personal history on Vice

Why I Love My Meds

As someone who goes into a month-long manic tailspin every few years, as well as more frequent batshit-crazy days-long episodes of depression every few months, I know I need my pills. I take medications every morning and night—they’re my breakfast and they’re my dessert. Full story

Go to Homeschool

My Education Among the Strange Kids of Rural Georgia in the 90s

Some of my "classmates" were completely divorced from popular culture and the society around them, and their playmates were so selectively chosen that they were rarely allowed to interact with other kids at all. It showed. They were socially underdeveloped to a degree that, in re… Full story

Notes from a Hitter: How Football Battered My Brain

It wasn’t until months after I played my last football game that the ramifications of the multiple concussions I suffered began to surface. The day after a long night of senior-year boozing, I came to in the back of an ambulance, flailing about as a firefighter struggled to hold… Full story

I Was a Suspected School Shooter

Rumors of me wanting to go berserk went far and wide, and even made front pages of the local newspapers. I had to go to therapy, and by the end of the ordeal I was having dreams about the Columbine shooters. Full story

My Family’s War with Animal Activists

I belong to a doggy dynasty. My grandfather showed dogs at Westminster, my brother’s partner runs a puppy spa, and my mother owns Puppy Palace, one of the biggest private puppy stores. We’re the Kennedys of the pet industry—except instead of conservatives hating us for our looks,… Full story