Domino

0:04 Hey, Mom, just calling to say hi. I hope you're having a good day. I wish you'd answer. I have something cool to tell you about. I guess I'll just tell your voicemail and you can listen and maybe call me later. So look, as anyone can see, there's dark storms brewing in the markets, in the financial world, and that's why crypto is going to be not just a passing trend, but a new way of being to replace the old way we handle money, like and upgrade your computer, but from money. That's the future. I'm thinking of starting an investment fund tied to it. I spoke to one of my old college buddies who is literally a billionaire now, and he verbally committed to put one hundred million in the fund. You know that's if I do it. That's confidential. Anyway, I wish you'd answer. You know what, I'm just going to hang up and call again. Maybe you were on the other line and now you're free. Delete this voicemail, please seriously delete it. Okay, Bye.

0:56 I guess. My name is Nancy Moon and I love my son. As a teenager, he was completely normal until a terrible thing happened to him, a crime of extreme vandalism and he was never the same again. I'm sharing his story and the hope that it helps others in a similar situation. Nancy is not her real name. Out of respect for Nancy and her son's privacy, we are not using their real names in this podcast. As a child, my son was gregarious, funny, bright, very engaging with other people all the time, loved animals, loved children. Was always sort of the center of attention. And as he got into his middle years after twelve is where really we moved from California to Idaho. He was very involved in sports, always a line hockey, soccer, and even got involved with football.

2:01 Even though he wasn't the biggest, he was still the best kicker they'd ever seen. His grades were straight a's, top of the class, president of his class in his junior year. There was nothing that ever indicated there was anything going on with Brad. That's why it was such an incredible shock to find out thirteen years ago he had had this incredibly horrible bullying situation that ended up setting him back right up to this day. On this podcast, we talk about crimes murder, financial crimes, crimes of abuse, but sometimes something that might technically be a misdemeanor of property crime, can be just as damaging psychologically as a traditional felony. That was the case with Brad, Nancy's son.

2:54 Brad was, as I said, very engaged in school. He had a girlfriend and she was actually president of her class and prettiest girl in the school, prima ballerina. So the two of them were quite a couple that were looked up to, and they were both very smart and liked by many people. And when Brad was fifteen sixteen, his father and I were going through some challenges with our marriage, actually ended up getting divorced, but he stayed with his father and he had a place to stay with me, so we saw each other regularly and there was nothing that indicated anything was wrong.

3:40 I mean, as I said, he was the normal kid and still laughing. But that age of fifteen sixteen is a precarious time anyway for any young adult. So after the divorce, Brad's father wanted him to go to California because he wanted him to go to college at a school in California and study film, which his dad had done, and unbeknownst to me, even though he was president of his class, his junior year. He was going to move him to California in his senior year, and I tried to fight it, but was told legally I was not. Didn't have any grounds to stand on. So he went to California and graduated valedictorian and school there, continued with his sports, stayed with his older sister. Mom. Hi, California is nice. Why did we ever leave? No offense to Idaho? But come on, and you're best known for potatoes, had stuff to compete with the West Coast. I went to the beach with dad. It was good.

4:51 You should come visit anyway, call me when you get a chance. December fifth of that year, in two thousand and three, he called me and told me that his father had passed away on the mountain, and without going into all those details, it was a big shock to everyone. So this is Brad now without a father, in his first year in college. And when I saw him, and when I talked to him, he seemed very introverted. He did not seem like the same Brad that I had known growing up. I took him on trips, I called him on a regular basis, I went to see him, I did things with him, but he was definitely not the same Brad. He'd sort of started walking with his shoulders over, letting himself go a bit, and I would look for drugs and see if there was anything that might have been reinforcing his strange behavior, and I didn't find anything. He was living with a bunch of guys on the campus at UCSB and Santa Barbara, and then we had a family wedding in Arizona after he'd graduated from college. He went through college and I didn't have to see grades or anything. But later on we went to a wedding

6:25 in Arizona, and I finally said, Brad, where are you? You know what's going on? He didn't talk very much, he didn't share anything. I would ask questions, he would give me a one word answer. He would be very vague and evasive, and it was so unlike him. And I finally I was taking him to He loved cars, and I was taking him to a car museum, and I finally said, Brad, where are you? Where are you? What's going on? And he said, Mom, I know you love me and I appreciate everything you do, but could you just give me five minutes of your time every day? I said, I'll give you five hours whatever you want. I said, you know what's happening, And then he proceeded to tell me about what had happened to him when he was fifteen years old in Idaho at the high school and he was bullied by a couple of his teammates, one of whom used to stay at our house spend the night with a lot of the guys from different from the teams, and Brad would go over to his house and stay there as well. They were very close friends. Unfortunately, this young man who was

7:58 one of the bulliers was a big bullier as well, to the point that we wouldn't even allow him to come on to any of the sports events and when we'd travel and go for hockey or soccer. And so Brad had been carrying this around with him for oh over eight years. And on top of that, he'd had his father die and I ended up being in an automobile accident. But these young men, they didn't do anything physical, according to Brad. When he shared with me, he said that they had broken the windshield on his car. They had pete and defecated on his car, and he owned it. He said, I was a jerk. I deserved it.

8:50 I was the bad guy, and so I've changed my personality. Tried to assure him that it wasn't him, and he made reference to all these things that what a bad kid he was as a child, which he wasn't. Lots of things that were more negative that were reinforcing his reasoning for having these guys bully him and do what they did to him. In any event, I was devastated and basically pulled over to the side of the road when he told me this thirteen years ago and said we've got to get help, and I was just I said, I'm just so sorry. If Brad didn't feel comfortable telling his mother about this incident, did he tell his father?

9:52 I don't know. I mean, he could have told his father a little white lie, because if he'd told his father what had happened, and his father knowing the father of the young man that did this, I'm afraid that would have been His dad was a bit of a pain in the tail to people. Anyway. He was a wonderful man, but he just didn't know when to shut up, and he would have been very aggressive. And he was the older father of the group anyway, and so Brad probably wouldn't either. He would have told him a little white lie about it and gotten it fixed. His dad probably would have gotten it fixed for him. According to Nancy, after his father's death and everything else that happened to Brad, he was resistant to get help. When his father passed away and I went to California to see him, and obviously he was very, very upset. And the night before the service, he was staying up and I could just I could hear him crying the bathroom next to the room I was staying, and he was writing a eulogy for the memorial service. And he wrote a ten minute eulogy that was beautiful and had every one of us in tears from the most part the whole time, he handled those moments. But after when I

11:26 took him, after he graduated from college to to a y, I mean he was I used to call him the turtle because he just from being this aggressive, go get kit person, he became just a slow mo joe who was in another world. Brad was now living in the LA area, and so this therapist that I tried to get him to go to, who was very expensive, even agreed to lower his price. But Brad was conveyed that these guys were just more out for the money, that they really didn't care about him or anything else. And it was he went to this guy a couple of times, and I had filled in the therapist the full background on Brad, sent photographs and all of that so that he would be well versed in his background. But Brad didn't want to continue going. And yet he continued to recognize that he needed help and he agreed to get it, but he wanted it on his terms without paying a lot of money because he just didn't believe they were worth it and they were going to do anything. So it became just not getting the help. We never really have gotten him truly diagnosed. We contacted doctor Nsha Tendon from Elevation Behavioral Health in California and presented

12:56 her with a timeline of brad symptoms as well as a patient history. You'll hear her diagnosis later in this episode. A brief stint in Virginia where his brother in law took him under his wing and got him into a place that they were able to diagnose to a degree based on a brief conversation and recognized that he was definitely they didn't identify it as schizophrenia or bipolar. But because Brad was so distant, the only thing he said, if he could be anywhere in the world, he would be on a desert island by himself.

13:37 And they got him on a medication called La tuta for a bet, but he didn't Brad didn't like taking any of that stuff. So today Brad is thirty eight years old, not really diagnosed, is not working, is living on the streets, is not willing to get the help that I'm willing to pay for. I've tried bribing him, I've tried everything at this point, and I really don't know where to go other than to continue to reinforce my love for him and remind him of all of the God given gifts he has and talents, trying to persuade him to step back into the real world.

14:35 And so it's just a very tough, very challenging and exhausting situation for a mother, and for any parents, for anybody that would have a relation that would have this. The craziest part is I live in the town where the bullier lives, who happens to be visible to me on a regular basis, and I have had to really restrain myself from approaching him, approaching his family.

15:20 But I know that's not going to do any good. Nancy was clear that her son was kind hearted and just in need of help. He's really a very kind, loving person, and he wanted to hold hands at dinner and say Grace. We'd have candlelight and we'd have music playing every night. He knew the kind of music I liked, and we'd have these lovely dinners. And then as soon as there was discussion about his work or his life, but I didn't agree that he would become manic and rip out at me. When Brad's father died, he inherited some money and he did buy a printing press. Bum. I know you're worried, but it's actually a very simple business. You get a T shirt printing press, it's called a heat press, a direct to garment printer, a cutter emulsion, a dryer, inks transfer paper. That's it, and obviously a shirts. I found a warehouse where I can buy like ten thousand shirts to start at old still costs.

16:27 Then you go online and find out what people are searching for, and you design a shirt that will match search terms, and then you just sell the shirts super easy. Let's say my profit margin is like six bucks of shirts, and I sell five hundred shirts a day. That's three thousand a day in profit, twenty one thousand a week, ninety two thousand a year. Even if I only sell like half of that, even if I only sell one tenths of that, it's still a pretty good source of supplementary revenue. That's right, supplementary because I haven't told you about my big idea yet. I don't want to do that on a windmill anyway, Buy mom, talk to you later. Then he went to Vegas because he thought that that would be a good place to meet people. And he drove limos where he had to talk to people, and he was always very proud of the fact that he was able to converse with another passenger, you know, and what he learned and how exciting that was. And then he really didn't care for that that much. And then he had designed a car, well, it was actually it was a three wheeled motorcycle. He's always spending times in libraries and reading things, and he had researched a company that was down in Texas and gave them. Unfortunately, twenty thousand dollars to start buying the parts because that day goodbye, and they ran off with it. I'm sorry, it

18:00 seems like you are feeling offended, and I apologize. I just wish you would listen to me. I'm trying to help you. I've learned so much settying the markets, and I can help you. I gave my friend Richard investment advice, and he's doing really great right now. I'm going on his boat for a couple of weeks, so I won't have reliable self service, so you might not hear from me for a little But please don't freak out. I'm fine anyway. I said sorry, right, sorry, bye. But it's only been in the last oh I would say three four years that I think he's run out of the money that he inherited and has pushed him.

18:41 He doesn't want to ask for anything from anybody, and so he now has pronounced himself as being home free and x like living on the street is wonderful, and he's always talking about the great ways to get food. Now this is bread. Does not drink, he does not do drugs. He will not eat sugar. He only eats healthy stuff. Will not do bread, meat, and he told me about Mom. You can't believe the things that the restaurants throw away. You can't believe what's in the grocery in the back of the grocery stores, Mom, Mom. In Europe, people do this. It's a lifestyle. Maybe I'm part Ramani. I should do an ancestry test. Not everyone wants to have a house and be tied down.

19:37 I'm free. That has its own value. Yes it's not a traditional value. But I can go anywhere and not worry someone's going to break into my house. If I want to go to Australia tomorrow, I can. It's good for me to be outside, out in the world. I don't expect you to understand it. I just ask you to accept it anyway. By his personality, is that whether it's the schizophrenia or bipolar that erupts in these manic behaviors where he's attacking me and calling me dumb and calling me an alcoholic and you don't know this, and you don't understand that, and you don't do anything. You know. He doesn't have imaginary things. He's just evasive of what is appropriate in real life living and responsibility. As on the streets in New York City. He sent me a text, a desperation text, asking me to if I could fly him out of New York as soon as possible, and said that he was in a hospital and had gotten frostbite.

20:56 And eventually I followed up was able to talk to him in the hospital in Brooklyn, where he took himself. Fortunately, evidently he was wearing like four pairs of socks with a pair of soccer shoes or something and almost lost a foot. But he was in the hospital for almost two months being treated for obviously a major, major frostbite, to the point that he had to be in a wheelchair. He had to be walkers. He was not able to walk. He had no feeling. While he was there. The nurse has had explained, They said, is there something wrong with him other than obviously being out on the streets. You know, he's a really nice guy, but he does have some communication problems. We're going to get different doctors in and they were going to get a therapist in. I said, I would love to get him diagnosed so that I could get the proper medication. Unfortunately, it was not the best of places, and there were a number of people that were seeing him nobody ever really diagnosed him or got him on any medication, and since it was COVID time still, I was not able for

22:30 me to fly out. I wouldn't even be able to see him, and he couldn't get out of the hospital because he was still healing for me to even fly him home. And eventually one day he just walked out after he felt like he was healed enough, and I don't know where he went. Mom, I left. It was a waste of time. They just want money point in me being there. I'm fine. I just need to be outside. You know, that's what I need. Sunshine. Did you know sunshine gives you lower blood pressure? It does nitric oxide. Sunlight makes your body send nitric oxide into your blood and it brings down your blood pressure.

23:15 It's supposed to be sunny this week. I just had a rough couple of months. That's all everybody's down sometimes, right, This was way overkill. I'm fine, mom. Really, the friend of mine that was in bok Ratan, he was in the Miami area and when he was down there, he told me that he'd gotten a bicycle, and I said, well, how did you get a bicycle? Knowing that he didn't have any money, And he said, well, I saw one on a median strip, I said, Brad, that could have belonged to somebody else. He said that he'd watched it for twenty four hours, that nobody had taken it. So he got it and realized that it was broken, so he fixed it somehow to the point that I mean, who knows where he got parts. He probably went to a bicycle shop and looked in the trash can for parts.

24:14 Maybe he got some help from a guy there. In any event, my friend in Burke Raton had asked him to come have lunch, not knowing what his situation was entirely, and so Brad ended up riding his bicycle eight hours to Boco Raton to have lunch with this man and the guys. The man that he had lunch was said that he looked very healthy and was pretty coherent. Had lunch, and Brad jumped back on his bicycle and rode back another eight hours to Miami. Doctor Tennon's case conceptualization based on the information provided was that he it appears that the thirty eight year old male may be struggling with symptoms of bipolar one disorder. This disorder is characterized by episodes of mania, which can include impulsive spending, excessive traveling, difficulty completing tasks, and impulsivity in relationships. It is also common for individuals with bipolar one disorder to experience symptoms of depression. Brad meets the criteria for bipolar one disorder, which is characterized by manic episodes that last at least seven days or are severe enough to require immediate hospitalization. He also reported symptoms of depression, including feelings of hopelessness and low mood. Treatment for bipolar one disorder may include medication, therapy, and lifestyle changes. Specifically, the client may benefit from medication to stabilized mood,

25:45 cognitive behavioral therapy to address impulsive behaviors, and lifestyle changes to support mental health, such as regular exercise and a healthy diet. Now he's back in the LA area, supposedly living with a friend in Calabasas, and he gets himself to our old house in Agra Hills where he goes by and he's been inquiring how much of the landscaping we did. There was a little over an acre, and we had lots of fruit trees and an English croquet field and a pond and all these things. It was a great house that he has a lot of wonderful memories. He keeps going back there. It's almost like he's grabbing every bit of his youth with just you know, touching base and a space that was really good feelings. Mom, I got your messages.

26:42 I just can't engage with negativity right now. I know you wouldn't think of it as negativity. I know you'd think of it as caring about me. But it's old stuff, like really really old stuff. I'm about today, the future. I get stay chain to bad energy from the past. We don't know what will happen next, but I can't get into things that happened in the past. It's like a weight on me, like a hot air balloon. Like if you have a weight, you hang off it and it can't lift up. That's how I feel about it. I'm not arguing. I just just don't worry. You don't need to worry about me. Doctor Tendon noted that a mental health provider can work with a client like Brad to develop a treatment plan that addresses all of these concerns and supports the client and achieving his goals for a stable and fulfilling life. Furthermore, I was discussed that Brad has a history of being bullied when he was fifteen years old and losing his father when who's eighteen. These experiences may have had a significant impact on his mental health. Mom, Remember we talked about Tesla Nicola Tesla.

27:44 Tesla was talking about wireless communication in eighteen ninety three. Tesla didn't want to be drafted into the Austro Hungarian Army, so he went into nature. He went into the mountains. Often he would be out of contact with loved ones. His family didn't hear from him. When he left university, people thought he was Actually Tesla just had too much on his mind, too many things to create, too much to think about. From the eighteen nineties to early nineteen hundreds, he started trying to figure out the transmission of electrical power without wires. People thought he was nuts. They accused him of being a hoax, but he was just ahead of his time. Do you ever think people can be born in the wrong times? Sometimes I wonder if I was born too late. Maybe I should have been born in the seventies, or maybe I was born too early. I don't know. There's just so much I want to do and I'm not sure the world is designed the right way for me to be able to do it, but I want to try. At a treatment facility like doctor Tannon's Elevation Behavioral Health, Brad could receive a comprehensive psychiatric evaluation, which would include a clinical interview, mental status examination, and a review of medical records. Therapists and a psychiatrist would utilize a combination of pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy address brad symptoms. Brad could be prescribed mood stabilizers to manage his manic symptoms and receive psycho education about the symptoms of bipolar disorder. A therapist could also utilize cognitive behavioral therapy to help Brand identify and challenge negative thoughts

29:15 and beliefs that contribute to his depression. The therapist and Brad would collaboratively develop a treatment plan that includes pharmacotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, and mindfulness based interventions to address current triggers. In order to support Brad, Mom, I started an account for you. I'm going to make some investments for you into emerging tech. Three D printing. You know about three D printing is incredible. They can do anything, make anything, you can dream of you just plug it into the computer and it creates it. In five years, sixty seven percent of the items we interact within our lives will be three D printed. Delete this voicemail after you listen. I'm excited, Mom. I need you to please stop talking to me about therapy and staying at that place and all that. Okay, if you're going to tell me about that kind of stuff, please just don't call. It's not a good use of our mutual time.

30:03 I'm not trying to be mean, just deficient. It's inefficient at my point. By I corresponded with him on Eastern Troy or on Easter, I did. And then when I was going to the airport before on Monday, I said, I'll be at the airport tomorrow. Let's try and talk. Because he said, you don't even know what's going on with my business. I said, I'd love to hear catch me up. I'd love to hear the details. Tell me a time to call. And so when I got to the airport and got settled in, I said, are you available to talk, Let's catch up. He hasn't responded, so I don't know whether he's just avoiding the details, none of which he has whether he's back.

30:59 I have answers, which is what happens inevitably all the time, and uh yeah, so that's where we are right now, the unknowns. Mom. I was thinking about you. The sun was setting and it made me think about you. I love you. I hope you really know that. I want you to be happy. I want you to look at sunsets and be happy. Good Night Mom. Allegedly is a production of Voyage Media. The series is produced by Natmandel, Robert Maidas, and Dan Benamore. This episode, Domino, was written, produced, and directed by Dan Benamore, starring Jonathan Jeeer as Brad Edited, sound designed and mixed by Jackson mcclennan. Original music by Derlis Gonzales. Special thanks to doctor Nisha Tanden and Elevation Behavioral Health.

31:59 If you are a love one our need of mental health support, we've put their website link in the show notes. If you're enjoying the show, please give us a five star rating on Apple Podcasts or anywhere you're listening, and subscribe now for future episodes.