What is the psychological effect that would happen to a kid who was used to being the Golden Child™ treated with love and kindness and smiles and people are always happy to see you?

And then ALL the support systems and relationships that child relied upon and could predict have now all simultaneously turned negative?

We can see in the Still Face experiments above how a baby with zero understanding of what’s happening is affected negatively.

Takes less than 10 seconds for the baby to immediately sense something is wrong and to start psychologically struggling.

Are we that different than babies?

Humans are humans.

The beauty of a baby in this experiment is that the baby is unable to hide their emotional behavior. A baby is going to be tremendously behaviorally honest and researchers will be able to watch in real time how a human baby behaviorally processes this emotional disruption.

A teenager will be better at hiding this kind of emotional dissonance.

So what happens when all the smiles and hugs and pats on the head stop?

What happens when everybody just assumes a teen is a lost cause?

Bad kid. Trouble maker. Heretic. Sinner.

The sunlight glints off his badge while he writes me a ticket for smoking under age.

I’ve never been in trouble with the law before. And while I feel sick to my stomach that I’m a shitty sinner now… I can’t fundamentally change anything about my circumstances.

“Stop smoking and I won’t have to write you tickets.”

He says it dead pan. No emotion. Stern nothingness.

He says it like it’s easy.

He must be a Fucking Evangelical™ because that’s their whole philosophy too.

“All you have to do is quit.”

Just. Stop. Sinning. And. Then. Bad. Things. Won’t. Happen.

God has plans for you just like the ChristianTherapist™ said. Be good and do as the Bible tells you so that God’s great plans can be unveiled for you. But if you sin… then it’s nothing but pain and suffering that’s all your own fault.

This is the simple math of Christianity.

The Truth of this simple math, like almost every position the Fucking Evangelicals™ take on everything, is that it is complete and utter bullshit.

This is a group of people who intentionally keep themselves illiterate about things like Science and Behavioral Health.

Addiction isn’t a brain chemistry problem to them… it’s a moral one!

And the moment that Fucking Evangelicals™ declare something is a moral problem, it gives them all the permission they need to completely write you off and stop loving you.

You’ve made bad life choices. And they can’t support people “living in sin”.

And they’ll gaslight you that the way the show their love is by shunning you.

Fucking Evangelicals™ are trained by their system to use tactics of abuse while calling them “Love”

The most common of these is to neglect you. Stop showing interest. When they see you their smile drops and this stone faced look greets you for the rest of your life. And they’ll never stop doing it until you jump through all the hoops they demand. Their way.

It’s a system of Love that is very, very, very, very conditional.

All while they sing songs about how great God’s Unconditional Love is.

And so it doesn’t matter to anyone WHY 16 year old Dave Griffin started smoking. What matters is he’s sinning! And if I’m sinning then nobody is gonna lift a finger to help me.

Which makes it very difficult to get my hands on smoking cessation materials.

A thing most people will never know, is that quite literally from the very first week I got hooked on cigarettes I was fighting like hell to quit the addiction.

You wanna know how many resources were available to a 16 year old kid in 1994 to quit smoking?

Zero.

Wanna know how easy it was to get cigarettes?

This was the era of cigarette vending machines. This was the era where they didn’t bother carding. This was the era where I knew the first generation immigrant minimart owners in my city that I could patronize who would sell me cartons of cigarettes because they’re just trying to make a buck to survive in this racist country. And selling cigarettes to the bad teenagers is a booming business.

And so if I failed at sneaking cigarettes out of my dad’s medicine cabinet at night, I had at least half a dozen other options including going to the gas station and begging people to purchase me a pack.

The number of times I would strike out and have to walk back home in the middle of night wondering how I was gonna be able to sleep…

Insomnia was a massive problem during my entire life but it takes on a beastly role during this era as the medications are giving me nightmares and muscle spasms and the dry mouth is so bad I keep waking up all night or can’t fall asleep to begin with. And if you can’t sleep or you only get a couple hours of tossing and turning sleep then you are never really rested. And if this happens over the long term it massively affects things like Depression and Anxiety negatively.

And super long term exhaustion can be dangerous and life threatening. How are you supposed to succeed and concentrate at school under those conditions?

And the anxiety of all the hell of my life was overloading my brain– we still don’t know yet that I’m Obsessive Compulsive– and the Depression and Anxiety endlessly ruminating in my OCD brain would make it impossible to sleep.

A cigarette could get me so dizzy it made it easier to fall asleep.

I’m self medicating with one of the most toxic and dangerous drugs known to humanity– nicotine. We’ll come back to this later, but nicotine and mental illnesses have a symbiotic relationship that nobody knows about during this era.

And this makes it nearly impossible to quit.

So while I’m begging my parents to buy me nicotine gum and patches, our health care provider won’t prescribe them to me because I’m too young. And I’m not allowed to join their smoking cessation classes. We asked.

From the moment I got hooked I was trying to quit. Busting my ass to stop smoking.

Which makes it all the more annoying as every Fucking Evangelical™ in my life keeps tsk tsking me and judging me and making snide comments and moralizing and offering me useless thoughts like “just quit.”

Just. Quit.

HOLY FUCKNACIOUSNESS, BadMan!!

WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT?!?!?

YOU MEAN ALL I NEED TO DO IS PRAY TO GOD AND I’LL BE ABLE TO QUIT?

Wanna know how many times I prayed to God Almighty BEGGING to break this addiction?

I literally could not even calculate the number of prayers I prayed in desperation for DECADES.

Hundreds of thousands of prayers.

So why isn’t god showing up?

What’s wrong with me?

I’m doing what my ChristianTherapist™ is telling me. I’m giving all my problems to god to manage because they are too big for me to handle.

And I’m poring over the Bible and I’m reaching out to God daily begging him to make me less of a shitty sinner and to make me happy and to take my fears and worries away.

I remain depressed and suicidal and this makes me anxious which makes me WANT A FUCKING CIGARETTE.

And I can’t stop thinking about all of this.

Again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and againand again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and againand again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and againand again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and againand again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and againand again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.

*inhales*

and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again.

Every part of my life is shredding apart. In some cases over night… and in other cases slowly, inexorably, torturously. And despite all my best efforts the life destruction won’t stop.

And now I have a ticket and have to go to court.

This is so stressful I need another cigarette!

One of the rooms where I receive the most unpleasant Still Face reactions… is the studio.

And my favorite place on earth is now becoming a room of discomfort and stress. And all the Fucking Evangelicals™ in the room who built careers off me and used to pretend they cared about me now just glare. Scowl. Say shitty things to me. Or they harass Corey Burton on my behalf which is one of the most shitty feelings of all time. That one of my favorite people is being harassed because of something that has absolutely nothing to do with him.

And I do want to be fair and and say it wasn’t overtly rude. It was far more subtle. I’m certain they would say they were concerned for my well-being.

But one of the remarkable super powers that Fucking Evangelicals™ have is their superhuman ability to think they know everything because of some antiquated Propaganda FanFiction Letters compiled into The Bible™.

This ginormous book somehow makes every Fucking Evangelical™ on earth an expert in addiction sciences and behavioral health. And trying to convince these Holy Bastards™ that they may be wrong is an impossible task. Certainly for anyone who is a minor to begin with. But a sinning minor stands no chance of ever being seen as someone capable of rational human thought.

The way they look at me. The way my church look at me. The way my parents and every adult in my life now just sees the cigarette between my fingers and the smell of toxic smoke on my clothes and at no time whatsoever is a loving approach ever attempted. That’s not how these people work.

You get scowls. Still faces. Frowns. Glares. Eyes rolled at you.

And everyone does it. The doctors and nurses and ChristianTherapists™ and police officers and teachers and principals.

All everyone can do is be LOUDLY and CONSTANTLY disappointed in me.

No more smiles.

How does that affect the human soul and brain?

We can see it easily in about 10 seconds in babies.

What happens when a teenager starts behaving the way the baby did?

What would that look like?

Avoiding?
Troublemaking?
Getting into drugs and booze and cigarettes and self-medicating?

Legal problems?
Fights?
Disconnecting from their parents and churches who are pushing them away?

And what if the baby is the one who caused the parent to give the Still Face?

What if the Still Face is a consequence?

What if it it was a Bad Baby that had done something to warrant the stern looks of disapproval?

What if it was a SinnerBaby™?

Doesn’t it deserve that Still Face treatment?

Geeze Dave, that’s kinda dark.

SinnerBaby™?

How can you look at an innocent child and think it’s a sinner?

Easy.

I was raised as a Fucking Evangelical™ and they believe every baby born is automatically going to hell because they are all sinners from the moment they are born. And this is why you have to convert those babies into Fucking Evangelicals™ so they can go to heaven.

Remember this when they pass more Forced Birth Laws.

The goal is to force you all to have your babies so that the Good & Noble Christian families who can’t conceive can be blessed with YOUR baby that they will eventually turn into a lifelong republican voter.

Pro-Life laws are about forced surrogacy.

They don’t know that, though.

The kind of people that think quitting smoking can be done with prayer are the kind of people that really have no idea half the things they vote for.

And before one of you holy assholes jumps into the comments to tell all of us how praying to Jesus helped YOU quit smoking and that this is proof that Fucking Evangelicals™ are right and that god not answering my prayers is proof I’m an apostate… write your own fucking blog.

Cuz your god never made this fight easy on me.

In April 1994 two episodes will air worldwide:

Adventures in Odyssey: Episode 262- A Prayer for George Barclay
Adventures in Odyssey: Episode 264- Making the Grade

These were the first episodes recorded in the session after my first suicide attempt. So obviously I barely remember any of them.

But this is where the Barclay Family storyline begins to end.

A few episodes before the Aloha storyline the patriarch of the Barclay family had lost his job. Now, after their Hawaiian holiday, George is going to suddenly be called into the ministry! He’s going to become a pastor!!!

Just like so many of my fan’s families!! What’re the odds?

This is a staple theme in the Evangie world. Whenever a dad loses a job, or gets twitchy in his career, or perhaps is suffering from something like depression or midlife crisis existentialism that their capitalist endeavors and efforts never really panned out… there will be this soul searching. And inevitably, there will be some nagging feeling that gets interpreted as a call to go into the ministry.

This tends to happen with people who spend large amounts of time in the christian world. Eventually, the church becomes a place to get the bills paid while doing The Lord’s Work. And god usually rewards these folk because there’s an entire industry of church building charities and colleges where people can get their divinity degrees. Very common and popular concept.

Well intentioned people making great sacrifices.

And I’m sure the Barclay family Patriarch going into the ministry is going to dovetail nicely with FOTF services and products that they provide to these well-intentioned families making great sacrifices.

But I remember thinking… is this a vehicle to write us out of the show?

Another thing is going to happen that will signal to me that the end is near.

In the 80’s & 90’s every family sitcom hit the same roadblock. The cute and cuddly kid cast grows up and starts getting acne and boobs and inconvenient boners. And the writer’s room is scrambling for ideas…

And inevitably the WE’RE HAVING A BABY storyline emerges. Cuz that’s an easy 9 months of storyline. That can buy a writing staff 2 seasons of material.

This is the signal that a family sitcom is dying and is on its last legs. This is the moment the team has run out of ideas.

OR

This is the fallback plan now that David has lost his fucking mind and might off himself at some point… make the Barclay Family less about Jimmy and more about George and Mary.

And so most of these final 8-10 episodes become less and less about Jimmy. And more about these family changes that are occurring.

And maybe this is all in my mind. Maybe it’s a coincidence.

Correlation does not equal causation, Dave. Perhaps they were going to write you off the show anyway.

Perhaps they had decided that because of our ages it was time for us to finally be moved away. Although I seem to recall last time that happened the audience literally demanded my character back.

[Editor’s Note: Fans STILL want Jimmy/The Barclays back 30 years later]

Or… maybe they were worried I was gonna die and they needed to write me off as fast as possible so the fans wouldn’t be sad if it happened.

But whatevs. The storylines now are feeling very intentional. And it feels like the show is slowly starting to slip away again.

And how much of this is because of me?

Is it my fault?

I will later be told that the team did run out of ideas, that the concern was that Donna and I would go off to college and they wouldn’t be able to record with us– which is fair. But, I was never going to college at this point. Maybe Donna for sure, but Jimmy’s character never needed Donna’s character to have great episodes (no offense Donna). We most often had separate storylines anyway.

Donna could have gone off to college and Jimmy starts working at Whit’s End. As the fans grow and start families so does Jimmy. Fans woulda ate it up for decades.

And I woulda done the show until the day I died and they know that.

And they’ll say Hal had died and it was time for a reboot, but Hal died AFTER this storyline got started.

I believe this storyline gets started because of my suicide attempt.

But I could totally be wrong, too.

And maybe this is the paranoia now of feeling like I’m messing everything up. Maybe the decision had nothing to do with me at all.

The endless mindfuck.

But I do believe they can’t have a sick Dave in the studio.
Or representing the show.

I’m a bad kid now.

Fallen away from the faith.

Smoking?!?

An argument could be made that the quality of my performances was suffering during this time. I would agree with that. That’s fair and true.

The meds and the trauma of everything definitely fucked me up like I’d been in too many boxing matches.

But even 80% Dave Griffin can still jam in the Lounge of Legends.

But I digress. All things have to come to an end at some point anyway.

And this is where that storyline starts.

I’ve been going to Bad Kid School for a couple months now and been suspended a few times already for smoking on campus. (I will end up getting suspended 5 times in the short 3-4 months I’m at this school.)

And something is occurring in my over medicated brain besides nicotine overload.

I am having another enlightenment moment that I never expected that I can barely process in my MolassesBrain.

All those mornings that I was driven past Bad Kid School to get my blood drawn and I would stare at the Bad Kids being written tickets by this very same GoodCop.

And I would tsk tsk those little shits in my mind “that’s what you get for being a little shit”. Those kids deserve punishment because they’ve made bad life choices.

It never occurred to me that those kids deserved sympathy.

They were breaking rules. Clearly these are godless heathens who are going to hell because of all the bad life choices they made.

And now my bad life choices have led me to becoming one of them.

And now that I’m a Bad Kid I’m learning something incredibly important:

Bad Kids are often made bad by the circumstances they are given and the environments they are raised. And before I was a bad kid I never thought about the fact that maybe the bad kids aren’t just a bunch of little shits, but in many cases they are products of the shitty environments and circumstances they came out of.

And a common theme I’ll discover in MentalHealthtopia and BadKidLand is that what makes mental health unique is that often the patient is the tumor.

But the cause of the cancer is the FAMILY.

I have a lot of families at this point.

My home family.
My church family.
My school family.
My work family.

Every single one of those environments is becoming a place of stress and Still Faces. The hugs dry up. The smiles disappear. Your status as a family member is at risk.

And here… 5 months after a SuicideCluster™ I’ve already lost my church family AND my school family.

And my home family sucks and is where 90% of the problems were anyway.

So the family that I most needed… who is left?

My Production Uncles.

My Aunt Katie and Uncle Will and Brother Corey.

And now the story lines are looking like my favorite place and family on earth is about to start slipping away and I can’t stop it.

No matter how much I pray. No matter how much time and effort and hours and tears. No matter how many times I ask jesus into my heart because maybe he didn’t hear me. Maybe he didn’t believe me. Maybe it’s because I’m a sinner and I can’t stop.

Keep in mind, please.

The reason all these families are abandoning me…

Is because I… *checks notes*… tried to kill myself.

Which any moral society would consider to be proof of a mental illness.

Illness. Hm.

And what’s an illness? Is that some sort of sin? Some moral problem?

Now remember… I’m losing all of my families because why?

I’m sick.

But you’re not really allowed to be this kind of sick in EvangelicaltopiaLand.

It kinda disproves a lot of the main theses.

Like how if you have the Holy Spirit in you you’ll be filled with Joy.

Those people aren’t supposed to be killing themselves.

And so if you don’t have the Joy of the Lord in you, what must you be lacking according to the simple math of Christianity?

A thing I would like you to consider…

Nobody does this to kids with cancer.

Nobody treats kids with polio like this.

How is a kid supposed to heal from nearly dying (twice) when everything keeps getting worse and the support systems dry up?

Asking for a friend.

And so what happened to the babies who got the Still Faces?

What happened when the love dried up?

Eventually, the babies turned their attention away. They begin disconnecting and looking for some other source of love and dopamine and oxytocin.

What is a teenager going to do when all the faces of love turn into glares and frowns and lectures and more biblical moral lessons jammed down your throat and blame and Still Faces?

My attention is going to turn away from the source of the pain and towards something that provides relief.

And who is there to be an option?

Hey look at that? Bad Kid School is a new family.

And I’m learning that these bad kids aren’t actually bad kids.

Almost ALL of them have been fucked over by the adults in their life. Maybe a handful are truly damaged kids and just unsalvageable, but for the most part everyone I was once afraid of I ended up sympathizing greatly with in the end.

The scar tissue these kids have. Holy shit.

And the strength they have. And the resourcefulness.

In a hostile world that hates them, these kids survive.

And I’m realizing that the little shits the GoodCop was writing tickets to?

Most of them are fucking addicts who have no way to stop.

And the GoodCop is actually a lazy asshole who parks his car in front of the school every morning knowing full well a kid who can’t help himself is gonna light up and now the cop can get some money for the city and it gives him something to do for the first hour of the day in quiet SuburbanAnchorBabyLandtopia™.

And I’m learning these kids are just like the kids at the hospital.

And a thing I learned about the kids in the first hospital….

They were some of the kindest,

most decent,

most generous kids

I’d ever been around in my life.

An incident occurred during my first hospital stay that opened my eyes to what true unconditional love and kindness actually was. An act of human compassion I had never seen before in all my Fucking Evangelical™ “Love One Another” spaces.

Once a week, the staff would take the kids who had amassed enough points for good behavior to a field trip to the McDonald’s around the corner.

As we’re sitting eating our crappy burgers attempting to feel normal a homeless man walks up.

I’m embarassed to say I was scared. I hadn’t ever really been around the homeless at this point in my sheltered suburban life. And the cultural narrative I had been sold was that these were people who made bad life choices or were so damaged there was no point in interacting with them. It wasn’t safe!

They’re CRAZY!!

A good christian prays about these people from the comfort of their church.

But here was a scary homeless person with problems begging all of us for money so he can get something to eat.

And I’m averting my eyes hoping he won’t talk to me when a young woman goes towards him!

“You’re hungry.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t have any money. But what’s helped me when I don’t have food is to make Ketchup Soup. They’ll let you do that if you’re nice. Just go in and ask for a cup of hot water and then take a handful of ketchup packets.

I’ve made it through winter with ketchup soup.”

She was from Maryland. Tough. Smart.

But here she was going towards a man who– once I gave the person a chance instead of a snap judgement– he was a man suffering.

A man the whole world threw away and stopped loving.

And here was a 17 year old girl offering this man a conversation like a peer. It wasn’t even what she was saying… it was her manner, her tone. It was loving kindness. It was compassion. She saw the human trapped inside the scarred shell.

And for years afterwards I would wonder what was it in her that made her so fearless in her kindness? And why did none of the people I had ever grown up with in AnchorBabyLandtopia behave in a similar manner?

And why was I afraid of that man?

Who taught me that?

And if the rest of the world and all my families are going to give me Still Faces for the crime of being sick….

Where do you go for empathy and sympathy when all your families abandon you?

You seek out those who have real kindness.

And often, when the world thinks you’re a bad kid…

only bad kids will talk to you.

Suicide. Addiction. Bad Kid School. Therapy. Legal Problems. Suspended from School . Still Faces. Bad Kid Friends. Losing Families.

Smash!

Smash!

Smash!

Smash!

The first fragile fragments of mirror fall to earth.

.