need to get 10 minutes of meditation and then the whole thing falls apart. So over the last several years, I've been like really focused on like focusing on one thing, even start with the easy stuff and make it a habit before you even trying to deal with anything

else. So, you know, for me right now I'm working on like just building in X, not, don't worry about anything else right now, building in exercise to be a habit in my life. I feel better physically and mentally when I do it. I know that. I know all the benefits that exercise can bring, you know, intellectually. And instead of trying to do that in tandem with a million other things, which then feels too daunting, so you end up doing none of it, just trying to find fun, engaging ways to exercise or just get active,

just to move around outside in ways that I find it enjoyable. And maybe, you know, for me, I hate going to the gym. I hate running on treadmills. Those things, I feel like a hamster in a fucking wheel. It's not for me. I need to be outside. recently one of the things I've found that is a really good way of exercising just to go to a local park and to shoot hoops by myself for 30 minutes every morning you know you actually you get a lot of

muscles going you're constantly jumping you're shooting the ball from different lengths oh you make it a lot actually I'm really good um wow you run across the court you do these sprints then stops and it's just it gets you get your blood flowing you know and then if i do that in the morning the rest of the day is kind of set up better you know And it feels because you get the exercise out of the way. It's not like this thing is, I got to exercise. It's two in the afternoon. I'm still not to it.

You know, get that stuff out in the earlier part of the day and it can kind of set a new tempo for the rest of the day. And then you can feel better about, you know, maybe being lax on some other areas while you're working on this. Another thing I think that this stuff does whatever you choose to do is especially if you have self-esteem issues or these negative thought spirals that happen during depression where you feel like shit and you treat yourself like shit. Like when you're depressed, you're mean to yourself. Absolutely. You kind of slowly build up self-worth and self-respect by sticking to things, by doing things, by bettering yourself. So something as simple as saying, I'm going to respect myself and actually build respect for myself by feeding, putting into my body, things that are nutritious, right? And then I do that over and over again.

and you're actually not just filling a plank of general health and digging yourself out of a whole, but you're cultivating a sense of respect and self-worth for yourself by doing that over and over again, giving my body the nutrients it needs. And I want to double down on what you said about diets. Fuck fad diets, you know, fuck the Atkins and keto and fucking carnivore diet like Jordan Peterson tried. Ended up in a gutter. What are you talking about? He's doing great.

Ended up in a gutter in Eastern Europe. he's just like I was eating all meat and now I'll eat all benzos and all benzodia dude I'm celebrating January dude Sannyuary bro

But it's coming up dude But all this is to say Don't even worry about all that shit Because that can be daunting And you could just It's a whole fucking world In it of itself And nutritional science

It's so difficult to wait into The basic is just Eat healthy, nutritious produce food So like one thing you can easily do is just like go around the edge of a grocery store, you know, I kind of do that. And if you think about the old edge of a grocery store, like starts with like fruits and veggies, and then it goes to the deli, you know, and like it's in the meat area, you can like healthier foods on that. And that's

really what it's about. It's not about being vegan or only eating meat or subscribing to this or that diet. It's just a matter of getting good, nutritious food into your body, which is the foundation by which you have, you know, the rest of your body functions, including your mood. and your mental health and those things. But you also don't want to put too much on your table at once. So just finding one thing that is relatively easy, doing it over and over again until it becomes more or less a habit, and then focusing on something else without overwhelming yourself

or without being so fixated on this thing that you're in these insane forums about how you can only eat non-carbs. And you don't want to get into that realm either because that can become a fixation and an obsession. And honestly, it gives rise to eating disorders. When I think, I think it's like, there's a word for it, like orthorexia or something where you just become so fixated and obsessed about getting food that it becomes, you know, such a fixation in your life that is actually undermines other areas of your life. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

And it's simple. Just feed your body nutrition. And one thing I read to that is like, you said something simple and easy. And I would just say that it's not easy, but it's simple. See, that's one thing that's important is because I only have to focus. on this thing like not even doing like exercise with eating or something like that or um i wouldn't say working on sleep because like that's less participatory you know but like you or you could just work on like exercise that would be a little bit difficult if you're like if you are really

binging and stuff but just one thing that can be difficult to do but it's just it's the one thing you kind of pinpoint on and it's as long as it's something and again this doesn't have to be like just biological stuff related with exercise or food or whatever it could be like some hobby that you enjoy. Social interactions. You try to master at a certain point. And if you just, you hone in, like, at least for me, I've honed in on that one thing. It's like I will just dedicate to this.

If I'm going to do one thing, I'm going to do this well. I'm just strive. And I may not do it well every day and I may set back, but it's like, if I just make it one thing, if I have that nice, like, singular approach, which is like, all right, I fucked up the rest of my day at work and I got angry at my kids and all this stuff. I still have this one thing I can do. You know, that can make it way easier. And one thing that I would say is just really, really, really humbled me.

And it's been helpful is that I used to have this grandiosity about what would fix my, like, mental health. Not fixed, but what would, you know, sort of help it out and remedy it. And, you know, if you would have told me, like, David, you will just, it will be massively, you'll have massive improvement from changing your eating habits. like fuck you dude i have like an existential dread and i have like this stuff and i've worked on this for years and i'm different i not only that but i require different solutions and it's you know what it comes to me where there's times where i was like really cranky and then i eat and i'm not so cranky my brain wants to go no that was particularly awful this has nothing to do with the fact that i feel better after i eat you feel silly because it's like this basic thing

has made you feel better and you're like no my my my issues with something are supposed to be more important than that you know and if you just kind of like me just dropping that and being like you know people like say like what's better for you this time around that's help you like do all these things and really engage all this stuff and like people have noticed this change i'd be like eating a part of me doesn't want to say that because like no it's supposed to be this like master plan i've congocted in my head in this system that's very like psychologically intense and it's just like yeah just the biggest factor eating yeah i mean i do so much other stuff recovery related all the other stuff but it was you know but just the idea that it's like i don't

need some grandiose giant complex thing to rejuvenate my life absolutely just something very simple and again there's something that's comforting and like something simplistic to it's like i can just point my scope of that and i don't have to look at the rest of the world absolutely absolutely and and sleep i think sleep really is important and as i've taken that more seriously i've felt the benefits throughout the rest of my life of a consistent sleep schedule and not sleeping too late. So one thing I, you know, me and my wife obviously delegate tasks having three fucking kids, you know, like we all kind of pick things that we really focus on doing or like the shitty thing of like getting up every single morning taking the kids to school. We could try

handing that back and forth, but I actually just said, I want to do that indefinitely. Every morning on the weekday when the kids have school, I'll get up, I'll get them ready, I'll take them to school. Then I'm up and then it's fucking 8 a.m. And I'm getting early morning sun exposure in my eyes, which actually really is important to set your circadian rhythm to help with that constant sleep schedule. I'm waking up at the same exact time every weekday. And it's in the morning, right? And so I'm sleep, which makes me go to sleep earlier. So I go to sleep at like 10 and I wake up at like seven, which is good. A lot of people if you, obviously we know the negative health effects of like people that work night shifts and how you know there's so many things your body is

just thrown into disarray evolutionarily it was programmed to like rise with the sun and then once the sun sets you might huddle around a fire for a few hours and then you go to sleep right and so radically changing that will result in negative consequences throughout the rest of your day and even and this is doubly true in depression you don't want to get out of bed so you'll sleep in and then when you get up when you get out of bed at 3 p.m you are you feel like shit you know at least me i've even when i was like not depressed just like a teenager that could that could sleep that long i can't even do that anymore if i tried but you know those years were like i could do that and i didn't have kids and didn't worry about it but you wake up as the sun's going down like it just

feels shitty you're you're feeling off you know and i feel like much better when i wake up and i see that sun just coming over the horizon and there's even lots of neuroscience evidence that early light exposure like not staring at the goddamn sun but you know just being outside for 10 to 15 minutes in that early dawn when the when the sun is still low in the sky does help set and cement um your circadian rhythm in a healthy direction so whether it's diet whether it's exercise which has obviously been huge for me or it's sleep or even smaller things um just yeah one thing and just try to do it and you know you will fail there will be days when you fuck up you don't eat good or you take two steps back and also in those moments have self-compassion kind of

pat yourself on the back and say okay today i fucked up i wasn't able to keep it on the rails tomorrow is a brand new day i can try again to get it back on the rails without feeling like shit without spiraling into some inner dialogue about how i'm a worthless piece of shit and i'll never be able to do it or this perfectionist idea that one time i fuck up and the whole month is screwed for my you know my goals so self-compassion focusing on simple things and just kind of building it up from there i think is a is a good approach as an underlying basis for a healthy life i mean self-care i mean that that alone like you know there's there's things that i just cringe and i know it's a huge part of me but like you talk about things like positive affirmations

like people that put like post-a-notes and stuff on there and i'm just like i can't ever bring myself to do that i can't say these mantras about myself or just like i don't know there's this eternal stern german father figure that's like give me that fucking post-a-note you piece of shit like go chop wood you piece like there is which actually might help more but but um yeah dude and eating all mean and then taking 400 pens out of it

sorry I'm still on that stupid but the self care like forgiving yourself in that you're not a piece of shit because that that is man when we spend that narrative that keeps us

that keeps us you talk about how we like that self-flagellation of our our habits that like we were just like I you know I think therefore I am I think I'm a piece of shit therefore I am and you're just like I don't deserve anything better and part of this was through mindfulness but like I mean there's just one thing I thought of like there's this exercise that if you're trying to like be compassionate to yourself I mean it's one that's probably been used like over and over and over again so it's not very novel or anything like that it just something that helped me recently it's just like imagining yourself as like a young child imagine all

the stuff that you have like in the in the world and all the whatever you're going through the relationship troubles financial troubles legal troubles just mental health stuff you have everything you feel like you need and it's not enough ever just all that stuff and it's like i've done things wrong and i've been so selfish right everybody wants me to get better but i can't get better and all this stuff and i suck and i hate myself and you know like if god forbid if i if I said anything of the sort that I say to myself I would go to jail like just such like terrible

like being so awful to myself and just imagine yourself as you were as like a younger kid maybe in a sad moment like maybe after you got void or maybe when you're scared and it's just like this is just a younger kid just trying to do his best he doesn't know any better

and you know maybe you got made fun of for something stupid you did or you got like beat up or where you got you know, just something where you lost a game or you felt like you disappointed people and you're just like a, you know, would you lash out as like you as that younger child? He's like, he's just doing the best that he can and he doesn't know how to do any better and he didn't want to disappoint his parents or his friends or he didn't want to like not live up to what he was like supposed to be. But he was just trying his best and like I'm, I'm getting sad just thinking

about it. But like if you could just imagine yourself, that's you too. You're the same form of that where you're just trying your best man like you know when you sit in like depression or when things get so dark and you feel like you just you don't deserve it absolutely you don't deserve it and you just you know you you can try harder and you need to but you didn't want to disappoint people the way that you may have and you didn't want your life to turn out this way and you don't deserve it you don't you don't need to condemn yourself and that condemning yourself will never make you feel better. I mean, again, not supposed to speak for everybody else, speak for myself, but being that sort of bullshit, tough love and harshness on myself has never helped my well-being. I've never been

able to use stick rather than carrot to make myself feel better. And it just, I just sometimes when I fuck up, when I mess up with eating or when I've like slept in or when I can't sleep a night, I think these awful things about myself where I think about the things I missed and the opportunities I lost and the ways I've disappointed people, the ways I've hurt people, I just try to imagine that, like, that younger me, I was just like, he was just trying his best, and that's what you are. You're just trying his best. You just want to be, like, a little bit happy.

You just want to find some contentment. And you're just, it's okay. And you deserve to just try more, just for you. And it's, it's all right if, like, things have gone awry or you've messed up. You're just doing the best you can, man. We think of ourselves as, like, now that we're grown older, we have all this knowledge

and we're smart. I mean, it's, it usually feels like the opposite. Like, the world gets more complex and we don't know anything. And you never lash out. not even at your younger self, but a younger child for just like messing something up that they're trying to do. That's all we are, man. Absolutely. Absolutely. Man. Beautifully, beautifully said, I could not agree more of if it's hard to find compassion for yourself and your adult version. Think of yourself as your child version. And I've even taken that to extreme extents where, you know, when I'm

getting harsh on myself in a period of mental health issues, a crisis, whatever, you know, and some things in mindfulness practice certainly help create enough space to be. be able to do this and cultivate the sort of heart that can do this, but it's like literally like I'll make the motion, kind of like as if like I was a little baby in my heart up in my chest and you kind of rock like this. You know, like it's a silly thing and nobody's around when I do it obviously. But it's, it's that like physical act of like cradling my heart technically, but also I genuinely think and visualize like me as a baby, you know, how innocent I am, how screaming and yelling in my face would do nothing but hurt me more, being harsh with

myself, that little, you know, that stern German figure, that little Nazi in your head that kicks your own ass, just to like fucking try to push that away, conceptualize yourself as a little child and conceptualize yourself hugging that little child within you, you know? Because a lot of those emotions that we experience as children, you know, we still experience as adults, but we feel less leeway to really give them any credence, you know, because I'm an adult. I shouldn't be feeling these feelings. I shouldn't be acting like this. I shouldn't be, you know, feeling vulnerable and shit like that. But to really, like, open up to that part of yourself and to see the innocence within. And then it also really helps as well once you start

showing compassion to yourself to be able to show compassion to others and vice versa. You know, I think, like, your ability to really show compassion to others is hindered if you're really cruel and unable to show compassion to yourself. And so even it might seem narcissistic even in a vacuum to think like cradling the little baby within you, you know. But it actually is doing exercises for that heart muscle of love and compassion. And you can start seeing the little child in every other person, you know. And it's very hard to hate and to want to brutalize yourself or other people when you take time to visualize them as a little innocent child that we all once were, you know, that we all once were. And in a lot of ways, as smart as we think we are and as grown up as we think we are, we're still that, you know, especially in our worst times.

And for whatever reason, what is the deep fear when you do stuff like this, at least for me, the deep fear is like you're being easy on yourself and you're letting yourself be selfish or you're letting yourself be narcissistic? And I just try to tell myself, and for everybody else, too, when it's like, oh, they're just going easy and they're just babying themselves or all this stuff, all this woo-woo bullshit, self-love stuff. I just think, you know, how often is that the case? how often is that the case that you're being too easy on yourself at least i know in my own experience i've never been like it's always harsh shit it's always this idea of just pointing a finger screaming at yourself and it's it's useless and you know what let's say maybe you are babying yourself maybe you are being a dare i say snowflake maybe you are doing this stuff that has a better chance of you bettering yourself so you know what why not even go the sissy libtard snowflake way

why not do that if it has better odds because you know what way doesn't work being brutal to yourself that is a zero percent chance of working absolutely correct and you're being just as narcissistic when you're brutal with yourself 100 percent it's like self-fitty when you more narcissistic really yeah yeah um yeah well shit uh that's a that's a beautiful kind of note to to end on in general but is there anything else that you would want to say? Of course, the little discussion we had about healthy coping mechanisms is just scratching the surface. There's different things for different people. But yeah, anything else you want to say before we wrap up? Can't say there's two things. God damn it. Should I cut it off right now? Dude, I have to say, I just want you to know this.

I wasn't going to do it. But during the whole part, when I went on that thing, which I truly believed about the child, I wanted to do like after it was spiraling and going. I just want to be like, and you just got to learn that. Deep down when you look at yourself, you really got to invest in crypto. Just ruin it. Stop with your fucking crypto jokes. For those that only listen to the public feed, this crypto thing is a long-running

Patreon joke of his. Get on the Patreon! And then one other thing, this is just something, I mean, you can adopt this if you like, I think it's pretty funny. For like, morons that never change their opinion are always stuck in their way, you know, it's a good name for them? You should call them

horseshoe crabs. Do you know why? Why? Because, beating every animal out by millennia, The horseshoe crab hasn't evolved for over 445 million years. He's doing his damn thing. Dude, he's stuck in his way.

I just imagine a little horseshoe crab with like one of those bald spot wigs. He's like, I ain't a waffler. The horseshoe crab, I don't know whether to judge it or give it mad respect that 445 million years hasn't changed a damn thing. I found my thing. I don't need a change. My little niche. That's why I start calling people on another level. It's just like, wow, you still believe that horseshoe crap, dude.

Like, sir, get out of the thing. Wendy's yeah and this conversation as well so let's end it there also why are you wearing that shirt what's that I hate it okay well that's that's a very good for an audio medium it's a terrible shirt all right about sign of the picture on and figure out what's on the shirt I'll post a picture of it it's terrible all right seriously though all jokes aside hopefully this was something I mean of course we're not solving the fucking world's problems we're not giving you a scientific breakdown of of all these mental health issues but we're just relating our own experiences and hopes that it makes people out there feel less alone that they

can resonate with some of our experiences and keep marching forward for sure. So love and solidarity to everybody out there, especially those struggling with this stuff. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Talk to you later. I think I've had enough to drink. Just give me one more drink to guarantee that I stink. Smack me on the back of my head. Go tell my therapist it's time to take my ass to bed.

It's all graffiti underneath the bridge. Like if it wasn't for my kids, I wouldn't need to exist. I'd probably live in the backseat of my taxi, get my meter up to keep enough to buy myself some happy. The lonely fisherman rocking with the sea change, karaoke and nothing but a cheat thing. The dystopian Obi-1 Canobi fell asleep in the car outside an Ethiopian bar. I gotta keep my third eye on the first prize. Ain't the type to break ground just to let the dirt fly. Trying to identify the shape of us to come just wait until they drag.

Those lakes for the guns There ain't nowhere to run It's on purpose On purpose I try not to take it personal I don't know But I don't know But I'm trying to know

I'm dying to know No This could be the last song that I ever wrote Only heaven knows I'm like whatever though Everybody's got to travel across it when I go I hope I go from supernatural causes but man I'm exhausted it's all about how you handle your losses and whether or not you recognize that you're toxic

you're a product to put you in the prophecy below the profit the pirate treasure is always buried next to monsters or lava the promise of trauma if I could quote a late century philosopher he said you can save the drama for your mama that's why I'm Focused on the fire, the circumstance You're not entitled to a second or a third chance I think I can feel the universe expand If I could do it all over again, I'd learn to dance So many other realities exist

So many other realities exist simultaneously I don't know. Oh, yeah. What you said? There's no such thing as good or evil. It's just people. When I consider everything that we've lived through, I wish that I could find the strength to forgive you.

But really, though, I love you. Don't even know you, but I need your affection. Appreciate your business, and I cherish the connection that enables my ability to visit this dimension. That's a whole lot of smoke, huh? I hope that it was worth the resources you smoked up. Forced to open and it stole some closure It's a cold, cold world when you're alone in your corner

I still remember how to shoplift Don't be astonished if my socks fit Let's bring it back to the original topic It's a graham cracker Marshmallow and some chocolate I don't know I don't know I'm going to

I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to and I'm mhm I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Swaddle. That's... ...that's... ...their... ...and...

...the... ...the... ...the... ...the...