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Episode 113: Mental Health Awareness with ALK Alters
102 Plays4 years ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to the Goblin Lore Podcast! May is Mental Health Awareness Month and the plan is for all the episodes this month to relate to important topics within Mental Health. We are also participating (along with other excellent creators) in #MentalHealthMtG and attempting to raise money for MH Organizations!!
cw, tw: suicide, suicidal thoughts, depression, self-harm
In today's episode we are joined by ALK Alters to discuss his experience with Mental Health Care (both from the standpoint of outpatient and inpatient). ALK candidly discusses his experience with being hospitalized and what this looked like for him. Our hope is that by discussing these topics we can help to combat stigma and to also be frank about the full spectrum of MH Care.
This is a sensitive topic that is extremely important to the members of the cast, and we feel like it's necessary to examine the depictions of these mental health crises in popular media. We hope this episode can be educational for those who may be wondering what a hospitalization may look like. What is discussed here is based on the experience of our guest (and Hobbes's work in inpatient settings). There are links below to several resources.
We also are proud to have partnered with Grinding Coffee Co a black, LGBT+ affiliated and owned, coffee business that is aimed at providing coffee to gamers. You can read more about their mission here. You can use our partner code for discounted coffee!
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As promised, we plan to keep these Mental Health Links available moving forward too. For general Mental Health the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has great resources for people struggling with mental health concerns as well as their families. We also want to draw attention to this article on stigma from NAMI's site.
If you’re thinking about suicide or just need someone to talk to right now, you can get support from any of the resources below.
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
- Veteran's can Press 1 at anytime to be taken to the Veteran's Line
- Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741-741
- International suicide hotlines: A comprehensive resource list for people outside the US.
- IMAlive: Click Chat Now to access a live online network of volunteers through instant messaging.
- TrevorLifeline, TrevorChat, and TrevorText (LGBTQ+ crisis support): 1-866-488-7386, or text “Trevor” to 1-202-304-1200
- Trans Lifeline (US): (877) 565-8860
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You can find the hosts on Twitter: Hobbes Q. at @HobbesQ, and Alex Newman at @Mel_Chronicler. Send questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to @GoblinLorePod on Twitter or GoblinLorePodcast@gmail.com.
Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (
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Transcript
Introduction to Mental Health Awareness Month
00:00:31
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome back to the Goblin Lore podcast. This episode is going to be going out the first week of May and actually if some of you may remember from last year, May is Mental Health Awareness Month.
00:00:46
Speaker
Mental Health Awareness Month I think is something that's really important to this cast. And starting with last year, we really made kind of the decision that we were going to be intentional about using this month to kind of amplify topics specifically related to mental health.
00:01:03
Speaker
And that, you know, we know that that's always kind of a part of the show, but really focusing kind of in on it, really drawing attention to it. Last year, we spent a lot of time kind of talking about stigma. We talked, that was our first time actually talking about recovery, the idea of the recovery model. And this year, we actually have a variety of topics already planned out for this month. So every episode this month
00:01:28
Speaker
is going to be focused on mental health.
Content Warning and Support Resources
00:01:31
Speaker
So with that said, there's a couple of things I wanted to get out of the way. So number one, we got to say thank you to Grinding Coffee Company. We are just, once again, they are a black LGBT woman-run coffee business that is partnered with gamers. And we are just thankful to be able to continue to be affiliated with them.
00:01:56
Speaker
And then I wanted to say that some of the topics that we might talk about and today's episode is one that could include some of those may be triggering for some people. This means that there are times during this month topics of self-harm, topics of trauma, topics of just mental health things in general are going to be talked about frankly and respectfully. And I think that's kind of what we have always done on this show.
00:02:26
Speaker
But we just want to let people be aware of that kind of going into this entire month.
00:02:33
Speaker
With the notes of each episode, if you go to them and click on them, there are the numbers that are directly for the crisis lines and actually a variety of them. We've included kind of the one that has just the general crisis line, the one for veterans, LGBT, and then the trans lifeline. And we just want to make sure that that is always part of our shows, kind of notes that go up every week.
00:02:59
Speaker
just a reminder that they are there. There are also links that we've been keeping up since last year when we talked about this for NAMI, the National Alliance for Mental Illness.
Charity Partnerships and Event Highlights
00:03:11
Speaker
One other thing that the Goblin Lore Pod is doing for the month of May is we are partnering with some other creators. And that's going to involve – we don't fully know what yet. We know at the very least that there's going to be some charity streams. And us as a podcast are giving away a goblin EDH deck, which I don't know, Alex.
00:03:33
Speaker
Is this like five? Like I've lost it. Yeah. We like, but we have another goblin edh deck and this is like, uh, so barbarians riddle. So Ryan, who was on a couple of weeks ago, he had donated this a while back. It includes a goblin wizard, which somehow was like a hundred dollar card now.
00:03:57
Speaker
Seriously, I actually got the artist's proof for it, cheaper than the actual one, and honestly in the world of artist's proofs, that's not as common. So this deck is a fully ready-to-play goblin deck with a lot of cool like...
00:04:14
Speaker
foil versions. I believe there's some from the Secret Lair drop with that great cool comic book art on it. There's some Hobb's Q tokens that I had gotten done by Inkling and Alex and I are also going to be signing copies of Goblin Lore and a copy of Goblin Gathering and including this with Ultra Pro like Boulder Deckbox
00:04:39
Speaker
So all you have to do to enter is DM us proof of a donation to a mental health organization during the month of May. That's it. Nothing else. You don't have to retweet us. You don't have to be following us. We don't care. We're going to give away this deck as part of our way of trying to raise some money for mental health and for mental health awareness.
Guest Introduction: ALK Alters
00:05:04
Speaker
With that, we are here for our first episode of the month, and we have a very special guest with us. So we have ALK alters with us, and we're going to let him kind of introduce himself, kind of tell you a little bit about what he does, who he is, kind of his role in the community, and we are going to-
00:05:26
Speaker
Well, if not, it's time to make one up right now. Well, I'm the community's dad now, so eat your vegetables and listen to your mother. Wow, if you're the community dad, I don't even want to know what that makes me. I'm like the community grandfather. Yeah.
00:05:42
Speaker
So as we do, we will let ALK introduce himself and to tell us a little bit about, you know, we're going to have our question today be one that we've done in the past, but it's very relevant for right now.
Self-Care and Exercise Discussion
00:05:56
Speaker
And that is simply, what is something recent that you have been using for self care?
00:06:05
Speaker
Yeah, hello, everyone. My name is A-L-K-Alters. My pronouns are he and him, and I guess his. I do digital magic card altars. So magic altars, not with like paint and other physical things, but with Photoshop, basically.
00:06:31
Speaker
And I've been doing that for cheese around two and a half years. I believe it actually sort of ties into my mental health journey a little bit, which I'll get into later. But that's the sort of main thing I do. I'm also I
00:06:53
Speaker
casual commander slash general magic content creator in that and I say casual not in like casual games, but more like casual in that I don't try very hard to make content. Like if it happens, it happens. I just basically like if I have this is not, you know, my my full time gig.
00:07:18
Speaker
And so if I have an idea that I really want to do or a goof that I want to do, I'll put it out there, but otherwise I'm not putting myself to a schedule and actively applying to make a podcast or a stream or anything like that.
00:07:36
Speaker
I'll say one thing I will say is I'm used to you, but you you make the rounds like you get to play with a lot like you are, you are a popular guest, I would say on people's show like I know that you've, you know, you, you're a very fun person to play with, I can say from experience. I try to be fun. It's, it can be, you know, difficult sometimes over virtual where you're just like, in the sort of like, little
00:08:04
Speaker
box in front of your computer where your cards are and then staring at each other's cards. I really do miss that face-to-face interaction. I think that sort of smooths out the whole gameplay experience where virtual can be a little rough sometimes.
00:08:28
Speaker
But yeah, it's been the winning aspect of virtual, of course, is you get to play with so many people that you would not get to play with. And that's fantastic.
00:08:41
Speaker
So during this time period, and by this, I guess I mean the pandemic, because we're still talking about it a year after we did our last mental health month, when we actually talked about the quarantine, we talked about a quarantine stop. The Phyrexians was an episode with Chase, which was a follow up to the fact that right before the pandemic started, we recorded how to avoid social anxiety or how to avoid avoidance. And it came out literally
00:09:11
Speaker
as people are today. And you're the, well, it's funny too, because I listened to that episode and you said, you know, the best way to avoid social anxiety is just to stay in your house for 13 months and never interact with anyone. You were still on point.
00:09:32
Speaker
But what's something that you've been using for kind of the self-care? So I've been really getting back into exercise. I was a swimmer all the way from the age of six all the way through high school and college. And then I worked incredibly hard at it. And then once I finished, I was like, OK, I am done.
00:09:55
Speaker
because it was really, really like draining to do that every day. I don't think people, this I wanted because this has come up too, because I ran from high school through college and then did not until like recently even. And I don't think people realize kind of how burning out that can be for something that you also really love.
00:10:21
Speaker
And I coasted off of that, and it's been a good while now since I graduated from college. I coasted off of that for several years and then started putting on a little bit of weight. And then the pandemic hit and I started putting on even more weight. So I got back into exercise. I had tried swimming again for a little bit years ago, getting into master's swimming, which is,
00:10:47
Speaker
If you can do it, it's very popular. Lots of places have master's clubs. I just like I like I did it for a little bit. I was like, I realize I hate this. I like it's not like the most fun part for me. Swimming was like the teams and the competition aspect of it. And I like I could have built up to get back there. But just like the process of waking up and like
00:11:16
Speaker
early and going to the pool and changing and jumping into the cold water. It was awful. So what I did realize, though, you know, now with the pandemic is I don't have to commute to my job. I'm lucky I can work fully at home.
00:11:38
Speaker
So I've been trying to get back. I was thinking about running. Uh, running didn't really work out so much for me, so I've just been walking. Uh, but I walk with, I have dumbbells and, um, I have a camel back on my back and my, my wife makes fun of me because I look ridiculous, but it's, I've been like improving my pace, um, and like getting, trying to get into a solid amount of exercise each day.
00:12:06
Speaker
And exercise produces dopamine in your brain, which is a chemical that actually makes you happier. And it's something that my therapist was telling me to try to do for a while. But I'm really enjoying, I'm now getting to the point where I'm getting better at it. And I'm enjoying, I'm getting that sort of competitive spirit
00:12:34
Speaker
back a little bit to be like, oh, this is my time. I can push myself. I can beat my time. Like that sort of that sort of stuff, which was some of the stuff I really loved about swimming back in the day is like the the attempt to improve what you're doing and to push you like to really push yourself. I really do love that experience of like really like going all out on a workout and then like like
00:13:02
Speaker
leaving nothing in the tank and just finishing it and being like, all right, that was worth it. Awesome. Well, Alex, how are you doing?
Hosts' Self-Care Practices
00:13:14
Speaker
You know, you and I never cocked, so I don't know what time, but... I'm doing good. As I think I said in her last episode, I just finished moving now, as of this time of recording, because recording podcasts is always a weird exercise in time travel.
00:13:29
Speaker
Um, I've finished moving. It was about two weeks ago in two days. It'll have been two weeks. So I'm feeling good. That was, that was a lot of stress and, and a lot of anxiety, um, on my shoulders tomorrow is when I do my final walkthrough at the old place and give the keys back. And then that place is gone forever from my life, which will be more stress and anxiety off my shoulders. I'm looking forward to that.
00:13:54
Speaker
I can actually introduce myself. I'm Alex Newman, found on Twitter at Mel underscore chronicler. My pronouns are he him. And to say one small thing that we've been doing for self care that I've been doing for self care. It's a good question. It comes back a lot. And in that spirit, I'm going to use an answer I've used before, because it's still remains solid. And that's buying like, jar candles, like I love the animal crossing.
00:14:24
Speaker
Well, no, not right now. We'll see how the rest of this month goes that makes I actually have not been playing it much recently though tomorrow Pokemon new Pokemon snap is available. So maybe that shows up in the next episode we record we'll see but and actually
00:14:41
Speaker
because you did specify recent. So I will say that I recently was at Target because I, as you may know, recently moved. So while there, I just decided I was going to buy candles because it's been a while I had a few I got some for Christmas. So I kind of had a stockpile and haven't really gone to buy new ones, which for at least for me is like part of the experience is getting to try out different sense because
00:15:03
Speaker
Well, I don't have a great sense of smell. I'm always congested. I have a dust allergy and things. So that's part of why I love scented candles. It's a way for me to kind of introduce something to my life that doesn't exist in most of it. Like a lot of the time I just don't have smell happening. And so I always enjoy getting to try this out and especially
00:15:26
Speaker
I can only like try like three or four candles before my nose starts to get fatigued but so it's kind of like really strategically picking the one that has like the attractive label that looks good and this is a scent that you know is something that I know I like so let's try this looks like something similar and so like that's always a part of the experience for me that I really enjoy.
00:15:47
Speaker
And we've talked about this a little bit in the past that for you, candles is one of those things that I love because it engages multiple senses. Yeah. And you know, there's the smell aspect to it. There's the actual flame. There's heat coming off of it. To me, it's like I love things that try to engage multiple of my senses, especially for kind of like either grounding or helping me to feel like just more relaxed, I would say. Oh, yeah. And if you can find the wood wick once you've got sound too, because those have you ever used? I love those.
00:16:16
Speaker
And I found one, and I may have shared this before, but I'm going to share it again because I think it's good, helpful, fun, a little anecdote. So my favorite candle of all time, and I can't tell you what brand it was, was one I found at Target. But it's a wood wick candle that was basically campfire scented. I don't think that's what they call it. I had a different name for it. But it was so perfect to the smell of the fires that we had at my cabin when I was growing up.
00:16:46
Speaker
and the sound of their crackling wood. So it hit me on kind of the nostalgia going back to that childhood memory on two senses at the same time. It's great. It's so good. That's awesome. I love everything about campfires. Like, I could just be happy just sitting out in front of a campfire for hours.
00:17:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's like, that's like one of those, like, um, it just brings me straight to childhood and it just like, yeah, I don't know. Emo Hobbs Q just looking into a flame, musing about life.
00:17:26
Speaker
Yeah. So, but yourself, Hobbs, is that an intro? I am Hobbs, and my pronouns are he, him. So, I kind of wanted to look at, is there anything different or new? Like, my exercise is one that's more of a routine at this point. I did, you know, with winter coming, it's becoming easier to get that more regular again, now that I'm coming off of winter. So,
00:17:52
Speaker
Actually, I would say this the artist proof project I've been doing is actually been a form of self care. I guess it's it's like a mixture of retail therapy, but also just like puzzle building, because
00:18:07
Speaker
This is one thing that I think when we had Dan on, when him and I did the episode on kind of like artist proofs and talked about flavor of decks and building, was this idea that finding artist proofs is a weird world. So you get the opportunities that like some people have agents, some people you deal with the artist directly.
00:18:28
Speaker
When I get to deal with the artist directly, I've been able to learn a lot more. We've had Titus on the show. We've had Adam Paquette on the show. And Titus is somebody that I just get to talk to on a regular basis now, because we had him on the show. I've talked artist proofs. And I've actually grown to have a relationship and a friendship. And getting to become friends with that piece of our community has just done wonders for me.
00:18:56
Speaker
So somebody that we're hoping to get on the show, Jeff Loebenstein. So I don't know if you either of you know about his project, what he's been doing. Yeah, I've seen his tokens project.
00:19:07
Speaker
So like that is a cool idea. And like, that's one of the things we're going to talk to him about eventually is like that self care piece. And through that project and me submitting that and then just talking to the dude, like it's really been fun to kind of like order proofs from somebody and get to have a conversation and just connect with the artist in our community in a way that is very different. And, um, it's also giving me a project. Like I'm somebody that needs a project and it was a dumb one. Like.
00:19:33
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to put together an EDH deck. I mean, I'm getting there. I almost have a hundred playable cards. Like, is it good? I don't know. Am I going to be excited to play it? Yeah. Yeah.
00:19:48
Speaker
That's awesome. Hobbs knows this, but I have a promo cube I built because I just love collecting promos and I decided I needed something to do with these as an excuse to continue collecting them. So I built a cube and then because it's hard to like even in the before times, it was hard to get people together to cube. I would just start making commander decks out of this massive collection of promos that I have.
00:20:15
Speaker
Um, often they weren't good, but it didn't matter, at least for me, because I was playing with all of these fun, goofy little promos that I found. And so I just was always grinning because I had a handful of like my favorite cards. Yeah.
00:20:30
Speaker
No, I totally understand. I started making a commander cube about two weeks ago, and that was a lot of... I just now have to just get the cards, but the act of trying to design it, as Hobbs said, it was a really nice puzzle to be like, okay, well, I need a simic commander, but I'm not putting Thrasios in. What archetypes do you want to support? What sort of thing?
00:20:59
Speaker
And then I really sort of realized like two days after I sort of really started doing this, my my grandmother passed away. And so I like I really threw myself into that project just as a way to like mitigate my grief. And so like that's part of the reason why why I finished it. So the design so fast. But it was it was like it was really just soothing to sort of do.
00:21:31
Speaker
So for our actual episode today, ALK kind of approached me and mentioned that there was kind of an aspect of mental health that we haven't talked about directly on this show.
ALK's Mental Health Care Experience
00:21:47
Speaker
And it's something that I have experience with more from the provider side of things.
00:21:52
Speaker
Just as a reminder, because it being Mental Health Month, I know that there could be this coming up a lot more. Everything I talk about on this show is always from the perspective of just me talking about my experiences. It is not clinical advice. It is not. I just always have to kind of preface that just. Yes, I it's weird. I know I'm awkward. I'm just leaning into it at this point. But, you know, we've been talking, I think, in
00:22:21
Speaker
the discord. We've been talking about kind of the language that magic has used, some of the concepts that really built out of Innistrad, which is a world of madness. And there is that concept of madness, and I mean, it's a key word actually, that does play on top of some of the kind of that era of sanitariums and this like idea of
00:22:46
Speaker
like mental institutions when people were institutionalized for a long time. But I also think that that is...
00:22:53
Speaker
sometimes what people have is kind of the perception of what it means if somebody has a mental health crisis and what it might mean if somebody, you know, or even just what treatment does look like in mental health. I don't think a lot of people know or think about this stuff and it can be very scary and it can be very much like a reason I have seen people not seek out care
00:23:20
Speaker
And A-OK, you actually approached and kind of was like, hey, this is actually something that I might want to talk about. Yeah, to just go ahead and put it out there. So I have done both what they call inpatient care, which is
00:23:47
Speaker
staying at a hospital and outpatient care, which is just sort of going to a hospital and doing classes basically for mental health. And I've done those both on separate occasions. So I spent not a super long time, three days in inpatient care, and then about 10 days in outpatient care.
00:24:14
Speaker
So I want to talk about that because you mentioned that, you know, the inpatient stay of like three days, um, that actually is probably kind of an, a newer concept for maybe people that are out there listening. You know, I mean, I think that historically we think of mental health hospitalizations as being like institutions, right? That's what people are oftentimes picturing or worried is going to happen. You know, that I'm going to be institutionalized.
00:24:43
Speaker
Yeah, I'd say the the public sort of perception of that has solidified over, you know, one flew over the cuckoo's nest. And that that hasn't really that impression hasn't really improved since that that movie was was in the 70s, I believe. Yep, 70s. Mm hmm.
00:25:05
Speaker
Ken Kesey actually, that was very interesting. So the author of it was one of the people really part of the counterculture movement with like the LSD experiments and kind of everything. And he kind of, the novel itself is really meant to be kind of a commentary on more than specifically mental health, but he got the idea for it, working at one of these mental health hospitals that, you know, people came to and they stayed and they stayed for long periods of time.
00:25:37
Speaker
Yeah, and my experience from, you know, from when I made the decision to seek what we'll call emergency help at that particular point in time, you know, we went to a, me and my wife went to a
00:26:01
Speaker
an emergency therapist, basically. And I told the therapist my situation and what had happened. And then my therapist, using that and knowing that therapist, using that and knowing my history, recommended an inpatient care experience. And that was really mostly based around my safety.
00:26:31
Speaker
And so the way it was explained to me is that the inpatient facility was a way to make sure that I was in a safe environment, that my meds could get sort of figured out and that whatever had prompted this most recent crisis could be addressed and
00:27:01
Speaker
it could be established that I was not a danger to myself before leaving the facility. So yeah, and that's what I want to kind of talk about a little bit today when it comes to how inpatient psychiatric hospitalizations tend to work these days. Because I think that this is where
00:27:25
Speaker
I will fully admit people are afraid to talk about stuff like suicide or talk
Modern Psychiatric Care Discussion
00:27:30
Speaker
about self-harm, and part of that fear is that you're just going to be forced into a place kind of against your will. I always tell people, and this is kind of just being from the field, just mentioning that you're having thoughts of this is not enough for me to say, hold you against your will.
00:28:01
Speaker
that isn't to that level, but that I am worried about, I want to do everything that I can to work with the person. And it is kind of like that you were saying, the idea behind psychiatric hospitalizations now is really about stabilization. It's really about safety. It's really about helping people that maybe don't feel that they are safe being home and recognizing that piece to it.
00:28:23
Speaker
And actually, even if I have somebody that
00:28:30
Speaker
Now, I will say that's not always everybody's experience, you know, because there are people that are hospitalized against their will. Because of kind of symptoms getting to the point where they are a danger to themselves or others, and they may not be able to recognize that. That can happen. But you're kind of saying that you recognize that something
00:28:57
Speaker
needed to be done. Basically that you didn't feel and it sounds like for you and your wife that it was the best idea for you to kind of stay just outpatient at this point. Yeah, so the precipitating event. I had been working from home that summer. And
00:29:23
Speaker
work had really become like the biggest stressor in my life and the biggest cause of my anxiety, which was leading to my depression and that sort of stuff. And there was a, I was feeling very overwhelmed and there was a specific thing going on at work that I like, I just couldn't handle. And so, um, I did a very minor
00:29:45
Speaker
like very, very minor act of self-harm. But as soon as I did it, I was like, oh shit, this is not going to end anywhere well. I need to call my wife. I need to figure out what to do next, because this is not the path that I want to be on. And so that's what led to it. And with the...
00:30:13
Speaker
the advice of the therapist there and with the, you know, the counsel of my wife. It was my decision, but it was made all together with everyone.
00:30:31
Speaker
So you mentioned kind of that this was a collaborative piece between you and your wife and the therapist. You guys kind of did talk about this, right? Like you kind of met and discussed this. Was this a therapist that you had a relationship with or was this a place you had gone to be evaluated? So this was a place that I had gone to be evaluated. This therapist I did not have a relationship with. This is part of the
00:31:01
Speaker
uh, you know, the medical mega corporation in the area that, you know, dominates the area that I live in. This is their behavioral health center. Um, and this was, this was the therapist whose job this was to be, you know, sort of on hand, um, in case of more emergency situations. So I'm wondering based on kind of what you were talking about, like leading up to this,
00:31:30
Speaker
Event to this to this actual, you know what we would call kind of like the precipitating event the actual kind of like point Are you somebody that if you're if you feel comfortable talking about it, you know how it was mental health struggles new to you was this something that you have dealt with and have been you know that you were at least aware that you had had kind of Yeah, I mean is this something that you have dealt with previously? Um, yeah, so I personally
00:32:00
Speaker
had been seeing therapists for about, let's see, that was
00:32:11
Speaker
two years ago now, and then probably three years before that. And I had a therapist. We sort of fell off appointments because she had fallen ill, and I didn't get a new therapist. And then I had been in outpatient therapy about, um,
00:32:40
Speaker
nine months before that. And I had been seeing a psychiatrist as well at that time. So you kind of had a medication piece to it. You were working on also, you know, you were doing some outpatient, but there was kind of an idea that like, this is not enough. And I think that that is one things that we kind of look at and that I kind of think of when it comes to hospitalization is at some point, you know, like,
00:33:05
Speaker
your normal coping mechanisms, your normal coping strategies, those that kind of work on a day-to-day basis become overwhelmed, or they get to the point where it's not your baseline. And we talked about this a lot on the show. This idea of the word normal, for instance, is the idea that it's unique to each of us.
00:33:28
Speaker
I mean, that's one of those things that I hate the word normal, except for the fact, like, I hate it as a concept of generally. I love it when you're talking about yourself. Yeah, definitely. Like I know how I sort of, how I felt and how I want to feel. And I can tell, you know, when I'm not feeling that way and like for a long time, I wasn't feeling that way. And now that I'm sort of back to feeling that way,
00:33:58
Speaker
I can feel that difference. So you mentioned kind of the – it did escalate to kind of a self-harm something, and that kind of – it almost sounds like it scared you a little bit.
00:34:14
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And I don't know, like I said, if you feel comfortable talking, I mean, are you somebody that has struggled in the past with having those thoughts? You know, we talked on the show back with Chase quite a while ago now. We talked about suicidal ideation and we talked about this and, you know, I think even at that point, you know, I had talked about some of my own more
00:34:37
Speaker
Passive just kind of rather not be alive or those intrusive thoughts of like I could just turn my car Wheel while driving down the road, you know You know, I've never had it raised to that level but the thoughts are there and I think that this is something else that I try to normalize or just discuss is that's why I talked about is like There becomes a point where that becomes different for a lot of people Yeah, and the
00:35:05
Speaker
I had been dealing with those sort of like passive thoughts for about two years beforehand. And in that moment,
00:35:19
Speaker
like you know when they they ask you um a lot of times if you've had suicidal thoughts the the next question is you know do you have a plan or can you see yourself acting on those thoughts um and it wasn't like that it was it didn't feel
00:35:39
Speaker
I hate to use the word rational, but it just didn't feel like I had a plan down executed. I just felt really stressed out and awful, and this was the only way I could express it. Every other avenue to me had been blocked off, which I know now wasn't true, but in that moment when you're feeling that way, that's the way you feel.
00:36:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I think rational is a great way to kind of mention it, right? Like in the moment, it did make sense that that was, you're like seeing those other options, they start becoming limited. You don't see those as being, well, you don't really see them as being options.
00:36:28
Speaker
So you mentioned that you went and you stayed, right? Did you do this voluntarily? Were you put on a hold? I did it voluntarily. There was a spot open for me to stay in the hospital that day. But it took so long. It probably took about
00:36:54
Speaker
10 hours for me. We went to the behavioral therapist's office probably around noon and talked and made the decision then.
00:37:08
Speaker
in my room in the inpatient unit at 11 p.m. or midnight. There was a lot of waiting. We had to go to just the ER of that hospital. It was all one big complex, so there was a general
00:37:33
Speaker
medicine hospital there and we had to go to the ER and like you know do all the sort of check-in ER stuff of
00:37:42
Speaker
uh, taking your levels and all of that. And then we just waited. We waited for so long and it was, that was the most awful part was just like, cause you know, I had made this decision and there was no going back at that point. Like I couldn't like, there was no one even to talk to. There was no, like there were doctors there, but they were running around doing ER stuff.
00:38:04
Speaker
I couldn't turn into the doctors. I'd just rather go home right now. I've changed my mind. We're good. This is one of the things that can be a difficult part in our community. There aren't a lot of beds. I'm going to be very honest. Oh, yeah. There is a lack of beds available at times.
00:38:32
Speaker
Well, and we can find that and then. Sorry, go ahead. No, no, you you I was just yeah, that was done. I'm good. I mean, I think that's the really, you know, the difficult thing. I of course, an inpatient, there aren't a lot of beds and both inpatient and outpatient. I realized there just aren't a lot of doctors. Mm hmm. Yes, there's a real shortage of like
00:39:00
Speaker
psychiatrists in particular, like prescribing doctors. So kind of a brief history of mental health treatment was, there was a big push, especially in the 80s, to move away from institutionalization. On the whole,
00:39:15
Speaker
That's actually a good thing in my opinion. I actually think that moving away from long-term, especially if we think with people with schizophrenia, people with bipolar, people with some of the serious mental illness, the people that I deal with, that I tend to work with and what my specialty is in.
00:39:33
Speaker
this is where we kind of get that idea of like a sanitarium. This is where people like lived in a hospital. And that's where they spent their time. And they basically went there, they got their diagnosis, and they lived at the hospital. And that was the rest of their life. That isn't a good thing. Like, the idea behind having hospitals maybe be, you know, like us reducing beds, and not having these facilities like that,
00:39:57
Speaker
because we want to get people stabilized. We want people to be able to do the work on outpatient is really actually a great thing.
00:40:06
Speaker
The flip side of that is what that actually means is there's cuts in funding for mental health. There's just not actually the resources, which is the sad part, right? Like if we spun this as an ideal world, hospitalization is all about getting people back to be able to be back in their community where they have support and hospitalization really is a way to kind of help with safety. That would be great and that would be ideal.
00:40:33
Speaker
what we got was close all of these facilities down and not have other resources.
Challenges of Inpatient Care
00:40:41
Speaker
So yeah, so it was about, again, late at night, when I got finally got into my room, and sort of get, you know, just getting adjusted, of course, you know, you have to, at least I don't know what the rules are everywhere, but you have to hand over your phone, all of anything that could be used to like,
00:41:03
Speaker
record or contact the outside world or anything like that. You can't have with you. You can't have your shoes. If they have shoelaces, those have to be taken from you. Anything that could be realistically used to harm yourself, they take from you. But you're allowed to, they
00:41:29
Speaker
do provide you with a gown if you don't have anything else or whatever, but they do let you wear your own clothes. They let your family bring you clothes and bring you other things into the unit. My biggest
00:41:49
Speaker
My biggest things were like, you know, just having nice clean clothes because there was a shower in my room, which was also like one of the best feelings was just to like be able to take a shower.
00:42:02
Speaker
And then, you know, wear a new clean set of clothes and wear your own clothes, which feel comfortable and like make you feel more comfortable in the unit. And then books is just like having something to do to pass the time when you're not in sessions. Because we went through probably five or six sessions a day and then there was like an evening activity or something. But that's a lot of downtime.
00:42:31
Speaker
And there's very little else to do, and it's very boring. And so they had a bunch of books there. I started reading the Da Vinci Code, and I was like, oh, the Da Vinci Code is just awful. I think it was in the sense of just remembering units that I have worked on, because I have worked on an impeachment. It's just like how old some of our books are sometimes.
00:43:02
Speaker
And so my wife was able to bring me books and that was a lot, very helpful to have my own books that I could read. And then the other thing that was really sort of odd to me, but I get why they did it, is they didn't let us have caffeine.
00:43:23
Speaker
all of the, they had it like a coffee pot, but it was decaffeinated and then there were no other sources of caffeine, which I understand, like, you know, caffeine can, it's,
00:43:35
Speaker
pretty powerful drug and it can affect your mood and all of that. And they want to, you know, get a baseline for people. But for someone like me who is probably drinks too much caffeine in the morning, like that sort of headache situation is not one that I want to deal with. So my wife actually brought me like Jerry Koch's too.
00:44:01
Speaker
So I think of it as, you know, like there's two of the bigger complaints that I get from people. The caffeine is definitely one. And for a lot of people, smoking.
00:44:12
Speaker
Yeah, of course. This is wild to me to see from the differences even from the early 2000s to now. One of my first jobs after college was doing overnight admissions at a mental health hospital. At that point, there was a smoke shack that was attached to the locked part of it.
00:44:34
Speaker
Like I had to like go take people out there and like watch them because you know like they're like waiting to be Like moved to a unit like it was wild like that just you know You that was still part of it like you could go smoke there was like they went out and smoked multiple times a day and now locked units really don't have that and so you know like
00:44:58
Speaker
they will offer you a patch. And, you know, like, it is going to be very effective. But there are a lot of people that are like, I don't want to go because I can't smoke. Right. Yeah. No. And, you know, I don't smoke, but I understand, you know, how strong that can be. I think one of the things you're talking about, you know, I'm really glad to hear the unit you were on had stuff to do. Right. Like the idea behind it with kind of this
00:45:27
Speaker
So the recovery model is something that I talked about last year during Mental Health Awareness Month, which is really meant to be a move away from medical model and really a move towards kind of patient-centered care or client-centered care that really is involving people in their recovery.
00:45:48
Speaker
Part of this is recognizing that, you know, even if you're only going to be there for a couple of days, having programming, having that opportunity to learn some coping skills, to not just have this be basically, okay, we're going to change your medications and you sit here for three days and we come up with a treatment plan for when you leave, but to actually start some of that work while you're there.
00:46:10
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And the, you know, both my outpatient and my inpatient experiences, the classes were fairly robust.
00:46:22
Speaker
with cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectic behavioral therapy, doing stuff like using art to express your feelings, learning about medicine and medication and the science behind behavioral therapy and
00:46:44
Speaker
basic neurological science. All of that was a strong emphasis. There were also group therapy sessions, and that's the part that I was getting to when I said there aren't enough doctors, is you realize, or at least in my experiences,
00:47:09
Speaker
When I got to outpatient therapy for the first time, I was like, oh, like I'm going to be, you know, it's going to be like going to my therapist.
00:47:20
Speaker
like, I'll see a person and talk about, you know, like, have a therapy session every day. And that just doesn't happen because there aren't enough doctors, basically, as far as I know, that's the reason there aren't enough doctors to do that. There is not. I mean, yeah, that that is very, very true. And that's and that can mean I think that's, you know, that was difficult for me to accept at first when I was doing outpatient therapy, because like, I'm, you know, I'm here.
00:47:48
Speaker
to fix my problems, I'm not here to fix the 10 other people in this group therapy sessions. And so that and like learning, like learning to cope with that was a little difficult. And there are like, I think group therapy is, there are things you can learn from it, though. You know, it's, it's really good at building empathy.
00:48:18
Speaker
in that my problems, my problems were severe enough that I had to be in an inpatient facility, but I had a very good support network. I was never worried about my job. My wife was constantly visiting and taking care of me and my family was in contact and all of that. So I was doing,
00:48:43
Speaker
I had as good of a support network as anyone could ask for outside of inpatient therapy. And there are people who just didn't have that support system and were dealing with more major problems than me. And so really getting a sense for what these people are dealing with and
00:49:10
Speaker
It really builds your empathy in that way.
00:49:15
Speaker
and learning, talking to other people and learning their experiences and then hearing what works for them with their coping skills and getting that support from them. I think that was stronger in outpatient therapy than it was in inpatient therapy, at least in my two very specific instances. But I think that that was something that was really great and really
00:49:42
Speaker
that was something valuable that it took away that I wasn't expecting.
00:49:46
Speaker
I mean, so, you know, I've worked on in inpatient units where the goal is the short term stay. One of the things that can be can happen a lot of times is there's, you know, the average length of stay is pretty short, especially with I think people coming in with kind of maybe some safety concerns, the depressions up, they're really worried about kind of, they just, they don't feel safe. And I think that that's something that I want to kind of demystify is like it being a place where that that is appropriate to come to.
00:50:17
Speaker
There's also the flip side, like inpatient units can be chaotic. There are people that are there with pretty serious symptom presentations and that don't have anywhere else to go. I think you mentioned like you had the support system, you had that kind of in place, you had a treatment plan.
00:50:37
Speaker
I mean, and this is coming from working in the VA where we're not getting people from the community, but we had people that just – there wasn't that. There wasn't a support system. There wasn't a good discharge plan. There wasn't that clarity.
00:50:55
Speaker
we would get people staying on the unit for a lot longer of a period. And there's times that that meant that the unit itself could also be a chaotic place that can happen. I think that it is
00:51:12
Speaker
I don't think it is like what people picture and they think that it's just like people running around and screaming and you know like I give things like that are over the top like we talked about with one flew over the cuckoo's nest or these like the media portrayals of like what a hospitalization looks like and it though is that it still is a restrictive environment and it still is a
00:51:37
Speaker
a place that people, not everybody is there voluntarily.
00:51:43
Speaker
It can be a traumatic experience and I think that that's one thing that I don't want to underemphasize. We're talking about this because I really want people to get a sense of what inpatient can be and what the purpose of it is and really what we hope happens. I've also had the people that have been hospitalized against their will and that can make it very difficult to engage in care after that happens. Yeah.
00:52:12
Speaker
It certainly wasn't fun. It was not just sing alongs all night. I remember the first time I talked to my therapist after coming home from the hospital, we were talking about it. I was like, man, that was really not fun. He's like, it's not supposed to be fun.
00:52:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's there. There's things like, you know, you have to deal with, like, you really, one of the weird things is this, this loss of autonomy over yourself. Like, when you're in there,
00:53:01
Speaker
you I mean you could choose like just choose not to go to therapy and plenty of people did that and they're like no one was going to drag you to the sessions if you didn't want to go but like you know they were checking on your your taking blood samples in the middle of the night and like doing like very sort of and like you know you're living in a room with an open door and
00:53:28
Speaker
or all of that, it is invasive and it is dehumanizing to a degree. You're denied freedom, you're denied some of the basic things that you've come to count on for your own autonomy. And I think that's
00:53:58
Speaker
For me, it was effective in that it helped level me out and figure out a new medication plan and get me out of crisis situation. But as you said, it was a little dramatic.
00:54:20
Speaker
I mean, my first job, I remember kind of getting into it to do this. Like part of my job was to literally, I mean, it is safety, right? So I had to do, I worked the overnight shifts. Part of my job involved like having to go and make sure people were still breathing. And I do mean that. Like I literally had to like shine a flashlight on a ceiling to make sure I could see people breathing.
00:54:44
Speaker
And I know how poor of a sleeper I am, right? Like every 30 minutes even, you know, like people would be on different levels of checks based on level of safety and everything else. Like, you know, like it would not. I would really, it would be very difficult I think for me who already struggles with sleep. And that may be what, if I was ever to be hospitalized, I think sleep would probably be one of the indicators that led me there.
00:55:12
Speaker
There are those very real pieces. It is invasive. It is intrusive. You're going to get asked a lot of the same questions every single day. That's another thing that I think about. You're getting asked, especially if you were in there maybe for thoughts of self-harm, you're going to get asked for over and over again. How are you feeling? Do you have thoughts of wanting to kill yourself today? It happens.
00:55:43
Speaker
there's, it is a medical facility. It still is, as you said, even at a nice open recovery place, there is a loss of sense of autonomy. And especially if you're not there necessarily by choice, you know, there really is like you can
00:56:05
Speaker
want to leave and just basically be told no. And you can even go involuntarily, and this is something that I do wanna let people know, logistics, right? Going involuntarily is always a better kind of situation in my experience. I will say though that going involuntarily into a locked type unit like this does not really mean that you can just leave whenever you want to.
00:56:35
Speaker
Um, you walk in that door and you just say, you know what, this was a bad idea. I don't want to be here anymore. And the reason that you were going in, even if it was voluntarily was because of concerns about harming yourself. Like the doctors can then choose to say, well, you're staying, um, you know,
00:57:00
Speaker
It can happen, and I'm not gonna lie and say that it doesn't, but I think it is clear to people that voluntarily means that you show that you're willing to be engaged in the process. It shows that you recognize that you need help versus somebody who just flat out says, well, as soon as I leave this appointment today, I'm going to kill myself. There's a big difference.
00:57:29
Speaker
but it doesn't mean that you have complete autonomy just even if you go involuntarily. I don't think I was ever told that specific thing that you just said. I got there and I was like, this is not fun. This sucks. I would very much like to leave. But I realized that the best way out
00:57:58
Speaker
for me was to participate in the program and to, you know, make sure that I was getting better and make sure that the experience that I had in there wasn't wasted. And so that, you know, that I was actually getting better and I wasn't just getting out to get out.
00:58:28
Speaker
You didn't get to the point where you were just saying exactly the words that needed to be said. Yeah, no, I, you know, I was being honest and I was participating in the process and you know, it's.
00:58:43
Speaker
To be perfectly honest, as a person who has gone through a lot of the screenings and stuff, it's pretty easy to know what the good answers to the questions are and what the bad answers to the questions are. But you don't actually get better if you do that.
00:59:03
Speaker
What I think that you said, you know, like you agreed to do and this is what is a lot more common now. Places are starting to offer this idea of what's called like a partial hospitalization program, which is usually kind of a step down after inpatient where it's kind of intensive day treatment. And I always like will want to talk a little bit about that aspect of it because the idea here is
00:59:27
Speaker
this is not day treatment in the sense of like the goal is that you go and just like play pool and drink coffee and hang out with some people during the daytime. Because I mean that is literally what we used to do, right? Like that is what kind of day treatment originally was. The idea here is that you're doing kind of intensive treatment over a couple week period often. And the idea is that you're going to go to groups all day long.
00:59:57
Speaker
Ideally, a lot of these are skills-based groups where you're actually getting the tools that you need to work on. I think one of the biggest parts for me that I work with people both before and after hospitalizations is kind of the idea of a wellness plan. Learning new coping strategies, learning how to recognize those signs that I'm not doing as well.
01:00:21
Speaker
noticing what led up to getting you there before to kind of, you know, ideally prevent it from happening again.
01:00:33
Speaker
Yeah. And that my outpatient thing was a PHP. Um, and I really like became to view it as sort of like therapy school. Like you would go in the mornings and like you'd be in therapy classes all day and it finished up around three o'clock and it was therapy school. Um, and it's, it's really about learning and like building those, those coping skills and those strategies.
01:01:02
Speaker
Did you guys do kind of, you know, I'm just curious from your experience and going through all of this, we are fully recognizing that not everybody's experience is going to be the same. Part of what ALK had kind of emphasized to me to begin with was like, this is what my experience was. And that's all we can do on here is talk about our own journeys and our own experiences. And, you know, I definitely know people who have had
01:01:28
Speaker
Fantastic, great experiences even with ending up possible hospitalized. I know the flip side. But I'm curious because this is something that I find to be important when I'm talking to people or trying to help them is, you know, did you do kind of a good like, you know, like I think if it was like a root cause analysis or doing it like an after action plan where you kind of.
01:01:49
Speaker
talked about, okay, well, what were those signs? What was going on? Like, what led up to this? With my therapy, not as part of that process, I don't believe maybe I did. I do it more with my therapist, who is from a separate practice from the
01:02:15
Speaker
inpatient unit. You know, my therapist is very big on, you know, if there is an incident exploring, you know, those causes of the incident and
Critique of Magic: The Gathering's Language
01:02:29
Speaker
you know, what I can do, what the thoughts, the automatic negative thoughts that are occurring from the incident, what I can do to mitigate those thoughts, and then, you know, what I can do in the next time if an incident like this
01:02:53
Speaker
could happen again to be proactive and to not let it happen. So one of the other things that we know, this is a lot less of a magic episode and we understand that. We talked a little bit at the beginning about kind of
01:03:14
Speaker
mental health in general is not really covered in magic. No. And where it is covered, it is not covered. It's not great. Great. You know, and so I want to bring this up because I think that this is an element to our game that is not really, I don't know, like it is not an area that we have
01:03:43
Speaker
You know, when we find our topics, it is storyline wise, we've gotten some of it. We got cards that talk about psychosis and psychotic episode actually is a card. These are actually like clinical things on cards that really do not represent what they are.
01:04:03
Speaker
how Ravnica functioned, the concept of madness really harkens back to very stigmatizing approaches to mental health.
01:04:17
Speaker
I think for me, having this discussion and being frank with it, with UALK is like, I want us to be able to talk about these because I think that people don't know what to expect if something happens. If they end up in crisis, they just don't know. And the unknown is so scary. Yeah, definitely. And I, um,
01:04:46
Speaker
You know, I have had some family experience with mental health before this. So I had a little bit more of an idea of what I was getting into. But it's still scary. It was scary to me when I was going through it, even with that knowledge. And it's, you know, I tend to look at the, you know,
01:05:16
Speaker
my mental health in a very frank manner when it comes to the big things like suicide or self-harm is like you don't, or sometimes if your attempt fails, you might not get an out from suicide.
01:05:39
Speaker
Like if you're successful, that's it. You don't get to fix it. You don't get a second chance. Like you're just done. And so like that is just something that needs to be avoided and dealt with and not gotten to that point.
01:06:03
Speaker
And so that incident with me, that was the absolute stopping point. Because once you get into that sort of territory, then there could be no going back. And so that is what helped me make that decision. And I think that is something that's
01:06:32
Speaker
When it gets to that point, it doesn't seem like there are other options and it doesn't mean that the other options are good. But it just really does. You cannot see the other options at that point. Sometimes people have happened kind of, I think, what you're describing. Like you get to a point where you did something that scared you.
01:06:55
Speaker
And I'm guessing from and like I said What you've described so far part of what scared you was because it like made clear kind of where this could head um, I Am curious what was your biggest fear about going inpatient? Like that's something that I just I'm curious about I you know, I'm a
01:07:20
Speaker
This is going to sound dumb. I'm a very home-bodied person. As that classic introvert thing, I get my energy from being at home. And the idea of being trapped in a place, if I wanted to get out, if I absolutely wanted to get out that I couldn't,
01:07:49
Speaker
that they wouldn't let me and so like just that that fear of being i guess trapped away yeah i mean the fear that that you don't have autonomy and i mean i think that one thing that happens is people don't know you know you don't know what the rules are you don't know what like doctors can and can't do um
01:08:13
Speaker
I think the fear of the unknown and the fear of what – I always think of it as kind of really is taking away freedom, and there may be a reason for it, right? Safety is one of these – it trumps everything. I mean to the point where you can tell me about – you can literally tell me about committing a murder, and if you don't have a plan – you're telling me you don't have a plan to harm somebody,
01:08:38
Speaker
Like that's not one of those things that I can break confidence about. You could tell me you, you beat your wife. If you're not planning on killing her and it's not an imminent threat, like you, you know, that's where, you know, we talk about confidentiality. Well, we do have limits, right? Like there isn't that, you know, like, and one of those is safety and safety usually is not just for other people, but for yourself and,
01:09:06
Speaker
That decision can get made for you that you are going to be hospitalized. And that I think is a very scary thing. I work with younger people whose kind of first experience with the mental health system was because, so as I said, working with people with schizophrenia or schizophrenia kind of spectrum disorders. For some people, their first experience with mental health is getting hospitalized, right?
01:09:34
Speaker
That's an incredibly scary thing if you're experiencing mental health symptoms so severe for the first time and then you have all of your autonomy and just taken away from you and usually in a state where you don't really know what is going on. And like I said, that's different than kind of I know what you're talking about here.
01:09:57
Speaker
I do always want to kind of highlight that it can be a traumatic experience. And in fact, to the point where some therapies that we do, especially with younger people who have gone through this, is processing the hospitalization as if it were a trauma. And while that is the case, and that does happen,
01:10:23
Speaker
A lot of hospitalizations are really what you're describing here, that it is for a person's well-being because we don't want to see them take their life.
Encouragement for Seeking Help
01:10:36
Speaker
And their medications might not be working. That happens, or their coping mechanisms are to the point where they're failing or they're not really doing what they normally do.
01:10:52
Speaker
Yeah, and if there's one thing to people listening to this episode, if I would like them to take away is if you find yourself in that
01:11:09
Speaker
that situation where you don't feel like you have any other options. Hospitalization can work. It did work for me. Again, I'm only speaking from my own experience. But one of the things that I sort of wanted to do
01:11:27
Speaker
when I got out of the hospital was like try and think about ways that I could talk about my experience in a way that was helpful for me to sort of process it, but helpful for other people too, to de-stigmatize what I feel like is one of the most stigmatized pieces of mental health.
01:11:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean, I will say, I've definitely worked with people whose goal as they're kind of leaving inpatient is to never be inpatient again. And I mean,
01:12:07
Speaker
gallows humor as it can be I kind of like well that's my goal too right like you're right like it but we are here if you need it this is a place for you to come back to um sure I would love for people I work with that have a history of multiple suicide attempts to get to a point where
01:12:29
Speaker
They never need to be hospitalized again. I also want people to realize that it is available to them and it's not going to be, like you said, it's not a fun time. It's not necessarily meant to be a fun time. But I also think that there is a lot of.
01:12:48
Speaker
fear that is unfounded or a lot of fear that is based on stigma, media perceptions, even within our own game, the use of language. I know at some point we're going to talk more about this on an episode, but just how language is used with
01:13:11
Speaker
like psychotic and psycho and psychopath and like these get used interchangeably when they're really, they mean things. And I think that the games industry, just like TV is something that we're very far behind when it comes to the stigma with mental health and even recognizing that it is okay to talk about if you're having these thoughts.
01:13:37
Speaker
Although I just want to put it out there. It wasn't all bad. Um, I did win a game of bingo while in the hospital. I think I, I think my, the prize I took was a bigger mug so I could drink more decaf coffee. I worked at one facility where we served like Senka, which is like the worst stuff ever. Like that's not even like fake coffee at that point. It was just like, that's what we could offer.
01:14:10
Speaker
Well, ALK, I really appreciate you just coming and talking very openly about what your experiences have been in this manner. We've talked a lot on here in the show about different mental health and how to cope and all this, but there is a point where I think all of our resources do get taxed.
01:14:33
Speaker
The willingness that you kind of showed was, you know, that there was something that was important for you to keep going.
Conclusion and Gratitude
01:14:41
Speaker
And you had to use this tool that was at your disposal, I mean, in some ways to be able to do that. Yeah, definitely. And I'm, you know, I'm, again, I didn't enjoy the experience, but it is better than the alternative.
01:15:01
Speaker
And for that alone, I'm glad I did it. So kind of on our way out, is there anything that you want to share that was either just like parting words of wisdom or just things that you wish you had known or do know now? Yeah, is there anything else that you just wanted to kind of wrap us up with?
01:15:23
Speaker
I don't know how they do food and you know every hospital across the country or across the world. Always we got little cards with like meal options for every day.
01:15:38
Speaker
It's important to sort of vary your meals each day. Like don't have, get the same thing for, for lunch as you do for dinner. Cause none of the food is that great. And if your lunch turns out to be not great, then your dinner is just going to be a huge disappointment.
01:15:56
Speaker
Always check the dessert. That's a pro strat and see if they have extra desserts. Sometimes they have extra desserts. I mean, this is like the gamification of hospitalization. I like it. Even then you were thinking as a gamer. Well, we really, like I said, we really appreciate you coming on to talk about this topic. I obviously have kind of the flip side of kind of working on these units and
01:16:26
Speaker
I've thought about what it would be like for me myself. I've had struggles with depression. I've had struggles with anxiety. I've gotten to the point where I've considered, and this was in much younger Hobbes years, but knowing that it is there and I would go if I needed to, it's still scary. And I still think that it's just something that we,
01:16:54
Speaker
to me need to talk more about in our community in general, just like there is a continuum of mental health care and it does rise to something like this at times.
01:17:07
Speaker
Yeah, well, thank you both for having me on and giving me this safe space to talk about my experience and be listened to in a way that was, you know, not judgmental and supportive and
01:17:29
Speaker
Really, I hope that the people who listen to this get something out of it and can learn from my experience.
01:17:43
Speaker
And do you want to let everybody know where they can actually find you? I don't know if we did that at the beginning. I feel like some people may want to actually follow you or like learn about what else you do with your cool art. Yeah. So I'm at Altars ALK, all one word on Twitter and Instagram. Instagram is like my, just my main full, um, posting pretty pictures of digital card images. Um, Twitter has that as well as, you
01:18:13
Speaker
know, basic Twitter stuff, which can vary from day to day.
01:18:25
Speaker
Those are my two main accounts. Am I allowed to talk about Patreon? Yeah, you can talk about anything you want. Yeah, I'm on Patreon. I do a various number of tiers, but the most exciting ones are the $10 and $20 tiers where I do mailings of
01:18:54
Speaker
card-shaped landscapes and critters, as I call them, that don't have the intellectual property of any particular company on them. And if you do the $20 level, you get a set of all five for the month. If you do the $10 level, you get one chosen at random, and I am going to be posting the May one soon, and they'll be out, of course, when this episode goes live.
01:19:28
Speaker
And like I said, this is the first of our episodes. We will be having Chase will be back on with us for this month. We are working on kind of having her join us for a couple of episodes. This month is very important to Alex and I as we kind of with this cast. And I don't know that we can overstate that. You know, the regular listeners of the show are going to be well aware that Alex and I have talked about our own
01:19:57
Speaker
struggles and our own kind of difficulties and those things that we have done. And we really just want to be using this month in particular. I mean, we do it all year, but to take the fact that there is mental health awareness month to kind of attack stigma. I mean, I think that at the end of the day, if I could say one thing about what we are trying to do, nope, not using that word try, do or do not, there is no try. I'm correcting myself. One thing that we are going to do,
01:20:26
Speaker
doesn't mean we'll be successful. But one thing that we are doing is we are putting this out there hoping to reduce stigma, to start conversations that we believe need to be had about mental health in particular, because this is an area that is very important, I think, to both Alex and I.
01:20:51
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, and when I think I've said it on the cast before, but it's something I'll say again. When I first started to see a therapist to work, I mean, even be diagnosed with my social anxiety, I very quickly learned that the two most helpful things for me were to, one, talk to other people about what I was going through.
01:21:13
Speaker
And two, listen to what other people were going through, listen to their experiences. Because even if they were very different from mine, that was still helpful for me trying to figure out what was going on in my own brain and work through that. And so just having those conversations, giving a space for those, using what platform we have to bring on other people to talk about their experiences. So thank you very much for coming on ALK.
01:21:42
Speaker
This is something that we want to do and without people willing to come on and share their experiences, we're limited in what we can do. So we really appreciate you coming on. Well, thanks.
01:21:56
Speaker
And that's our show for today. You can find the host on Twitter. HotzPew can be found at HotzPew, and Alex Newman can be found at Mel underscore comical. Send any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to at goblinmoorpod on Twitter, or email us at goblinmoorpodcast at email.com.
01:22:14
Speaker
If you want to support your friendly neighborhood gospel, the cast can be found at patreon.com. Opening and closing music by Vindergotten, who can be found on twitter at Vindergotten, or online at vindergotten.bandcamp.com. Logo art by Steven Raffaele, who can be found on twitter at Steve Raffaele.
01:22:37
Speaker
Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing Vorthos content, as well as magic content of all kinds. Check them out on Twitter at hipstersmtg or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you all for listening, and remember, goblins, like snowflakes, are only dangerous in numbers.