What Do DMX, Dr. Ray Langston & Myself All Have In Common?

I started writing this after DMX’s passing and kind of let it sit for a while. To be honest, I haven’t really been motivated to write anything, at least not like I used to. Everyone is so sensitive to fuck all everything and the internet is a shit hole. I continue to write because it helps people, and I feel as though that’s important. But I’m not a machine; I’m not an AI Robot from MIT that just writes for people to consume the things I put time and effort into just to scroll onto the next thing shortly thereafter. It’s incredibly unmotivating and, like I said, the internet is a fucking cesspool of things and people I don’t want to care about. It’s unfortunately the only platform to share things on this level anymore. So, my apologies for being somewhat absent on the writing forefront. I don’t want to be; I’m just disgusted with people and the way things are. 

Anyway, I digress...

A lot of news articles and social media opinions after DMX’s passing discussed his long-term battles with addiction, but one thing I haven’t seen discussed is his long-term battle with bipolar disorder. I’m not trying to get into with anyone about the root causes of addiction, as everyone has an opinion and it’s a touchy subject for a lot of people and with good reason, but I did find it odd that nobody talked about it, when it’s a huge reason as to why people cope with drugs and alcohol. I think it’s worth talking about it myself if no one else will. 

Now, the first time DMX did crack, he was tricked by an older friend he looked up to who was a local rapper. He didn’t have a dad that was around and this older friend kind of took him under his wing as a protege and DMX really looked up to him. This friend told DMX to hit a joint he passed him, and DMX did thinking it was just weed, when in reality, it was laced with crack cocaine. He was 14 years old.

I bring this up because I have a lot of friends who have had a similar experience - either trying to fit in, peer pressure, or in some cases, like people I know who have beaten heroin addiction (or didn’t sadly), someone had to shoot them up the first time. It’s a sad reality, and though some people are able to party and mellow out as they get older, some people can’t. Those reasons tend to vary, but there is a huge link between lifetime users of whatever it is they choose to get their rocks off with, and mental illness.  

Being bipolar plays into this because there’s a chemical imbalance in the brain which causes extreme emotions, both good and bad. A lot of people, I’m sure all at some point, who have been diagnosed bipolar (or some of the other fun disorders out there) have had a tough battle with drugs or alcohol, and/or  other risk taking behavior. It’s hard to not be in control of your emotions, and though therapy and medication help, they’re not cure alls, and drugs and alcohol give a false sense of control by manipulating the emotions we feel. 

Bipolar disorder runs in my family, very heavily on my dad’s side. I didn’t realize how heavily until I did one of those Ancestry.com tests a few years ago. I had a lot of friends who were against doing them, and I get it, they don’t really provide you any info you most likely don’t know already about where you’re from, and it’s at a pretty big cost of giving up your DNA to a database. But I wasn’t really interested in it for that purpose. I wanted to connect the dots to find people on my dad’s side of the family. 

My dad didn’t really know his dad at all. He told me a story one time (bear in mind, my dad told lots of stories, and liked to embellish so I don’t know how much truth is in this, but it’s a story nonetheless) about how he tracked his dad down to a small town in Nova Scotia or Canada somewhere. He was in his 20’s, so this would’ve been in the 60’s or 70’s. And when he got to the town, there was a cop directing traffic. It was a small enough town that I think everybody would’ve known everyone else. So my dad asked the cop if he knew where to find his dad. And the cop, almost with a pained laugh said “yeah, he’s the town drunk”. So my dad walked to the bar in town and sure enough, there his dad was, sitting at the end of the bar. My dad spent the afternoon there with him and bought him beers and they chatted. He left without ever telling him who he was, though I have a feeling he probably knew. Don’t parents always know? 

So after poking around on Ancestry.com for a bit, I kept having family members from my dad’s dad’s side of the family reach out to me. At first, it was a little tough. I would get home from work at about 3AM and usually have an inbox of messages from people I had never met with stories. Sometimes Ancestry would send me little news clippings or tidbits too. And after a while, I gathered that this little bug that lived inside me, that lived inside my dad, and his dad, was a whole lot bigger. It went back generations, all the way back to Ireland, and there were a whole lot more people who were a little whacked out in their day, to say the least. A lot of alcohol use, a lot of multiple marriages, a lot of just up and leaving, a lot of people just not being able to lead “normal” lives. After a while, the messages and news clippings just got to be too much and I had to take a break from my subscription to the site. But it was good information to know. 

There’s a character on CSI (big CSI fan here) named Dr. Ray Langston. He’s played by Lawrence Fisburn. He’s basically courted by lab supervisor Gil Grissom in a middle season to help with the fictitious Dick & Jane Killer, and actually ends up taking over the lab when Grissom goes on sabbatical. Now, in the show, we learn that his dad, who was a war veteran, had a drinking problem, but also a mean streak. He would pick fights at the bar just for fun, and their relationship was tumultuous. It’s discovered that his father has a gene, the MAOA gene, which is linked to violent behavior, much like the Dick & Jane killer himself, and there is a subplot of the potential risk that Ray also carries this gene. 

Genetics can be a fascinating wormhole to go down. It was really the only thing in my high school Bio class that I really was drawn to. The being able to mix and not mix certain traits and get certain results. The endless possabilities of it all just made my brain go nuts. With animals, we see different eye or coat colors. With humans, sometimes we get less pleasant results. 

It’s pretty obvious that from speaking to distant family members, it’s not just a coincidence that I have bipolar disorder. It’s pretty obvious from looking at my not-so-distant family members on my dad’s side that I have bipolar disorder. Between drugs/alcohol abuse, inabilitiy to settle down, attempted murder charges, overdose, violent outbursts...well there’s definitley something going on. 

I try my best to learn about the things that make me tick so that I can try and overcome them. As far as I know, I was the first person in this long line of generation that had ever gone to therapy or tried to get a grip on things. But it’s not perfect. I’m not perfect. And sometimes knowing that there is a ticking time bomb inside me is a little nerve wracking. I always feel like I’m looking over my shoulder, waiting for the next “thing” to happen. I know that’s no way to live but as fun it can be to be bipolar, there have been a whole lot of times it’s been really painful, really alienating, and really fucking hard. There’s been times where I’ve just felt like the biggest fuck up, the biggest burden, and just unsure of what caused it. There have been times where I’ve felt like dying would be the only way to take some of the pain away. 

It’s not easy, but I do it, I try my best to work through it. Because for all the pain that has come from it, it’s so much easier to just give up and become the next victim of this illness that has been in my family for generations. It’s far better to learn about it, and to jump over it.