True til Death, or How Punk Rock Saved Me From Depression and PTSD

by Dennis Bagwell

Listen to Executive Director Gabriel Nathan read this post aloud:

I remember it like it was goddamned yesterday, even though it was 44 years ago. I was maybe eight years old sitting with my mom in a Burger King parking lot in my hometown of Buena Park, California. She told me something that felt very heavy and dark. She spoke in low, reasoned tones, as though she were afraid that someone would hear her speaking in a car with the windows rolled up and the radio on low. She explained that she smokes marijuana, and that if I told anyone, including my Grandma and Papa, that we could both be in irreversible, serious trouble, up to and including me being separated from them. With a paper Burger King crown on my head and a burger and fries in my lap, I remember feeling confused and that a great weight seemed to be levied upon me.

My Grandma and Papa were the true north of my tiny world. The thought of being separated from them was plenty enough fear to keep whatever filthy, stupid secret my mom needed me to keep. Looking back now, it’s clear that my own mother imposed those weighted shackles of fear on my impressionable, young mind. Coupled with vague consequences that I could only imagine, I had to keep her secret that she is a pothead. Being about 1980, marijuana was still very much illegal and had serious consequences for possession. She was consciously choosing substances and her new boyfriend/meal-ticket over my own emotional well-being. At 52 years old, I sometimes still scope for cops when I drive even though I have zero reason to do so. That was my job whenever we were in the car and my mom and her third husband were smoking dope, which was every time we were in the car. It instilled an unnecessary, lifelong fear and distrust of cops in me. This was one of many traumas my mother and her partners would inflict upon me, traumas that I’d need to fight against the rest of my life.

American Revolutionary war General Nathaniel Greene famously said in regards to his British adversaries, “We fight, get beat, rise and fight again.” I’ve adopted that as my personal mantra. I’ve been doing that in one form or another for 52 years. But it’s not always easy.

I refer to myself as an oops-baby because that’s what I am. Both my parents were in their senior year of high school when I was born. 17-Year-olds do not generally plan or prepare to have a baby. That’s only one in a lifetime of poor decisions my mother would make. They got married, tried to make a life together, failed for a number of reasons, and got divorced. My dad joined the Air Force probably because he didn’t know what to do with himself and I didn’t meet him until I was 16. We never really had a meaningful relationship for long. Most of my best childhood memories are of living with my Grandma and Papa.

My mom’s next poor decision was her second husband. They were married sometime in 1976 when I was four. We’ll just call him Number Two. He was a runt of a man and a violent alcoholic just like his parents. They used to get drunk and beat the shit out of each other. Being that #2 was reared in that world, that’s all he knew. So, he would get drunk and beat the shit out of my mom, giving her lumps, bruises, black eyes, and eventually a broken jaw. My mom had my two brothers with this asshole in ‘77 and ‘78. She or neighbors would call the police when things got out of control. My Papa would rescue me in the night and take me back to his house. I remember #2 would drive drunk and recklessly with me and my mom in the car. It scarred me and may have contributed to my aversion to driving, which gave me great anxiety. I didn’t even get my driver’s license until my second daughter was born at 28 years old.

One day in 1979, when I was about seven, it all came to a violent crescendo when an explosive argument erupted at my Grandma and Papa’s house at the dinner table. Number Two flew out the back door in a rage, Papa ran to the front, and they met and went at it on the sidewalk. I stood at the front door with my mouth open and transfixed with Grandma’s arms around me as though she could somehow shield me from the violence opening in our front yard. Fists flying. Bodies writhing in physical conflict. Number Two managed to flip Papa headfirst onto the sidewalk. A neighbor kid who knew my uncle ran down the block to tell him what was happening. He raced down the street in his ratty old truck and got out without putting it in park. The neighbor kid jumped in and stopped it. I think my uncle had been waiting for this day for a long time. At some point, Papa came into the house, bleeding from the wound on his forehead. That’s when I lost it and really started crying. My uncle pummeled the absolute living shit out of #2. To this day, I have never witnessed such a beating in my life. I can still hear the hollow, thudding thumps of my uncle’s fists connecting with #2’s body. When he had enough, my uncle physically lifted him, plowed him head first through the open window of the driver’s side door of #2’s Mercury Cougar, then continued to beat on him some more.

That glorious, awful day has stuck in my psyche like an oil stain on asphalt. I don’t advocate for unnecessary, senseless violence. But when the wife-beating-son-of-a-wife-beater finally gets what he deserves, there’s a sense that justice has been served more efficiently than any court could decide. It’s quickly resolved. For some people, hate and violence is their love language. It’s what #2 understood best and he got the message that day. How he managed to remain conscious, I’ll never know, but #2 drove away and I never saw him again. At least not as a child. As an adult, I saw him bicycling through his parent’s neighborhood to and from the liquor store several times over the years. Pedaling a kid-sized BMX bike, sweating in the hot sun, with one hand on the handlebar and one hand cradling his six-pack in a brown bag.

My mom’s third husband, we’ll call him Number 3, is the evil genius who brought pot and other substances into our world. I’m definitely not suggesting my mom was unfamiliar with illicit substances before him. But he took it to a new level. Not only did they smoke dope like their lives depended on it, but he built a hydroponic pot farm in the garage. I still don’t understand how he managed to bullshit the landlord, but he did. A full-on farm, with proper lighting, irrigation, good bugs that ate the bad bugs. A total fucking Einstein. They would dry the harvested pot in the microwave. It was the most God-awful, putrid stench I’ve ever smelled in my life. Me and my brothers would have to go play outside to escape its pungent stink. It made us sick. They started selling it to friends. Somehow that escalated to them buying higher quality pot by the pounds from a supplier and selling that instead. And that led to paranoia that the police were watching them.

Now that pot is legal almost everywhere, it’s easy to smell it everywhere you go. For me, it’s a triggering experience. Whenever I smell it on a breeze, at a traffic light, walking down the street, it assaults my sense of smell and it takes me back to those unpleasant childhood memories that I resent. It makes me annoyed that I have to be subjected to it, and disgusted by the people using it. It brings me right back to that house and those times. I loathe the smell of pot, but it’s hard to avoid it nowadays.

Eventually, the dealing led to a falling out with a buyer of theirs. They returned one night with a couple of friends and tried to kick in our front door, smashed out the glass, and said they had a gun. Their message of intimidation and fear was received loud and clear by me. I was so traumatized, I refused to sleep in my own bed for weeks. I had no feelings of safety or security in our own home. But equally, emotionally traumatic for me was my Grandma and Papa retiring and moving two and a half hours away to the San Bernardino mountains. I felt truly alone then. I would walk to school and look at the mountains and cry. We would visit as often as we could and my brothers and I would stay with them for weeks at a time. But it wasn’t the same as knowing the safety and security that they and their home provided me, of knowing they’re just a short drive away across town and ready to rescue me and my brothers if needed.

Life continued to get heavier. Dissatisfied patrons of my mom would come and commit acts of violence in our home. My mom’s emotional and physical abuse escalated during this time too. She would wail on me and my brothers for minor issues, cuss at us, call us terrible names, and once publicly humiliated me on the streets of Ensenada, Mexico by dumping a full cup of Dr. Pepper on my head and making me wear it while I cried. She continued to berate me in front of the shocked locals. I recall waking one morning to a kitchen full of smashed dishes and bugging out for the day, only to come back in the evening like nothing happened. The love and protection every child deserves and expects was sorely missing in our home. And we felt it all the time.

When I was 15, in the summer of 1987, I discovered the wonderful, individualistic world of punk rock, and more importantly, the subgenre of Straight Edge. A brief explanation is required for the uninitiated. A group of Washington D.C. area punk rock kids who loved the music but resented the nihilistic attitude and the general message of punk, gravitated to an important hometown D.C. punk band called Minor Threat. They had an aggressive message that said it was okay to not waste your life on drugs, alcohol, and using girls like a doormat. They had a blistering song called “Straight Edge” espousing that philosophy in a mere 45 seconds. Thus, the Straight Edge movement was born and spoke to me in a way that nothing and no one else did.

Musicians that I looked up to (really just kids not a lot older than myself) had a plan, a philosophy, and a set of values that were not their parents or their peers’ values, but ones they created on their own! I started adopting those values as my own too. I’ve adhered to those tenants my entire adolescent and adult life. If Straight Edge was a rejection of some of the tenants of punk, a rebellion within a rebellion, my choice to not be chemically dependent was certainly a rejection of my mom and step dads’ life choices. She thought I was just being a “good boy” despite her deplorable parenting. Little did she know it was my personal rejection of her and everything she represented. I had chosen a set of values and a philosophy she couldn’t comprehend. At 16, I decided that even though I knew nothing about being a responsible adult or how to even be a good person, I somehow knew I could do better than my mom and the chemically-dependent rejects with whom she surrounded herself. So, I did. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have emotional scars that are still with me today.

At some point, my mom was making me exchange pre-weighed bags of dope for money to her buyers if she wasn’t going to be home. She told me who was coming and when and what bag to give them. It made me feel ashamed because I was an unwilling co-conspirator. It went against all the tenets of my newly found Straight Edge values. I felt like a poser. I know I protested at the time and was made to feel guilty. As though I were somehow being disrespectful and unhelpful to the wellbeing of the family. Fear, guilt, and unspecified threats or consequences for refusing to participate are powerful tools to control people, especially a kid. It made me feel even more resentful, angry, and incredulous toward them and their stupid “friends,” as well as making me feel like a de facto drug dealer. We were certainly never better off or living the high life. If it wasn’t lucrative, why did they keep selling dope?

And as always, my mom was looking for her next meal ticket and wasted no time finding one. He eventually became Number 4, but by that time I was over the whole bullshit, stepdad thing, and he didn’t figure into my life as much except that he loaned me an acoustic guitar and taught me a few basic chords. Guitar became my primary focus eventually. Number Four was a bass player, in and out of bands. He understood my passion for punk, which I appreciated. Shortly after discovering punk rock, he took me to visit some former high school friend of his who had a crossover-style hardcore band. The band’s name was C.M.C., Cerebral Meltdown Council, a not-so-subtle reference to taking LSD.

They were all in their early 20s, four to six years older than me. Talk about a brain meltdown! My little 15-year-old brain was blown. My mom and her husband had taken me to a number of arena rock shows by that time. By the time I was 10, I was a veteran concert-goer. I had even seen the Clash live. But at that point, I had never seen anyone play as fast and with such purpose as they did. Screaming with anger about American injustices and the futility of religious fundamentalism. I could identify with injustices in my own home, from my own mother, so it resonated with me hard. I was still at the introductory level of punk. Once I got over my shock, I became like a punk intern they couldn’t get rid of. They exposed me to a culture and music I knew very little about, and introduced me to a network of bands and other punk philosophies that would change my way of thinking and are still with me today.

Eventually I earned my keep by helping them move equipment to and from gigs. In time, they became like older brothers and protectors to me. I knew I had found my tribe. They became the family I didn’t have at home. They took me to my first proper punk shows, looked out for me, and I soaked up their music like a sponge. I learned how to play guitar by emulation and the dynamics of being in a band simply by osmosis. All of them were casual drug-users and beer-drinkers, typical suburban kids. Being around that lifestyle for most of my young life, I didn’t feel threatened by it. That’s just how it was. But they all respected and accepted my refusal to participate in that aspect of their scene. I always appreciated that about them.

A traditional nuclear family was never quite attainable for me for more than a few years at a time, so I looked for role models and surrogates outside of that. I have surrogate family members I’ve connected with over the years that are every bit as important to me as blood-related family. In some cases, more so. I don’t see a problem with looking outside of your immediate family to get whatever positive emotional connection you need with other people. Sometimes we can’t always get what we need from the people we think we can count on. Sometimes, they’re not emotionally available at all. So if you can find someone who is, hang on to them.

Two months before I turned 18 in March, 1990, I moved out of my mom’s rental house because she and #4 were about to become homeless and I refused to go down with them. I moved into a friend’s parents’ house, slept on the floor, started my first band, started dating the girl who would eventually become my wife, and skateboarded to work every day. My brothers were banished to the mountains to live with my Grandma. Papa died just 10 days after my 18th birthday.

My wife and I made a lifestyle change in 2007 when we decided to move from California to Georgia. Over the years, my mom’s drug use has ebbed and flowed, but it has never stopped and neither has her emotional and verbal abuse of me and my brothers. Several days after we left California, she called to completely unload every verbally abusive weapon she had in her arsenal. She called me every name she could muster, emasculated me, called my wife every filthy name she could think of, and accused me of leaving California just to get away from her.

I reciprocated by telling her what a selfish, drug-addicted, pill-popping, emotionally and physically victimizing, human piece of garbage she has always been. I haven’t talked to her since that November day in 2007. She claims she doesn’t remember that happening. With her pickled brain swimming in a cesspool of 50-plus years of illicit and pharmaceutical sludge, I believe her. I don’t need or deserve that kind of abuse. I’ve had people actually tell me, “but she’s your mother.” Nothing pisses me off more. “She’s your mother” excuses her toxic behavior, invalidates mine and my brother’s trauma, and requires me to forgive her for her abuse and my broken childhood? Fuck that! To me, it doesn’t matter who the victimizer is in your life. At some point, it’s better to cut the tether than keep allowing yourself to be a victim. At some point, some of the responsibility of being abused has to fall on me. Once I realized that, I cut that tether and I got the fuck out! I’ll never understand what’s wrong with her, but at this point, the damage is done, and I don’t care what her issues are.

Fast forward to 2022. My wife and I split up in 2018. It was clear, but very painful that she and I had different priorities after 28 years together and 23 years of marriage. We simply grew apart, I think. I realized before our marriage ended that I was severely depressed and had been for a few years. Over time, you acclimate to feeling that way.

My depression manifested itself in feelings of being overwhelmed with a dead end job of 25-plus years, along with the stress of providing for a family. I gained weight. I didn’t want to do anything outside of immediate and necessary obligations. I felt general anxiety, physical illness, utter hopelessness, agonizing crying fits, and irrational feelings of impending doom. I was constantly thinking about suicide and how to execute that in the least messy way. It was unhealthy, self-defeating, and unnatural. I wasn’t myself anymore.

Around this time, one of my coworkers, who was my age and whom I liked very much, finally reached his breaking point and died by suicide. I looked at him in his coffin and understood that I could just as easily be him sooner than later. I saw the pain and trauma it caused his ex-wife, his sons, his mom and siblings. I cried all the way home. Sad that I lost a friend, but also profoundly ashamed of myself for thinking suicide was my best option and allowing the monster of depression to overwhelm me. I came to the realization right then that I desperately needed help. It was exhausting to feel like that every single day and I knew I couldn’t live with it any longer. I owed it to myself, my wife, and my two precious daughters to get help as soon as possible. In my own research about depression, I learned that adults who experienced trauma during childhood are more than likely to double their risk for major depressive disorder as adults. And here I am.

I talked to my doctor, and he got me on an SSRI medication to help blunt the extreme depression while I looked for therapy to teach me how to keep the monsters in their cage where they belong. The medicine took a few adjustments to get me to the right place. Although I may have had some reservations about taking a drug that could potentially alter my brain chemistry, my overriding sense of getting those chemicals rebalanced, getting my life back on track, and getting off the suicide highway was more important to me than any reservations I had about taking a drug. I don’t feel conflicted about it. I understand the difference between drugs that are meant to help and drugs that are meant to harm. I don’t use the word monsters lightly. They ARE monsters that try to convince you that life would be easier if you just killed yourself. “They” are your internal monologue. They try to convince you that no one would miss you or even care if you were gone. Eventually, it becomes easier to believe them. It starts to make sense and becomes easier to go along with the idea. And those bastards are very convincing.

My first experience with a therapist didn’t go well. After a few visits, I ditched him. I looked for another therapist and found the one I was looking for. It was obvious that her style simply worked better for me. She helped to give me the tools to work through my feelings that I’d be better off dead and helped me learn how to deal with normal life issues that look much bigger than they really are. I learned how to identify healthy coping strategies, about how your negative behavior affects your relationships, how to set goals, establish a healthy internal monologue to help overcome negative thoughts and feelings, and simply how to manage stress and anxiety. Just having an unbiased person to talk to and get things off my chest was hugely beneficial. I wish I had known about these things earlier in my life, but I accept that I got them at the time I needed them. My mom and her various husbands were certainly in no place to instill any of these principles in me and my brothers that they knew nothing about themselves.

That being said, the chemical imbalance of depression occasionally rears its ugly head and tries its best to suffocate me. I have to accept that I’ll never be completely free from its slimy tentacles. I still deal with depression more often than I wish I did. That’s where my mantra kicks in: “We fight, get beat, rise and fight again.” I can’t traumatize my daughters by ending my life prematurely. I still have shit to do in this life. Sometimes I have to tap into the well of self-control I don’t think I have. Sometimes I can’t control random tears that flow any time day or night. Sometimes, I still feel sad when I have a myriad of things to be grateful for or happy about. Sometimes, I think it’s simply chemical and I can’t do a damn thing about it but ride it out. It’s all part of the ongoing war within myself.

I joke that writing helps keep my spiraling descent into madness at bay. Except, it’s not really a joke. Writing and composing songs, poetry, and prose and just trying to find various other ways to stay creative is its own kind of elixir. It makes me focus on the present and how I’m feeling right now. It allows me to tap into my creative well and forget my depression for a while. Through the 90s, I was in three bands, and lately I’ve re-immersed myself in the punk rock scene in North Georgia. I go to punk shows often. I’m playing local and out-of-state gigs with friends I’ve made, and have even toured a little. I’ve made new friends in the scene that I value and discovered local bands that I like a lot. I’m no counselor, but if I can be a positive influence on the young punks coming up, I try to be. I have never and would never force my Straight Edge values on anyone. It’s just a personal choice in the same way that choosing to partake in substances is a personal choice. It’s not my responsibility to convert you to my philosophies. Anyone who forces their beliefs on me, be it political extremism, fascism, racism, religious fundamentalism, defending police brutality, or any inflexible, hardline establishment are people I steer clear of. There’s nothing punk about ANY of that bullshit.

Punk isn’t something I used to be when I was a confused teen. It wasn’t just a rebellious stage that I eventually grew out of. Punk is something you just are. When my wife and I were raising  our two daughters and trying to create a safe place for our family and ourselves, I definitely put it on the back burner, but it always stayed with me. Punk is less a fashion choice, and more of a DIY mindset. Do it yourself! No one is going to come save you or fix it for you. You take personal responsibility for yourself and your actions. It’s made me more socially aware and empathetic. It’s helped me see things a little more rationally. Figure out what’s important to you, and stick to those values. More often than not, those values will help get you through some tough times. Sometimes shit happens and it’s just your turn.

In the 80s, a lot of Gen X kids had to grow up fast. I’m not special. If you’re lucky, you might find other people who share your values and make lifelong friends, like I have. You don’t grow out of punk. If you grew out of it, you checked out. Punk didn’t check out. It’s still here and so am I. I’m not always sure why. I feel like my choice to be Straight Edge has also helped me steer clear of problems and problem people over the years. I maintain that punk rock saved my life then and continues to now. Many of my friends and family have hurt themselves or spent a part of their lives being high or drunk, trying to find a way out of that lifestyle. I just never did. It was a waste of my time. Life is hard enough. Where other people have failed in their sobriety, I never have. That’s my victory. That’s my epitaph.

My story isn’t one about my own journey down the road of drug abuse and recovery. My story is one of other people’s drug use and how it injected fear, depression, and PTSD into my and my brothers’ psyches. Other people’s choices had detrimental consequences for me and my little brothers. It shaped us both consciously and unconsciously in ways we’ve struggled to understand. My journey has been one of acceptance. I accept that I have problems. I’m broken, but not useless. I accept that I need therapy from time to time and medicine all the time to keep me balanced. I’m not the same person I was before I slipped into the black hole of depression, and walked through the door of therapy and depression meds. That door is closed. That kid is gone. But it’s okay. That’s also a victory. Some days are great. Some days are really bad. The important thing is that my life is better overall and I’m trying. I try to appreciate the good days more when they happen. I accept that the bad days are going to happen and I try to stay focused. If I can do it, anyone can, but I accept that sometimes, some people simply can’t cope for a variety of reasons and sadly, we will lose them. I accept that my mom will never change because she is incapable. I still have nothing to do with her. I accept that a relationship with my dad just isn’t in the cards in this life. My former wife and I have a friendly, supportive, post-marriage relationship. My daughters are beautiful young women making their own way in the world. I try to stay focused on the family, friends, and things I love, and not waste precious time on people and things I don’t. I’m always very conscious of the fact that there are many people whose stories are many times worse than mine. But this is my life. I wish you the best in your recovery, whatever that may be.

You’ll always have the chance to give up. Why start now?

For today, at least, I continue my fight. I will get beat occasionally. I will rise again. I will keep fighting.

Don’t let the bastards win! Straight Edge for life! True ’til death! Punk’s not dead!

XXX

If you or someone you know may be in crisis or considering suicide, please call, text, or chat the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.

​EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR / EDITOR: Gabriel Nathan | DESIGN: Leah Alexandra Goldstein | SITE ORIGINATOR: Bud Clayman