Climbing Up the Downward Spiral

Hard Times, Drug and Alcohol Abuse and Addiction, Mental Illness, Suicide

Jones, Joseph

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
• ISBN:
  9781498272704
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: General Health

Climbing Up the Downward Spiral takes a holistic approach in looking at practical, neurological, and spiritual issues, as it walks readers through the shadows of some of the most difficult problems of our time: financial loss; drug and alcohol abuse and addiction; mental illness; and suicide.The authors also share from their considerable personal experience with these problems. Bringing together some twenty years of work with people in programs of downtown, late-night ministry in different cities as well as personal experiences with illegal drugs, bipolar disorder, and a serious suicide attempt, Jones and Joseph walk readers through the shadows of our lives, offering encouragement, methods of coping, and above all, hope.

1

Hard Times

Dean Jones

“I made it through the rain and kept my point of view.I made it through the rain and was respected by others who were rained on too”

—Barry Manilow

Financial loss is not a topic to be covered in a few paragraphs. For some it is a long and very difficult journey. All of us can learn from down times even if we do not experience them personally. I invite you to prolong this chapter with reflections of your own. Valuable lessons come from times of financial crisis; lessons that remain important long after the time of crisis has passed.

It has been hard to keep up with the bad economic news coming out during the time of the writing of this book. On April 9, 2009, Pam Belluck reported on the first page of the New York Times that anxiety was “sweeping into everyday lives.” Her report included a story of a woman living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who began having panic attacks over the economy.1 A prominent article for the Boulder Camera on May 11, 2009, by Alicia Wallace noted that, “At 7.5 percent, Colorado in March notched its highest unemployment rate in nearly 22 years.”2 The rate would climb higher in the months ahead. It is obvious that many people in our country do not have a comfortable lifestyle today. Maybe it is a man or woman who has gone through divorce. Or perhaps it is someone who has lost a job. For seniors getting by on a fixed income, life can become a struggle for basic survival, including decisions about whether to pay for prescription medications or to buy food for the day.

Too many families today face the pain of losing their homes through foreclosure. The “R” word (recession) has come back into the common language with some talking about the Great Depression. As a sign of the times, in 2008 I drove past a man and woman standing on a street corner near a gas station. She held a large, red gas can. He held up a sign reading, “Mom and Dad out of gas.” On a hot day in June 2009, another man stood on this same corner. His sign read, “Father Lost Job . . . Five Children . . . No Food.” The front cover of Time magazine for June 28, 2010, came with the picture of a battered, generic state license plate with the bold letters, BNKRPT. The lead article for that edition of this national magazine was on “The Broken States of America: How the financial crisis of the states affects all of us.”3 For the immediate and near future the story gave little basis for being optimistic. Unfortunately, many individuals in our country could wear old T-shirts with the letters “BROKE,” printed on both front and back of the shirt.

In July of 2008 the daily news coverage on TV included photos of police in California monitoring a long line of people waiting to withdraw their funds from a failed Indy Mac bank. In the week of October 6, 2008, newspapers around the country carried headlines with the news that markets worldwide tanked as fears of a wide-scale recession spread. As this book enters into its final stages of editing, the economy continues to be high on the list of concerns for Americans. Lynn Bartels, a writer with the Denver Post reported in a front-page article appearing on June 21, 2010, that “no matter their political leanings, a majority of Coloradans believe the most pressing issue facing the country today is ‘jobs and the economy.’” In the automated poll by SurveyUSA, the jobs issue topped other popular issues such as immigration and medical marijuana.4

In its 2009 third-quarter report, RealtyTrac, a web-based firm that tracks and markets foreclosed homes, tallied 937,840 properties, a 5 percent increase from the previous quarter and an increase of nearly 23 percent from the third quarter of 2008. Foreclosures in September 2009 showed a 29 percent increase over September 2008, the third highest monthly total, behind only July and August of 2009, since the RealtyTrac report began in January 2005.5 A lot of material and non material losses accompany every foreclosure situation. In May of 2008, USA Today featured an article by Stephanie Amour giving a very personal look at the mental health toll from foreclosures.6 The article begins with an account of Raymond and Deanna Donavan of Prineville, Oregon. In October of 2007, this couple closed all of the doors to their home except the one to the garage and left their car running. Toxic fumes did their work. Sheriff’s deputies found the bodies when they were called to the scene. A relative blamed a pending foreclosure for the suicides. Amour also said that crisis hotlines were reporting an increase in calls from worried homeowners and that mental health groups were giving more information on how to handle the emotional stress triggered by the real estate meltdown.

It would be all too easy to relax under the impression that it is only the low-end real estate market that is threatened by foreclosure. But growing evidence suggests that the sagging economy is having an impact in a wide range of markets. The front page of the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado, for Saturday, July 12, 2008, shared color photos of homes valued at over one million dollars on the foreclosure list. One of these homes with a large swimming pool was assessed at $1,100,000 with the owners owing $1,162,500. High-end foreclosures are also posing a threat to senior centers, office buildings, and even churches. The New York Times for Sunday, July 13, 2008, included stories of problems faced by people in New York City looking for apartments selling for over one million dollars. A large down payment did not guarantee a mortgage if someone was working in the troubled and unpredictable financial sector. When foreclosure action is pending the major lenders including Countrywide are simply not organized to take calls giving advice. In the first week of 2009, German billionaire Adolf Merckle took his own life, his spirit broken by financial fears. He is only one of other high profile casualties of the global economic crisis. The front cover story for Time magazine on September 21, 2009, came with the bold headline: “Out of Work in America: Why double-digit unemployment may be here to stay—and how to live with it.”

Many sources tell us that being unemployed today hurts more than in past times of high unemployment. I recently talked with a woman in her forties who is now unemployed. I was surprised by her very negative view of her future. She does not see how she can get a job that will last for any length of time. I think that this attitude may be encouraged in part by the stimulus package in place at the federal level. Most of the jobs created by this measure are by nature short term, like fixing the highways. The unemployed woman added that many of her friends are out of work and that one friend told her he was simply going to use up all of his money and then go up into the mountains, never to return. Such a direct comment about suicide was not part of the unemployment picture in the not-too-distant past. Today the problem is also increased by the sheer amount of debt most people have and also the inadequacy of healthcare for those who do not have regular employment.

The shadow of the recession has fallen on many parts of life in our country. My wife and I are members of a program called Golden Retriever Rescue of the Rockies (GRR).7 This program rescues dogs that for one reason or another are not able to remain in their original home. In an email to volunteers in July of 2009 the director, Mary Kenton, points to the economy as creating lots of problems for dogs and their owners.

So many of the Goldens we have coming into GRR this year are because of this economy we are all struggling with right now. Some are forced to give up their Goldens as they are having trouble caring for their children. Many have lost their jobs, their homes and are suffering while giving up their Goldens that they can no longer afford to give medical care, house or feed. I have spent many hours on the phone listening to them while their hearts are breaking as they talk about why they can’t keep their Goldens.

I assume that this situation can be found in other states and for other breeds of dogs. We can all help by becoming volunteers, doing what we can in these hard times for dogs as well as people. The impact of a recession on household pets is always difficult to determine, but newsletters and word of mouth from those directly involved can become very emotional.

For some in our country, home ownership is only a distant dream, no matter what happens on the national economic scene. We can learn from those who have seen poverty on a personal level as a chronic condition. Now is the time to listen to folks like Sam and Joan. It is unlikely that they will ever have a home of their own. “We live at Walmart,” Sam says. A forty-one-year-old man, he wears a faded blue ball cap frayed at the edges. He lives in a small camper, a “cab over” that rests on the bed of an old pickup parked in a Walmart parking lot. He shares this cramped living quarters with the love of his life, a thirty-year-old woman named Joan. Living at Walmart is a twenty-four-hour exercise in survival. There is constant fear of being forced to move by authorities, of losing everything as their “home” is towed away. When I talked with this couple on the last day of May in 2008 the weather was turning toward a time of daily temperatures in the nineties. It is hot in a small camper in the summer and very cold in the winter. Propane bottles attached to a portable heating element do give some heat for the freezing winter but there is no air conditioning for the summer. No electricity, no running water, none of the things that make life pleasant.

After my visit with Sam and Joan, I went home to adjust the thermostat in our townhouse. With ceiling fans and central heating plus central air conditioning, a touch of the finger automatically adjusts the temperature. The morning after my visit with Sam and Joan, I went out on the trail near where we live for a walk with our dog, a Golden Retriever. We walked past one large home, some four thousand feet of living space with several bedrooms. I am sure that this spacious house overlooking a friendly, free flowing creek and trees newly decorated with the greenery of spring had empty bedrooms. A deck from the second floor looked out on a garden spot where a new sack of peat moss waited on the owner as he began a garden for the season. This surround of living space was more normal for our time—having all of the perks that sustain a positive life. Then I thought of Sam and Joan. I also thought of them as I crawled into our king-sized bed and as I showered with soap, shampoo, and conditioner in the morning and used a handheld dryer to blow dry my hair before using a bottle of soft style Paul Mitchell hair spray. I could not imagine a day without these conveniences. Then I thought of Sam and Joan, living at Walmart.

How does one become homeless, claiming a parking lot as “home?” There are many roads converging on the highway leading to homelessness. For both Sam and Joan, health issues are paramount. Sam has migraines, lower back pain, bad knees, an enlarged prostrate, and high cholesterol levels. One goal for both Sam and Joan is to get her back on disability. On good days, Sam can lift thirty-five pounds. Then he has days when he cannot lift a gallon of milk. It is very hard for him to pull himself up the three feet into his “home” in the pickup. Sam takes seven pills every day at set intervals. He has been declared unfit to work, so draws disability (SSI) of $637 a month. He also sells his blood at a local blood bank and recycles scrap whenever he can. Sam is proud of his eight years of sobriety. This gift of life came when a friend took him to his first AA meeting. At one low ebb in his life, he threw his bicycle off a cliff and intended to follow it to his death ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Hard Times
• Chapter 2: Drug and Alcohol Abuse and Addiction
• Chapter 3: Mental Illness
• Chapter 4: Suicide
• Bibliography
• Resources