Brandon returns to the Better Weather podcast with stories of his past two years dealing with the highs and lows of his battle with mental health. A journey that began after episode 11, a decision to enter rehab, and ultimately a path to salvation and self love. Follow with me as I try to share this human experience, and hopefuly you can relate in some way. 

Welcome back to the Better Weather podcast. It is your host, Brandon Leith. Been a little bit for some of you if you're following along. Last episode was episode 11 with Ella Kasiba. Right now we're starting episode 12. If you're paying attention to the dates, you'll notice that it's been some little bit of time. Last episode we recorded June 7th, 2021 with Ella and today is September 23rd, 2023. So I feel like I owe you an explanation. I feel like I owe it to this podcast if the reason I started it was to really be open and vulnerable. When I talk about mental health and my journey through that, and truth be told, during that period of this podcast, probably episodes 5 through 11, things weren't going great. The podcast was helping. I was able to talk about things and that's that's a really a a great part of this. It's kind of like therapy for myself, but sometimes that therapy isn't quite enough. 

I've gone through a journey with trying out antidepressants, I would say unsuccessfully for the most part. I think up to this point, I'd probably tried five or six of them and that's a pretty big undertaking because the ramp up. On these medicines is kind of a little little bit of time, time, days or so to kind of really feel what's going on. Then you kind of assess how you feel and then if it's not great, you can take some medications for side effects or just take that, take that medicine down and try a new one. It's a very long, drawn out process and it's very hard on an individual. I was kind of going through this during that middle part of the podcast and adding more medicines on for the side effects that I was experiencing and I was slowly crumbling and so I just want to talk about that. I want to talk about where I had to go, what kind of happened. I'll be back here definitely for several episodes because I have a whole lot of things to tell you guys and I'm honestly really excited to tell you about it. The stories are probably going to be a little bit dark leading up to it, but but I promise you, we're leading up to a great ending. So let's just kind of jump into it. 

These Ssri's were making my life fall to pieces. I was becoming to the point where I was unable to work. My job was becoming incredibly difficult for me to even just regularly function. I couldn't organize tasks in my day. For a lot of you that have been listening along, you know, I kind of work in the corporate world. I own a CrossFit gym and I kind of do both throughout the day. Obviously I have a lot of help. My wife helps tremendously with the gym, but still, it's a pretty long day and it doesn't allow for a whole lot of free time. Now, is it all bad? No. I work remote. I'm not complaining, but I probably am doing too much. Well, throw in these medicines. Throw in the lack of sleep that I was getting from these medicines. My legs were going crazy. I was having restless leg syndrome which was making me wake up almost every hour, every single night. So that lack of sleep was just building and building and simultaneously I was using cannabis. As a lot of you know, I talk a lot about how open I am with my use of that and and interest honestly in in using it as a medicine. Now during this time, I was really using it as any way to make myself sleep by. That's the only way I can describe it and it it was helping for that. And then I would notice during the day I would have these huge crying bouts where I would cry like 3 * a day uncontrollably. I would sleep to maybe just make it all end. I would just force myself to kind of lay down. And 

then when I needed to kind of focus, I found that cannabis was helping with that. It would it would kind of calm things down for whatever reason. And I know if you if you don't really subscribe to that, I can understand how crazy that sounds. But, I mean, anybody could attest to it. They could see how I could actually function. Now, was that healthy? Probably not. It's definitely not something I even wanted to do. It got to the point where I didn't even want to do that. I just didn't know what else to do. I was just, I was like screaming for help. And it was the only thing that would make me kind of function for that 30 minutes or 45 minutes that it would last. Well, work was starting to start, starting to take notice. Management was like, hey, what's going on with Brandon? And it was becoming harder to hide it from them. Well, that slowly started to spill into my kids even starting to notice. Leslie's obviously very involved in noticing and doing her best to try to understand it, but it it's it's it's almost too much for anyone to kind of deal with. When it comes to the point where I was at, it was becoming harder to hide it from the kids. They were starting to notice. My friends were starting to notice. I was canceling plans. I was just acting. I was acting odd and you could see it on people's faces, and there's nothing worse than when people can see it because you start to kind of feel crazy. And I'm just sitting there and all of this guilt is just building because here I am fixing to leave Leslie is the way I wasn't. I wasn't thinking about her leaving me there. I was thinking about leaving her with all of these responsibilities 

and in my chaos brain, understanding that if the roles were reversed, I don't think that I could handle it. 

Handling the daytoday with the kids and work and just not having your person there and her being under all of this stress, 

it it made it so difficult because I knew that although I was going to be going through a lot, being here, she was going to be going through just as much. She didn't have the luxury of escaping all the daily stressors. She now had to take on 100% of our responsibilities. And at the same time knowing that your partner is struggling so much and there's nothing you can do to help. And and that sat with me. And to this day, it's something that I think about daily, The amount of strength and compassion and love that she had to have 

to get us through this dark period of time in our lives. And to this day, I'm so forever grateful for her for that. It really culminate. One of the biggest things that it really culminated with is a friend of mine and his wife had a baby and that baby passed away at birth 

and he's a great friend of mine. The funeral was coming up. We were obviously set to go, and this was probably two days before the event that I'll fix and talk about happened. I I just completely crumbled 

and I felt so ashamed that I couldn't be there for my friend in his time of need. And I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for that. But I just couldn't go. One day went by that next day was a complete nightmare. And then the following day I could tell Leslie had something on her mind and she wanted to talk to me and she said, hey, I want you to sit down, I want to talk to you about something and and I could almost feel what she was fixing to tell me, she said, Brandon, I don't know how to help right now. I need help helping you and I think we're going to have to put you in a a mental health facility for a period of time and hearing that is for me. It was just so soul crushing. I don't know how else to describe it. Even though I was going through a lot of turmoil. I guess you still don't think you're at that point and and to hear that that is on the table was just I I felt a fell to pieces because you're immediately thinking, hey I don't want to go do this. How am I going to deal with work? People are going to find out how am I going to explain this to my kids? But at the same time, I didn't want to put this on my family anymore. And I knew the only thing I could do was say yes, I I'm going to have to go to rehab. So yeah, that's where that's where I had to go. Now. I wasn't there the entire time. Obviously I I didn't just get out by any means. But I do want to tell 

you that story about what that that was like. It was a great experience. I I say great it it was it it saved me. Was it a great experience. Now you're going to hear a lot about those details. I just wanted to use this first episode back to just tell you that story. 

So here we go. Let's start packing. So I have to originally kind of figure out a how long am I planning on and going to do this. I think in the very beginning, the way this was set up, this we, Leslie had found a place that was towards, I'm in the Austin area, this was kind of out towards San Antonio. I'm thinking about mentioning the place because I it it did, it was it was an amazing place. So I'm still debating on whether I want to do that or not. But she had researched it because they had a couple of key things. It was what they call a dual treatment facility. So at this particular place, they treat 

mental health and then they also treat alcohol and narcotics. So they offer training classes, therapy, a couple of specialized therapy for mental health as well, which was really interesting, which is why Leslie kind of found this place. And the plans they offered were a 30 day, a 60 day and a 90 day, just depending upon how long you needed to stay. Now, I could exit this place at any time and that was a huge thing for me is I didn't want to be held somewhere. I wanted to be there on my own free will. But at the same time, when you're going to this place, you're kind of there under the assumption that you can't just walk off the premises, You know, a conversation needs to be had. So I start packing. You know, I'm packing for 30 days trying to think of what do you take to this p