April 2, 2025 • 50 mins
Trigger warning: We’re diving into the heavy stuff related to mental health—stats, struggles, the works. If it hits too close to home, skip it and come back next week. I will not be offended.
It’s 2025, and Gen X (born ‘65–‘79, now 45–60) is wrestling a quiet crisis—too many of us are taking our own lives. Gen X men at a rate of 27–29 per 100,000, women at 7–8, both up since 2002. In this episode we unpack why—financial struggles, loneliness, physical & mental health issues—and how to fight back. I will share my own experiences and what I’ve learned and the steps I’ve taken.
Resources:
It’s 2025, and Gen X (born ‘65–‘79, now 45–60) is wrestling a quiet crisis—too many of us are taking our own lives. Gen X men at a rate of 27–29 per 100,000, women at 7–8, both up since 2002. In this episode we unpack why—financial struggles, loneliness, physical & mental health issues—and how to fight back. I will share my own experiences and what I’ve learned and the steps I’ve taken.
Resources:
- 988 Crisis Line (call/text)
- NAMI.org (support groups)
- SAMHSA.gov (local help)
- Veterans Crisis Line (988, press 1)
- Text HOME to 741741
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome to the Stuck in the Middle Podcast, the podcast
dedicated to the music, movies, and culture of Generation Acts.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
What is Up, Slackers, and welcome to another episode of
the Stuck in the Middle Podcast. I am your host,
Jason Eck, and anyone who's listened to the show for
a while will know that I've never done this before
and it is appropriate that I do so. So this
(00:52):
is a trigger warning. The topic for this evening is
going to get pretty heavy, and it's going to be
a combination of some of my own experiences as well
as looking at overall mental health and how oftentimes that
(01:16):
can lead to poor outcomes. What I mean by that
is we're going to be talking really deeply about mental
health but also the potential for self harm, up to
and including suicide. And that's the trigger warning for you.
(01:38):
If this is a topic that is too heavy for
you because it hits too close to home and things
that you have experienced, I completely understand. It's your call.
You do not need to keep playing this podcast. It's
something that I felt was really important that I needed
to talk about and needed to address. I went back
(01:59):
and forth about whether I should just keep it too
dry facts, but I don't think that would have been
I think in tune with my intent and what I
think is important to share, never really shied away from
much on here on the podcast. Now. I haven't gotten
(02:21):
into all the nitty gritty because I think there are
some things that are just somewhat untoward and I haven't
discussed them. But this is a topic that I think
is important, and as we go through it, I think
you'll understand why. So again this is the trigger warning.
If this is too much, I understand, I hope you
(02:41):
come back next week for the episode. So let me
tell you kind of the impetus for all of this.
I've mentioned many times on the podcast that I've dealt
with health issues over the course of really the past
thirty years, and over the past year I have had complications
(03:02):
from CRONES and that and of itself is a challenge,
and the type of complications that I've had are uncomfortable, painful,
and the kind of thing that wears very heavily on
your psyche on a daily basis, and it's limiting in
(03:23):
many ways. But within all of that is the fact
that CRONES is often exacerbated by high levels of stress.
So even though I've been working with nutritionist on working
on the nutritional piece and getting my diet and my
food on track in ways that are both beneficial but
also easily digestible, and the hopes to reduce inflammation. All
(03:48):
of that is critical, but in periods of high stress,
even if you're eating pristinely, it doesn't always work. And
at this point, I no longer drink, I no longer smoke,
although I am finding myself quite addicted to zin at
the moment. But then I had a very serious couple
(04:12):
of weeks of stress at work and it was really
really bad, and it could all be fine, but as
I've been going through it, it's still weighing on me.
And I'll talk a little bit about some of the
methods that I've been using to kind of deal with that,
(04:37):
and at some point on an afternoon, and any of
you who've experienced this will know what I mean, even
if you've never said it out loud to someone before.
And this is my way of maybe giving you permission
to go ahead and have these conversations, because I think
(05:00):
they're important. But the dark thoughts begin to trickle into
my head, and any of you who have had dark
thoughts knows that it starts off as a whisper somewhere
in the back of your head, just a whisper when
(05:21):
the stress is so great and you're really feeling it
and you're feeling maybe a lack of worth. So let's
say my health had been fine through all of this,
I probably would have been able to shoulder the burden
with much more grace than I did. But to have
(05:42):
the health issues exacerbated by this stress, I found myself
having dark thoughts. Now. I recognize that one about to
say may not be the case for all of you,
and that will be critical as we're going through this
this podcast tonight. I'm very blessed and very fortunate that
(06:06):
I have a partner and my wife, Maggie has been
on the show before that I know that I can't
speak to about just about anything without judgment and without fear.
And I called her up on the phone and I said, hey,
(06:26):
you got a couple minutes. And I said, look, the
stress has all getten to me. It's bad and I'm
having dark thoughts. Now. She didn't chime in and say
what do you mean by that? She has kind of
let me go. She's like, okay, all right, what do
you say, and I said to her, you know, I'm
(06:48):
thinking in terms of self harm, like and it's just
a whisper in the back of my brain. It's not
something that's screaming and yelling at the forefront of my mind. However,
I feel it's important for me to articulate this to you,
as my wife, as the mother of my children, that
I've had these thoughts at all, even as a whisper,
(07:12):
because I said, let's say, this continues to spiral in
my brain, and that little whisper gets louder and louder,
louder and louder. I would hate to find you in
a position where I took some horrible action, leaving you
(07:33):
to wonder why and did you miss something and what
could you have done differently and all of that. I
feel that as a good husband, it's important for me
to say, hey, look, these thoughts have creeped in. I'm
not going to take any action. It's not anything that's
(07:55):
in the forefront of my mind, but I've had them
because God forbid I were to do something. And she
was caught completely by surprise that there was no warning,
there was nothing, no even inkling, that such dark feelings
(08:17):
and thoughts were present within her husband. I would have
never felt okay with that. So, for all of you listening,
I've taken a number of steps since then, Okay, number
of steps since then, and recognized that part of the
major issue was not just the stress of things and
(08:41):
these thoughts creeping in, but also very high levels of
anxiety and the inability to sleep and my heart racing
and all of those things that I think all of
us have experienced in some way, shape or fashion. Maybe
not all of us, but many of us. And I
took appropriate steps, and I, you know, I called my
doctor and I said, hey, look, here's the situation. Now,
(09:04):
a couple of years ago, I went through a period
of very high stress. Not this bad, not where I
had these kind of thoughts. Well, I did when I
quit drinking because I was having auditory hallucinations. It got
that bad, and I did have some dark thoughts creep
in at that point, but that was a couple of days,
(09:26):
and then I moved through it as the dependence on
alcohol left my system. So now, gosh, bad. I look
back at the timeline. Hmm, makes sense, makes sense. So
I called my doctor. I said, hey, look, I need
a little something to take the edge off the anxiety.
Here's what I've taken in the past. Here's the Milgram strength.
I'd like to have a refill of this prescription. If
(09:47):
it persists past this point, I will call you back.
I'll come in right And she's like, Okay, completely understand.
Here's you know. I think it's like a not even
a thirty day supply, something like fifteen day supply or
something like that. And I was immediately able to kind
of take that edge off and be able to breathe
(10:08):
and kind of come down and say, Okay, here we are.
We can get through this. One way or another. We're
going to get through this. And I just think it's
important for all of you who listen to recognize that
it's the most difficult thing sometimes in the world to
(10:31):
just talk about things. Again, I am very fortunate and
very blessed that I have the supports that I do.
Sometimes when things get very dark, you can find yourself
forgetting about the resources that you do have at your disposal.
And I think that's what is important as well, is
(10:55):
to try to find just some some moment your mind
long enough to say, Okay, do I have any kind
of support here or am I completely on my own Now,
I don't have a close relationship with my extended family.
I don't. It is what it is. I don't really
(11:17):
have normal parntal relationships and those kind of things. So
but whoever it is, Well, let's dig in some more
of why I think this topic is so important to
me beyond my own experiences. It's because, in many ways, statistically,
our generation has been saddled with this for much longer
(11:42):
in a more persistent way than other generations. So yet
again we have some uniqueness into our little cohort here
of existence. And I think one of the key things
as we go through this is to consider that concepts
of self harm and suicide are often reported out in
(12:03):
such a way. And this is my perception of the
news of the focus on young people. Now, certainly teenage
rates are nowhere near where they like we would like
them to be societally. However, that's been the kind of
pervasive discussion for so long, and fortunately it's not as
(12:25):
dire in those age groups. It's just that it hits
people so much harder because we're talking about young people.
But let's take a look at good old gen X.
So most of this is going to be centered by
and large on gen X males. So for the female
(12:45):
listeners of the show, bear in mind that your statistics
are super commendable in any demographic and really very very
low rates. Male rates are exceptionally high. And we're going
to get into a little bit of some of the
(13:07):
known and unknowns related to this, but let's just take
a look at the numbers. Okay, So back in nineteen
ninety one, we're going to use that as an example.
Gen X guys fifteen to twenty four, we're at a
twenty four per one hundred thousand for taking their own lives.
(13:29):
By twenty twenty two, as forty five to sixty four
year olds, we're at twenty seven to twenty nine per
one hundred thousand. That is twelve to fifteen thousand of
US gone every year. Out of thirty nine total mail
(13:51):
suicides per year, we're up to fifteen percent of it.
We're fifteen thousand of those almost forty That is a
big number. Not that I think this is super important,
(14:11):
but the methodology most commonly used, and I think this
statistic is often used in a lot of different ways.
It's typically by a handgun sixteen to eighteen per one
hundred thousand than suffocation typically hanging. And then I didn't
(14:32):
realize this because again, this is a serious subject and
not one that I've dug too deeply into poisoning, which
is also potentially medicinally. But here's what's even more frightening.
We're not the worst. Men over the age of seventy
(14:56):
five are at forty three point nine for one hundred thousand.
Those are boomers, larger cohort overall, which makes our numbers
higher and reaching it faster than we should. I guess
(15:22):
the reminder in all of this when we listen to
those numbers is that we're not done. We're not done,
not by long shot. We have a lot more life
to live. Just sometimes it gets really hard. So think
about this, Think about the air in which we grew up.
(15:45):
We had feelings, we had feelings, had deep feelings, but
we kept quiet, we didn't talk about it. And the
kind of carryover of these older generations and the male
that suffer in silence, that's part of it. And I'll
be honest, I'm pretty prototypical male in my mindset about things.
(16:14):
Just got to go and do things. But I can't
let pride stand in the way of potentially doing something
that's going to cause so much greater harm to my family, community, etc.
It's a hard thing because you do get to a
point where you sometimes think it would just be easier,
(16:41):
everyone be better off. I don't think that's true, but
think about some of the things that we've experienced so
economic roller coasters. Nineties were massive layoffs in many different industries.
Two thousand and eight crash, my gosh, I had my
house or four months in the housing market crashed. We
(17:04):
didn't think we can get the house any lower, and
wouldn't you know it, it got worse. We are underwater immediately, immediately,
We're all just starting our lives. In many ways, even
for the older exers, I mean for those of you
who are like ten years older than me, you might
have been faced with the fact that divorce was peaking.
(17:28):
Divorce rates peaked in our generation, in our lifetime in
the mid two thousands. And let's not forget the fact
that many of us, myself included, we partied. We partied
hard through the nineties into the early two thousands, and
(17:50):
some of us developed a habit it's hard to shake.
So what do we know for certain the number one
reason that most give if they give a reason. Money.
(18:16):
Money is the number one problem in the world. As
I said on an earlier podcast, money is not even real,
but it's the realist thing in the world. We saw
jobs vanishing, globalization recessions, a lot of middle aged people
(18:36):
just like us. We took that hit, wages completely flatlining,
and unemployment rates. Unemployment by itself doubles the potential risk
for taking one's own life doubles it. That is pretty serious. People.
(19:05):
They lose their houses, their spouses, maybe their kids, then
pride and then everything. Second on the list substance abuse.
(19:29):
Think about our generation. We caught the tail end of
all the heroin in the nineties and then what comes
rolling in opioids all the same family. We're hit really
hard with it. And that's going to come up again shortly,
(19:49):
because what do you do with opioids. We'll talk about
that in a minute. In twenty seventeen, forty to forty
nine year olds had the highest death by overdose than
any other demographic. You have a bad day, is it
(20:16):
an overdose or is it on purpose? It's a really
fine line. That's a really sobering thought. Right, No, No,
it was accidental. Maybe that's a tough one. Number three,
(20:44):
being alone, and I'm not talking about the kind of
perceptual loneliness, but I think just humans have. But divorces spiked,
as I said in the two thousands, then you might
have your kids leave via that or just as they
(21:05):
get older, they grow up, they go away the empty
nest our parents have either passed or are fading into,
you know, health issues. Next thing you know thousand is
quiet and you know these concepts of the loneliness and
what that is. It means different things to different people.
(21:26):
But if you're a latch key kid like me, loneliness
or it's just because that's a way of being. And
I think that we take that for granted to some extent.
I do take for granted the fact that I am
completely comfortable in silence, in quiet and being on my own. Yeah,
(21:48):
I couldn't imagine not having the people that are around
me in my life, particularly my family, and I'm so
blessed for that. And then there's a stigma. There's a
stigma that's attached to having mental health issues, leading people
(22:09):
who need it to not seek help. They don't seek help.
You're seeing where this linear path could cause someone to
arrive to taking that step. Plus, when we were growing up,
it's like, okay, if you were in therapy, you either
had major issues or rich weirdos who are like, Oh,
(22:32):
I'm going to go to therapy and talk out all
my problems, and yeah, that stigma has to be eliminated.
Only one in three depressed men get help. For women,
that's one and two. Those fifty percent of women who
are feeling depressed or feeling some kind of overwhelming emotional
(22:57):
response to something will seek help. Ah, we're guys, we
got this. We're tough, right, We're all tough until we're
not right. So then there's a lot of what ifs.
(23:21):
You know, is isolation. This technology that we're all involved with,
doom scrolling. There's a reason it's called doom scrolling. Does
it just take us down a path of not interacting
meaningfully with the world around us that includes our family,
our friends. Just getting outside and enjoying the sun. That's
(23:43):
an issue. People need to be outside. There is genuine
health perks to sunlight beyond just getting your d vitamins.
I was on a medication for many years that made
me complete lee photo sensitive. I went out five minutes,
(24:04):
I'm starting to get a burn. Man. I was so
happy to be done with that medication because I love
being outside. But when I was on it, I would
slather myself with sunscreen and I would go out there.
And we're not going to get into a whole debate
about whether sunscreen is good or bad, or if it's
exacerbated the issue or not. All I know is I
would go out, I would burn, and I just still
needed to be outside. There are health benefits there. And
(24:30):
then just midlife. So I talked about at the start
of the show health issues, bad knees, bad backs, bad necks.
Maybe you make it through your forties with minor aches
and pains, and if you have good for you but
(24:50):
pain by fifty, it's real, it's real. You sneeze, funny,
you throw in your back out. What treats pain? Opioids, alcohol, drugs.
See how these things kind of exacerbate the issue, and
(25:10):
you start finding yourself in this cycle. And of course,
particularly with pain medications, the amount necessary to dull out
the pain it increases, the more it increases, the more
dangerous it becomes. So you're feeling pain, you're sick, you're stressed,
(25:32):
money's tight, and you start to ask yourself, what's it
all for? The existential crisis that I've talked about on
the show, It's real, and it gets super heavy. It does.
It gets heavy. Now. I'm speaking for myself, but I
(25:52):
know that maybe there's a couple of you out there
who have experienced this or feel that. And that's why
I want to have this conversation with you, is because
if you are just putting on the brave face and
pretending that it doesn't exist. Again, like I said earlier,
just trying to give you the permission to yourself to
(26:17):
take the necessary steps because health health, it's not just
physical health. I look at it. It's physical, it's mental,
it's spiritual health. All of those require some hygiene if
you will. Now you might say I don't believe in anything,
(26:43):
I'm an atheist. Whatever, that's great, that's fine. It doesn't
mean that you can't take time to meditate. You don't
need to call it prayer to quiet your mind and
just ill the universe, if that's what you'd like to
(27:03):
call it. Because whether you believe in something or not,
to not be able to tap into the energy that
exists in our world there's energy. It's there, and for
many of us, we equate that directly with the presence
of a divine being, even if you don't think it's sentient.
(27:27):
If you don't think that it's this being, that's fine.
But there is an energy to everything around us. So
tap into that if that's what it takes. And certainly,
you know, one of the things that has been talked
about an awful lot and again I've spoken mostly about
(27:49):
the you know, the male perspective tonight. You know, there
is a change in the dynamics between men and women too,
include you know, in the workplace and earning and all
of those things that we've seen a lot change in
our lifetime. And I think that it becomes one of
(28:11):
those things, and particularly if you go on social media,
these kind of expectations that may or may not exist
for what a real man is. It's oftentimes more older
zoomers and earlier millennials were like, I need a man
who is six foot five making five hundred thousand dollars
(28:31):
a year. Well, okay, that brings down that percentage to
a very small number. But most of us are just
normal guys, normal people working jobs. And I think that
it becomes much more difficult in the world that we
live in for those kind of interactions. And I mentioned
a couple of weeks ago, I can't imagine, you know,
(28:51):
being divorced right now and being out there and trying
to date. You know, there's a lot of things culturally
that I think have changed so much where we kind
of feel like are we being left behind? Which is
why I've spoken about utilizing new tools like AI for example.
Are there ways for us to be motivated and a
(29:15):
part of this world that's not the world we grow
up in. It's not that world is gone and we
have to simply find our way within it. And that's hard.
So what can you do now? I have always said,
(29:35):
email me, direct message me, whatever, reach out to me
social media. I think a couple of you folks out
there will know that I respond. I may not respond
to every email right away, most emails I respond to occasionally.
I think once or twice I haven't gotten back to
someone on an email. But if you don't feel like
(29:59):
you have anywhere else to go by all means, if
you were feeling some kind of dark thoughts in your head,
you can text me. Well not text I'm not giving
out my phone number, but you know what I mean,
You can message me, send me an email, hit me
up on X or whatever. X is probably the best
(30:21):
way to get me. Plus you should be following me
there anyway. And that's where stuff like this podcast go.
But let's say you don't feel like you want to
go and get help per se, talk to a buddy,
(30:44):
and it doesn't have to be like you're getting your
feelings out, not a therapy couch. Just hey, Tommy, you
want to go grab a beer, you want to go
grab a coffee, whatever, Just go shoot the shit, talk
about stories, whatever. Hey remember that time and missus Johnson's class,
(31:06):
I was talking to that girl Janis whatever. Just go
and have some kind of connection, a little bit of
a reboot. You don't need all the mushy stuff. Sometimes
it's just feeling connected to something is enough, Or get help,
(31:31):
go to therapy, doesn't have to be forever. Maybe you
just need to talk through this particular thing, this particular struggle,
this particular point in your life. If you don't feel
like you can, we'll talk about some other resources in
just a couple minutes. Another option, and I've said it before, move, move, walk,
(32:01):
just walk hike. I feel like you can lift some weights,
lift some weight, do it. It's helpful. You know. I'm
still gradually going back into it, and I don't have
the same vim and vigor that I had nine months
ago now when I started having the issues with crones.
(32:25):
I'm gradually getting back into it, still just hitting super
lightweights and gradually just trying to keep moving. It is
incredibly helpful in door fins and everything that's going through
your body, and how it resets certain things. It's just
(32:46):
important because honestly, we just destroy our dopamine levels with
the screens and the work and the stress and the
poor sleep. So sometimes just go for a walk. I
know that something it's hard to do if you live
in cold climates, but even then cool wind on your
face can go a long way. It doesn't necessarily cure everything,
(33:09):
but these are just some steps to take now. I
think this last thing I'm going to say, as far
as what you can do, is exceptionally important, and it's
why I called my wife that day. You need to
(33:31):
own it. You need to recognize that it exists and
that you're feeling something even negative. Recognize it and say, okay,
I need to start here and know, hey, I'm struggling.
(33:57):
If you have time off at work, and I recognize
some of you might not, there's a reason that you
get time off in most workplaces. Take it. It's hard
to do if it was hard for me. I took
off this past Friday after these couple of weeks of
(34:18):
just feeling really not okay, and maybe I was going
to do something that was related to, you know, my
daughter's college search. But I knew I needed the day.
I knew I needed the day. I needed to sleep
in a little bit. I needed to restore and refresh
or all the times that I've missed out on sleep.
I needed to do it. My daughter's like, no, I'm
(34:39):
not going to do it on Friday. I'm going to
do it on Saturday. Fine booked for Saturday. We're good.
I got some stuff done in my car, need to
get my inspection stick or I went cleaned it out,
you know, getting ready for being able to you know,
pop open the sun roof in the car. So I
just wiped the whole car down, vacuumed it out, you know. Great,
(35:03):
did some stuff in the yard, but I needed that day.
I logged into my email for work once just because
there's a couple of things that we're doing right now
that the statistics matter. Okay, did that done? If you
(35:24):
have PTO sick time, personal days and you just need
to take it, take it, it's hard to do. It's
hard to do. I went back and forth about making
that request. They said, you know what I need to
do it. Yeah, I'm doing it. And I did, and
(35:48):
I'm glad that I did. Now had some complications with
the crones yesterday Monday and felt like shit had to
leave early. It is what it is. But here's what
we know. There has been an increased push to focus
on mental health, and in particular men's mental health. So
(36:10):
I found this somewhat surprising statistic because we do know
that self harm did somewhat increase briefly within COVID, but
the statistics don't bear that out. And I find that
fascinating because that's what we heard right on the news.
Rates have dipped from thirty point one per thousand gen
(36:35):
X in twenty eighteen, one of the higher years, down
to twenty six point six and twenty twenty one. Not massive,
but still maybe we're seeing some progress and people are
getting the help that they need. So beyond just sending
(36:58):
me a DM or calling an old friend, talking to
a spouse, whatever, here's some things that are available. So
first and fore of the most there's SAMSA SAMHSA dot gov.
You can plug in your zip code and give you
(37:20):
free or sliding scale counseling, no insurance, no problem. But
it also provides on the website some of these other
options that are available. So nine eight Suicide and Crisis
Lifeline caller text nine eight twenty four to seven free,
no judgment. If you need the help, call up do it.
(37:46):
National Alliance on Mental Health, National Alliance on Mental Illness
NAMI dot org, local groups, online chats. They also have
some things that are based upon on different places in life,
so like groups that are specifically for people at midlife
(38:07):
midlife stress gen X, so there's like subgroups within that
I mentioned the nine A eight. There's a Veterans crisis line,
so for those of you who served our country that
nine A eight then press option one that specifically for veterans,
and then there's the crisis text line text home ho
(38:31):
m E all caps to seven four one seven four
to one, discrete fast response times if you just need
to have an interaction with someone. These are all really
important for yourself. But also if you feel like you
(39:01):
need to have a connection, maybe text an old friend
that you haven't in a while. Because all of these
crisis lines that I've talked about, you're initiating because you're
looking to make You're seeking something. You're seeking someone to
(39:22):
just say hey, I'm feeling this way. But equally powerful
is just texting an old friend who might be in
that moment where you text them at their lowest moment.
They might be pondering taking irreversible action, but in that
(39:43):
moment of you just saying hey, Bud, how you been,
that could be enough for them to change course. We
always talk about we as a society, make sure you
tell the people that you love that you love them.
Absolutely important, But we're not just talking about the people
(40:09):
that you see day to day. Sometimes that's just the
people that you've known throughout your life that are meaningful
to you. You know, I reached out to a couple
of people just this past week just hey, No. Some
of it was podcast stuff, because are people that are
important to me that I like to interact with, that
(40:30):
I enjoy speaking with. But you know, different places in
life and usually not living within close gig you know,
geography to people. You know, sometimes you're left with the
social media space and the instagrams and the messaging. But man,
there's a handful of people in this world that I
adore and I don't adore that many people, and I
(40:54):
love talking to them. Another friend I texted, and so
I came and cool, we're texting back and forth, but hey,
can we get out of call? I'm like, yes, brother,
next week. Absolutely, you know, it's important. It's important to
(41:17):
keep and maintain these connections. Look, we have survived a
lot of stuff in our lifetime. We've come a long way,
ups and downs. You know. A few months ago I
(41:38):
felt like I was riding a high and then things
changed and then things seemed like they were low. I'm
still not out of it yet. With the darkest thoughts.
Those whispers are silent, but I know they can recur anytime,
(42:03):
and I don't take that lightly and I don't want
any of you suffering in silence. So one of the
things that I always find so I feel like people
don't mean to be they don't mean to be dismissive
when they say things. And I know I've said this
(42:24):
on earlier podcasts. I recognize that people say, oh, well,
everyone's got someone. No, not everyone does, and I recognize that,
and that is really difficult. And if I didn't have
like my wife and my kids, I don't know what
my life would have been like. But I can't imagine,
(42:47):
knowing the relationship I have with family and all that,
that I'd be tight with them, because if I would
have stayed in those circumstances, I most certainly would have
been a statistic. Thirty five years ago, I was going
down that path. So I recognize that some of you,
(43:09):
your family has passed, and maybe you're married and divorced,
or maybe you never married, and maybe the kids are
grown and out of the house. And I recognize that
not everyone has just someone easily available. That's why these
resources are there, because even if the only thing you
have is right now you're hearing my voice, and you
(43:30):
go to work and you put on a smile and
all that, go to your local church. I know, for me,
as a Catholic, just going in, I'm pretty sure that
I could go to the parish center and I can
find a priest and find someone to talk to. Sometimes
that's going to confession, the right of reconciliation. It's a sacrament,
(43:50):
it's great, but you can go in and you can talk.
So it's not just these resource lines. There are things
in your community that are available. And if you're feeling
as though you need to talk to someone, please do it.
The statistics for gen X are too high, and if
everything that I've talked about tonight Holt's true, we're eventually
(44:13):
going to be heading over into that next age demographic.
What we're starting to see or continuing to see these
really high rates of self harm. You know, my wife
in her industry as we are talking tonight, and I
kind of told her what I was doing for the episode.
(44:34):
She goes, these are important topics. You should do it,
because I was going back and forth about whether I should.
Is it too heavy? It's like it's heavy, it's important.
She goesn't also right now? Right now, past two years,
divorce for people over age fifty five has skyrocketed, And
it is blowing my mind. To think that people who
(44:56):
are in their seventies are divorcing. Ows my mind because
let's say the average age that people are marrying nowadays,
and it would have been younger back then, but I mean,
you put thirty forty years in and you call it quits.
You couldn't, You couldn't work it out at this stage.
(45:19):
It's heartbreaking to me. Look, I am far from a
perfect husband, far from a perfect husband, and I'm sure
my wife wild saying she's far from a perfect wife.
We all have our shit that we bring to it, right,
But ultimately, whether it's the relationships that you're in or
(45:41):
for yourself, you gotta put in work. You always got
to put in work, even when it's the hardest thing
you could possibly do. And if the hardest thing that
you need to do today when you get done listening
to this podcast is except the fact that you need
help take that step, take it because it's important. I
(46:10):
want every single person who listens to this podcast to
feel welcomed, to feel cared for, to feel heard, to
feel known, and to know that there are resources there.
Even if you don't have tight friendships or close family,
(46:33):
there are resources. There are people out there who want
to help you. Look Call nine at eight if it's dark,
if it's dark in your head, if it's only kind
(46:57):
of gray, call friend, family, okay, but recognize whether it's
a whisper or a shout in your head that you
need to take some action and that's okay, and you'll
(47:17):
be better for it. And that includes substance abuse as well.
I know it all too well. It's that first step.
It's okay, it's important, it's important. And that's the thing
with the SAMSA, the SAMHSA dot gov. One of the
first things that talks about it. It's substance abuse as
(47:38):
being a critical piece of this, and many of these
things are are linked together. It's hard to get sober,
it's hard to get clean. It sometimes does it seem
worth it when I feel like absolute garbage and my
health feeling my garbage, and I've had a shitty week.
(47:59):
You don't think that a couple of weeks ago, that
same day that I called my wife, I didn't want
to go ahead and get a bottle bottle of rum
and a pack of cigarettes. Seemed like a tremendously good
idea in that moment, and it would have been stupid,
(48:21):
and I'm glad I didn't do it. It was enough
for me just to utter the words out loud to
my wife and say here'shere. I'm that so take that
first step. No matter what it is, and if you're
not battling any of the other stuff, and it's just
a matter that for your mental health and your physical help,
take that first step on a treadmill or just stepping
(48:42):
outside your front door, go walk, whatever it is that
you need to do, take that first step, all right,
So please, if you need to shoot me an email,
whatever it is. How do you reach me? You can
email me at Stuck in the Middle pod at Yahoo.
You can find me on Instagram X and YouTube at
(49:04):
stockpot x. Heading over to the Facebook page Stuck in
the Middle gen x podcast, please like, comment, share, leave
five star reviews, and most importantly, please subscribe to the podcast. Actually,
most importantly, please get help if you need it. So
(49:25):
until next time, later, slackers,
Welcome to the Stuck in the Middle Podcast, the podcast
dedicated to the music, movies, and culture of Generation Acts.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
What is Up, Slackers, and welcome to another episode of
the Stuck in the Middle Podcast. I am your host,
Jason Eck, and anyone who's listened to the show for
a while will know that I've never done this before
and it is appropriate that I do so. So this
(00:52):
is a trigger warning. The topic for this evening is
going to get pretty heavy, and it's going to be
a combination of some of my own experiences as well
as looking at overall mental health and how oftentimes that
(01:16):
can lead to poor outcomes. What I mean by that
is we're going to be talking really deeply about mental
health but also the potential for self harm, up to
and including suicide. And that's the trigger warning for you.
(01:38):
If this is a topic that is too heavy for
you because it hits too close to home and things
that you have experienced, I completely understand. It's your call.
You do not need to keep playing this podcast. It's
something that I felt was really important that I needed
to talk about and needed to address. I went back
(01:59):
and forth about whether I should just keep it too
dry facts, but I don't think that would have been
I think in tune with my intent and what I
think is important to share, never really shied away from
much on here on the podcast. Now. I haven't gotten
(02:21):
into all the nitty gritty because I think there are
some things that are just somewhat untoward and I haven't
discussed them. But this is a topic that I think
is important, and as we go through it, I think
you'll understand why. So again this is the trigger warning.
If this is too much, I understand, I hope you
(02:41):
come back next week for the episode. So let me
tell you kind of the impetus for all of this.
I've mentioned many times on the podcast that I've dealt
with health issues over the course of really the past
thirty years, and over the past year I have had complications
(03:02):
from CRONES and that and of itself is a challenge,
and the type of complications that I've had are uncomfortable, painful,
and the kind of thing that wears very heavily on
your psyche on a daily basis, and it's limiting in
(03:23):
many ways. But within all of that is the fact
that CRONES is often exacerbated by high levels of stress.
So even though I've been working with nutritionist on working
on the nutritional piece and getting my diet and my
food on track in ways that are both beneficial but
also easily digestible, and the hopes to reduce inflammation. All
(03:48):
of that is critical, but in periods of high stress,
even if you're eating pristinely, it doesn't always work. And
at this point, I no longer drink, I no longer smoke,
although I am finding myself quite addicted to zin at
the moment. But then I had a very serious couple
(04:12):
of weeks of stress at work and it was really
really bad, and it could all be fine, but as
I've been going through it, it's still weighing on me.
And I'll talk a little bit about some of the
methods that I've been using to kind of deal with that,
(04:37):
and at some point on an afternoon, and any of
you who've experienced this will know what I mean, even
if you've never said it out loud to someone before.
And this is my way of maybe giving you permission
to go ahead and have these conversations, because I think
(05:00):
they're important. But the dark thoughts begin to trickle into
my head, and any of you who have had dark
thoughts knows that it starts off as a whisper somewhere
in the back of your head, just a whisper when
(05:21):
the stress is so great and you're really feeling it
and you're feeling maybe a lack of worth. So let's
say my health had been fine through all of this,
I probably would have been able to shoulder the burden
with much more grace than I did. But to have
(05:42):
the health issues exacerbated by this stress, I found myself
having dark thoughts. Now. I recognize that one about to
say may not be the case for all of you,
and that will be critical as we're going through this
this podcast tonight. I'm very blessed and very fortunate that
(06:06):
I have a partner and my wife, Maggie has been
on the show before that I know that I can't
speak to about just about anything without judgment and without fear.
And I called her up on the phone and I said, hey,
(06:26):
you got a couple minutes. And I said, look, the
stress has all getten to me. It's bad and I'm
having dark thoughts. Now. She didn't chime in and say
what do you mean by that? She has kind of
let me go. She's like, okay, all right, what do
you say, and I said to her, you know, I'm
(06:48):
thinking in terms of self harm, like and it's just
a whisper in the back of my brain. It's not
something that's screaming and yelling at the forefront of my mind. However,
I feel it's important for me to articulate this to you,
as my wife, as the mother of my children, that
I've had these thoughts at all, even as a whisper,
(07:12):
because I said, let's say, this continues to spiral in
my brain, and that little whisper gets louder and louder,
louder and louder. I would hate to find you in
a position where I took some horrible action, leaving you
(07:33):
to wonder why and did you miss something and what
could you have done differently and all of that. I
feel that as a good husband, it's important for me
to say, hey, look, these thoughts have creeped in. I'm
not going to take any action. It's not anything that's
(07:55):
in the forefront of my mind, but I've had them
because God forbid I were to do something. And she
was caught completely by surprise that there was no warning,
there was nothing, no even inkling, that such dark feelings
(08:17):
and thoughts were present within her husband. I would have
never felt okay with that. So, for all of you listening,
I've taken a number of steps since then, Okay, number
of steps since then, and recognized that part of the
major issue was not just the stress of things and
(08:41):
these thoughts creeping in, but also very high levels of
anxiety and the inability to sleep and my heart racing
and all of those things that I think all of
us have experienced in some way, shape or fashion. Maybe
not all of us, but many of us. And I
took appropriate steps, and I, you know, I called my
doctor and I said, hey, look, here's the situation. Now,
(09:04):
a couple of years ago, I went through a period
of very high stress. Not this bad, not where I
had these kind of thoughts. Well, I did when I
quit drinking because I was having auditory hallucinations. It got
that bad, and I did have some dark thoughts creep
in at that point, but that was a couple of days,
(09:26):
and then I moved through it as the dependence on
alcohol left my system. So now, gosh, bad. I look
back at the timeline. Hmm, makes sense, makes sense. So
I called my doctor. I said, hey, look, I need
a little something to take the edge off the anxiety.
Here's what I've taken in the past. Here's the Milgram strength.
I'd like to have a refill of this prescription. If
(09:47):
it persists past this point, I will call you back.
I'll come in right And she's like, Okay, completely understand.
Here's you know. I think it's like a not even
a thirty day supply, something like fifteen day supply or
something like that. And I was immediately able to kind
of take that edge off and be able to breathe
(10:08):
and kind of come down and say, Okay, here we are.
We can get through this. One way or another. We're
going to get through this. And I just think it's
important for all of you who listen to recognize that
it's the most difficult thing sometimes in the world to
(10:31):
just talk about things. Again, I am very fortunate and
very blessed that I have the supports that I do.
Sometimes when things get very dark, you can find yourself
forgetting about the resources that you do have at your disposal.
And I think that's what is important as well, is
(10:55):
to try to find just some some moment your mind
long enough to say, Okay, do I have any kind
of support here or am I completely on my own Now,
I don't have a close relationship with my extended family.
I don't. It is what it is. I don't really
(11:17):
have normal parntal relationships and those kind of things. So
but whoever it is, Well, let's dig in some more
of why I think this topic is so important to
me beyond my own experiences. It's because, in many ways, statistically,
our generation has been saddled with this for much longer
(11:42):
in a more persistent way than other generations. So yet
again we have some uniqueness into our little cohort here
of existence. And I think one of the key things
as we go through this is to consider that concepts
of self harm and suicide are often reported out in
(12:03):
such a way. And this is my perception of the
news of the focus on young people. Now, certainly teenage
rates are nowhere near where they like we would like
them to be societally. However, that's been the kind of
pervasive discussion for so long, and fortunately it's not as
(12:25):
dire in those age groups. It's just that it hits
people so much harder because we're talking about young people.
But let's take a look at good old gen X.
So most of this is going to be centered by
and large on gen X males. So for the female
(12:45):
listeners of the show, bear in mind that your statistics
are super commendable in any demographic and really very very
low rates. Male rates are exceptionally high. And we're going
to get into a little bit of some of the
(13:07):
known and unknowns related to this, but let's just take
a look at the numbers. Okay, So back in nineteen
ninety one, we're going to use that as an example.
Gen X guys fifteen to twenty four, we're at a
twenty four per one hundred thousand for taking their own lives.
(13:29):
By twenty twenty two, as forty five to sixty four
year olds, we're at twenty seven to twenty nine per
one hundred thousand. That is twelve to fifteen thousand of
US gone every year. Out of thirty nine total mail
(13:51):
suicides per year, we're up to fifteen percent of it.
We're fifteen thousand of those almost forty That is a
big number. Not that I think this is super important,
(14:11):
but the methodology most commonly used, and I think this
statistic is often used in a lot of different ways.
It's typically by a handgun sixteen to eighteen per one
hundred thousand than suffocation typically hanging. And then I didn't
(14:32):
realize this because again, this is a serious subject and
not one that I've dug too deeply into poisoning, which
is also potentially medicinally. But here's what's even more frightening.
We're not the worst. Men over the age of seventy
(14:56):
five are at forty three point nine for one hundred thousand.
Those are boomers, larger cohort overall, which makes our numbers
higher and reaching it faster than we should. I guess
(15:22):
the reminder in all of this when we listen to
those numbers is that we're not done. We're not done,
not by long shot. We have a lot more life
to live. Just sometimes it gets really hard. So think
about this, Think about the air in which we grew up.
(15:45):
We had feelings, we had feelings, had deep feelings, but
we kept quiet, we didn't talk about it. And the
kind of carryover of these older generations and the male
that suffer in silence, that's part of it. And I'll
be honest, I'm pretty prototypical male in my mindset about things.
(16:14):
Just got to go and do things. But I can't
let pride stand in the way of potentially doing something
that's going to cause so much greater harm to my family, community, etc.
It's a hard thing because you do get to a
point where you sometimes think it would just be easier,
(16:41):
everyone be better off. I don't think that's true, but
think about some of the things that we've experienced so
economic roller coasters. Nineties were massive layoffs in many different industries.
Two thousand and eight crash, my gosh, I had my
house or four months in the housing market crashed. We
(17:04):
didn't think we can get the house any lower, and
wouldn't you know it, it got worse. We are underwater immediately, immediately,
We're all just starting our lives. In many ways, even
for the older exers, I mean for those of you
who are like ten years older than me, you might
have been faced with the fact that divorce was peaking.
(17:28):
Divorce rates peaked in our generation, in our lifetime in
the mid two thousands. And let's not forget the fact
that many of us, myself included, we partied. We partied
hard through the nineties into the early two thousands, and
(17:50):
some of us developed a habit it's hard to shake.
So what do we know for certain the number one
reason that most give if they give a reason. Money.
(18:16):
Money is the number one problem in the world. As
I said on an earlier podcast, money is not even real,
but it's the realist thing in the world. We saw
jobs vanishing, globalization recessions, a lot of middle aged people
(18:36):
just like us. We took that hit, wages completely flatlining,
and unemployment rates. Unemployment by itself doubles the potential risk
for taking one's own life doubles it. That is pretty serious. People.
(19:05):
They lose their houses, their spouses, maybe their kids, then
pride and then everything. Second on the list substance abuse.
(19:29):
Think about our generation. We caught the tail end of
all the heroin in the nineties and then what comes
rolling in opioids all the same family. We're hit really
hard with it. And that's going to come up again shortly,
(19:49):
because what do you do with opioids. We'll talk about
that in a minute. In twenty seventeen, forty to forty
nine year olds had the highest death by overdose than
any other demographic. You have a bad day, is it
(20:16):
an overdose or is it on purpose? It's a really
fine line. That's a really sobering thought. Right, No, No,
it was accidental. Maybe that's a tough one. Number three,
(20:44):
being alone, and I'm not talking about the kind of
perceptual loneliness, but I think just humans have. But divorces spiked,
as I said in the two thousands, then you might
have your kids leave via that or just as they
(21:05):
get older, they grow up, they go away the empty
nest our parents have either passed or are fading into,
you know, health issues. Next thing you know thousand is
quiet and you know these concepts of the loneliness and
what that is. It means different things to different people.
(21:26):
But if you're a latch key kid like me, loneliness
or it's just because that's a way of being. And
I think that we take that for granted to some extent.
I do take for granted the fact that I am
completely comfortable in silence, in quiet and being on my own. Yeah,
(21:48):
I couldn't imagine not having the people that are around
me in my life, particularly my family, and I'm so
blessed for that. And then there's a stigma. There's a
stigma that's attached to having mental health issues, leading people
(22:09):
who need it to not seek help. They don't seek help.
You're seeing where this linear path could cause someone to
arrive to taking that step. Plus, when we were growing up,
it's like, okay, if you were in therapy, you either
had major issues or rich weirdos who are like, Oh,
(22:32):
I'm going to go to therapy and talk out all
my problems, and yeah, that stigma has to be eliminated.
Only one in three depressed men get help. For women,
that's one and two. Those fifty percent of women who
are feeling depressed or feeling some kind of overwhelming emotional
(22:57):
response to something will seek help. Ah, we're guys, we
got this. We're tough, right, We're all tough until we're
not right. So then there's a lot of what ifs.
(23:21):
You know, is isolation. This technology that we're all involved with,
doom scrolling. There's a reason it's called doom scrolling. Does
it just take us down a path of not interacting
meaningfully with the world around us that includes our family,
our friends. Just getting outside and enjoying the sun. That's
(23:43):
an issue. People need to be outside. There is genuine
health perks to sunlight beyond just getting your d vitamins.
I was on a medication for many years that made
me complete lee photo sensitive. I went out five minutes,
(24:04):
I'm starting to get a burn. Man. I was so
happy to be done with that medication because I love
being outside. But when I was on it, I would
slather myself with sunscreen and I would go out there.
And we're not going to get into a whole debate
about whether sunscreen is good or bad, or if it's
exacerbated the issue or not. All I know is I
would go out, I would burn, and I just still
needed to be outside. There are health benefits there. And
(24:30):
then just midlife. So I talked about at the start
of the show health issues, bad knees, bad backs, bad necks.
Maybe you make it through your forties with minor aches
and pains, and if you have good for you but
(24:50):
pain by fifty, it's real, it's real. You sneeze, funny,
you throw in your back out. What treats pain? Opioids, alcohol, drugs.
See how these things kind of exacerbate the issue, and
(25:10):
you start finding yourself in this cycle. And of course,
particularly with pain medications, the amount necessary to dull out
the pain it increases, the more it increases, the more
dangerous it becomes. So you're feeling pain, you're sick, you're stressed,
(25:32):
money's tight, and you start to ask yourself, what's it
all for? The existential crisis that I've talked about on
the show, It's real, and it gets super heavy. It does.
It gets heavy. Now. I'm speaking for myself, but I
(25:52):
know that maybe there's a couple of you out there
who have experienced this or feel that. And that's why
I want to have this conversation with you, is because
if you are just putting on the brave face and
pretending that it doesn't exist. Again, like I said earlier,
just trying to give you the permission to yourself to
(26:17):
take the necessary steps because health health, it's not just
physical health. I look at it. It's physical, it's mental,
it's spiritual health. All of those require some hygiene if
you will. Now you might say I don't believe in anything,
(26:43):
I'm an atheist. Whatever, that's great, that's fine. It doesn't
mean that you can't take time to meditate. You don't
need to call it prayer to quiet your mind and
just ill the universe, if that's what you'd like to
(27:03):
call it. Because whether you believe in something or not,
to not be able to tap into the energy that
exists in our world there's energy. It's there, and for
many of us, we equate that directly with the presence
of a divine being, even if you don't think it's sentient.
(27:27):
If you don't think that it's this being, that's fine.
But there is an energy to everything around us. So
tap into that if that's what it takes. And certainly,
you know, one of the things that has been talked
about an awful lot and again I've spoken mostly about
(27:49):
the you know, the male perspective tonight. You know, there
is a change in the dynamics between men and women too,
include you know, in the workplace and earning and all
of those things that we've seen a lot change in
our lifetime. And I think that it becomes one of
(28:11):
those things, and particularly if you go on social media,
these kind of expectations that may or may not exist
for what a real man is. It's oftentimes more older
zoomers and earlier millennials were like, I need a man
who is six foot five making five hundred thousand dollars
(28:31):
a year. Well, okay, that brings down that percentage to
a very small number. But most of us are just
normal guys, normal people working jobs. And I think that
it becomes much more difficult in the world that we
live in for those kind of interactions. And I mentioned
a couple of weeks ago, I can't imagine, you know,
(28:51):
being divorced right now and being out there and trying
to date. You know, there's a lot of things culturally
that I think have changed so much where we kind
of feel like are we being left behind? Which is
why I've spoken about utilizing new tools like AI for example.
Are there ways for us to be motivated and a
(29:15):
part of this world that's not the world we grow
up in. It's not that world is gone and we
have to simply find our way within it. And that's hard.
So what can you do now? I have always said,
(29:35):
email me, direct message me, whatever, reach out to me
social media. I think a couple of you folks out
there will know that I respond. I may not respond
to every email right away, most emails I respond to occasionally.
I think once or twice I haven't gotten back to
someone on an email. But if you don't feel like
(29:59):
you have anywhere else to go by all means, if
you were feeling some kind of dark thoughts in your head,
you can text me. Well not text I'm not giving
out my phone number, but you know what I mean,
You can message me, send me an email, hit me
up on X or whatever. X is probably the best
(30:21):
way to get me. Plus you should be following me
there anyway. And that's where stuff like this podcast go.
But let's say you don't feel like you want to
go and get help per se, talk to a buddy,
(30:44):
and it doesn't have to be like you're getting your
feelings out, not a therapy couch. Just hey, Tommy, you
want to go grab a beer, you want to go
grab a coffee, whatever, Just go shoot the shit, talk
about stories, whatever. Hey remember that time and missus Johnson's class,
(31:06):
I was talking to that girl Janis whatever. Just go
and have some kind of connection, a little bit of
a reboot. You don't need all the mushy stuff. Sometimes
it's just feeling connected to something is enough, Or get help,
(31:31):
go to therapy, doesn't have to be forever. Maybe you
just need to talk through this particular thing, this particular struggle,
this particular point in your life. If you don't feel
like you can, we'll talk about some other resources in
just a couple minutes. Another option, and I've said it before, move, move, walk,
(32:01):
just walk hike. I feel like you can lift some weights,
lift some weight, do it. It's helpful. You know. I'm
still gradually going back into it, and I don't have
the same vim and vigor that I had nine months
ago now when I started having the issues with crones.
(32:25):
I'm gradually getting back into it, still just hitting super
lightweights and gradually just trying to keep moving. It is
incredibly helpful in door fins and everything that's going through
your body, and how it resets certain things. It's just
(32:46):
important because honestly, we just destroy our dopamine levels with
the screens and the work and the stress and the
poor sleep. So sometimes just go for a walk. I
know that something it's hard to do if you live
in cold climates, but even then cool wind on your
face can go a long way. It doesn't necessarily cure everything,
(33:09):
but these are just some steps to take now. I
think this last thing I'm going to say, as far
as what you can do, is exceptionally important, and it's
why I called my wife that day. You need to
(33:31):
own it. You need to recognize that it exists and
that you're feeling something even negative. Recognize it and say, okay,
I need to start here and know, hey, I'm struggling.
(33:57):
If you have time off at work, and I recognize
some of you might not, there's a reason that you
get time off in most workplaces. Take it. It's hard
to do if it was hard for me. I took
off this past Friday after these couple of weeks of
(34:18):
just feeling really not okay, and maybe I was going
to do something that was related to, you know, my
daughter's college search. But I knew I needed the day.
I knew I needed the day. I needed to sleep
in a little bit. I needed to restore and refresh
or all the times that I've missed out on sleep.
I needed to do it. My daughter's like, no, I'm
(34:39):
not going to do it on Friday. I'm going to
do it on Saturday. Fine booked for Saturday. We're good.
I got some stuff done in my car, need to
get my inspection stick or I went cleaned it out,
you know, getting ready for being able to you know,
pop open the sun roof in the car. So I
just wiped the whole car down, vacuumed it out, you know. Great,
(35:03):
did some stuff in the yard, but I needed that day.
I logged into my email for work once just because
there's a couple of things that we're doing right now
that the statistics matter. Okay, did that done? If you
(35:24):
have PTO sick time, personal days and you just need
to take it, take it, it's hard to do. It's
hard to do. I went back and forth about making
that request. They said, you know what I need to
do it. Yeah, I'm doing it. And I did, and
(35:48):
I'm glad that I did. Now had some complications with
the crones yesterday Monday and felt like shit had to
leave early. It is what it is. But here's what
we know. There has been an increased push to focus
on mental health, and in particular men's mental health. So
(36:10):
I found this somewhat surprising statistic because we do know
that self harm did somewhat increase briefly within COVID, but
the statistics don't bear that out. And I find that
fascinating because that's what we heard right on the news.
Rates have dipped from thirty point one per thousand gen
(36:35):
X in twenty eighteen, one of the higher years, down
to twenty six point six and twenty twenty one. Not massive,
but still maybe we're seeing some progress and people are
getting the help that they need. So beyond just sending
(36:58):
me a DM or calling an old friend, talking to
a spouse, whatever, here's some things that are available. So
first and fore of the most there's SAMSA SAMHSA dot gov.
You can plug in your zip code and give you
(37:20):
free or sliding scale counseling, no insurance, no problem. But
it also provides on the website some of these other
options that are available. So nine eight Suicide and Crisis
Lifeline caller text nine eight twenty four to seven free,
no judgment. If you need the help, call up do it.
(37:46):
National Alliance on Mental Health, National Alliance on Mental Illness
NAMI dot org, local groups, online chats. They also have
some things that are based upon on different places in life,
so like groups that are specifically for people at midlife
(38:07):
midlife stress gen X, so there's like subgroups within that
I mentioned the nine A eight. There's a Veterans crisis line,
so for those of you who served our country that
nine A eight then press option one that specifically for veterans,
and then there's the crisis text line text home ho
(38:31):
m E all caps to seven four one seven four
to one, discrete fast response times if you just need
to have an interaction with someone. These are all really
important for yourself. But also if you feel like you
(39:01):
need to have a connection, maybe text an old friend
that you haven't in a while. Because all of these
crisis lines that I've talked about, you're initiating because you're
looking to make You're seeking something. You're seeking someone to
(39:22):
just say hey, I'm feeling this way. But equally powerful
is just texting an old friend who might be in
that moment where you text them at their lowest moment.
They might be pondering taking irreversible action, but in that
(39:43):
moment of you just saying hey, Bud, how you been,
that could be enough for them to change course. We
always talk about we as a society, make sure you
tell the people that you love that you love them.
Absolutely important, But we're not just talking about the people
(40:09):
that you see day to day. Sometimes that's just the
people that you've known throughout your life that are meaningful
to you. You know, I reached out to a couple
of people just this past week just hey, No. Some
of it was podcast stuff, because are people that are
important to me that I like to interact with, that
(40:30):
I enjoy speaking with. But you know, different places in
life and usually not living within close gig you know,
geography to people. You know, sometimes you're left with the
social media space and the instagrams and the messaging. But man,
there's a handful of people in this world that I
adore and I don't adore that many people, and I
(40:54):
love talking to them. Another friend I texted, and so
I came and cool, we're texting back and forth, but hey,
can we get out of call? I'm like, yes, brother,
next week. Absolutely, you know, it's important. It's important to
(41:17):
keep and maintain these connections. Look, we have survived a
lot of stuff in our lifetime. We've come a long way,
ups and downs. You know. A few months ago I
(41:38):
felt like I was riding a high and then things
changed and then things seemed like they were low. I'm
still not out of it yet. With the darkest thoughts.
Those whispers are silent, but I know they can recur anytime,
(42:03):
and I don't take that lightly and I don't want
any of you suffering in silence. So one of the
things that I always find so I feel like people
don't mean to be they don't mean to be dismissive
when they say things. And I know I've said this
(42:24):
on earlier podcasts. I recognize that people say, oh, well,
everyone's got someone. No, not everyone does, and I recognize that,
and that is really difficult. And if I didn't have
like my wife and my kids, I don't know what
my life would have been like. But I can't imagine,
(42:47):
knowing the relationship I have with family and all that,
that I'd be tight with them, because if I would
have stayed in those circumstances, I most certainly would have
been a statistic. Thirty five years ago, I was going
down that path. So I recognize that some of you,
(43:09):
your family has passed, and maybe you're married and divorced,
or maybe you never married, and maybe the kids are
grown and out of the house. And I recognize that
not everyone has just someone easily available. That's why these
resources are there, because even if the only thing you
have is right now you're hearing my voice, and you
(43:30):
go to work and you put on a smile and
all that, go to your local church. I know, for me,
as a Catholic, just going in, I'm pretty sure that
I could go to the parish center and I can
find a priest and find someone to talk to. Sometimes
that's going to confession, the right of reconciliation. It's a sacrament,
(43:50):
it's great, but you can go in and you can talk.
So it's not just these resource lines. There are things
in your community that are available. And if you're feeling
as though you need to talk to someone, please do it.
The statistics for gen X are too high, and if
everything that I've talked about tonight Holt's true, we're eventually
(44:13):
going to be heading over into that next age demographic.
What we're starting to see or continuing to see these
really high rates of self harm. You know, my wife
in her industry as we are talking tonight, and I
kind of told her what I was doing for the episode.
(44:34):
She goes, these are important topics. You should do it,
because I was going back and forth about whether I should.
Is it too heavy? It's like it's heavy, it's important.
She goesn't also right now? Right now, past two years,
divorce for people over age fifty five has skyrocketed, And
it is blowing my mind. To think that people who
(44:56):
are in their seventies are divorcing. Ows my mind because
let's say the average age that people are marrying nowadays,
and it would have been younger back then, but I mean,
you put thirty forty years in and you call it quits.
You couldn't, You couldn't work it out at this stage.
(45:19):
It's heartbreaking to me. Look, I am far from a
perfect husband, far from a perfect husband, and I'm sure
my wife wild saying she's far from a perfect wife.
We all have our shit that we bring to it, right,
But ultimately, whether it's the relationships that you're in or
(45:41):
for yourself, you gotta put in work. You always got
to put in work, even when it's the hardest thing
you could possibly do. And if the hardest thing that
you need to do today when you get done listening
to this podcast is except the fact that you need
help take that step, take it because it's important. I
(46:10):
want every single person who listens to this podcast to
feel welcomed, to feel cared for, to feel heard, to
feel known, and to know that there are resources there.
Even if you don't have tight friendships or close family,
(46:33):
there are resources. There are people out there who want
to help you. Look Call nine at eight if it's dark,
if it's dark in your head, if it's only kind
(46:57):
of gray, call friend, family, okay, but recognize whether it's
a whisper or a shout in your head that you
need to take some action and that's okay, and you'll
(47:17):
be better for it. And that includes substance abuse as well.
I know it all too well. It's that first step.
It's okay, it's important, it's important. And that's the thing
with the SAMSA, the SAMHSA dot gov. One of the
first things that talks about it. It's substance abuse as
(47:38):
being a critical piece of this, and many of these
things are are linked together. It's hard to get sober,
it's hard to get clean. It sometimes does it seem
worth it when I feel like absolute garbage and my
health feeling my garbage, and I've had a shitty week.
(47:59):
You don't think that a couple of weeks ago, that
same day that I called my wife, I didn't want
to go ahead and get a bottle bottle of rum
and a pack of cigarettes. Seemed like a tremendously good
idea in that moment, and it would have been stupid,
(48:21):
and I'm glad I didn't do it. It was enough
for me just to utter the words out loud to
my wife and say here'shere. I'm that so take that
first step. No matter what it is, and if you're
not battling any of the other stuff, and it's just
a matter that for your mental health and your physical help,
take that first step on a treadmill or just stepping
(48:42):
outside your front door, go walk, whatever it is that
you need to do, take that first step, all right,
So please, if you need to shoot me an email,
whatever it is. How do you reach me? You can
email me at Stuck in the Middle pod at Yahoo.
You can find me on Instagram X and YouTube at
(49:04):
stockpot x. Heading over to the Facebook page Stuck in
the Middle gen x podcast, please like, comment, share, leave
five star reviews, and most importantly, please subscribe to the podcast. Actually,
most importantly, please get help if you need it. So
(49:25):
until next time, later, slackers,
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Two Guys, Five Rings: Matt, Bowen & The Olympics
Two Guys (Bowen Yang and Matt Rogers). Five Rings (you know, from the Olympics logo). One essential podcast for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. Bowen Yang (SNL, Wicked) and Matt Rogers (Palm Royale, No Good Deed) of Las Culturistas are back for a second season of Two Guys, Five Rings, a collaboration with NBC Sports and iHeartRadio. In this 15-episode event, Bowen and Matt discuss the top storylines, obsess over Italian culture, and find out what really goes on in the Olympic Village.