My Story for Bring Change 2 Mind

My Story for BringChange2Mind

Please be sure to remember the disclaimer under the “About Me” section of my blog site applies as always.

February has been proclaimed national “Share your Story Month” by Bring Change 2 Mind. A wonderful organization that has brought those who suffer with mental illnesses and their loved ones “out of the closet” if you will to share their stories. Its a very good thing that has helped people come out of their bubbles and realize that they are not alone. It helps us to heal, it helps us to learn from each other, it brings national attention to mental illnesses to defeat its stigma and all the good that will come from that. So in the spirit of the occasion I will now share mine as best I can.

So metaphorically speaking, I stand before you and the World to say, “I am Mike and I have ADHD, GAD, and Depression and I while I am not proud of this fact, I am NO LONGER ashamed of this fact anymore. This is my story which I give in hopes that it will in some way help others”.

As far back as I my conscious memory goes, I have always been a high strung person who needlessly worried and got worked up over nothing. Always scared of what was coming up around the bend, I always expected and prepared for the worst as though it were inevitable. Hell, I remember fifth grade, one of the years I was a straight A student, having anxiety attacks the night before the last day of school, because I was terrified that I would be held back !!

It has been a relief to me to learn that I am not unique among those who are effected by ADHD in that social skills do not come easily for me. This difficulty caused my grade school-high school years hard. I was forever being picked on some incidents are quite dramatic and clearly etched in my mind for the emotional turmoil it caused. While I was never a bad kid who was forever acting-up, seems like two or three times a year one or many kids would pick on me till I could not take it anymore resulting in the inevitable scuffle. But even in adult life, my struggles with social skills has caused me some difficulty.

But as far as my condition is concerned, things did not really starting serious until college. My anxiety knew no bounds and started effecting my ability to function. My pessimistic outlook and worry-wart ways drove my friends to tears of annoyance and even as early as sophomore year people were telling me (usually not so nicely) that I needed medication. But I never seriously listened because it was usually said in anger and not out of genuine concern. So I let it go in one ear and out the other. That was until.....

Until my Army National Guard unit was called to active duty three weeks after the 9-11 tragedy. We were stationed stateside as part of Operation Noble Eagle I homeland defense operations for a year. Nothing too crazy, in fact more days were agonizingly boring than not. BUT that whole year was full of uncertainty and frustration. Since the Army was writing or rewriting the book on homeland security operations, things were forever changing. Also the military was in the preliminary planning stages not only of domestic security, but also the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. So we kept being told our tour was going to be extended, shortened, that we were going to be prepping for an overseas mission, and on and on an on. I was literally told by the same officer that we were going home in five days, then that its changed and we are going Iraq, and that we'd be on our current mission for at least two and a half years, back to “we still don't know”, all in the same day. When you start messing with people's emotions with that even a mentally strong soldier will inevitably start to get rattled. And guys were starting to have mental break downs so often, you really never knew who was going to snap next. But without question I was among those who struggled the worst. So much so that my platoon sergeant ordered me to get some counseling out of genuine concern for my well being.

The stress of the uncertainty and constant back and forth of the status of our deployment had caused me to crack. I had a very dramatic stress breakdown one night where I spent three hours screaming obscenities while smashing my head into an actual brick wall outside the barracks and leaping into the air to more forcefully drive my face into the ground. God bless my squad leader, he was eventually able to get through to me, calm me down, and help me regain my composure. But I was never the same and over time became unable to sleep and developed a nervous tick. So the platoon sergeant ordered me to get counseling. So I reluctantly visited the post physiologist. However even in that degenerated state, I could see a mile a way that the Army's mental health program was designed solely to weed-out the soldiers it felt could no longer be trusted with a rifle. Anyone who went there for treatment had to be escorted and the waiting room was guarded by a big menacingly looking NCO. No way I was going to honestly answer any questions the over-worked and obviously fatigued Army physiologist asked me.

After a couple hours I finally see the man and he asks my why I am here. I simply tell him that the stress of things had made it impossible for me to sleep and the lack of sleep is making me very grouchy. That's about all I told him other than my name, rank, unit, and ssn. Just like we'd been told to do if we ever became POW's in hindsight !! So he gets tired of this and simply tells me to cut down on the drinking, schedules me for an anger management seminar, and suggests taking Benadryl to help sleep better, then sends me on my way. But on that day I made a promise to myself that I would seriously get help when I came home to stay. Also as luck would have it, two days later we FINALLY got orders to demobilize that did not change and went home three weeks after that. By that time, I don't think anyone really believed we were demobilizing until the first sergeant dismissed us after the final formation.

Now please do not misunderstand me. I don't blame the Army for my problems. I was a soldier, there to do a job with an organization I VOLUNTARILY joined. As the third generation of my family to serve in the Army, I knew full well that Army life would not be all sunshine and rainbows. I knew that one day the green mother would call on me to make sacrifices and endure hardships in the name of protecting this great country. I also know that what little I sacrificed, pales in comparison to the sacrifices the brave young men and women of America's Armed Forces are enduring today as they fight and die in overseas conflicts and I hold them in great respect and reverence.

Anyhow getting back on topic I did get help, several months after we returned to civilian life. It took me a while but I finally got enough courage to seek the advice of a general physician. He started me on anti-depressants. This was late 2002 and the available medications were primitive compared to what's on the market today. I must have tried a half dozen different ones over the course of the next year, all with quite brutal side effects. Everything from your basic diarrhea to the sensation of being electrically shocked at the base of my head. So while I was happy with the overall benefits I got from them, I could not stand the painful side effects, and quit taking them after two years. I figured I'd just “take it like a man”, suck it up, and get on with my life. After all, I had just decided to quit working full time in order to finish my last year of college. I didn't have time to sit and mope or feel sorry for myself, I had to kick the engine into high gear and get things done.

Upon graduating college I moved home for a year and a half. It was the first time in six years I'd returned home for longer than 2 weeks in nearly 6 years. Mom and Dad took notice of my anxiety and increased irritability and about 8 months into my stay started asking to consider going back on medication. But I had been down that road once before and the thought of enduring those harsh side effects was unbearable. So I resisted until the company I was working for laid me off. The worry and humiliation of this became so overwhelming that I started having anxiety attacks again. I'd shiver uncontrollably like I was naked in a snow storm despite laying beneath a half dozen blankets. So I went to the doctor and started antidepressants again. This time there was a new medication that was far more effective with no noticeable side effects. It worked and for a few more years I thought the problem was fixed.

That was until three years ago when my general physician told me he couldn't increase the dose anymore and that he feared my condition was more serious than he was qualified to deal with, and referred me to a psychiatrist. By this time I had moved back to Columbus, Oh and was living on my own.

The psychiatrist reviewed my charts and simply increased the dosage. But it didn't help me that much. But I dealt with it because I didn't know what else to do. But early this past spring a combination of increased stress at work and dramatically increased stress in my family life started pushing me into anxiety attacks again. I was always intensely grouchy and I'd lash-out at even the most trivial things. But it was the mood swings that started to get my attention. Still I resisted because in hindsight I realized I had a bunker mentality. My family and I were definitely not seeing eye to eye with each other last spring and arguing constantly. I was also bickering with my friends an awful lot and all but one couple had started withdrawing from me. Every time a friend or family member and I had tense conversation, they'd repeatedly ask if I was still taking my medication. Since I felt like everyone was dismissing me because I was on antidepressants, I quit taking them, and things went from bad to worse almost overnight.

Eventually my parents and I fought each other to a standstill and we established a tense peace in our fighting. Dad drove down to see me under a flag of truce to talk about things. Through this we were able to clear the air and the hostilities that had been developed due to misunderstandings. I realized that Mom and Dad were asking about my medicines because they were legitimately concerned for my welfare; so I relented and started taking the pills again.

I also went back to my shrink to discuss the mood swings that had started to really frighten me. I could go from white hot anger to down in the dumps depression inside of five minutes or pure jubilation to being overwhelmed with anxiety in a quarter of an hour. People around me were always walking on eggs because they never knew which Mike they were going to get from one minute to the next. You just never knew if I was going to want to hug you or fight you. Think we're on the road to the land of sunshine and rainbows ? Guess again. The doctor took all of ten minutes to diagnose me as bi-polar, write out a script for some additional anxiety medications and bipolar pills and a month later doubled the dosage.

The problem that I did not know was that I wasn't actually bi-polar. These pills had the effect of tranquilizing me. This was only compounded by the fact that I switched from eight hour shifts to twelve hour shifts at work. I could barely make it through the day and suddenly, for the first time in my life, I was getting into trouble with my employer for missing too much work. I was days away from giving-up and starting the paperwork for disability. This thought filled me with deep depression and despair, despite the large dosages of pills. Whether it was the feeling that doing this would be letting my family down or a small sliver of self pride I don't know but I decided I could not give-in without getting a second or even third opinion. This is where I believe the hand of God, who was always there, started getting quite noticeably involved. God sent two angles into my family's and I's life who have changed out lives for the better. One in the form an organization and the second in the form of a doctor into my

The organization that he sent was NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illnesses). During the course of all these events I had heard one of their radio ads while driving home from work one night. So I called them up and the compassionate angel who answered the phone, spent two hours talking to me. She helped answer all these questions I had been scared to ask since I first started looking for help. Everything from medical laws (I'd always been terrified that if I said the wrong thing they'd take me away to an 1800's style insane asylum), what kinds of treatment options to consider, support groups, and above all what to expect from a good psychiatrist and assure me that it was normal for people with mental illnesses to get a second opinion and that I wouldn't be offending my old doctor by doing so. Amazingly enough my mother made a surprise visit to check on me the next day because they were still extremely worried. I told her about this great organization I'd just learned of and to she gave me a funny look. Apparently she and Dad had heard a similar radio ad and were planning on attending a support group meeting run by NAMI later that week ! NAMI's support group has been an immense help to my parents in terms of understanding the complex nature of mental illnesses as well as providing an emotional support group for them where they can share their experiences and problems with others who understand what they are going through.

With new found courage I started contacting mental health treatment facilities. If you live in Central Ohio and you ever feel you are alone in your struggles with mental illness try to change psychiatrists and see how quickly you can get an appointment. I must have called close to a dozen offices and none save one could get me in any sooner than four months out. That one was able to get me an appointment in three weeks. That alone made me suspicious but I thought I'd go see what he had to say. Turns out this man aka Dr. Martin was probably the one person with the experience and knowledge in Central Ohio who could help me. After having me fill out a grueling five page single spaced questionnaire and a 90 minute interview he looked me straight in the eye and said “Mike I can get you feeling better within six weeks and fully normal in six months”. That got my attention. He then went on to explain that I was not bipolar, I was ADHD with depression. WHAT ? I said.

He went on to explain how ADHD exists in adults but few psychiatrists have been trained on how dopamine levels can have an effect on the brain though they know almost too much about how serotonin levels work. Drew a picture of the brain and started explaining the physiology of the condition. A combination of rigorous exercise, antidepressants, and stimulants and six weeks later, at our follow-up appointment, I happily admitted he was right !! It hasn't been easy and I suffer set backs and bad days from time to time. But six months as of this February my family and I both agree that Dr. Martin made good on his second statement.

I'm still unsure about a lot of things and feel that I still have some work to do in terms of my recovery. However, I do know that thanks to the help this man has provided I am in a much better place mentally, emotionally, and spiritually than I've been in at least eight years. My employer has noticed the change, several managers have complimented me on my improved attitude and rewarded this by giving me increased leadership opportunities and chances to help with employee performance development, something that I've long since expressed a strong interest in. I'm managing my finances much better, I'm staying on top of my cleaning chores, and all those other aspects of my life that I've always struggled with. The understanding of my condition and its tendencies have helped me get over my long held belief that I am in some way inferior to others. I am not lazy, dumb, or stupid, I'm just different. Mental illness is not an excuse and I'll never belittle others who are afflicted with a mental illnesses by blaming my condition for my actions. But it does help me understand who I am and why I am that way. Its unlocked a lot of long unsolved mysteries about my past and about my habits.

I will always be guarded in terms of how I view the future. Like so many of my fellow wounded birds who've shared their stories here, life has sucker punched me more than a few times. But for once in my life, I feel that if I can keep my guard up and my focus square on my recovery, that opportunities for better things in my life can come along and that it won't all be clouds and rainstorms all the time. I am so thankful to God for the people he's put into my life these past several months and how he's been able to help me through such angles as Dr. Martin and the good people of NAMI.

One last thing I want to mention. As you can infer from this story, I'm very grateful to my parents for helping me through all this. I certainly am extremely grateful to them for their love and support. While I still have a ways to go, I would never have made it this far without them. I'd also be remiss if failed to mention a husband-wife couple who've been friends of mine for going on eight years now. Even at my worst, they never stopped being my friends, never stopped praying for me, never stopped reaching out to me. The wife has had her own serious struggles with mental illnesses and one of their sons deals with ADD as well. They've been very open about sharing their experiences with me as well as providing insight and information they've learned from life's school of hard knocks. I owe them a great deal for this.