BSidesWLG 2017 - Amanda Berlin - Hackers, hugs, and drugs

so how was your first day of besides awesome alright now that you're all excited I'm gonna like totally bring it down because this is super depressive so first off I want to thank the b-sides organized organizers for inviting me here I'm from Ohio as you can tell by my I think of lack of accent right all you are the ones with the accent and I already want to move here so maybe eventually but it's been great so far so I want to start out this presentation with a little story so about 70 years ago seven years ago in that seventy I was married with two kids at the time now I have three I lived in a super

shitty house in the middle of nowhere I still live in the middle of nowhere just a slightly better house my second son was about one year old my one my oldest was seven our roof leaked without going into too many details of my marriage I didn't really have any control over anything that happened in my life that being said I remember one night when I kind of realized something was wrong with me I was you know in the shower getting ready for bed and like throughout the day I just had become like progressively sadder and sadder until you know I get out of the shower and I'm getting ready and I just like broke down sobbing on the floor and I

didn't know it was wrong and the best explanation I can give to anybody is that's exactly how I felt the inside of my brain was just like scrambled I couldn't actually speak about anything that was going on in my mind like it just felt like static like there was absolutely nothing I could do about it you know my husband at the time came up to me he thought something super serious was happening you know like I wanted a divorce or you know I was dying or something like that and anybody that knows me knows I hate to use the word triggered but the the thing that I can well the thing that triggered me time was that my shower curtain was

dirty stupidest in the world right I felt stupid and immature and just like that doesn't make any sense at all so looking back at a lot of it now a lot of the anxiety problems that I had was because lack of cleanliness which falls under OCD and anxiety and a whole bunch of other stuff and that itself as a whole stories so the funny thing is even when I realized something was wrong I didn't ask for help I didn't ask you know my family I didn't ask anybody I figured it you know at like 25 I had made it through so much of my life already and had all of this handled and I could just do it all myself because I

you know that that much of a veteran of life that I could figure all this out so why in the world am i bringing this up at an info SEC time first I consider this community to be my family more of a family than you know majority of my blood relatives you're the first group of people that you know understands you know each other and understand some of the stuff I was going through and the stuff that I worked on day to day that I could actually talk to you about a lot of the stuff that's happening in my life when I began tweeting and posting on Facebook and talking to people about this kind of stuff I realized how

systemic of a problem that we seem to have and we're just not you know verbalizing it a lot of people are struggling it and struggling with it and trying to tackle it alone like I had been for like ten or so years that I had realized a lot of the conversations that I had were with some amazingly happy people always joking always the center of attention you know just super super funny super happy people all the time and a lot of times those were the people suffering the most because it's a lot easier to put on that kind of facade in front of everybody then actually have to talk about this kind of stuff so we

never want to admit there's a anything wrong with us right so what's the first part of any like 12-step program do you know yeah admitting you have a problem and accepting it but you can't just do that and stop there you have to actually do something about it otherwise you're just gonna get more and more depressed that you know something's wrong you're just not doing anything now then not only do the people in our industry have the normal stresses of like family and money and that kind of stuff a lot of us are just extremely passionate about what we do you know none of you are here because you have to be if you are that I'm sorry and it's

our community I think is different difficult to compare to any other community we are passionate and driven and we put ourselves you know into our research and we sit behind computer screens for hours and hours on end and we do this because you know we're trying to cater to our willingness to you know to do that not have to be around people and on top of that a lot of times you can add on things like incident response or helping law enforcement agencies track down child predators a lot of kind of stuff that normal everyday people don't have to deal with adds all of those stresses on on top of what you already have so first I want to talk

about some of the research that I've done I read way too many medical journals perhaps to those people for being able to write about all that kind of stuff there's a lot of information out there so the first thing that I did is I went to Google and I searched for mental health issues and STEM fields and I got back about 6 million results most of them about women now how much much percent of stem is women like maybe ten at this point so why are four million of the six million you know focused around women I took out that term it dropped down to like two million results but when it comes to mental

illness sexes are definitely different women are mostly more likely to be diagnosed with anxiety and depression and men tend to have things like sustance substance abuse and I social disorders that kind of stuff but nobody wants to talk about men even though you make up over 70% of our industry so the hypothesis that I was trying to prove is that people in stem might have a higher rate of mental health issues and turns out there's a couple studies that reinforce that thought that I had the first is called the Savannah IQ hypothesis and I'll read a quote for more from that the finding of an association between progressively increasing risk of bipolar disorder and high arithmetic intelligence performance

is rather surprising not only mathematical skill but the rapid information processing for the purpose of successfully completing a timed exam high scores with such rapid processing power may also share a tendency to experience mania a state of high focus of psychomotor activity as well as other mental health issues it also talks about people with higher intelligence tending to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs more than the average person show of hands who has watched either all of mr. robot or let me at least know you know the premise right okay so they had to have done some research into that or maybe they just guessed right based on you know all of us but so the main

character Elliott suffers from social anxiety disorder depression delusions paranoia and he self-medicates himself with morphine and uses suboxone to come down off of like withdrawal I don't recommend that no matter what you have not not a good idea but it kind of reinforces you know what that paper was about so let's move on to some more statistics not only the Savannah IQ interaction hypothesis talks about the smarts to depression correlation there was a study done recently at Berkeley that found that between 42 and 48 percent of those Berkeley students in science and engineering are depressed that's compared to 7 percent of the overall population so it makes sense on the Google results there are significantly more results in involving

women because one I think we report it more right and two people like to focus on minorities you know I don't want to try and focus on the men but now you're the minority so it's not like you guys aren't having issues believe me I know some of you you're just not reporting them now I know these say us just ignore that part I'm trying to prove a point so all of this and we still think everybody else has their [ __ ] together better than we do you know that there are impostor syndrome talks I mean there's there's all this kind of stuff I know I'm guilty of it constantly and a lot of people

have done research on impostor syndrome just like we had earlier and that can go hand-in-hand a good amount with mental health so for any of you that don't know impostor syndrome is the feeling that you shouldn't really be doing what you're doing either because you don't have enough time put in or you don't have the experience necessary or you're just not smart enough so a lot of times we see that's how we see ourselves when we have thoughts of suicide and anxiety you feel like you're drowning while everybody else is just doing fine and that's not true I can think of a good amount of people that have talked me through these kinds of situations as

well as all of the times that I've been limited because my brain kind of just decided to go in some crazy direction you know maybe I didn't apply for that job or I didn't go talk to that person and I'm you know shutting myself in because all of that shit's going on inside my head so I did find one thing that said the US Preventive Services Task Force recommends that all adults be screened for depression that's all of us now when I read that I thought all right so is that just US citizens is that everybody is it just be mean like first world problems right is it our diet is it it's probably our

government but in the grand scheme of things we don't really have things that bad right you know we have roof over our heads and for the most part food access to high speed whatever but that doesn't really matter when your brain is like eating yourself from the inside out and you know you're huddled in a corner or in bed not be able to get out you know none of that matters that it's a first-world problem you know it's all it's all in your mind and not something that you can just overcome so I'm gonna dive into a handful of different types of mental health issues and their characteristics I'll probably be reading from my notes a lot because there's a

lot of different symptoms that come along with these there's five different ones that I'm gonna mention and when I talk about the symptoms of these diseases pay attention they don't just cover things going on in your mind they're also gonna start manifesting themselves physically as well so first there is social anxiety disorder or also known as general anxiety disorder some common symptoms are fear situation when you which you might be judged worrying about embarrassing or humiliating yourself concerned that you'll send somebody intense fear interacting or talk with strangers that makes things like this for me like horrible fear of physical symptoms that might embarrass you like blushing sweating having a shaky voice how many times I've said um

while I'm on the stage avoiding situations where you might be a center of attention like being on stage having anxiety in anticipation of a feared activity or events like somebody invites you a party you don't want to go to because you know you're you're already having anxiety about thinking about going spending this is a big one for me anyways spending time after a social situation analyzing your performance and identifying flaws in your interactions so I can tell you that coming to a new country for the first time has been extremely hard on my anxiety like for example I will be walking down the sidewalk and consciously at so far I've been here for like three four days every

time I'm walking on the sidewalk I make a concerted effort to make sure I'm on the left hand side but I'm always thinking about that kind of stuff because it just you can't shut it off sometimes and another is like experiencing worse possible consequences when interacting with people now you might save yourself that these types of things happen every now and then to you maybe but the diagnosis specifies that these are intense fears ones that you can't shut off ones that happen all the time not just like here and there maybe once a week whatever I know now the doctor but if you experience any of those symptoms or the ones I'm gonna talk about I suggest you

get some help and I will cover that kind of stuff too and other things you'd like avoid coming into a room that's already full like if somebody were to walk in when I'm halfway you know done with a talk and it just like know about just leave because I couldn't handle somebody maybe looking at them eating in front of others is a common I had a friend that I used to work with that could not eat in front of people and would take her lunch out to her car or you know find a conference room and have to go because she didn't want anybody ever have to see her chew so that's that's another one that's

possible dating so first off I can tell you dating in your 30s and small-town America is a nightmare in its own and then you tack on anxiety and it's pretty damn impossible going to work or school returning items to a store making phone calls that kind of stuff I don't know how many relationships I've ruined to do to like panic and anxiety attacks I don't mean just like romantic relationships I mean friendships anything more than just a business relationship because I like over-invest myself or I think I'm not investing enough time that my jokes are stupid that my haircut sucks that whatever I just overthink everything and in my head I just completely push people away even

though everything is happening in my mind and I've not actually done any of that so next up super fun one is bipolar disorder also previously known as manic depressive and there's two sides is this one first off is the manic part some of the symptoms are being abnormally a beat jumpy wired not being able to sleep increased energy an exaggerated exaggerated self a sense of well-being like super awesome self-confidence euphoria that kind of stuff racing thoughts distractibility and in more extreme cases you can have poor decision-making so like going on buying sprees gambling all your money you know making huge job change decisions without any thought behind it and the second part of bipolar spectrum is all the

depressive character characters of like average depression like my loss of interest and things that you once liked sleeping all the time you can also have a feeling of worthlessness excessive or inappropriate guilt next is borderline personality disorder also also what I found out was called disassociative identity disorder is difficult to say it's a mental health disorder that impacts the way you think about yourself and others so it'll cause problems in everyday functioning life a lot of that's it's rare to have this first off and it's especially rare to have really super serious cases of it but you do hear about it a lot shifts between the different personalities are often accomplished accompanied by blackout periods and you

know the the one personality may not know about the other and a lot of at least in the more extreme cases they won't you have like risky and impulsive behavior like reckless driving unsafe sex binge eating drug abuse that kind of stuff and then completely swap to like your nice person and then you're not doing any of that kind of stuff

so depression is one of the most talked-about mental health issues out there a lot of people will associate it with just being sad about something in particular or you know something that just kind of puts you in a down mood but it's way more than that according to a recent w-h-o study World Health Organization depression is the leading cause of physical illness in the world which I thought was interesting you know feelings of sadness tearfulness emptiness hopelessness thoughts of suicide attempted suicide sleep disturbances and that just goes on and on and on this is my favorite one and a lot of times anxiety comes along with depression as well you know trouble thinking concentrating unexplained

physical problems like back pain or headaches next up is post-traumatic stress disorder is a mental health condition triggered by a terrifying event a lot of people in Armed Forces have PTSD especially if they've seen active combat but also you'll see like like earthquake survivors rape victims that kind of stuff that you know a particularly traumatizing event can have PTSD you'll have recurrent and unwanted distressing memories of those traumatic events you'll relive the traumatic event like it like like flashbacks you'll have those severe emotional distress and physical reactions to something that reminded you of the thing that had happened and then there's obsessive-compulsive disorder people you know throw that around all the time they have OCD just because you like things in

a spreadsheet doesn't really count so it features a pattern of unreasonable thoughts and fears which are the obsessive obsessions that lead you to do repetitive behaviors which are the compulsions some really notable cases that I'm sure people at least one person you've heard of before so nikola tesla had severe OCD I guess he would walk around a building three times before he entered it he had severe fear of circle shaped objects which is a little odd and he wouldn't eat alone with women there was a case in the 1800s that there was this young lady that would compulsively wash her hands and I don't mean like twice after you go to the bathroom every time she touched something so like 200

times a day and you know back in the 1800s things weren't really clean it was a little bit harder back then she wouldn't touch people on the street you know walking walking down the street or whatever so that was a pretty serious case and another one that I read about it was the case of Joanna H also in the 1800s she had she was obsessed with the idea that she would commit adultery on her new husband she was happily married had no desire to have an affair but if you would have told her that she had one she would instantly believe you especially with people that she had just met just in her head she thought she had

been unfaithful to her husband it got bad enough that she built her own chastity belt and the only person with the key was her husband which I found a little odd but whatever works so a fear of contamination or dirt we covered in needing things orderly and symmetrical something else that accompanies it is aggressive or horrific thoughts about harming yourself or others and a lot of times I'll either have sexual or religious undertones so we can all agree that one of these conditions can royally suck not to mention if you have more than one so what do you do if either you or somebody you care about is experiencing one or more of these how do

you cope or how do you help them cope I had sent out C at the beginning of the year this er you know completely on non-scientific survey on Twitter it asked about 20 different questions about how people's perceptions and personal ideas are about mental health one of the questions was let's see here do you participate in any activities to reduce dull or improve the stress or feelings you're having such as alcohol prescription drugs other drugs exercise medication or other first right off the bat you know I have a handful of people yell at me because it wasn't multiple answer because a lot of times people do all of those things to try and cope with

their stress and if I would have taken it myself before I send it out I would have realized it because so do I so out of 860 responses some of my favorites in the other category you know the little sliver of other favorite responses on how to deal with stress pretend to be a Vulcan masturbation which I should have just listed as category cats and Twitter all wonderful outlets so there's a lot of different coping mechanisms that are out there that can help with this stuff including medicine not necessarily needed but it's out there and here you kind of see the earlier hypothesis at work because of booze and things right and when I started this and I first put

the survey out I was talking to a friend of mine that's actually a mental health counselor and one of the things that he pointed out was the quickest way to improve your brain chemistry is moving around and he gave me two different two different things the two best ways to improve the chemicals in your brain without drugs anybody want to shout out the answers top two things exercise exercise and sex those top two things so as long as you're doing it right so not to go directly from sex to my mom that would be a whole Freudian thing but I used her as a sounding board for a lot of my stuff that I talked about you know

I'll show her my sides and tell her what I'm talking about even though she has most of the time no idea what I'm gonna be talking about but I like making her laugh and blush and you know do anything I can do Barriss her at the same time so when I started talking about the different coping mechanisms and what I was doing on you know this part of the presentation she talked about her great-grandmother which would have been my great-great grandma I guess she had been institutionalized back then because of her sad and withdrawn behavior during menopause and for treatment at the time she was giving regular shock treatments and there's nothing like you know trying to bring

yourself out of clinical depression than just shocking the hell out of you all the time but now we have better options people talk sarcastically about safe spaces and especially we're making fun of Millennials I think that we can agree the majority of normal people don't need safe spaces but it is nice to have somebody to talk to to have an outlet whether it be you know a professional or you know the person sitting next to you you know somebody in a slack channel whatever it's nice to have somebody to talk about these kind of things and you can use that as a coping mechanism as well was talking and it can feel good to externalize those feelings especially

when you're not being judged and mocked you know because a lot of us have the same problem so I mean other than if you're an [ __ ] why would you joke it and judge and mock the other person so back then you couldn't really talk about those things you know when they were getting those shock treatments just like you couldn't talk about divorce or teen pregnancy and yeah I've had all three so I'm gonna I can talk about all of them now so not can you so not only can you talk to people in your field about your thoughts you know you can talk to professionals whether it be a psychotherapist you know people that give you drugs

psychologists psychiatrists whatever you want to call them you know it's it's important to have an outlet for that kind of stuff and not just keep it all internalized so getting back to getting all doped up so the last 20 years we've seen a 400% increase in the use of antidepressants with an estimated one in ten adults now taking them now I don't want to devalue people suffering at all but we also don't want to be too quick to throw pills at a problem for which you know better non-medical solutions may exist but you know again that's not my job to do because I just just studied this stuff a little bit like that's not actually what I do but it's great that

people are doing other things right there like we saw in that pie chart before they're meditating they're exercising they're hacking they're teaching they're doing all this kind of stuff as creative outlets to to help with those stresses and a good amount of those things also increase your dopamine level without the need of anything clinical when I was first prescribed Zoloft so I don't know if you guys have the same named stuff here but this is kind of the explanation that I received from my doctor that it's just a simple chemical imbalance in your brain and so off is the answer it's gonna fix that it's gonna you know make it so all the chemicals are flowing correctly and you

know that's it simple answer to single simple problem I wholeheartedly took that as gospel because logically on the surface it made sense you know it's a physiological problem fixing with meds and I found out through my research that's not necessarily 100% true from what I found in those journals and articles and everything they have absolutely no idea why some of this stuff works which all right I get that science is hard the studies that I read also pointed out that issues arise from things like faulty mood regulation by the brain genetic vulnerabilities stressful life of other medications that might be interacting other medical problems there was an American Psychological Association article that I'm also gonna

quote so they said we do not dispute the possibility that neurotransmitters and other brain chemicals play a significant role in the etiology of depression however we are concerned that the chemical imbalance explanation may not reflect the full range of causes of depression and may be given greater credence by both consumers and practitioners then is supported by sound research and may be understood in an overly simplistic manner but really what part of medical science do we not get in an overly simplistic manner so I tried to I started taking Zoloft about six months before the end of my marriage and it was amazing I wasn't sad anymore I had lots of energy and I thought it was

amazing it kind of made me a zombie though I was pretty much dead inside I had no emotions which was great to kind of propel me through divorcing a job change twice and a move and another move and all of that lawyer costs and all the [ __ ] that I went through in that year was amazing to not have to have any emotions but after I had done with that I thought that that's probably not the best thing to not feel at all and so that's you know there's reasons why I switched so after all that had died down I realized it's time to switch because I was trying to fill that hole in my life

with others not very healthy things and it takes a lot of self-reflection to kind of realize you're going down a bad path and take steps to change that without somebody like smacking you in the face and telling you you should be doing something else with your life so I change to something called wellbutrin which is kind of like speed which is great helps you concentrate energy and then I take xanax every now and then when I have to be around this many people and I'm freaking out so now that he covered a whole bunch of my personal baggage and different coping mechanisms about how you know we look at how we can treat others now so as I said before

I've talked to an amazing a lot of different people since bringing up this topic and have heard their stories and backlashes and everything else that they've talked to people about and I wanted to find out what would help other people write help either your loved ones or you deal with a loved one or you know what to say what not to say I got a huge range of responses from people personally now that I can tell when I have an anxiety attack happening I have a few key people that I can go to to verbalize you know what's gonna happen that we have had conversations beforehand and they know what they can do to help me the two most common

negative things that I've heard are one you're overreacting and I'm definitely not the only one that happens - for sure I've heard that one a lot and this so I get this a lot like you know you you have so much going on for you why why are you sad you know I have fantastic job three wonderful kids a house everything going for me how what gives me the right to be you know sad about things or you know depressed about anything in life there's nothing to be depressed about right but I've actually caught myself thinking the same thing about others which I shouldn't because you know I I see this I see what happens

when people say it to me because there's [ __ ] going on in my head that you can't verbalize to them and so forth but instead you know you can tell them that you love them but they're amazing and while it's nice to hear sometimes that does even help and people will tell you try thinking happier thoughts because you know that always works great you can't you can't will yourself to be happy when there might just be a chemical imbalance happening in your head you know you can always put on that happy face and go out and about you know do things but you know that's not really helping you be healthier a good amount of the mental

health issues come with their own physical symptoms like I mentioned before even if it's difficult for the everyday person to see even sometimes we can't see it ourselves you can't just tell somebody to make more of an effort when they physically can't so let's cover some of the deuce A's first off sometimes you just have to listen listen to them about you know communication is hard right listening can be even harder it's just as simple as that though a lot of times they just need a shoulder to cry on somebody to listen and not judge or mock talking about it knowing what works for each individual person helps as well and definitely can help more

than you know there's a handful of those people that I can go to and you know I'll use things like a keyword like porcupine because I love porcupines it's like a safe word for your mental health and I find it helps a lot especially if I can't I can't talk at the moment that I'm having a panic attack maybe I can remember that keyword or at least an idea of what's happening mine specifically happened a lot of conferences because I mean honestly day to day I sit at home all day I work from home every day yeah my kids are there half the time but you know that's not really adult interaction and I live in

the middle of nowhere don't really have any friends around me all my friends are on the Internet and then I come to a conference and boom you're just surrounded by people that and I used to forget to take my meds and exercise when I was traveling and just fall into a lot of bad behaviors when I went to conferences that I've since learned are probably triggers for all the [ __ ] that was happening to me during but having some semblance of a routine will also help another thing you have to understand about interacting with others is they might just not feel like going out pushing them doesn't really help it just makes them feel

worse that they can't go and I find this to be true you know no matter the issue you know maybe they just don't want to be in enclosed spaces with others the thought of using public restrooms loud noises you know whatever it is being crazy can take a huge toll on your social life and there's a great article that a friend of mine sent me called this is how you love someone with anxiety and a lot of the points just hit home big-time with both of us and in different ways really one of the thing that describes me I think to a tee sadly enough silence kills anyone with anxiety it creates problems in their mind that

aren't even there and it ends in apologies that aren't even needed somebody will send me a text or I will send a text and get no response and freak freak out like all of those horrible things that could have possibly happened I said something to piss them off whatever you know there's a huge list of things that just automatically go into my mind when I haven't been responded to and I know that that makes absolutely no sense you know people have wives I have a life I'm not gonna be able to respond with people right away right and I know that I mean to my core I know that's what is happening but I still freaked

out that doesn't matter another thing the phrase is it's okay or how can I help are probably two of the most important things that you can say and nothing beats a blanket fort best I love the fact that you guys have like bean bags out there it's fantastic oh not only have I gotten the positive and negative stories about the interactions around mental health but almost everyone that I've talked to over the last few years have been super surprised that either I had depression anxiety or people were surprised that they had it and a few cases I was told that they're shamed into thinking it's their fault which is awesome not only is it difficult to talk about in the

beginning but so many of the things come into play that make you want to bottle it up and try and force it to go away I want to show you a couple things that our communities already doing doing one is I Ronan calm its ir0 ni n calm if any of you know Jason Street great guy he set up this website that kind of focuses on mental health issues and also starting in InfoSec it's a lot of like beginner level like alright I'm a college student now what so that's a really good resource that's out there and the next one hopefully all this audio works if anybody knows who mu Bix is you might have seen this before this

is about hacking together and I will try not to cry at the end of this I seem to always cry at the end of this but let's see how this goes alright here goes hi my name's Rob fuller and I'm a hacker now every single one of you watching probably has a different definition of what that might be but I guaranteed not a single one of those definitions includes race creed color religion sexual preference or anything in between the hacker community is filled with human beings people from all walks of life in our community like any social community there are people among us friends acquaintances con buddies that have problems that many of you might not

even know they have we have lost too many of those friends to suicide drugs alcohol depression and crime many of us dome into the world of computers and the internet because it was a place of acceptance but there's a dark side to this world it is too easy to disconnect to miss those markers would all you see is what someone tweets or IMS you can't see when you hurt in crime there are many ways to help us that need it and are afraid to ask because one of the biggest biases we still have in our community is showing weakness but you can let those around you know you care that you are there for them and

the door is open to talk anytime but one of the best ways is just to be around each other hang out go to a movie have a good time talk about your day to be a true friend not just another face a lobby of a conference if you wish to join me in this fight please make a video or just tell your friends your con buddies or your acquaintances that you just see it that Lobby con that we are all hacking together just in case so let's do some hacking together my door my phone my DMS everything is always open to talk about anything that's on your mind I know there's an info sanity slack channel out there as well a

handful of people that like to talk about this kind of stuff a lot of times when I'm feeling lonely or disconnected I'll like tweet out a google chat a Google video you know hangout thing and you know so I can see people face to face since I can't like just jump on a jet and go see them and I think the saddest part of the survey results were were the answers to the question have you ever felt like you weren't worth much as a person over 50% of people answered yes and that like breaks my heart break time I feel like having more of an open dialogue about this and killing it as a taboo

thing to talk about is gonna help you know tons in fixing it going forward so let's just be more compassionate to each other and work together and with each other even if you don't like each other a life is just a light you know a life is a life and just like Rob said we've already lost too many people in our community due to that kind of stuff here's a me amazing worldwide and nationwide organizations I'm sure you guys have some here as well that you can actually talk to people online you can call them whatever if you feel like there are no other options and you can't you know physically talk to the person

next to you and I wanted to finish up a picture of a cute puppy because I know this is a huge downer of a talk so three things to remember that I hope you walk away from this with you're definitely not alone if you're struggling to get help if you need it and three be compassionate to others and thank you so much for listening

you