Challenges with mental health and substance use this past year have been near-universal. Oklahoma City’s street paper spoke with those impacted and those working on the frontlines of mental health services.
Fred Maxwell was speed reading on his porch in Oklahoma City, but he didn’t need to be in such a hurry.
He paused reading his book and surveyed his actions. He had been multitasking this whole time. He was sipping coffee, playing the radio and greeting neighbors. All while speed reading like he had an English report to turn in the next day.
“I’m trying to read something and enjoy it, but there I was skipping words,” Maxwell recalled. “I had gotten in the habit of never being where I was. I have to learn how to just be. You know, I struggle with that all the time. My ultimate goal is to just recover from a lifetime of being in a rush.”
Maxwell isn’t alone in experiencing increased feelings of stress as a result of isolation. Throughout the U.S., mental health treatment and addiction recovery programs have been disrupted — all while COVID-19 has sparked an increase in reported symptoms of anxiety and depression. In late June, 40% of U.S. adults reported struggling with mental health or substance use, according to findings reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The New York Times dug into the study and learned that 5,400 people completed this online survey. Anxiety symptoms were three times as high as those reported in the second quarter of 2019, while depression was four times as high.
Maxwell found his veteran recovery group after a year of experiencing homelessness. He has attended meetings almost every Thursday for the past two years. When his weekly meetings were canceled in March due to COVID-19, it was harder to be around people and difficult for Fred to express himself. For months, he said he didn’t share his feelings of isolation with anyone.
He’s a widower and all six of his kids have lives of their own. He tells me that he can often feel warehoused — as if he has been put on a shelf to expire. He has felt the weight of depression during the pandemic, and he didn’t think to call another veteran to talk about it. Life without his group meetings was tough.
“It’s just lonely,” he said. “It’s bad to be left with your own thoughts. The main advantage of being in a group is having a chance to express yourself, no matter how crazy you might sound. You say it out loud, and it helps.
“But if you’re always by yourself, then you can convince yourself of anything,” he continued. “A bad idea makes perfect sense if you’re isolated.”
Maxwell is relieved his recovery group is back to meeting face-to-face, or at least mask-to-mask. They resumed their meetings in October. These sessions helped him feel less isolated and more connected to people who know what it’s like to have an unwelcome panic attack if an airplane flies too close overhead. It’s not the first group Maxwell has opened up to about his struggles with alcohol and isolation, but this one has been an especially good fit.
“It’s a great place to discover who you are,” he said. “It’s not magic, but it really helps ... physically and mentally. It made a difference. Everything got better by just being with people.”
Emma Wassilak has worked as a therapist at Sunbeam Family Services in Oklahoma City since 2014. The social services agency is one of the longest standing in the state and offers counseling, foster care assistance and a shelter for senior citizens. Wassilak has noticed social isolation causing increased stress, anxiety and depressive symptoms in clients — as well as increased numbers of people seeking services related to abuse or neglect.
These symptoms have led people to consume news to a point where they feel like it’s unsafe to stop watching it, while others have simply had a hard time enjoying life as much as they used to.
“I think it was a disservice to our society when we told people to be socially distant because what we meant is physical distance,” Wassilak said. “We are creatures of togetherness — introverts and extroverts alike — and we need each other.”
Those recovering from substance use disorder face their own set of challenges.
For Lacie Wallace, it was a bad idea that had been staring down at her.
She’s a 45-year-old vendor for the Curbside Chronicle, a street paper much like Street Roots, in Oklahoma City.
Wallace was contemplating having a beer. She had been clean and sober for two years and had a lot going for her.
She got plugged into AA meetings about a year ago and also started attending art classes at the Homeless Alliance. On top of that, she became an Oklahoma State University student and was on her way to receiving a retail floral design certificate so she could start working at Curbside Flowers.
Then COVID-19 hit. Everything in Wallace’s life slowed down. She took social isolation seriously from the start and stopped leaving her apartment, but it left her feeling deflated and missing the activities that helped keep her sober. Her meetings and classes were paused because of safety precautions implemented in response to COVID-19. She soon reached for that bad idea.
“I had focused more on the pandemic than my sobriety at the time,” Wallace said. “It was just a relapse in my mind. I restarted an old way of thinking, which made it seem OK to have one beer. Nobody would know. I’m just drinking in my quiet place. It escalated from there.”
Wallace said she started drinking heavily and using hard drugs again. For three months, she was lost in her addiction and feared an overdose. Her faith is extremely important to her, and she prayed daily for a path toward sobriety. Then she heard an answer and something in her mind rebooted. It’s hard for her to say exactly what changed.
Wallace entered a rehab clinic and gave an addiction recovery phone app a try. Sharing messages online didn’t compare to in-person AA meetings, but at least it was an outlet. And it was a viable one that helped inspire her and humble her in the aftermath of a bender that could’ve been deadly, she said.
“You have to guard your sobriety,” Wallace said. “Yeah, you have to be true to it, so it’ll be true to you.”
Last year, nearly 72,000 Americans died from drug overdose, according to the CDC. Overdosing has grown so much in recent years that it’s pushed down overall life expectancy in the U.S. This trend is nothing new. Deaths due to drug overdose in America have increased nearly fourfold from 1999 to 2018 — with opioid abuse looming large as the leading cause.
From January through March 2020, 19,416 Americans died due to drug abuse. That’s nearly 3,000 more fatal overdoses compared with the same period last year, according to NPR. These numbers are expected to grow as COVID-19 lingers throughout the U.S.
Walker Milligan works as a therapist at a private practice in Oklahoma City. He’s in recovery himself. An important thing he’s learned from clients facing substance abuse issues is that drugs and alcohol are an effective coping mechanism. The catch? They aren’t efficient.
“Efficient coping strategies don’t happen naturally,” he explained. “They take practice and work. We naturally fall on the ones that are most effective in the moment. … I think people confuse rationality with what humans actually do. Our emotions, anxieties and pain don’t work in the realm of logic.”
Milligan described recovery as a practice. He often works with clients to re-frame their frustrations in a less judgmental light and helps them work toward self-acceptance and gratitude.
He suggested imagining stepping off a curb and spraining your ankle. “Your mind might say, ‘I knew I shouldn’t have worn these shoes. I always slip in these shoes. I wasn’t even looking when I stepped off the curb like a moron,’” Milligan said. “Does that help your ankle heal? Does that help get you to the doctor? No, but we focus on the negative all the time. … We think we have some control if we beat ourselves up enough.”
In many recovery programs, there’s already the added pressure to maintain sobriety for a set amount of time. Recovery should foremost be about building hope, Milligan said.
“I think it’s worth re-focusing on any tiny, positive thing you’re doing for yourself. It’s about self-love and self-acceptance,” he added. “Our society’s not great at that. We’re great at being hard on ourselves and being anxious.”
Street Roots is an award-winning weekly publication focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
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