It’s mental health awareness month and I know I have to contribute. But I also know that I’ll go deep on stuff that can hit a spot inside of mind I try to stay away from. It’s a spot that I know I’ll revisit when I fall again and when I do, it’s honestly the worst thing I’ve encountered here on earth… Some people get hit with crazy trauma.. others hit with death to those around them. For others, they might battle demons. Everybody has their inner struggles they might not wear on their sleeve… Here’s what you gotta know though… Don’t judge somebody on the type of struggles they have because you don’t know how each individual copes and deals with what they’re facing.
I used to hear the cliche saying “older and wiser” and just thought it was something you say as you get… well… older. But this year I turned 45 and I’m starting to get it. Each lap around the sun brings us new experiences where hopefully it’s filled with a lot of great memories and not too many stumbles. But for those that fall, I feel for you. I don’t know how all of you fall and I sure don’t know if you get up or if you’ve gotten up. But I am able to pick up on queues that tell me if somebody is doing well or not so well. And I’ve realized that I gravitate a lot towards people I feel need help the most. I’m starting to see that I help others when I’m actually just trying to run away from the issues I’m having as well. Doing this some times gets me in trouble but I’ve always liked to help people… Help somebody find light when all they see is dark… If I can help somebody who is at their darkest point maybe they pay it back with somebody else and we have something.
I now know that I suffer from major depression. But “Tim, you’re always so happy, you always have so much energy, you have so much going for you, you have so many friends, you are so loved…” I know… I know… But that doesn’t mean I’m not battling demons. It doesn’t mean that I handle stuff just like you do. So yeah… Major depression… I used to label myself as just having severe anxiety which came with the generalized anxiety disorder I’d been labeled with for years. Then a few years ago it struck me that I deal with depression. Sometimes I have bouts where I think I’m a little bit bipolar… I’ve been told that as well. Maybe I’m a mix of several mental health issues but I think the root cause is depression… but now I know to call it major depression. Just having that label makes me feel better about it. The guilt that comes with it and how much I beat myself up is crazy.
It always tends to hit me in the winter months and I usually go down for 4 - 6 months at a time. Is that about the same time that bears hibernate for? I don’t know… Getting off track. I would hear the term seasonal depression and would look it up but I don’t think it really applied to me. My latest psychiatrist said he didn’t think I suffered from seasonal depression because I go down longer… But to those that do… I feel for you. Don’t take it lightly… Try to find ways to combat seasonal depression and I want to big homey you and just say, it’s alright. But wait… It’s not alright, you don’t feel alright. it’s hard to see the light… everything is skewed negative… So I feel for you. I know how it feels. Not many understand what you’re going through or have gone through… I feel you though.
I’ve taken pills. I’m taking pills… light dosage on a mood stabilizer right now for anybody keeping score… I’ve talked to therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists… It can be exhausting talking to so many different professionals over 10+ years . But not many people really know what I’m going through. Not many people know I’ve gone through. It’s dark where I can only tell a few people the thoughts I’ve had… the thoughts I’m having. And some people come from a place of love when they throw over suggestions on how to break out of my funk but it’s not that easy. I wish it was but it’s just not. Especially when you’re trying to balance it all. This is why I like being around others that suffer from mental health issues as well. We can bond over being…. crazy? the fact we’re both suffering?
What does dark look like for you? It can be really dark or it could be just a bit dark. It could last a week, a month, several months, or it could just be a dark cloud that is always over you at all times. Whatever it may be, I feel for you. 2024 was one of the worst years I had with mental health. It started when I quit my 9-5 because my inner demons took over my mind…. took over my life… In December of 2023 I had a doctor prescribed month long leave of absence provided to my work because of where I was mentally. The psychologist heard everything I was dealing with and said yup… this isn’t good… It was really weird telling HR and my coworkers that mind was totally f*cked and I was taking a month off from work to deal with it. As I told people, I just felt like people thought I was weak… that I was a pussy… But maybe I was just in my head and assuming something I had no idea about. How could I read other people’s minds? I can’t… But that’s a part of the depression and one of the cognitive distortions that go on in your mind. Btw, one of the best takeaways from therapy I learned was about cognitive distortions. Writing out thoughts in my mind and then seeing the cognitive distortions going on was really interesting… look it up… worth your time.
I quit my job coming out of that month long mental health leave of absence… I think I’ve written about this before too and if I’m being redundant, I’m sorry… I write a lot on this site… it’s really what Mid90s is… I talk about music and throwback stuff that I’m into. Writing is therapy to me and it helps me deal with the ills or just keep busy to stay away from the ills. But yeah… My late 2023 battles were dark… I had everything going for me too! Decent job…. a main side hustle covering my rent and expenses, other cool side hustles that gave me amazing experiences that a lot of people will never have…. but when I swing manic, I know the other side. In late 2023 I was not sleeping much, beating myself up for it, having baaaaaaad thoughts run through my mind, envisioning myself h*nging from a rope in the same garage you see all my content from… going on long walks in the middle of the night looking over bridges and wondering what if, and yeah… just rough things to cross your mind you know…
I came out of my 2023 depression in early 2024 by reconnecting with friends I went dark on… and I don’t go dark on people because of YOU… I do it because of ME. When I go dark, I can’t handle anything. A text? nah… too hard to text back and I overthink how it’s going to land or wonder what you’re thinking about me. A phone call? oh man… “how are you Tim”…. uhhhhh… next question and honestly no other questions bc I really don’t want to talk… I know I need to talk… I do… I do… but it’s just… hard. simple tasks like laundry or paying bills… a struggle. If I wrote down some of the things that become immensely impossible when I’m down in the dumps you would be like, what? Cmon… But yup… everything is impossible. So I go dark. I don’t want to… but I just do… I can’t just snap out of it either… wish I could. Exercise for sure is good… talking with people is good… getting vitamin d… eating better… agreed on all… but when I stop even listening to music and look at my cassettes like walls caving in I know I’ve gone under… and it’s usually for a long stretch.
Early last year I came out of my latest round of mental health issues with a psychologist and psychiatrist on my side. But then that psychiatrist belittled me when I tried to question the pills he always wanted me on. I didn’t want to be on the benzos again. In a conniving way, he didn’t want to collaborate at all on my requests and just shamed me for even trying to question a doctor who had been doing this for so many years. Some of these so called professionals can be total shitheads too… just because they’re a doctor means that they can’t be a total quack themselves. I’ve seen firsthand how mental health professionals can exert their power in unthinkable ways. My psychiatrist at the time did some VERY questionable things to me (verrrrrrrry) that I for sure could have reported. FOR SURE COULD HAVE REPORTED. The way he cut me off cold turkey from the benzos was criminal. The stuff he was doing to me wasn’t cool… It’s like he was playing games with me in the fragile state I was in… Exerting power to people in a vulnerable state when they think they can trust you… bad place to be in if you’re down. But I stood up and checked him… but how many people don’t stand up for themselves because they’re in such a weak state and don’t have anywhere to turn?
Finding a good mental health professional is key. But f*ck is it hard… you finally build up the courage to ask your insurance provider for a list of doctors you can call…. then they hit you with the white pages of professionals and you’re like… dawg… I don’t want to pick up the phone to call any of these people and now you gave me a 10 page PDF of different people to call? And how many of you know the difference between a therapist, psychologist, and a psychiatrist? Going to say 2% of you know the difference…. The process from “I’m going through shit” to actually connecting with a doctor shouldn’t be this hard… but it is… and now we got these apps that leverage tech to get you talking with the right professionals… ummm… I don’t know man… and then when you just search mental health stuff when you’re on youtube, google feed, and IG hit you with constant reminders of not being in a good spot and trying to capitalize on your current state with all of these people that can take your money with ads. Sad.
I’ve always turned to weed to try to come out of my funks. But I turn into a damn addict with the weed where it becomes a crazy crutch filled with good times but also bad decisions. I came off cold turkey from the benzos and knew I was going to be in a bad spot… I was ready for war and war was what I got…. The sleep was not good at all for weeks/months and waking up at 12:30 at night for the day or 1:30 in the morning for a day is tough… it’s a really dark time of the night. dark time of the morning? I don’t know… so knowing I couldn’t fall asleep or wake up my family I just puffed… and puffed… and puffed. and then just walked up and down my apartment complex hoping not to see a soul other than my long dark shadow stretching out on the concrete from the street light. Then there were the hallucinations here and there… weird… mind playin tricks on me in real life. Tears running down my cheeks super fast where they drop off your chin… not that one tear type ish.
For my Spring/Summer ‘24 bout with the ills I was lucky enough to have a music project to pour myself into. Shout to Trent, Fash, and Crispy and this Fashawn project, YOU OWE US WITH INTEREST because working on that project kept me into something. They gave me creative outlets to work on Btw, go listen to the album. It’s really dope. the story behind all of it is really dope too… one day we’ll document it in detail. I need some money though… you got me?
Coming off the benzos and fighting it with joint after joint and bongload after bongload and dabs when they’re around was a coping mechanism for sure… and fam… I needed a coping mechanism coming off of the pills. But then these demons being battled led to arguments… outbursts… disagreements… bad decisions… impulsive spending… me wanting to hurt myself and then 2 minutes later laughing hysterically… then an hour later yelling at friends and business partners and then crying uncontrollably. Fuck… I remember being at the Mazda dealership just letting some dude have it because he wouldn’t take my car in right then and there on the spot. The look on his face while I was manic AF will forever stay with me. I felt bipolar there… I felt like Kanye… Like 2022 Kanye though… 2025 Kanye I don’t want to be associated with… the black KKK robes? what? But if the beat is hot, I know G will hit me with the text and I’ll peep it and go yup, Ye still got it… But Ye is bipolar and the mood swings are crazzzyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.
I teetered back and forth between being cool… not being cool… hanging with friends… hanging with skechy people that weren’t my friends and were simply addicts… it even got me into getting set up to get robbed… wait… what???
Last year I get myself too involved with an old friend I cared for. Shout out to Brooklyn Greg. But his PTSD was just too hard to conquer… He had majorrrr issues and problems with the law but here I was hitting him up and checking in on him only to find out that he had finally gone off the deep end. I tried to help. But seeing those eyes look at me with a “I have it in me to kill you look” while he was in my car wasn’t my jam… Saying I tried to help is an understatement. I put myself at danger trying to fix what I thought was a friend… nah… he just saw me as a come up after the PTSD and drugs and alcohol had killed every brain cell left… his mind was gone… but yet I still pushed that door open into his pad when his neighbor said he hadn’t heard a peep from him in a minute… I walked in and seeing blood all on the carpet and the tv thrown into the wall (literally into the wall) and the walls peeled off of the walls (bruhhhh… crazy to see) and broken glass from the windows everywhere (punching windows for sure) and found him in his room out COLD… Dead? Idk… his white dog running around with blood all over its fur. I finally was able to wake Brooklyn Greg up after yelling at him for 30 seconds while pushing him harder than I’ve ever pushed somebody trying to wake them up… only for him to give me the death look until he realized that gatorade in my hand was for him and I was trying to help. but he didn’t even know me? mind gone…
Then he blew up inside his apartment… I had nowhere to go amongst these blood stained surroundings and a lunatic in front of me…. So I screamed at him in the craziest way to get away from him. It was a scream I remember from my dad that was always so powerful… a scream that made me tremble when I heard it… I never used the scream tho… but i always had it deep down inside waiting for the right time… then I screamed at him and my voice made me feel like I was 15’ tall as he crumbled to the ground going, whoa… where did that come from… We proceeded to scream at each other in the parking lot where he chased me outside to… all of the neighbors look on going, wait… what? I called the cops but fam, 911 was a joke as me and this dude and I were screaming at each other and he had the look in his eyes like he wanted to kill me. Little did I know that the cops coming to his pad meant a violation of his parole… so it loomed larger than just a po po check in. And those cops??? They leisurely made their way to his apartment after like 45 minutes. Yup… Shout out Flavor Flav on that 911 is a Joke track.
I got away… But I didn’t learn… Tried to help him one last time but knew I had to keep a distance… When I got close in my car, the feeling wasn’t right… I felt like it was a trap. My spidey senses told me something was up in that Del Taco parking lot. But man was I sharp that day… I was paranoid AF anyway and super blazed but I was on point when he hesitated just a bit and his eyes seemed a hair off…. So I sped off out of the Del Taco parking lot but went right instead of left and was trapped with a crazed PTSD lunatic probably on his last few days of life yelling at me in the middle of the street seeing him in my rear view mirror… and then I jetted to a parking spot in a complex nearby… then a car some screaching behind me into another parking spot and a dude walks up strapped with a 9 in his waist walking quickly towards me with a bow legged walk because those sweats weren’t meant to pack heat… i saw it coming… again… spidey senses on point… I backed out so fast I almost crushed the card behind me… then had the most untimely 4 point turn as baggy sweat pants dude who was strapped waddled towards me quickly. but I peeled off just in time and parked illegally and got out of there on foot while getting screamed at from afar by 2 desperate lames… yup… set up to get robbed… or something else? something more? Idk… that was a first… I had gone too far… I have a family and I’m ending up in this situation? Fuck…. I showed up at my nephew’s baseball game like nothing happened on the outside but on the inside? crumbled.
For months I got threats that I was going to be hung off of my roof… That I was going to be taken care of and to watch out… Did he have my address? Could he find my address? So in those early mornings while I couldn’t sleep, was high as fuck, listening to the early recordings of YOU OWE US WITH INTEREST, I was also peaking around corners thinking somebody was gonna come get me. Damn… that was a lot going on. It was a relief to find out Brooklyn Greg had died earlier this year… I know it was only a matter of time. Still felt for the kid but cmon… Gotta draw the line with him trying to rob me and having a goon bring a gun to the party… nah… RIP Brooklyn Greg… you helped me see the darkest times of mental health and PTSD. I feel you… I felt you… but rest in piss bruh. but let’s be real… i ain’t that tough…i still feel bad for what happened to you on 9/11 in those buildings while you tried to save so many people from that tower falling. you’re a hero but the other side of it was trauma… rest in peace. we had some good days that i won’t ignore.
October I finally crashed after doing lots of thangs, and seeing lots of people. October I crashed hard… It was the deep dark depression again which made everything so damn hard… SO HARD! I cut myself off from the world… but then I also wanted to cut myself with the biggest knife I could find in my kitchen. Hard to say but I’m trying to keep it real with you. That butcher knife pushed into my stomach was a low point. Been there before but this one scared me a bit more… how can i get to this?? i don’t know… some of us do tho…
Many times driving in the car where just driving off of the road seemed logical… One night after hanging out with all of my friends I was really close to just jerking that wheel off of the road right where I get off the freeway to head to my home… Chalk that night up with one of the darkest memories of how I would hurt myself… Jumping off a bridge… Running into traffic… Stabbing myself… Hurting my family and then hurting myself… Driving off the road… yup… all in the bag when I’m battling demons and am mentally off… this moment in time will forever be etched in my mind because well… it just seemed… real. it was… real.
Holding that knife to my stomach was a turning point though… thinking about whipping that steering wheel far left stopped me… I told Gabe about it and told him I needed to see him immediately. I went and met up with him at the park in a slightly crazy mood… But that’s why I love Gabe… We don’t judge… We just hang and talk… about anything…. Hanging with Gabe that day gave me the courage to go get help… again… I just needed to say it all out loud and have somebody else listen and let me know their honest thoughts. Being friends with Gabe has saved me on countless occasions… We all need a Gabe in our life… You need to have homies you can tell your deepest darkest thoughts too… I pulled off on the side of the road that afternoon and finally called a new mental health professional… it was hard… I was scared… it could cost a lot of money… okay let me riff..
why is finding the right mental health professional so hard? oh wait… i already spoke about that before. okay… why is it so damn expensive? The people in most need probably don’t have the money… and it is SOOOO EXPENSIVE. Mental health professionals are great… But $200 for 45 minutes because it’s out of network? And then when you’re time is up and you still need to get out the crazy it just makes it all feel like a business. I know it is a business but sometimes you just need more. And who has like 10 G’s around to just pay to get mental health help… nobody… I feel for anybody who wants help but doesn’t have the cash…or doesn’t have the right insurance… or doesn’t have the best coverage… i feel for you. been there… spent $7K a few years ago with talk therapy and was supposed to get cash back… but nah… insurance companies make it impossible to go get the cash they owe you. freal….
On that weekday I called into a new psychologist and a new psychiatrist… I made my first appointment… I got evaluated by doctors as they asked me a lot of questions… then becuase of my scores on their tests and because I had tried different medications in the past and hadn’t been on benzos for 6 months I got approved to try something called TMS… you know TMS? probably not… but let me fill you in.
TMS and ketamine therapy are newer ways to help combat depression, anxiety, PTSD, and other mental ills… I thought about the ketamine many times but decided to go another route. btw, to anybody looking into the ketamine route, let me know if you want to talk to somebody about it. I have a friend who has going through sessions with a physiatrist and it has helped him SOOOOO MUCH… Really cool to see.
I went the TMS route… TMS stands for Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation and the procedure involves magnetic fields placed strategically on your head to stimulate nerve cells in your brain to improve symptoms of major depression. TMS is a commitment though… a commitment that I was able to commit to because I was looking for a job at the time so had time. Luckily enough, another business I owned that afforded me insurance which luckily gave me the coverage I needed to go down to a doctor’s office 5 days a week for 8 weeks for 45 minutes a day for this FDA approved treatment for depression… Also good for anxiety too but that’s not FDA approved…but why don’t many people know about TMS or know about ketamine therapy… well… just think about how disruptive it would be to the pharmaceutical industry if more people knew… a lot of rich f*cks would lose a lot of money… so these newer treatments that don’t come with pills are pretty much kept in the dark.
I write all of this just to let you know… We’re all going through something… We all deal with things in different ways… and if my journey or me just letting it all out can touch you (pause) in some kind of a way, I’m here for it… if you know me and are seeing this and are suddenly concerned… or have been concerned… I’m good now… I just have to tell my story before somebody does something unthinkable… Because I’ve been close… others have too… but if I can just let a few people know that life is hard that is good. Find your Gabe… Find a professional… Find something… I feel you… it’s hard… I’ll be there again too but I’m just trying to be better than last time. You know, be older and wiser. I look back at times in my teenage years and 20’s and it all seems clearer now… I isolated myself and kept quiet because these were early signs of dark days for me. Those days renting 5 videos from Blockbuster and locking myself in my room and only coming out for food were early depression signs. My rap lyrics in high school that were alwayssss super dark and suicidal had meaning… finding solace in my Walkman instead of human connection meant something… I just wasn’t schooled on mental health growing up because who was? But all we can do is try to teach the kids and support each other… it can save people. so if you’ve been through it or are going through it, I feel you. And to the future me who hits that dip once again, just realize you have options outside of medication…. as Ab-Soul says, “I Gotta Do Better”… and I plan to… hope you do as well… peace.
this is the only picture I took in January when I started TMS… it doesn’t hurt… sometimes it rattled some nerves in my teeth which was crazy but otherwise, nothing to worry about. go look into it if you need help… ketamine therapy another to look into.
Rappers who talked about mental health in their tracks always resonated with me. That’s why I wanted to grace this article with songs and videos that touched on the subject or connected with my story to help it flow well. If you want more tracks like this, hit the playlist below. if you need help, hit me… hit a friend… just try not to beat yourself up too much… easier said than done I know.