{"id":199,"date":"2014-08-13T20:05:03","date_gmt":"2014-08-13T20:05:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nashvillerecovers.org\/?p=115"},"modified":"2017-07-09T06:21:53","modified_gmt":"2017-07-09T06:21:53","slug":"are-we-really-that-different-from-robin-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/2014\/08\/13\/are-we-really-that-different-from-robin-williams\/","title":{"rendered":"Are we really that different from Robin Williams?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robin Williams\u2019 suicide hit the recovery community hard.<\/span><\/p>\n

My friend Ed M., a fellow recovering addict, had this thought first: \u201cHow does someone who comes out of rehab go home and kill themselves?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHere\u2019s a guy surrounded by trained professionals who are there to help him identify issues and heal \u2013 and they missed the bleeding wound.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Do what?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe medicate with drugs and alcohol because we typically have some underlying issue. We show up at treatment centers and we\u2019re taught how to change the prescription from drugs and alcohol to God. But we still have a bleeding wound \u2013 depression, bi-polar disorder, a childhood of neglect or abuse.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhy are we afraid of talking about mental illness as it relates to addiction? Why don\u2019t we treat co-occurring disorders equally? Let\u2019s treat the addiction and the depression.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Robin<\/span><\/a>To be fair, at least two treatment centers in the Nashville area purport to do just that, The Ranch in Nunnelly, Tenn., and Voyage treatment center for young women in Murfreesboro.<\/span><\/p>\n

But Ed \u2013 and many others \u2013 are more concerned with those who never make it to treatment.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf we don\u2019t eradicate the stigma surrounding mental health and addiction, we\u2019ll never have the resources or the pathways to give people the freedom, to make people realize help is available to end their suffering,\u201d Ed, 42, a Franklin businessman, says.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe depression that came along with my addiction was very real and I couldn\u2019t understand why I was sober and yet felt so hopeless.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Studies show something like 50-60% of alcoholics and addicts have co-occurring mental health disorders, and something like 40% of those with mental illness have addictions.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some call it \u201cdouble trouble.\u201d Most refer to \u201cco-occurring disorders.\u201d And it is rampant in the mental health world.<\/span><\/p>\n

The sad fact is that there are only one or two 12-step groups each week in the Nashville area for people with co-occurring disorders.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was fortunate enough to have the resources to seek help privately. I also had a network of supportive individuals \u2013 not family, by the way,\u201d said Ed, who has four years clean.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes indeed, stigma around addiction and mental illness affect Ed in very personal ways.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy own family and closest friends are not even capable of engaging in a discussion about it. The most powerful healing in my life came from strangers.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"suicide\"<\/span><\/a>\u201cI hope Robin Williams\u2019 death ignites the conversation, and from that discussion, someone is able to seek help and realize that they are not toxic, contagious, or a worthless human soul. They shouldn\u2019t be ashamed.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an illness, not a moral deficiency.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

OK, let me be devil\u2019s advocate \u2013 When celebrities die from addiction or co-occurring mental illness, is it too easy to blame on fast lifestyles and ego instead of disease?<\/span><\/p>\n

Did Philip Seymour Hoffman\u2019s death change the conversation? Did Kurt Cobain\u2019s death make it easier for mentally ill addicts to seek help?<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately no,\u201d Ed says. \u201cWhat\u2019s easy is to blame the individual for poor choices, whether they\u2019re a rock star or a ditch digger who has repeated let down his family.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe discussion needs to follow the science and what we know about brain chemistry. Let\u2019s ask someone to stop eating for a week or to turn off their reflexes and see what kind of choices they\u2019re capable of making.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have contempt for people, my own family included, who still think addiction and mental illness are moral weaknesses. I hope to live my life in a way that gets them to see differently and I want to love them through the process.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Lots of folks say they can\u2019t relate\u00a0at all<\/em>\u00a0to Robin Williams\u2019 death, to addiction or to suicide. And to them, I say, God bless.<\/span><\/p>\n

I know for me, when I got that second DUI, I was in a wicked funk that next morning. Yes, there were 15 minutes there where I was wondering if the world wouldn\u2019t be a better place without me. I really considered, briefly, well, maybe it would be so much easier if I killed myself.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s tough to admit. I\u2019ve been sitting here for 10 minutes wondering if I should leave that in this blog.<\/span><\/p>\n

But let me ask you, even if you\u2019re not an addict, if you\u2019ve never had a mental illness:<\/span><\/p>\n

Have you ever had a moment, even if it was fleeting, where you considered suicide?<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe after a death in the family, after you got dumped by your boyfriend or girlfriend, after a cancer diagnosis, after getting rejected from a school, a college, law school or a club, after a divorce?<\/span><\/p>\n

Have you had a moment, even just a few seconds, where the pain was so overwhelming, you literally didn\u2019t know what you were going to do to get some relief?<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe we\u2019re not so different from Robin Williams after all.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robin Williams\u2019 suicide hit the recovery community hard. My friend Ed M., a fellow recovering addict, had this thought first: \u201cHow does someone who comes out of rehab go home and kill themselves?\u201d \u201cHere\u2019s a guy surrounded by trained professionals who are there to help him identify issues and heal \u2013 and they missed the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":215,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199\/revisions\/215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nashvilleprevention.org\/nashville_recovers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}