Mental Health Awareness Week - Me

This is Mental Health Awareness Week. I have always been open about my mental and emotional issues. I am ADHD and OCD. I am sixty-six years old and have dealt with anxiety and depression all of my life. In 1971 at seventeen, I had a massive panic attack while driving to school. That began years and years of sometimes crippling anxiety that changed the course of my life. My ADHD and OCD was not diagnosed until I was almost fifty. They had also hugely affected the way I lived.

     

Because of the anxiety, I dropped out of college, never completing my art degree. I became more and more agoraphobic. I was not treated for any of these things. I never saw a psychologist or therapist back then. I was told by my family that everyone gets “nervous.” I learned that alcohol helped the anxiety and I self-medicated. Boy did I self-medicate. My life became very small. I learned that if I kept drinking, I was okay. So I drank, and drank, and drank until it eventually it became impossible to drink enough. 

   

On 16 April 1990, with my then wife to be, Lynn’s help, encouragement and support, I checked into rehab. I was not visibly intoxicated and yet my blood alcohol content was documented at .412 (above what would be lethal for a healthy person. My tolerance was astonishingly high). At that time I was drinking a slab of beer (24) per day, along with a half gallon (2 litres) of vodka every three days, just to be okay. In the psychiatric unit, it took me five days to be let out of the detox section (usually 48 to 72 hours).  I was later told that they expected me to have delirium tremens (commonly called the DTs), and possibly injure myself, but gratefully I did not. After completing the 28-day program, I was released and have remained sober since.

I worked for many years with a brilliant therapist in the USA. I currently work with a psychologist here in Australia. I have medication for my anxiety should I need it. Ninety-five percent of the time I do not, just knowing that I have it available is usually enough.

Now, bearing in mind I live with these mental health problems, allow me to mention briefly...

I won awards for my artwork at shows in the early 70’s. I moved (agoraphobia and all) halfway across the country to Austin Texas in 1974 and played music for a living. In 1984 I set a new world record for a fish called a tautog. I recorded four albums of original songs that are still being played on satellite radio and on the internet and other places. In my fifties, I became a long distance runner and in 2005 I ran a full marathon. I toured internationally on thousands of stages. I travelled back and forth from the USA to AUS over a dozen times. I travelled the entire continent of Australia in a camper birding in 2015-2016 and I wrote a book about that. Next year that book will be released worldwide through John Beaufoy Publishing. I continue to travel often in my Troopi all across Australia, sometimes alone.
I can handle it.

Just a few weeks ago enjoying "Lifer Pie" in Western Australia. That is ME!

That was an extremely abbreviated version of "my story." I will write more about it in detail in perhaps the next book, or even the one after that. But I wanted to post this during this Mental Health Awareness Week because I am living proof. Yes, it can be possible to live a large life while coping with mental illness. I know I am fortunate and I am very grateful. I still deal with my anxiety, depression, ADHD and OCD. But dealing with them I am, and I continue to live a life that is genuine and a life that is me.

I write therefore I am. I share therefore it’s real. I love y’all.