Starting the Day as a Mental Health Drill Sergent

Trigger warning: this column has references to suicide.

Long ago, I met Drill Sergeants for the first time at Ft. Benning, Georgia, as I began my infantry training. Starting my new treatment, I know it needs to be sort of like this, but far softer and gentler than I was ever treated at bootcamp.

I mean, can you imagine telling a Drill Sergeant, “No, go away, I haven’t had my coffee yet.” –this is even funnier if you have been to bootcamp.

Treating mental health, though, is like this. Has to be like this. It needs to be more than just taking medications. It needs to be more than talking to a therapist. It means being proactive in my treatment, something I set an intention for every evening.

This is something I have known for decades, but have not followed through on. Yes, I can beat the hell out of myself about it, but I have decided to be kinder to myself.

My mother was permanently disabled with her mental illness. She would get checks from the government, her meds, her therapist, and her psychiatrist. One doctor even told her that she should go and isolate on a farm and leave her children and all responsibilities.

That was not the right answer.

She listened to the doctor, except the one about the farm, and I wonder what could have been? She had an IQ that rivaled or surpassed Einstein. Much, much later in life, when mental health treatment began to change, her social worker set her up with a volunteering opportunity. Einstein was making sandwiches at a home for the elderly.

The changes were instant and dramatic.

Her mental health improved, her relationships, especially with my step father, improved, but her health, after so many years of meds and suicide attempts had taken their toll. When the three day a week dialysis hit, it took her away and isolated her again. The changes disappeared.

So, there is a drill sergeant standing, or sitting, by me as I finish my coffee. I know that he is necessary.

Maybe I can put it all together properly this time? Maybe I can bring all of the pieces of the mental health triangle this time? Maybe, at 54, I can reach that self-actualization I have struggled for all my life?

No, it is not a maybe, the drill sergeant tells me. This is going to happen.

There is no magic pill, despite what society has been taught. I need to employ the tools and resources I have learned for a systematic approach to my mental illness. Yes, it involves medication and talk therapy, but they are just the sides of the triangle. The base is self-help. The base of it, the real work, is working it.

It’s been an interesting five years for me. I guess it was about this time in 2020 when I firmly put aside the idea to end my life. I had learned things, enough things, during my cross-country journey that I knew would lead to hope and a better future.

The close to 40,000 miles and six months I spent on the road, chronicled in my book, “Disconnected,” had me dive into a slumbering America and an even deeper dive into myself. You do a lot of self-evaluation while driving thousands of miles with the music playing. Teachers would appear from the oddest places. It was so much more than a journey of miles and states, but of self-awareness and lessons.

Not all the lessons were good ones. Not all of the teachers were great. The basis of everything, that I do not come out and say in my book, was not the healthiest, but it did open me in such a way that I had never been opened.

Yes, the big secret, that is not such a big secret, is that at the end of the journey, I was planning on finding a nice, quiet warm beach to take my life and allow the waves and tides to carry me away. You can listen to the interview I did about the book here, on the podcast,<a href="http://<iframe sandbox="allow-scripts allow-popups allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox allow-same-origin" src="https://art19.com/shows/before-you-kill-yourself/episodes/3c4f7a9a-c8eb-470b-9dbe-313f7934d30b/embed?theme=dark-blue&quot; style="width: 100%; height: 200px; border: 0 none;" scrolling="no"> “Before You Kill Yourself.”

Planning on killing myself –which I do not recommend– had the side effect of opening me to ideas and well as lowering my anxiety and walls. What’s there to worry about when you are not planning on being around?

Just as an example, I had to fly to both Alaska and Hawai’i. I’ve never let it stop me, but I have always been terrified of flying. Not anymore. The plane goes down? Who cares? I’ll feel bad for the others on the plane but it would save me the notes and messages. Know what I mean? –I now love flying as it taught me the deeper, healthier, lesson of not to worry about the things you cannot control.

I guess it was the openness that allowed me to reach places I had not before. There was a very spiritual person I met in Colorado, a friend of a friend, who told me something very important: “Being completely lost is sometimes the best place to be because it opens up the most paths for you to find your authentic self.”

I have the tools. I have the beginning of knowledge. I have the drill sergeant.

I’m going to work it this time. Do it right.

Yes, after coffee.