We All Take A Beating
A graphic excerpt from Russ’ new book in progress . . . his working title: Confessions of the Dying. CAUTION: Strong Language.
The leading experts in neurology, psychology and psychiatry say early childhood trauma causes atrophy to the amygdala, the brain’s alarm center. This leads to slow processing and decision making in the executive center of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, which causes people to become paralyzed as adults when faced with any physical, mental or emotional stress.
I don’t buy it! There’s a flip side to that coin; early trauma can teach us to take the hits life dishes out. As long as you didn’t hide your head in the sand and gravitated to positive mentors, you can evolve through that storm and become a bulletproof adult ready to take on the world as well as all the traumas you will encounter and keep moving fucking forward. I’ve watched sane men and women react to insane circumstances and noticed it was the people who grew up hard who survived.
The indoctrination started early while I was in Catholic school. They tried to teach me to follow the bureaucratic narrative, “God is all-knowing and all-seeing and never question authority because if you do, you will be labeled a rebel.”
I’ve been beaten, slapped and punched repeatedly by prestigious Members of Society: priests, cops, nuns, lay teachers. When I deserved it, I absorbed the pain and learned from my mistakes—when I didn’t, I fought back with a vengeance.
My father was a union leader in Bayonne, NJ and always on the forefront of innovative thinking for the workers—better equipment, safer work areas and improvements in health and retirement benefits. He was fit, didn’t drink or smoke. He had joined the merchant marines at sixteen years old and traveled around the world. When I was five years old, he was attacked by three men that cut us off while driving back home. I remember like it was yesterday… I thought they were going to kill my father and without fear or hesitation he took them apart with a series of punches and kicks to the head and chest. It was over as fast as it started. The adrenaline was pumping through my veins. I was speechless but loved the intensity of that feeling. I’ve been chasing the dragon ever since.
“My father looked at me and said, “You good?” He smiled and pointing in the direction of the three men and said, “They’re all chicken shit. They couldn’t make a pimple on a man’s ass. Let’s go eat.” My old man was not breathing hard and it seemed like he’d done this a thousand times. Later I realized he had boxed in over 100 matches over the years! It was his sport for fun.
Bayonne was one tough fucking Leroy Brown kinda town. The people called bullshit on everything. I knew in my early years that priests, teachers and police could be as dangerous as criminals, listening to the stories of my father and his friends at the time. Tough men who took no shit from nobody and would fight at the drop of a hat; it was in their DNA. And Never. Ever. Fuck with Family.
I was in the eighth grade when our tribe started to explore sex. It started with spin the bottle and advanced to more intimate behavior. We boys and girls were all best friends, like we were all part of a team growing up, exploring each other, and yet there was no jealously among our group. I knew it from my first kiss. I loved it from as many different girls as possible and this behavior followed me throughout my life. I blame that behavior on the low DRD4 gene mutation. I loved the alpha female: strong, athletic, powerful in mind and attitude, a true warrior partner which is extremely helpful when you’re getting your ass kicked all the time. The Jersey girls were just as tough as any boy and would jump into a fight in a nanosecond.
I played basketball at the PAL (the police athletes league). There I used to watch professional boxer Chuck Wepner hit the heavy bag with his coach. Chuck was a good guy. Massive man with fists like cinder blocks. He always said hello to me and had time to show me a few moves. Chuck Wepner was the Prince of the City. He was the only boxer to go fifteen rounds with Mohammed Ali, the heavyweight champ at that time. Chuck was called the Bayonne Bleeder because he would cut easily and blood would stream down his face to the point that many of his pro fights were almost stopped. Lack of coagulation is a bitch in boxing.
Sylvester Stallone made the movie Rocky after he saw Chuck’s fight with the Champ. Stallone even gave him a small role, which never happened because of all the blow Chuck was doing. He loved to drink and party with the ladies. Bayonne was his town and you could see the strut in his walk.
As a kid from kindergarten to about the fifth grade, I took a beating from older kids on a daily basis. It became a part of life. My old man trained me to fight back. “You don’t have to win,” he instructed. “Just fight back hard and wait for a shot to the nose and then fucking crack ‘em. Then they will leave you alone.” I had no fear. I never picked on or bullied anyone ever. Even back then I was protecting other kids who could not fight back.
I met the same personality types throughout my life, always picking fights with me. Most of these fights happened through high school. I had just moved to Winter Park, Florida from Bayonne in 1973 and I had a heavy Jersey accent, which made me a target. I was made fun of constantly which never bothered me. It was when they put their hands on me that they got cracked.
I would be in the high school boys’ locker room and one guy named Billy LaClarie, some Louisiana hillbilly fuck, would stand in front of me and start tapping my forehead hard with his index finger calling me Jersey Boy, wanting me to repeat certain words that accentuated my accent. Billy talked with that southern I-just-got-fucked-in-the-ass twang. I smiled and looked into his eyes as I balled my fist at my side and he continued poking me in the forehead. I would say to myself, “I remember this cocksucker from when I was a kid…this is the same person,” and just crack ‘em in the face. Billy was so shocked, the fight ended with one punch.
I hated fighting. When I was a kid, I’d rather steal and have the police chase me; as a result, my friends and I were always in trouble. My low dopamine levels got me craving the rush of excitement. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that makes us feel good, be it from food, porn or a bump of heroin. It’s always about the dopamine burst whether we become addicted to a substance or a behavior. Over the years I’ve met many war vets, police, EMS professionals and athletes with low dopamine levels. If you understand brain chemistry, you can understand behavior.
The police caught me stealing many times, from candy to shoes. The funny thing was, it wasn’t ever about what I was stealing, it was about the feeling the minutes before I took it. It was a rush I sought out over and over again. To me, that feeling was amazing, like hearing the slot machine in Vegas way before you pull the handle.
The police would take me to the station and call my father. He would arrive and go ballistic. “What the fuck are you stealing for? You got fucking rocks in your head? You’re embarrassing the family! Jesus H. Christ, is this how you pay back your mother? She had three miscarriages before you! You know how many Hail Mary’s she said for your disrespectful ass? I’m thinking now you’re the fourth miscarriage! Get in the fucking car before I kick your ass myself! YOU DO NOT LEAVE THE HOUSE for a month!” I was out in a week.
I was never stealing because I needed something. I was stealing for the dopamine high it caused and then add being chased to the mix. I would get an adrenaline erection—same as with the Jersey alpha females—lasting hours. It wasn’t until years later when I became a paramedic that my addiction to dopamine shifted from crime to saving lives. The lights, sirens, the hyper-fast pace from high-impact auto accidents to shootings. I found my home taking a bath in dopamine with each emergency call. I found my calling and I was one of the best.
Years of paramedic book training can teach you to administer life-saving medicine on an emergency scene, but it could never ready your mind for the horrible scenes I rolled up on.
As a brand-new paramedic my very first auto accident call was car versus telephone pole, impact speed about 70 mph. We had to be extremely careful there were no wires down that would electrify the vehicle. One touch and you’re dead, so we made sure no wires were down and there was no gas leak. I ran up to the driver-side door and the driver was unconscious, covered in blood lacerations from head to toe, the smell of battery acid filling the vehicle. His ulna bone sticking out of the skin like a white jagged knife. All I did was lock on to that visual, stunned. “That’s a bone, that’s a bone.” I kept repeating in my head. Then the other crew member arrived and stabilized his neck and airway and readied him for transport. We arrived on the scene and transported all in under seven minutes—not bad.
As we returned to the Winter Park Hospital ER, the patient was becoming cyanotic (i.e., turning blue from lack of oxygen) and I was about to find out why once we arrived and moved the patient from our stretcher to the ER bed. The doctors cut all the clothes from the patient and I left the room to get our rescue truck back in service for the next call. While sweeping the glass from the floor of our vehicle one physician walked out and said, “Good job, Slick, that guy was shot twice in the chest with a small caliber bullet before he hit the telephone pole.” “Fuck me!” I said. The physician added, “You need to wake the fuck up next time.” From that day on, all trauma victims had their clothes cut off to expose as much skin as possible. I would never miss another bullet wound ever again.
Emergency work taught me that nothing is as it seems. I missed the small caliber bullet wounds from a .22 long rifle because I was focused on the bone protruding from the patient’s arm. Book learning will never ready you for the trauma and human suffering you will witness.
Bullies were an important part of my evolution to adulthood. I met bullies in Catholic school, the fire department, the police academy, on the SWAT team. I met the most dangerous bullies in grad school. Ph.D.s could make students question their existence. These mental bullies knew the dark side of psychology and used it often. As I aged, it took me a while to realize the bullies were abused as well and they were using displaced aggression just to vent their own unique traumas.
The Ph.D. bullies in academia knew nothing about the real world. All they dealt with was faculty and students. I was on the job twenty years before I went back to grad school at Rollins College. So, when they tried to pull their shit with me, making me the butt of their humor, it didn’t go well. I know when someone is poking fun or being vicious. We had stadium seating in a class called Human Factors. I would fly under the radar and sit in the back of the room. I wore my workout clothes to class which were black sweats. The Ph.D. was dressed in his lime green polo like the director of a LGBTQ cruise ship and would say aloud, “Mr. Scala, I see you got dressed up for us today.” Big laugh. I’m thinking, “Cool, I’ll roll with it. This pussy could not last two minutes on an emergency scene.” I smiled and went along, but this sick fuck kept it up for a few weeks. I finally had enough and walked down the stairs and up got in his face and said, “Keep it up and I’ll kick your ass all over this class,” loud enough for the class to hear. Problem solved. All forty students’ eyes were on him while beads of sweat formed on his upper lip. All I thought was, “You pussy!”
In my early life I took a mental, physical and emotional beating, but when I look back I am thankful because it prepared me for a tough life ahead. I learned from every situation. I understood human behavior early on, watching abusive adults as well as my friends on their way to becoming lifetime criminals. When I look at children playing today I always wonder what they be like as adults, what traumas will they encounter that will shape their behavior? Who will be their most powerful mentors? Mine were my mother, father, little league coaches and the doctors who showed me a whole new world with limitless possibilities.
It was the bullies that taught me to stand up. They taught me how to defend myself and not depend on others. They taught me I’m the only one who can change my situation. They also gave me a mind of steel while racing long-distance marathons. When my mind was writing checks my body couldn’t cash, I would think of the bullies. I kept going, one foot in front of the other, taking a beating till I crossed the finish line. When I lost my career on two separate occasions I always knew I would be fine and power though.
Maybe today as an 11th-hour interventionist I get people answers to conditions missed by most physicians because I know helping a client is not about one medicine, one diet or one nutritional program. The mind and behavior are extremely complex. It’s about looking at the person, their story and the multiple interconnected parts of their life that placed them face-to-face with me. I take my forty years in medicine and I fight for people.
Today I’m not married, and I have no children. My clients become my family for as long as they stay with me, then either they or I move on. That may sound sad to some but I’m happy with my life. I’ve experienced intense trauma; I witnessed nightmares in real time. My behavior is hardwired. I was put on Earth to do exactly what I’m doing, helping people at their darkest hour and showing them that they have options. At the same time, I’ve also had many dark hours from losing my career to finding both my parents dead, but I would also meet someone who loved me through that trauma. I’ve been very lucky in that respect. I’ve never looked at breakups as a loss. I’ve always been curious about the next warrior I would meet. For now, I’m good. I have my alpha warrior. She’s a wicked-smart bad ass and I can hear her heart beat from miles away. Vicki ILiff, I love ya.
Russ Scala, MA
American Biohacker
Image copyright: 123rf/bowie15
