We take Thanksgiving for granted. It's a Holiday sandwiched between Halloween and Christmas, more or less forgotten about by the time New Year's rolls around. It's often written off as a historical event that is either celebrated or reviled, depending on what ideological group you belong to. The rest of us identify it as the day you sit around with family and eat a lot of food, then nap while the football game is on.
For me, this year, it will mean something a little different, because if things had gone just a bit differently, I'm not sure I'd have been around to see it.
Back in September, I wrote that I was experiencing some severe sleep issues, in that I was unable to get any sleep without heavy medication. I won't go too far into the details, but it began with migraine headaches that give me auras that blind me and horrible nausea on top of a searing pain in my head. My doctors told me that the reason I'm getting them is that I have horrible sleep habits, and so I got serious about my sleep, but not in a smart way.
I began using melatonin, which I was assured was all-natural and safe, but in reality, you want to use it to help establish a healthy, regular circadian rhythm. It's not a sleep-aid in the sense some think it is. Using it too much can stop your body from producing melatonin at a regular level. You might fall asleep, but staying asleep becomes very difficult.
And that's what happened to me. I would sleep for three, maybe four hours, then wake up and fail to return to sleep. No matter how much I tried, sleep just wouldn't come. Soon, the migraines came again, and one was so severe that it put me in the ER. From then on, something happened to me that I hadn't experienced before.
Your brain is a very powerful thing. Scientists can't actually explain all of its functions either. But despite its power, it's also very dumb. The "lizard" part of your brain, the one that controls all your automatic functions like a beating heart and a working liver, can also control your body in ways you probably don't realize. It can also learn things that you don't have any say in, either, and use these lessons to control functions of your body in various ways.
My brain picked up a very odd lesson. I had developed a really nasty case of sleep anxiety where I'd spiral into sleeplessness by being anxious about not returning to sleep. After the ER visit, my lizard brain began to associate sleep with danger, and as a result, any time I'd try to sleep, my brain would cause my body to jolt the moment I began falling into sleep, effectively keeping me awake. No matter what I did or the meds I took, my body would not let me sleep.
Did you know that sleeplessness is a torture method used by many militaries? It was even used by us for a time, because long bouts of sleeplessness are something of a mind-shattering experience. Your memory begins to falter, you can't concentrate, you fall into irrationality, and your emotional control tanks. It's an effective torture method because you lose your ability to do things well, like lie, and your emotions are stripped bare. Even your pain sensitivity increases, and you become physically weaker.
And it doesn't take long to set in, either. Sleep is a very, very important tool for your body and mind, and depriving it of sleep can throw your entire system into chaos.
We've all been through sleepless nights, even several in a row, but there's always a light at the end of the tunnel of eventually finding a place to sit and close your eyes to drift off for a while. I didn't have that hope because any place to rest would become another place of torture. Just looking at my bed gave me panic attacks. Moreover, the sleeplessness was causing me to produce more cortisol, the stress hormone, which only made the problems worse. I was often seized by panic, depression, and anxiety that had me seeing monsters where there were only windmills.
When you get into a state of extreme hopelessness and stress, your brain will naturally begin trying to find a solution. If it can't find one, it will present one sure way to end the hell you're in.
These thoughts began haunting me, and they were exhausting, dark thoughts that were only made darker by the fact that I was a father and husband. I had to fight them all the time, during the day, while I worked or tried to work, and especially at night.
One day, panicked and needing to hear something comforting to keep me afloat, I called my father. When he picked up the phone, I tried to talk to him normally, but soon I lost control of my emotions, unable to hold it together. I told him what I was going through, and he asked me one simple question: "Are you having thoughts of wanting to hurt yourself?"
I almost did what men are supposed to do in these situations and denied it. Sure, I was down, but men aren't supposed to be all the way down. We're supposed to suck it up and walk it off. We're supposed to suffer quietly and put forward a strong front. I paused long enough to consider my answer, but my dad's a retired police officer, and he knew the answer, even before my common sense overpowered my already broken pride.
"I'm coming to get you," he said, and told me to hang on until he got there.
That man dropped what he was doing at five in the afternoon and drove from Galveston to Dallas to bring me back home to the island. There, under his eye, he helped me get the care I needed for a month, never asking anything in return. Despite being in that familiar environment and in the safety of family, it was an incredibly difficult, long month. Between doctor's visits, I cycled between medications, trying to find what worked. I saw a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a sleep doctor, a pulminary specialist, you name it. I had to say goodnight to my wife and son over FaceTime instead of in person.
I was at least given the solace that doctors were looking into my case, doing tests, and trying to find an answer for my issue. They concluded that I had sleep apnea. That solution, combined with Lunesta, had put me more at ease. My body was still jerking me awake, but at least the Lunesta was helping me get to sleep, and the apnea machine was on the way. I spent my days trying my best to write. I went on long walks on the beach, where I often prayed to God for mercy. Even as dark as it was, I felt Him there, speaking to me in various ways. Amid that darkness, the lights that I was given shone brighter than ever.
The thing is, even with the light at the end of the tunnel, I couldn't help but get the impression that He was telling me to brace myself. It was only going to get worse before it got better.
He was right. When I returned to Dallas, I got my machine, but it didn't work. The apnea was so mild that it was hardly worth considering. The shot the doctors took had missed, and the Lunesta was wearing off. My newly acquired psychologist gave me anti-anxiety pills, but they couldn't stand a chance against the effects of increasing sleeplessness. Whatever hope I had of figuring out what was wrong with me had disappeared.
My brain had no solutions, and those dark thoughts I had gotten away from, at least temporarily, had returned and were louder than ever. Again, I tried to dismiss it. I walked and prayed through brain fog and anxiety. Nightly panic attacks weakened my mental resolve as sleep escaped me more and more.
One morning, I had a breakdown, not my first since it began, but this time it happened in front of my wife. Desperate for help, my wife drove me to the ER in an effort to find something, anything that would help, but all the tests had been run that could be run. The doctor suggested that, if I was having suicidal ideation, then what I needed was psychiatric help, and suggested we go to a clinic.
From here, I'm going to give you the short version of what I experienced, because what I experienced in that facility is a story all on its own.
I voluntarily submitted myself to the clinic, which wanted to keep me for 24 hours. This turned into 48 hours, and what's more, they didn't have room for me in the section where people like me would normally go — the people who aren't suffering from anything but a really hard time — and had to place me in the section for people detoxing and struggling with addiction.
Let me tell you something that this place taught me: You think you're having problems, and that you're not right, but your life isn't half as bad as some of the people I met in that facility.
While I was there, I learned through counseling, talks with God, and trial and error that what I was going through was entirely mental. I had to retrain my lizard brain to not see sleep as a danger and reframe the act as something positive. This can take a few weeks, but in time, with enough reinforcement, you can retrain your brain to see and perceive things differently than you normally would.
As I write this, I'm happy to say that I've more or less won the battle of retraining. It's not fully done, but I'm weaning off the meds gradually and still sleeping fine as I find tricks and reassurances about sleeping on my own. I'm getting over eight hours a night, keeping to a steady bedtime, and am even now returning to doing the things I was doing before, such as working out and creating YouTube videos.
I realize that in telling you all of this, I've put myself into a very vulnerable position. I do not doubt that some of you are going to think it's weird that anyone would become afraid of their own bed, or at 41, need their dad to come rescue them from themselves. I would've thought it weird myself, and even now it's hard for me to identify with the guy having his fifth panic attack of the day as his dad talked him through them.
But I wanted to tell you this tale for two reasons.
The first is that if you feel hopeless, don't stay quiet. Get help. Sometimes the places you'll find help aren't always the places you ever saw yourself going, but it's better than staying in the dark alone and dealing with the consequences of that.
The second, and most important, is that Thanksgiving isn't just some holiday where you eat turkey, watch football, and argue with your in-laws. It's a reminder that you have things worth living for, and people to help you see that. Gratitude, especially for those you love and who love you, is a powerful thing.
Did you know that in moments of anxiety, gratitude and thankfulness activate a chemical in your brain that directly dampens those feelings? In fact, the chemicals that cause both feelings are almost direct opposites of each other. Cortisol, the aforementioned stress hormone, begins to dilute when dopamine and serotonin enter the system, and you can get those chemicals from thankfulness.
In my darkest moments, one of the things I did constantly was tell God how thankful I was. Thankfulness, or in other words, thanksgiving, propped me up when things were dire.
This Thanksgiving is going to be one of the most significant of my life, because, through a very dark period, I learned what it truly is to be thankful. Thankful for a loving family, for a merciful God, for living in a time when my condition could be helped through professionals and better living through chemistry. If it wasn't for these blessings, I'm not sure how things would've turned out.
Hug your relatives today. Tell them you love them. Tell them how thankful you are for them, and not just for their sakes, but for your own.
