I have recently become addicted to watching Skepticon videos. Atheism! Rationality! Science! Vulvaless nematodes! Really, it’s everything a young angry atheist’s heart could desire.
However, one video this year went far beyond the usual skeptic fare: JT Eberhard discussing his experience as a man living with anorexia.
I have tremendous respect for JT Eberhard as a person. He wrote one of my favorite descriptions of what it’s like to be depressed:
To be chemically depressed is like having a monster in your brain trying to take it over. The monster is never dead, but you can keep it chained in the corner by taking certain steps. Sometimes it tries especially hard to get loose. And even for the most well-managed loon, sometimes it does break free. When that happens, it changes your opinions. Things you believed to be true just the day before – that life was worth living, that there was hope for things to get better, that you’re not extremely obese, evaporate as the monster sinks its tentacles into your mind. You literally lose track of ‘you’, and with it your ability to realize that the monster is lying to you.
Yeah. I’ve had days I’ve felt that.
I think this speech is tremendously important, because as a crazy person myself (with the line of healing cuts down my right arm to prove it), I think that fighting stigma and myths about mental illness are tremendously important. One of the best tools that we crazy people have to deal with it is to get out there and talk about it– to show that we tend not to be gibbering maniacs, but ordinary people with a disease.
I find this video interesting from a masculist perspective because anorexia tends to be a disease gendered female– if you ask someone to visualize a person with anorexia, they’re liable to visualize a skinny young white woman, despite the fact that anorexia affects people of all genders, races, ages and body types. In particular, even though ten percent of anorexics are male, there is not nearly enough awareness that men even can be anorexic.
So good on JT for speaking up and helping to raise awareness that men can be anorexic.
One moment during his speech really brought home to me how utterly fucked-up our culture’s notions of masculinity are. JT chokes up and starts crying onstage during his speech (quite rightly– I mean, he’s talking about his struggles with mental illness, I can barely go through the list of my crazies without crying either). As he cries, he said he promised his friends that he wouldn’t be a pussy during the speech.
A pussy?
A pussy?
So let me get this straight. JT survives years as an anorexic, a disease which has the highest fatality rate of any mental illness. He fights his way into something approaching recovery. He stands up on a stage and talks about his history of mental illness; he faces the risk that people would take his ideas less seriously because he’s crazy, make fun of him for being crazy, give him all the shit crazy people get, in order to possibly reduce the stigma for all us crazy people in the future.
And our culture’s notion of masculinity is going to call him weak on account of he cries?
There is no conceivable universe, tears or no, in which JT is not strong as shit. All this “boys don’t cry” (which is really just a euphemism for “boys don’t feel”) nonsense needs to go jump off a cliff.
(Accessibility Note: Startledoctopus is MADE OF AWESOME and has a transcript.)
Funny, I’ve always read “Boys don’t cry” as “Boys feel, sometimes deeply, but should never show it”. The appearance of strength comes from the appearance of restraint, not from the appearance of invulnerability. And, I guess, though I know this is wrong, I feel that it is right. Still working on it.
I’m very touched by all of this. Thank you.
As for the ‘pussy’ comment, that was my friend Amber, the same one who initially made me go to the doctor. She knew I would cry and was just joshing with me. 🙂
JT
@Leum and @f., I did the exact same thing when overcoming alcohol abuse. I learned to view my impulse to drink as “the booze monster” reaching for the controls. This, together with the understanding that the otherwise impressive mind control abilities of the monster only work when I actually had alcohol in my system, was perhaps the greatest factor in me actually managing to stop drinking and staying sober. Viewing the alcoholic thought patterns as something that was not “me”, but something external to my core self, was how I became able to actually fight against it, instead of just… Read more »
@Leum, for me it was exactly the same. Being able to tell myself that the anorexic impulse wasn’t quite me exactly was so important. Then I could be like, stfu anorexia, I am going to put this sandwich in my mouth because it is delicious! When I was finally able to externalize that stuff, I felt like I could take hold of a volume knob and just turn the obsessive thoughts down.
I suffered from depression. Funny, sometimes now I find myself downplaying it; “I got a bit burned-out back when in university”. No, I was fecking crazy. It’s really scary the thought of taking drugs that change your personality, and this put me off for ages, long after I should have sought help. But you know what, just because drugs were imposed on your brain, and depression happened to it naturally, doesn’t mean that what the depression does to your brain is any more “normal” than what the drugs to you. It’s hard to describe the feeling when the drugs kick… Read more »
@debaser: That link is interesting, although the legitimate criticisms it makes of psychiatry are super exaggerated and unbalanced, IMO. Its certainly not “nothing but a giant scam”, and while its an infant science that in truth knows very little about its subject domain, all of the proposed alternatives of its critics I’ve ever come across are significantly worse. I think part of the basis for the ultra-negative perception comes down to the stronger links between the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatry in America; doctors in other developed countries as a rule are less likely to reach first for the prescription pad.… Read more »
I am really bothered by that… I think it is propaganda, not sure of the psychological message it is trying to send. That whole black hole thing floating around (its own entity, not part of the woman, but a separate force, like a demon) really bothers me, and I find it really creepy. Making a separate entity of the depression ignores the fact that it is PART of the mind of a person and it just… creeps me out for some reason. That’s interesting. For me, learning to separate myself from my depression and acknowledge that it wasn’t inherently who… Read more »
Debaser, thanks for the link, I might actually use it myself, since I am bothered A LOT by the Abilify commercial which I would like to write about it, if I could figure out what its trying to subliminally convey. In the ad, a little black hole (symbolizes depression) is following the woman. In the beginning of the commercial, she steps aside to avoid falling into the hole. Then it morphs into a black balloon, then a ball and chain that creates a large hole that she falls into. Speaking of sexism, a nice kindly white doctor helps her climb… Read more »
F. : you’re welcome. It was my “how can I stand by my principles in action as well as word” deed for the day. Plus it’s a good speech.
It’s interesting that he used a feminized insult (pussy) when, as you point out, he’s experienced so much marginalization for suffering from a feminized disease. Time for a moratorium on using insults that refer to people.
LOL@debaser71… look who has the second comment?
I self-medicate with alcohol. Not every day, not even most days, but a couple of beers makes me feel better than any amount of drugs the fake docs can give me. A couple more beers than that, not always a great idea…
startledoctopus thank you so much for the transcript 🙂
I’ve read several comments about mental illness that want to make me share this.
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/06/25/is-medical-psychatry-a-scam/
“This is some kind of strange tolerance that non-alcoholics don’t have, and The Experts really can’t understand it. ” This. And it applies not only to this particular tolerance but also to a metabolic condition in Norterhn Europeans, Asians and Native Americans in which a person is hyper-efficient in carbohydrate metabolism and the body recognizes alcohol as a food source and becomes dependent on it. Alcholism is a huge health risk in Sweden and only the most blue-nosed cultural attitudes were able to bring it under control through the centuries. “(Definition of Irish Alzheimers: you forget everything but the grudges.… Read more »
tw for discussion of depression, medication complications, and reproductive health problems that pretty much sums up my depression perfectly. Although for some inexplicable reason mine seems to go away for a few months (literally, my brain chemical numbers will return to normal on their own) for a few months at a time and then it comes back. No doctor (not psychiatrists, not endocrinologists, not neurologists, not a GP, NOBODY) can figure out why this happens. It’s not medication doing it’s job either because I can’t take the medication because it makes my endometriosis worse (they don’t tell you that when… Read more »
I wouldn’t take their medications, in fact, I was there for substance abuse and I told them I didn’t want their fucking personality tests, but the govt was paying (and that should tell you how long ago THAT was, LOL) so I said sure. And then they hit me with all that CRAP. I was polite but skeptical. I still think lots of diagnoses are done by default. It was only when they got the results of these tests that they were AT ME, demanding to know why someone who can identify words by Milton (answer: I’d read them before)… Read more »
Transcript seemed a bit long for the comments, so I posted it up at my blog. Feel free to yoink. http://startledoctopus.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/transcript-jt-eberhard-mental-illness-as-a-skeptic-issue/
Depression runs all through my father’s side of the family. It’s pervasive – but it also meant that when I was a boy, my father sat me down and explained to me that it wasn’t that Grandma wasn’t excited to see me, but the chemicals in her brain weren’t letting her feel and express the excitement. I was 9 years old. I understood that it was chemical – just like when you have too much caffiene and can’t sleep. So when I was 14, one day I woke up and realized I didn’t want to do anything. Play video games?… Read more »
Damn, jordanrastrick! You beat me to posting that comic. But I agree, it’s probably one of the best descriptions of depression I’ve ever seen. Ozy, your description was very cool as well. And great post, too. I have a lot of respect for that dude. A long time ago I watched a report about 3 or 4 boys who suffered from anorexia. I think the youngest one was 10 or 11, and the oldest 15, though I’m not too sure anymore. It was really heartbreaking. By the way, I’m all for reclaiming “crazy” as a word 😉 Regarding antidepressants: finding… Read more »
I’ve tried medications before. They didn’t work. Quite frankly I hate the idea of chemicals that alter your personality. Quite frankly it is existentially creepy in concept, like something from an edgy science fiction novel. But I guess it can’t be that bad if you can operate like a normal human being. However I seriously doubt there will be meds for Autism any day soon. Medications don’t change your personality so much as they allow for a fuller expression of your personality. They don’t make you happy, they just make happiness a possibility. And there are meds for autism. I… Read more »
I’ve had autism all my life, which heavily impacts social skills. Thus I have to feel jealous towards this guy as he continuously thanks his friends. Unfortunately in the last several years I’ve had some sort of anxiety complex around college work, which has been even more stressful than a lack of a social life. In cruel irony this ‘anxiety complex’ hampers my ability to seek out help of any sort. But when I do finally look up available therapists the website for my insurance claims that there is no one with an Autism specialty within 50 miles. I knew… Read more »
@Improbable Joe Yeah. My cats and dog are always up for a cuddle and always happy to bother me until I give them it or food, or whatever it is they need. And hearing snap out of it drives me crazy, since you’d think if I could, I would. I mean, it’s not like I enjoy feeling like shit or wanting to hurt myself or any of the other great things that go along with my depression. I have several friends just kind of pat me on the knee and tell me to stop and just get better, because me… Read more »
Eating disorder survivors have my tremendous and undying respect. Living through that shit has got to be the worst. Ozy, that paragraph is only the second best description of depression eva. The best is this.. And respect for reclaiming the word “crazy”. On hypomania – mild hypomania actually is often considered, er, an anti-disability(?): in the sense that if you take a standardised psychiatric disability-measurement test, and give it to a hypomanic person, they will usually score as functioning higher than the average person, not lower. But yes, that doesn’t mean those tests are measuring the things you actually would… Read more »
@Hannah There’s nothing more infuriating than the whole “snap out of it” business. I want to slap some sense into people with a shit-dipped sea bass when they say things like that to me. Usually through gritted teeth I’ll inform the person that me standing in front of them dressed and showered within the last 2-3 days is about the best I can do, the most I’m able to “snap out of it” when my greatest desire is to use the last of my motivation to drag a bucket over by the bed, fill a cooler with ice, and drink… Read more »
@Daisy Hypomania. That’s an interesting word for me. My introduction to hypomania- One of my therapists had to get into it a bit with mom over the ‘manic depressive’ or bipolar diagnosis she gave me. My mom was all, “But he’s never happy. He has no mania,” and my therapist had to explain that mania wasn’t happiness, but was often anger or just a mad drive to do. Which is why she could find me busting out a stump in our backyard, or making telephone books of ‘horrifying’ artwork and fiction, but then I could refuse to get out of… Read more »