I’m not sure when I broke but it was around in August. I started mid90s records last year but I had no idea what I was doing. I hustled to get all of the records, cassettes, tees (x2), and stickers made for the Murs x Wiardon project and then when I had it all, it coincided with me crawling back into my hole. I took a chance on a new job in the software world and kept hustling on the 3 businesses that I own. It was all too much for me. I was on a family vacay for hip hop’s 50th anniversary last August and I didn’t even want to listen to music.
My phone literally buzzes non-stop and that’s with a lot of things on mute. Texts, Teams, Slack, GroupMe, WhatsApp, voice notes, FaceTimes, FaceTime videos and other apps stay ringing. And let’s not forget Outlook, gmail, LinkedIn, SalesForce, HubSpot, and all of that other noise…. All I want to do is go back to the days of fax machines, house phones, walkmans, and pagers. Life was much easier.
Around September, I didn’t avoid people, I just stopped reaching out. I’d get a text and it would take me hours to figure out what words to use in my text back. I wanted to let my friends know I was suffering but to somebody who hasn’t fought mental issues, it’s tough for them to truly understand. Mac Miller once said that he was contemplating suicide like a DVD on “Diablo” and that line just resonated with me. And that album resonates with me. Shout out to the 10th anniversary of Faces which I feel is the epitome of art being best coming from the darkest spaces.
There were a lot of mornings at 2:30am where I was scrubbing kitchen knives and then thinking about stabbing myself in the home where my family lives. 2am – 5:30am is a weird time. I run into all of the tweakers on the streets you don’t see during the day. I always wonder if they think about walking into traffic or if that was just me. But shit… then you’re involving somebody else in your demise and that’s not fair. So then the thoughts evolved…. Working from home has its perks but when you have nobody to talk to at work and you’re wired to work non-stop, those early morning hours and those long days were brutal. Lots of illogical thoughts in those tweaker hours of the morning.
As human beings, we need to be outside running around and seeing other people on the daily. But here I was just stressing at work all alone in a garage without windows or fresh air. Let me clarify…. I was stressing over my 9-5 but I felt that if I worked more and worked harder, it would give me options. My side businesses would give me options too. But the 9-5 stress from the software company shut down all operations for me. I knew I had to do something when I was working in the garage in late November and I’d see a silhouette of myself hanging from a rope that I couldn’t shake. It was there with me in that garage but also with me when my eyes were closed at night.
In early December, I couldn’t do it anymore. I called my boss at the software company and told him, “I don’t think I can work here anymore.” He couldn’t be more understanding about everything which I couldn’t be more grateful for. He told me to cancel all meetings and not look at my computer or phone for a week. I took that time and tried to find a new mental health professional. Have you looked for a mental health provider before without a referral? By my count, I have seen 7 different therapists/psychologists/psychiatrists/sleep scientist over the past 10+ years who have given me 10+ prescription meds to experiment with, take, and live with.
I met my new psychologist and here was yet another professional to tell my life story to and have then figure out why my mind is the way it is. She listened to me and said yup, you check every box for being deeply depressed. She told me with this with the most genuine words I had heard. She knew I was suffering… She reminded me of the psychologist from Sopranos so I thought that was pretty cool. But where was I going from here?
My new psychologist told to get back in touch with my psychiatrist to get back on some meds. Therapists and psychologists can’t prescribe pills so you have to go to the psychiatrist to get some meds that they determine off of some old tests and a few conversations about my past. This was the same physiatrist I saw for a few years. I was off of the meds but he got me back on Zoloft at a low level. The Zoloft getting in your system has different reactions to people. It crushed me this go-around. I started taking the pills at my in-laws and within a day, my ears wouldn’t stop ringing. They rang for about 3 or 4 months straight and right now I don’t know if they’re still ringing or if I just became used to it. For a few weeks, the humming in the ears made it hard for me to sleep. My stomach felt horrible. The depression sunk deeper and I started getting into Reddit threads of other people losing their mind like me…
My psychiatrist would always be pushing Klonnies (aka Klonopin) but I didn’t want any piece of. When I pushed back on the Klonnies, my doc straight up raised his voice at me and pressured me into a benzo way more manipulative than somebody passing me a j back in the 90’s….. If you ever get the amazing chance to read the warning label on Klonopin it makes you want to just melt into the earth. It’s not easy to come off of benzos… Withdrawal symptoms are real… The warning label on the pills is crazy. It literally says, withdrawal symptoms include feeling like bugs are crawling under your skin. Oh sweet…. that’s comforting.
I got on the Klonnies and on the bottle it says, “take as needed”. But my psychiatrist told me I needed to take them every night… so while I disagreed with this prescription, I submitted to the pills because to me, it beat not wanting to be alive. Oh I forgot, my week off from work turned into me going to my boss and HR and getting a 1 month leave of absence to try to get my mental state to improve. Taking those 5 weeks to find myself weren’t good. There were lots of long walks where I searched for answers to just make me feel better.
On the 1st working day of January, my PTO was exhausted and I had to attempt to return back to work. I went against what 99.9% of people told me and put in my 2 week notice at the software company. I tried to budget how long we could survive with me not working and luckily it was around 4-6 months. My mind was gone… I quit to save my life.
My last day came and went and now the mindf*ck really got going. How was I going to get a house for my family now? I never envisioned a world where I’d be living in a small apartment during my money making years but shit… that is the world we’re in right now. One of the things that helped me first crack what I was going through was talking to Gabe. We would share stories of our horrible mental health and would never judge a thing out of each other’s mouth. I called him up one afternoon out of the blue and i asked him how he was doing. In the funniest tone he told me, well, today I didn’t want to kill myself when I woke up so I got that going for me. It was the first time I smiled in months.
I started building from that smile that Gabe brought to my face. Within a few weeks of leaving my job, I realized that I was better. Working a 9-5 for a minimum of 40 hours per week while trying to be a good father and family man is tough… Now add in the fact that I also owned 3 businesses on the low and you can see things piling up right? Another homie of mine who has hustled since the Mid90s and he dropped some gems on me one morning… He congratulated me for making it. You see, I have homies on the corporate side but also have homies who dabble/live/thrive in that grey area. When an OG hustler congratulates to you it’s a real thing.
I was too busy being depressed and dealing with crazy anxiety to realize that I was stacking chips. Sometimes something right in front of you can be so far away. But I’m just trying to keep it real for y’all. Sometimes easy decisions are right in front of us but we’re scared. I was scared to quit my job because we were raised to work hard, start a fam, buy a house, and then be old enough to watch your grandchildren succeed…. that shit is so backwards now… a report came out this year saying that to own a home in San Diego, on average, you need to make $270K per year. Cmon dog…. $270K per year? And then in order to make that type of cash, you need to be a slave for the man and make it up the corporate ladder…. But wait… the math is fucked up because I can’t make $270K per year working for the man. My wife can’t close the gap if she started working so what am I supposed to do other than stress the fuck out and worry non-stop.
So here I am…. I don’t have a 9-5 anymore… I do have 3 businesses and if you think I’m gonna go back to another 9-5 you are crazy. I’m independent now… In the words of BFAP aka Sunspot Jonz, “I’m independent, independent as fuck!” Shout out to Corey and Tom aka the Mystik Journeymen. It took me 44 years of life to break that fear and come out the other side dusting off my Reeboks.
Look, I know I might have to get a 9-5 job at some point and I’m okay with it. So for now, I’m on that paper chase. And with the extra time in the day, I’m checking in with homies, visiting friends, and checking in on people. And just know this…. EVERYBODY IS FUCKED UP RIGHT NOW! Once you come to grips with this and can have honest conversations with your friends about what you’re thinking and feeling it will be therapy. I always stay running because if I stop, I might stop.
If you are going through shit, confide in others and hold nothing back. If you can get therapy from talking with friends, do it. If you need a professional to talk to, it doesn’t mean you’re weak. Kill the ego and realize we only have one life to live. And knowing I only got one life, I need all my homies to be doing alright as well. I took “Ain’t No Fun” to heart back when the track took over every house party out here in Cali. Ain’t no fun if the homies can’t have none so I’m going to be pushing you to be your best self. You’ll be outside of your comfort zone… I know… But I got scars that I can leverage now.
If this article helped you, text or call a homie you haven’t talked to in a minute… just tell them you were thinking of them and go from there.