Confessing the Secret Reason Why PTSD Advocacy Will Remain A Pillar of This Publishing Company

This is a Lethal Disease and I am Fighting to Survive It and Give a Voice to Others

Photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash

Since September of 2021, I have been fighting to keep living. On September 16 - Yom Kippur of all days - I was the victim of multiple assaults and torture at the hands of law enforcement officers when I was an innocent man, falsely accused. The phrases “innocent until proven guilty” and “in your custody, in your care” are now sad jokes to me. The charges against me were soon dropped and the violent arrest I experienced at the hands of young, inexperienced cops was expunged from my record, labeled a mere “detention.” There is now an ongoing internal affairs investigation of what happened to me, based on my filing a complaint with the city of Burbank.

However, the trauma inflicted on me by these officers has literally destroyed my life. I no longer have the ability to concentrate like I used to be able to do in my work as an activist, freelance writer, editor, and researcher. I once could immerse myself in deep research into antisemitic hate groups and Islamist front groups for hours on end. Now it is difficult to be able to focus enough to read a few pages of a book for a few minutes, or write more than a couple paragraphs at a time. Even watching a whole movie is often difficult now, as I cannot handle that level of stimulation. Just a few days after the trauma I was already experiencing what I would come to know as “hyper-arousal” or “hyper-vigilance" which WebMD describes thus:

Hyperarousal is a pervasive mood- and life-altering symptom in which you are consistently irritable, angry, and paranoid. 

Symptoms of Hyperarousal

Hyperarousal can be characterized by: 

• Pervasive jittery feelings

• Always being on the lookout for peril

• General irritability 

• Becoming angry instantaneously

• Getting startled by loud noises 

• Paranoia

• Difficulty sleeping

• Inability to concentrate or focus on one thing

I currently suffer from all of these symptoms. And I’ve sought to treat them by going to such extreme measures as moving out to an isolated RV on 25 acres of desert land near the marine base in 29 Palms, California.

But these symptoms are not the worst of the PTSD or what makes the disease so dangerous. This is: The Link Between PTSD and Suicide:

According to the National Institute of Mental HealthTrusted Source, as many as 4.8% of adults in the United States have serious thoughts annually about suicide. In 2019, suicide was rated as the 10th leading cause of death, responsible for the loss of more than 47,500 people.

Living with PTSD may increase your chances of suicide ideation or attempt. As many as 27% of people diagnosed with PTSD have attempted suicide.

Other factors can contribute to an increase in suicidal ideation with PTSD, including your profession or gender.

A 2021 research review looking at suicide rates among U.S. veterans and active service members of the post-9/11 wars found that PTSD contributed to a suicide rate four times that of any other military combat-related deaths.

…

Among civilians, a cohort study from 2021 of more than 3 million people suggested that PTSD accounted for 3.5% of suicides in women and 0.6% of suicides in men. Also, experts estimated that 54% of suicides among people living with PTSD were directly related to PTSD and not co-occurring conditions.

Here’s the thing to understand with the PTSD: it causes all my physical feelings and emotions to become way more intense than they ever were before. Sometimes coffee tastes too bitter to drink. Sometimes a cold can from the refrigerator will be freezing. Often times what should be a minor body ache or pain will be excruciating. Colors become more vivid and visual details grow more noticeable and overwhelming. All of this also drains my energy, leaving me exhausted most of the time.

But also my emotions and abstract feelings have grown much more intense, prompting a number of so-called friends, family members, and colleagues to label me “erratic” and to abandon me. The trauma of what happened to me is one thing, but the trauma of people I thought cared about me choosing to be in denial about it, or to blame me for what happened, or lambast me for not recovering fast enough for them, has made it even worse. I’ve even been accused of having bad character by one long-time former friend because I didn’t get better as soon as he thought I should.

Here’s what everyone needs to understand, though, the PsychCentral article on PTSD and suicidal ideation notes there are different types of PTSD:

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (DSM-5) and modern clinical practice, there are 5 potential classifications of PTSD.

• Uncomplicated PTSD: PTSD in its classic clinical form, outlined in the DSM-5

• Complex PTSD: severe psychological symptoms arising from chronic, repeat trauma over long periods of time

• PTSD with dissociative symptoms: symptoms of PTSD with the presence of persistent derealization or depersonalization

• PTSD with delayed expression: achieving full PTSD diagnostic criteria 6 months or longer after the experience of trauma

• Co-morbid PTSD: diagnosis of PTSD coincides with another mental health condition, like depression

My PTSD falls into the “Complex PTSD” category because the violent trauma I experienced at the hands of the police in September was not the first violence and emotional abuse I have experienced in my life. The truth is that I have struggled with intense suicidal ideation for over 20 years - since I was a senior in high school in 2001. At the time this was initially misdiagnosed and mislabeled as Bipolar 2, but I’ve known for over a decade now that diagnosis was incorrect, and the psychiatrist I saw last fall confirmed it was wrong, noting that diagnosis was a popular “catch-all diagnosis” at the time. Now I’ve had to spend years investigating the range of possibilities for why I would feel this way, and I’ve concluded it is most likely due to a) being violently abused by my grandfather in third grade, b) being violently assaulted by multiple classmates at a birthday party in junior high, and c) the overall experience of perpetually being emotionally and physically bullied from fifth grade through high school in the cruel Carmel, Indiana school system.

I was never able to find effective treatment all these years to get better. And the incorrect medication I was put on for years only made me chronically tired, provoking me to drink a pot of coffee every day to try and keep going. It was only through distracting myself - with my writing, my activism career, my faith, and my first marriage - that I managed to keep going and avoid killing myself.

Well, guess what this new PTSD trauma has done to these already latent, persistent, suicidal urges? It’s turbocharged them! Just as grabbing a cold jar of pickles is too much, now the self-destructive urges which I once had under wraps have metastasized throughout my being like a cancer. And just as I could not find useful, effective, medical help to push back in the past, in the nearly a year since my symptoms emerged from this new trauma, I have not really found effective tools for clamping down on it now. I’m seeing two wonderful therapists and exploring a range of drugs with a psychiatrist I respect and trust (so many psychiatrists have failed me in my life, but Dr. Harvey has been wonderful) but so far therapy and psychiatric medication have been the equivalent of band-aids on a gushing wound.

Because of the ineffectiveness of the cognitive behavioral therapy and most of the medications we’ve tried - save for the wonderful Propranolol which offers some mild relief at times from the hyper-arousal - and the intensity of the obsessive suicidal imagery and urges I experience, I’ve now been approved for more extreme measures: at the end of the month, starting on August 29, I will begin Ketamine Infusion Therapy at Reset Ketamine in Palm Springs. I’ll be writing, blogging, and podcasting more about this treatment as I prepare for it and then as I go through it. If anyone has any other suggestions about other PTSD treatments or coping techniques I should explore then please leave your thoughts in the comments.

I hope this now explains more to our readers why this subject of my attempt to recover from PTSD will be such a central theme in this Substack and in the books which we’ll be publishing moving forward. Most people simply do not understand how serious and how dangerous PTSD can be. Over the last year I have been on the edge of suicide so regularly, held back only by the love of my fiancee, friends, and family, and the desire to return to my writing, publishing, and activism career. This publishing company is not just about publishing the writings of my friends and cherished colleagues, it’s about giving myself a reason to keep living. So thank you to all our readers for your understanding and encouragement.