I picked up the orange pill cannister and studied it. It contained a month’s supply of tiny, white pills, and my name was printed on the label.

I used to be a patient caregiver at a psychiatric hospital; how did I end up needing psychiatric care myself?

I guess it was the only logical result of years of mood episodes, a bedbug-infested camper van, and a panic attack in a hotel room in Houston.

*       *       *

For as long as I could remember, I’d always had seasonal mood fluctuations: down in the winter, up in the spring. Having grown up in central Pennsylvania, where it’s dark and dreary for six months and sunny and pleasant the other half of the year, I became accustomed to alternating between feeling full of life and completely deflated.

(more…)

“I have a lot of money coming my way soon,” the thirty-something woman sitting across from me at the table told me with a sincere tone.

“Oh yeah?” I calmly responded. “How’s that?”

“Well, I helped Maroon 5 write most of their songs,” she said without blinking.

Before you get too excited, no, I wasn’t having a chance encounter with a music mogul at a swanky cafe; I was interviewing a schizoaffective patient in the crisis unit of the psychiatric hospital in which I worked. And I knew what I said next would either hinder her recovery or hasten it.

“How about that?” I replied, showing a lukewarm level of interest. “When did you get the chance to work with them?”

“I used to date Adam Levine,” she continued.

(more…)

I have a bedroom confession to make.

In my condo I have a queen size bed fully equipped with a mattress, box spring, and oak frame. It’s the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept in.

And sometimes I don’t use it.

No, it’s not because I’m too lazy to wash the sheets, or because I fall asleep on the living room couch, or because I find my way into someone else’s bed after a night at the bar. It’s because I occasionally sleep on the floor.

You heard me right: at least one night per week I purposefully get my beauty rest on the ground next to my bed. I’m talking full-on, back-against-the-carpet snoozing.

Why would I, a grown man with a fully-furnished apartment and spacious bed, choose to sleep on the floor from time to time? (more…)