Loading summary
Transcript23 lines
- [00:01]
A
I sold my car in Carvana last night.
- [00:02]
B
Well, that's cool.
- [00:03]
A
No, you don't understand. It went perfectly. Real offer down to the penny. They're picking it up tomorrow. Nothing went wrong.
- [00:09]
B
So what's the problem?
- [00:11]
A
That is the problem. Nothing in my life goes as smoothly. I'm waiting for the catch.
- [00:14]
B
Maybe there's no catch.
- [00:16]
A
That's exactly what a catch would want me to think.
- [00:18]
B
Wow. You need to relax.
- [00:20]
A
I need to knock on wood. Do we have wood? Is this table wood?
- [00:22]
B
I think it's laminate.
- [00:23]
A
Okay. Yeah, that's good. That's close enough.
- [00:25]
B
Car selling without a catch. Sell your car today on Carvana. Pick up fees may apply. Stitch fix. Stop shopp. Get styled A on the outfit. Ms. Turner, you are about to slay parent teacher conferences.
- [00:38]
C
Oh, these just the most perfect fitting jeans my stylist sent me. Oh, hello, you who didn't set one foot in a mall and still looks amazing.
- [00:47]
B
Just show your size, style and budget and your stylist sends personalized looks right to your door. Stitch fix. Get started today@stitch fix.com to my stylist. This look is dedicated to you.
- [00:59]
C
Thank you.
- [00:59]
B
Thank you.
- [01:03]
C
Hey everyone, Derek here. Shortly after we published our 2023 book, How New Age Conspiracies Became a Health Threat, I started thinking about the next book I was going to write. For the last few years, I've been writing two. A novel and a memoir. Last fall, I realized I was going to have to focus on one, so I put the novel aside and set to work on completing the memoir. Well, I'll call it a half memoir. Because my journalism wouldn't let me just write about myself, I had to contextualize my life in my work. Since the topic still very much aligns with the work that I do on this podcast. The result is well, enough. Finding Health. Despite the Wellness Industry, which was published on Monday, I was thinking about all of the different ways of optimizing and biohacking. And you know, sometimes, well, enough is enough. It's a punchy book. 31 chapters over 136 pages. I wouldn't call it comprehensive, more like snapshots in time throughout my life, detailing my struggles with anxiety disorder, panic attacks and disordered eating, as well as grappling with cancer and working as a patient monitor looking after suicidal patients in an emergency room for two years. The backdrop of all of this is the broader wellness industry I worked within for decades, which led to the creation of this podcast. There's also some writing on psychedelics, which were hugely influential on me and which predominantly took place while I was studying religion with a focus on Buddhism while in college. You can find a link in the show notes for all the purchase options. Recording this made me think I really need to do an audiobook, so I am going to get to that, but it's not available yet. I'm hoping to do it over the next month. For today I'm going to share two chapters from the book where I introduce my experiences as a patient monitor and where I first talk about my struggle with panic attacks, which sort of becomes a theme throughout the book because so many people deal with generalized anxiety disorder and it's something that I know intimately. I was going to share my more journalistic chapters akin to the work that I normally do on this podcast, but sometimes talking about the why behind the what can be informative as well. And this is the most personal writing I've ever done in my life, so just sharing a little bit of it. As always, thanks for your support. You can support us as independent media creators on patreon@patreon.com conspirituality or via Apple Podcasts, where we share our bonus episodes every Monday and where we normally get a little more personal as it is. Thanks for listening. Let's dive in. Three I don't know how anyone develops a $40,000 a month cocaine habit. Bob found a way he had it all. A wife he loved, kids he adored, a successful small business in East Brunswick, friends to go out drinking with after a hard week's work. So yeah, Bob still drank with his buddies, hanging on to the college days. Not all the time, of course. Then one of his friends brought cocaine into the mix. The cravings hit hard, man. The coke ruined everything. His wife, kids, business gone, deep in debt. He had it all. Until he didn't. Which was the night he slit his wrist and tried to bleed out. Only he slid it wrong, which I hear is somewhat common. Bob doesn't strike me as someone who wants to kill himself. He's too animated, too reflective, too lively, too talkative. But that's fine. Underneath all these qualities is pain he can't reconcile, can't wrap his head around. Like a thought on the tip of your brain that won't come out. It's right there, but somehow you can't see it. I'm not trying to see it for Bob. Not my job. The job I have is to make sure he doesn't flee or complete what brought him into the hospital in the first place. What Bob craves is for someone to listen to him, even a 19 year old Rutgers student he never met before. I'll do at least for this shift. Then my replacement will likely do as well. I don't know what his life is really like. All I have is his perspective, his lens. Passions, failures, sense of right and wrong, biases hidden and discovered. And stories. Bob has tons of them. Most patients are too drugged up or shot out to say much at all. Some ramble incoherently, some yell, some cry. Most sleep. Bob just talks eight hours straight. That's fine. It's part of being a patient monitor. We were never instructed on whether or not to give advice, though I certainly don't. I'd been in pain before, but never that kind of pain. I'm not going to pretend to know how to navigate such a dark space. Neither does Bob, it seems. How else do you end up in the emergency room after attempting to end it all? Who called the paramedics? Was he found writhing in his own blood somewhere? Did he want to be found or just fade away like all his bad memories? I never know the mechanics of what lands someone here. I never ask. I only know they're here and I'm here to make sure they stay put. Sometimes I'm in the room with them. Sometimes my chair is positioned within view in the hallway. Usually when they're violent, unpredictable. A few are strapped to the gurney. I'm right next to Bob. He's no threat to others, at least. He's also detoxing from months of cocaine abuse. So maybe I caught him at the right moment before his physiology betrays him. The perks I'm paid to study $6 an hour, three shifts a week, reading textbooks and writing papers while strangers bleed out next door. The bad hearing doctors and nurses banter about patients. And don't get me wrong, most healthcare professionals are kind. The ER is just hell to work in. You're stuck under fluorescent lights, chaos always erupting or threatening to. The smell of death everywhere. You leave reeking of bleach and misery. Once in a while I catch the dark side. A nurse sneaks into a locked pharmacy closet because they're working a 30 hour shift and no human can pull off such a feat without assistance. A doctor laughing about patients with colleagues right after feigning compassion inside the room, blood splattered on the floor after a gunshot victim is wheeled by at blinding speed. Being inside the room brings you closer to someone who, despite the luck of timing or incompetence, no longer wishes to inhabit the world you share. The ER holds The worst pain humans can possibly feel. Employees are expected to let it slide off their skin. After two years working long shifts, I'm jaded, cynical, confused, incapable of empathy. I don't know how feeling for others is even possible. And I'm just an observer. To be around that much pain on the daily and not close yourself off seems impossible. You have to put up a wall or risk carrying that pain with you. Some are built for this type of work. Sure, I've seen it as a patient when I live there. As a patient monitor on the other side, champion levels of compassion. They figured out how to contain the sadness somehow. Bob is an easy one, relatively speaking. There's Device, who lives on the streets in New Brunswick. I'm not sure how many times he ends up in the hospital. I am sure it's not a small number. One day he speaks at me for over an hour about how he created the universe. Considering I'm studying religion for my degree, I'm amazed at the coherence of his mythology. Something's off, though. Device believes he's the Godhead, directing all of it, everything from Big Bang to this day. Strip that away and his tale is as rich and symbolic as any text considered sacred. After an hour or so, he stands on his bed, rips off his hospital gown, pisses all over the sheets. I spend the rest of my shift outside the room. There was the heroin addict who taunted me relentlessly about my doctor father and the wealth that awaits me. My father isn't a doctor. No wealth awaits me. She's eventually strapped down because she desires nothing more than to sink her claws into my face. An elderly woman who swears to God that I'm the son she hasn't spoken to in decades. I assure her that's not the case. Doesn't matter. She spirals, cries, turning into whales. Nurses sedate her. My boss puts me on another patient. I have a hard time falling asleep that night. I'm given other duties on days when no patients await me. Wheeling patients to and from the catheter lab is common, as is running prescriptions. Sometimes I land the vaunted switchboard job where you don't have to deal with emergencies. On occasion, I wheel dead bodies to the morgue, always fully wrapped by the time I arrive there. Just wait. If you think too hard about it, you realize it's the weight of a lifetime. So you try not to think too hard about it. The morgue is cold. Hell cold. Shoved in the basement, out of sight. A special card to access. Don't want randos waltzing in buckets of body parts soaked in formaldehyde stacked against the wall outside the building. I'm studying the numerous forms of transcendence the world's religions inspire. Endless takes on the body and soul, debates on the afterlife, the movement of poetry from learned voices to hungry, hopeful ears. Inside, I learned that life ends when consciousness ceases. With any luck, the detritus of muscle and flesh and fat nourish the soil. Any construction of self. These former bodies housed live on only in memory and hearsay. Usually I work the seven to three shift. I'm an early riser. My father never mentally left the Navy. He considered seven sleeping in on the weekends. During the week when school started at 8:30, I'm shaken awake at 6 to get ready. I'm accustomed to rising with the sun. In college I stack all my classes early and pick up shifts. On off days I take the 3 to 11 shifts, sometimes to force myself to study. Once in a while, the hospital requests I cover the 11 to 7. My roommate, Wayne, loves it. Little night owl he is not. So for me, you're given a comfy reclining lounger and told the only thing you absolutely cannot do is fall asleep. Lights are dim or off. Patients sleep. Impossible to focus on boring textbooks. Pay is the same. So what are we really doing here? Not every overnight is chill. To be clear, weekend shifts tend to explode. One moment I'm melted into the cushions trying to make sense of Buddhist texts, the next, rushing a flailing kid into the trauma center. My age drank himself into a violent altered state. Alcohol toxicity. A nurse rushes up, calls his name. I ask how she knows him. He's here every few weeks, she says, nonchalant, unattached, Just stating facts. There are many ways to kill yourself, many paths to desiring death. Not everyone transcends. The night ends. I walk into the brisk morning air, cranky and discombobulated. Eight sleepless hours and a lifetime of uncertainty ahead. A life that I know can end without a moment's notice. I walk a few hundred feet to my Somerset street apartment, clamber up a flight of stairs, and pretend that I'll sleep, knowing that will never happen. You don't spend two years under fluorescent lights watching strangers bleed out and casually brush off the scent of cleaning solution and unrealized dreams. The trauma follows you home. It settles into your bones and rewires your nervous system to always anticipate the next disaster. 4. Insomnia becomes a lifestyle when you realize how easily the machinery can break. A few years later, in Hackensack, I'm still not sleeping, though, for an entirely different reason. I gather all the contraband, shove it in a plastic bag, a few glass pipes, wood bowl, the plastic bong that still smells of cheap weed. Stuff the bag below the sink, sliding it through a gaping hole in the cheap particle board. What if they bring a dog? Pops into my head. So I rush downstairs, fling the shopping bag into the dumpster. Who knows what horrors my beloved accoutrements discover? The cleaners I live above dump toxic solutions into the same receptacle. One thing is certain. No police dog is going to sniff that out. None of this was necessary. A good hour passes between me thinking I'm having a heart attack and the ambulance showing up in the parking lot on Route 17. My first solo apartment is a Hackensack studio built on top of classic cleaners. $600 a month to live directly above machinery used to sanitize clothing, plus whatever chemicals seep through the poorly built infrastructure. Only four apartments in this complex, one occupied by a friend who's also a weed dealer. Now my weed dealer at this moment, a decision I regret. The night started out fine. In preparation for meeting Darren in Hoboken. I take a few rips from the bong. Everything starts spiraling, a feeling I've had before. Often, though, this one rushes at me with unusual vigor. Tight chest, wandering brain, heart palpitations galore. I'm going to die on the side of a Highway at 22 years of age. I know I'm calling the ambulance, and I know they'll know what's going on. A prophecy that kind of sort of turns out true. They won't learn the full story. Both what I won't tell them and what none of us know dash around my studio, frantically gather things, throw shit out, clean. The latter an odd but recurring choice whenever I have a panic attack. Focusing on a task proves helpful when overtaken by an avalanche of anxiety. Scrubbing dishes and vacuuming have worked before. Not tonight. Even the dispatcher sounds skeptical. I'm more frantic than dying. She sends an ambulance at my insistence. The studio still reeks of weed as I carry the cordless phone, look it up to the parking lot. Of course, a cop shows up first. There are protocols for this type of thing. He really wants to get inside my apartment, you know, to check things out. I know what he's doing. He knows that I know, and he's forcing the issue. Anyway, I punt. He knows I'm punting. But I'm a white guy in Hackensack and he's not going to take liberties he might have with others. The phone comes with me to the emergency room. The rescue squad attached oxygen to my nose. Immediate calm washes over me. Halfway to the hospital, I just want to turn around. I'm embarrassed. They're pissed. Rushing out on a Friday evening to shuffle this kid who's on who knows what to the ER when they could be enjoying a pizza and watching the game. The doctor is even less forgiving. He treats me with as little respect as possible. I can't blame him, though I also know it's not just weed. Bong hits triggered something but weren't the origin of that thing. I won't piece this together for years when I'm officially diagnosed with general anxiety disorder. Only then do I finally understand what's been crashing my nervous system since my first panic attack sent me to Robert Wood Johnson. Yeah, there again, at age 16. They didn't know what was happening back then, either. Panic attacks weren't, in the public vernacular. I had gotten in a fight with my mom, sprinted around the block in a tizzy, returning home to collapse on the bathroom floor. She freaks out, rightly. Suddenly the entire neighborhood is watching me being rolled out on a stretcher. The doctors in New Brunswick treat me with kindness and respect because I'm a kid and there's a corroborating witness. Plus, no marijuana. The Hackensack doctor likely thinks it's worse than weed, as in opioid worse, though he never considers a panic. The year is 1998, after all, when most people didn't really diagnose them, especially when substances are involved, which is a shame. When I first learned about anxiety disorder, panic attacks were presented as being all in your head. While a grain of truth exists, there are techniques some people, including myself, can do to help alleviate the existential distress of an attack. The origin of the physiological reaction remains a mystery. That doesn't make them any less real. An important piece of this story helped drive my panic. I was heavy into the poetry and theater scene. One of my favorite professors at Rutgers was Miguel Agarin, who co founded the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in Alphabet City. I performed all over North Jersey and New York City. I also did spoken word with a band, a useful distraction as I had just gone through the first major breakup of my life. There's a photo of me from a show at Webster hall, mike in hand, looking like a ghost. At 6:3, I had dropped to 159 pounds. The breakup hit me hard, and I wasn't taking care of myself. While I did put weight back on. This marked the beginning of a 15 year struggle with disordered eating. Which, it turns out, helps explain how I ended up in the emergency room in Hackensack.
- [21:40]
D
And, Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual. Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.
- [21:50]
C
Hey, everyone. Check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?
- [21:53]
D
Oh, no. We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.
- [22:00]
C
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
- [22:02]
D
Anyways, get a quote@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.
- [22:05]
C
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.