Schizophrenia and the Lack of Help

My brother was diagnosed around 16 with schizophrenia. This is a little early as most men do begin to show symptoms until early 20s. He had been diagnosed with bipolar for sometime - well okay, like a couple years, and was on medicine. One day, when he was with some friends at the beach, he smoked pot for the very first time. From that moment, the switch had been flipped.

He heard voices. He was delusional. He was told he was a child molester. He was told he was gay. He was convinced Satan was trying to get him to do evil things. I can still recall when he would go into these manic states. His eyes would change... just like a horror movie. It was creepy.

He was in and out of hospitals. Regular hospitals. You see, there aren't mental institutions or funny farms anymore. They aren't PC. We need to get these folks back to reality! Yea, well that's a bad idea. A regular hospital is no place for people who get super human powers and can't control themselves.

My parents insured covered him for a bit and then he had to be let go - they would demand payment. My parents do not have a lot of money and I remember my mom having to put $6K on her credit card. That's like YEARS for them to pay off. They lived in a decrepit, falling apart double wide.

I was living there but hardly. I'm eight years older than my brother so I was working three or four jobs - all fresh out of grad school with no full time job - hooray post 9/11. I remember one night of my brother flipping out. All weapons had been removed except a few kitchen knives. Well he got a hold of one, but I think we got it away from him. Instead he jumped on my dad on the couch - sat on top of him and just kept pounding him in the head. Brutally. My mom and I did not know what to do - the police were called but my dad could die in that amount of time. I instinctively grabbed my brother's nuts to get him off my dad. My dad taught me that many years before... if I'm attacked, get the guy in the junk. It worked. He climbed off our dad and stormed outside. My dad had a literal baseball size goose egg on his head. It was scary.

The sheriff shows up and my brother is off in the woods like a caged animal who escaped. My dad has the start of tears and my mom is crying. My family does not cry. Ever. We don't hug either but that's another story for another time. The sheriff says he has to take him to the hospital because he is a juvenile and does not have a record. My mom did not want my brother going to the hospital because she couldn't afford it. The sheriff said they we will have to leave him here. I flipped my shit.

I said you have to take him to juvie so that now he has a record. The sheriff could care less. I said if you leave him here, I GUARANTEE when I come home after midnight tonight from my grocery store job, I will find my parents dead. No doubt. They said they would take him to Juvie. They took him to the hospital.

My mom tried everything and everyone to get help. There just wasn't any. She didn't know who to turn to. I had just started my career in PR and I called Dateline and left a VM about my brothers issue and how he terrorizes the family and leaves a trail of holes in the wall in his path. They called me back right away and wanted to cover him. My mom said no because he was still in HS and didn't want to embarrass him. Well he dropped out.

It is now 13 years later and hard to believe. He's still very much schizophrenic and living with my parents - on a constant cocktail of drugs and pretty much out of it, sleeping a lot, but then totally OCD when he is awake, always wanting to buy something.... especially video games. But he is calmer, from what I understand. He is also heavier - he is a big boy. My entire family is small. Like all of us have fast metabolisms. We're the people you hate b/c we can eat what we want.... but my brother can't stop eating. Medication causes him to sit down and eat a quart of cottage cheese at one sitting. A half-gallon of ice cream. You name it.

It's sad. It's scary - and I have no idea how my parents have managed. There is no place for him to go. He lived in a half-way house for a time but the other men were former drug users and they picked fights with him. So that didn't last long.

The reason I'm writing this now is because of a 60 Minutes segment last night. The Virginia senator is now trying to get laws passed to get mentally-ill in the moment patients in a bed right away. But the bigger issue is the lack of mental hospitals and psychiatrists. And then there is lack of empathy.

There was a recent blog post from a mom of a mentally-ill child. The mom wrote a blog about how much people cared and took care of her and her family when she had breast cancer. But when her daughter was struggling through alcoholism no one called to talk about it and no one helped like they did when she had cancer. And she said that was the time she most needed help. My poor mother has had breast cancer three times - the whole time she was dealing with him.

But back to the story out of Virginia. The story is common. The son was bright, but then developed bi-polar and then got the voices. He attacked his father and ultimately killed himself. I really hope that Virginia politician can help.

And then there were the seven moms of mentally ill children (yes, there are girls) who have fortunately found one another and started a support group. It almost made me smile when they said they share contractor names for all the damage the children do to their house. Smile not happy - but smile from familiarity.

Another point on this.... my brother did smoke pot and it triggered the demons to come out. Shortly after I took my first full-time PR gig, I had to sift through nutrition science for my client. In that research I found a story of schizophrenics out of the Netherlands that had started that same way at a younger age. Something about it counteracting with bi-polar meds potentially - I don't believe it causes it, but may trigger it sooner. Food for thought. Either way, those voices were coming for my brother.

What's going to happen to my brother? I'm not sure. My other brothers and I joked about who gets to inherit him one Christmas. But who knows how long he would ultimately live. About 5-10 years ago, a celebrity's son died who had battled schizophrenia. He had been living on a ranch and died young - maybe late 30s from organ failure. Your kidneys and such can only take so many cocktails. So there is no good solution :(

But let's hope this discussion picks up and helps to find a fix... because the solution may be a ways off.

A president or a rock star?

I'm in Vegas for a trade show for work, so I'm missing a bit of news. I'm nearly the only one I know who doesn't care about the inauguration. I mean I don't recall ever watching one before so why should this one be any different?

Being away from home, it's easy to miss the news of the day. But I caught the pre-inauguration celebration highlights on the news last night and wow, wtf? I couldn't believe the musicians who came out. Did they perform for free? I sure hope so in light of the economy. This is a president - not a Hollywood or rock and roll star. I get it. This appeals to the younger audience, just like many of the Christian churches which have guitars and drums during mass. Not that I want the new president to be more reminiscent of the Roman Catholic churches masses, but tone it down.

Elections - no matter if they are local, school council or the president of the U.S. are nothing but popularity contests. I know people who voted not knowing the difference between party lines and even voted for one candidate when their viewpoints were more consistent with the other. I wish there was a test to pass to vote.
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But back to my first point... why did the pre-inauguration have to be so extravagant? That doesn't set a good example to a nation who already wants too much.

There was a man named Animal

One of the reasons I still appreciate living in a small town is for some of its real people. I still can't stand small town drama where everyone thinks they know everyone's business and I don't care for people without manners or common sense. But in small towns, you find people who are "real." They don't go for the marketing lingo I sling; they just live their lives by appreciating a cold beer and good friends and family.

This morning we learned a man named Animal shot himself in the chest. Animal was a friend of a friend. He was maybe early 60s, rode a Harley and was the kind of guy who wouldn't hesitate to pick you up when you're down. From what I hear he was going through a rough patch with his wife and thought this was the next best step. I wish, even though I barely knew him, he would have thought about all his friends who loved hanging out with him and liked his crooked smile. Oh and now that I think of it, that was Honda that looked like a Harley. We'd tease him about that and he'd just smile. But that's what you do, you can't afford a Harely, you get a Honda to make it look like what you want.

I hope your troubles are over Animal - we'll miss you.

Camping is BAD!

We went camping over the Memorial Day holiday - and you talk about seeing tons of trash. Oh and I'm not talking about people ;). People immediately think of throwaways for camping and not reusables. Can, glass bottles, paper plates, plastic forks, small containers of this or that - you name it, it gets thrown out. I really should have taken a picture of the overwhelming mounds of trash. One morning alone we filled the back of a truck and that was just one campsite of about 20 people.

On a side note, what is up with people taking flattening irons camping. We even saw a girl no older than 7 straightening her hair!

Okay, now seriously. I just read this article about how much trash was found on beaches around the world. I am not an anti-smoker; I have never smoked but it has really never bothered me. But come on. Pick up your butts. At my local beach, we have a buddy named Dummy who pick up after those who left butts everywhere. Really how lazy are we that we leave stuff laying? Well we are and we need to stop if we want to continue to enjoy our beaches.

Group finds 6 million pounds of trash on world's beaches

By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer 59 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The world's beaches and shores are anything but pristine. Volunteers scoured 33,000 miles of shoreline worldwide and found 6 million pounds of debris from cigarette butts and food wrappers to abandoned fishing lines and plastic bags that threaten seabirds and marine mammals.

A report by the Ocean Conservancy, to be released Wednesday, catalogues nearly 7.2 million items that were collected by volunteers on a single day last September as they combed beaches and rocky shorelines in 76 countries from Bahrain to Bangladesh and in 45 states from southern California to the rocky coast of Maine.

"This is a snapshot of one day, one moment in time, but it serves as a powerful reminder of our carelessness and how our disparate and random actions actually have a collective and global impact," Vikki Spruill, president of the Ocean Conservancy said in an interview.

The 378,000 volunteers on average collected 182 pounds of trash for every mile of shoreline, both ocean coastlines and beaches on inland lakes and streams, providing a "global snapshot of the ocean trash problem."

The most extensive cleanup was in the United States where 190,000 volunteers covered 10,110 miles — about a third of the worldwide total — and picked up 3.9 million pounds of debris on a single Saturday last September, according to the report.

That's 390 pounds of trash per mile, among the highest rates of any country, although the high number also reflects the large number of U.S. volunteers who took part, said Spruill. By comparison, volunteers in neighboring Canada collected 74 pounds per mile and those in Mexico, 157 pounds per mile, said the report. About 65 pounds of trash were collected per mile in China and 46 pounds per mile in New Zealand. Volunteers covered one mile in Bahrain and found 300 pounds of trash.

But Spruill said the volume of trash collected tells only part of the story. It's the items that are found that tells us about the behavior of people enjoying the beaches and coastlines of the world.

"It represents a general carelessness we have. ... We're the bad guys. Trash doesn't fall from the sky. It actually falls from our hands," said Spruill.

The debris ranges from the relatively harmless, although annoying and an eyesore, to items that annually result in the death of hundreds of thousands of seabirds and marine mammals caught in abandoned fishing lines and netting.

A third of the items found came from smokers.

The volunteers collected and cataloged nearly 2.3 million cigarette butts, filters and cigar tips. And they found 587,827 bags; more than 1.7 million food wrappers, containers, lids, cups, plates and eating utensils; and nearly 1.2 million bottles and beverage cans.

Divers also scoured waters offshore, collecting about 160,000 pounds of debris from cigarette waste and food containers to more threatening items: abandoned fishing lines, plastic bags, rope, fishing nets and abandoned crab and lobster traps.

The International Coastal Cleanup also focused attention on the damage these items can do, said program sponsors.

The volunteers came across 81 birds, 63 fish, 49 invertebrates, 30 mammals and 11 reptiles and one amphibian that all had become entangled in various debris, most often discarded fishing line, rope or plastic bags, according to the report.

Among other items that entangle animals and birds were balloon ribbons and strings, building material, vehicle tires, wire, and beverage six-pack holders.

In all, 57 percent of the trash was related to shoreline recreational activities, 33 percent from smoking-related activities, 6.3 percent from fishing or waterway activities, 2 percent from dumping and less than 1 percent from medical and personal hygiene activities, said the report.