Being Bi-polar 😇 😈

N.B., this is a serious post about a serious topic of mental health but attempts to be humorous and light hearted at times… Please don’t be offended. Grown down a bit!

Ciao!

The chances are, you don’t know me.

You probably never will.

You don’t know
You don’t know about me
You don’t know
You don’t know about me

Dizzee Rascal - You Don't Know

But don’t worry!

There are about 8 billion of us altogether on this Pale Blue Dot — until Elon lands on Mars!

What’s this all about then..?

This is going to be a short, sometimes verbose, definitely resourceful, blogpost with links, lessons learned the hard way and zero actual medical advice.

I am emphatically not a Doctor of Medicine only Computer Science.

It will include some tips and support for any one who wants to know more about the condition referred to as “Bipolar Disorder” (also known as “Manic Depression”).

You probably know someone with this condition, it actually affects 4 in 100 people in the United States at some point in their lives according to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH)¹.

You will definitely know of some bipolar celebrities…

Top left clockwise: Kanye Omari West born June 8, 1977 (age 45) in Atlanta, Georgia; Marshall Bruce Mathers III born October 17, 1972 (age 49) in St. Joseph, Missouri; Carrie Frances Fisher born October 21, 1956 in Burbank California, died December 27, 2016 (age 60) in Los Angeles, California; & Stephen John Fry born 24 August 1957 (age 64) in Hampstead, London © 2022 Google & Wikimedia Commons

My personal favourite is Kanye West (a.k.a Ye, Yeezus, Yeezy or Saint Pablo). Followed closely in no particular order by Marshall Bruce Mathers III (a.k.a. Eminem or Slim Shady), Carrie Fisher (a.k.a. Princess Leila) and, last but, certainly not least, Stephen Fry (a.k.a. Cuddly Dick or Lord Melchett in Blackadder).

Although this probably alludes to the fact I was born in the 1980s, love hip-hop culture, sketch comedy and geeky things like Star Wars!

Each of these four fabulous individuals have been tormented by a mental health condition known formally as Bipolar Disorder².

What that means in practice is extreme swings in mood.

Literally one second a happy elf dancing around the kitchen to a song on the radio… To… Only moments later… A screaming goblin throwing a chair out of the window.

I know, I have lived with it, most likely since I was born but who knows really where we end and mental health conditions begin?!

I like to think of the classic Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde depiction by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1886.

This must be how my personality must appear to other mere mortals who are not bipolar and frankly have more stable moods on a day to day basis.

Adaptations of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde © 2022 Wikimedia Commons

I don’t even really know when I became bipolar but have lived my Life reasonably well despite it.

I’m currently married, two children whom I adore, four degrees, sold a company to Salesforce.com at age 25 and now sometimes academic, sometimes investor in 70+ technology startups), undiagnosed until roughly 3 years ago with the help of an amazing psychologist and psychiatrist both based in Milan.

My doctors are in Italy, despite the fact I’m British and live in the UK, partly because my wife is Italian but partly because the UK mental health services have been worse than abysmal in my personal experience. I might even use the term detrimental to my own health.

More on that another time… I’m trying my best to keep this positive!

Back to the story…

Are you sitting comfortably?

An unimaginably extreme turn of events in 2019 left me in a wheelchair in immense pain unable to walk for several months.

I almost died in a horrific car accident in Cape Town, South Africa.

I spent 6 months in and out of hospital, two blood transfusions, five fractures and now have multiple plates in my right leg.

I managed to sustain a broken ankle, tibia, fibula, patella and femur… Ouch!

Right?

Pain is now a good friend of mine lets say!

My hope is that through pain and suffering the world and Life chips away at us as poorly formed pieces of clay but what is left at the end of it is something resembling our very own masterpiece.

Or if your lower on confidence then at least your “Best version of yourself”.

Near death experiences change us.

There is no doubt in my mind.

I am not the same person I was on 2nd January, 2019 or any day before that.

The day I almost died. Photo taken at the summit of Lion’s Head, Cape Town, South Africa on 2nd January, 2019 by my good friend Hugh© 2019 Hugh Whalan

Maybe none of us are.

But for me that is the date which my Life could have ended.

It didn’t.

I’m here.

I’m writing this and hoping to share what wisdom I have salvaged from the experience to help others. After all, that’s what makes us human, no?

Passing down stories through the ages so that others may learn from our mistakes and be better humans and better versions of themselves.

The hope for a better tomorrow!

Maybe by the time I publish this we will have runaway Artificial Intelligence spawning from DeepMind or OpenAI.

I wish I had all the answers and could help many, many more people who must struggle with this condition.

With the manias, with the depressions.

Sometimes all within a single hour of intense mood swings!

I don’t have any silver bullets and as The Verve famously sung… and in my humblest of opinions:

Now the drugs don’t work
They just make you worse but I know I’ll see your face again

The Verve - The Drugs Don't Work

Please don’t take me out of context… Psychiatric drugs have their place in society but under controlled conditions inside safe, clean, kind and supportive mental health institutions.

This is not what happens today in the United Kingdom of (supposedly) Great Britain.

I was sectioned in the Spring of 2019 to a mental health institution called Kingfisher Court³.

“Work is progressing on the new Kingfisher Court” © 2014 Borehamwood & Elstree Times

In my own mind, if Hell on Earth exists then this place is not too far off…

Nestled in the picturesque woodlands of southern Hertfordshire this place is anything but peaceful.

As happens far too often with government absolutely millions were spent on the building (i.e., the physical space) and seemingly zero thought or resource was given to the doctors, nurses, wardens and the people who would be the caregivers to some of the sickest and most in need patients in the country.

I spend two sleepless weeks in that place… Under constant observation. I felt dehumanised, like I had done something wrong, like I was being imprisoned just for being depressed.

Visiting hours were few and far between.

Most staff were underpaid, temporary workers who cared more about how to get paid an extra pound per hour than the wellbeing or mental state of any of their inmates, sorry… patients.

In that entire time I spend at that hospital I spoke with one doctor.

It was after about ten days since being admitted.

He realised there had been some grave mistake and although I certainly was not 100% I did not need to be inside a mental health institution.

He signed the relevant paperwork, apologised profusely and offered to discharge me that afternoon.

I was in shock, I had gotten into my head through depression and catastrophizing that I would be stuck inside this hell hole for the rest of my Life.

Perhaps moved from one ward to the next and never to see my friends and family in the real world ever again.

I was terrified, alone and depressed.

All I needed was some compassion and love and to talk to a trained psychotherapist not to be locked away under observation like a lab rat.

As you may be able to tell, I truly despise that place more than anywhere else on Earth.

If the government hadn’t spent £42 million on this “world class inpatient mental health unit” then I would suggest burning it down to the ground.

In my research, it seems there once was a hospital in Hertfordshire called Harperbury Hospital⁴.

A former mental health and learning disabilities hospital built on the remains of World War I hangers.

The former site of Harperbury Hospital, Radlett © 2022 Whatevers Left

Directly quoting from the website Whatever’s Left:

A large part of the hospital was closed in 2001 and those buildings have rapidly deteriorated over the years. The new purpose built building has been established in the middle of the original site — leaving all the old buildings now closed and derelict.

Let’s just remember.

If we don’t learn the lessons of the past not only as individuals but as a society we are doomed to repeat them over and over again for the rest of eternity.

We must do better.

People’s livelihoods depend on it.

What’s next… Where do we go from here?

Don’t you know I’m still standing better than I ever did?
Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid
And I’m still standing after all this time

Elton John - I'm Still Standing

If writing this blog post means one single person reads it and gets the help they need when they need it or if I’ve made one person smile, laugh or cry then I guess it was worth the few hours fuelled with coffee I spent writing it.

It seems, Life gets the best of all of us at some point in time… My only advice is to firstly, wear sunscreen and secondly. please talk to someone and don’t let issues go unresolved, linger and get worse.

Live long and prosper!

Sincerely,

Thomas Rory

p.s., Please feel free to reach out via Twitter or e-mail via my website if you need support and think I might be able to help.

Links & Resources

• Stephen Fry: The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive also Won Emmy Award for Best Documentary [Part 1] [Part 2]
• A follow-up documentary, titled The Not So Secret Life of the Manic Depressive: 10 Years On, aired in February 2016. [Link]
• Every, single, album by Kanye West from College Dropout (2004) to Donda 2 (2022) [Link]
• Eminem’s second, third and fourth albums The Slim Shady LP (1999), The Marshall Mathers LP (2000) and The Eminem Show (2002) [Link]
• The first three Star Wars movies (the original three, not the new three though) known as Star Wars: A New Hope (Episode IV)
  (1977), Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Episode V)
  (1980) and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi (Episode VI) (1983) [Link]

Some Photos (mainly of Thomas & Friends)

Being Bipolar 😇 😈

The Songs

• “You Don’t Know” by Dizzee Rascal
• “The Drugs Don’t Work” by The Verve
• “I’m Still Standing” by Elton John

Also made this into a Spotify playlist called Being Bipolar featuring R&B, Soul, Hip-Hop, Indie, Dancehall, Funk and even some dirty Pop with songs that I like, love or have some significance to my Life.

Footnotes & References

¹ United States National Insitute for Mental Health (NIMH) website information page about Bipolar Disorder — https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/bipolar-disorder [Accessed June 2022]

² Mind.org.uk (a British mental health charity) website information page about Bipolar Disorder — https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/bipolar-disorder/about-bipolar-disorder/ [Accessed 18th June 2022]

³ NHS Ratings & Reviews — Kingfisher Court — [https://www.nhs.uk/services/clinic/kingfisher-court/X104887/ratings-and-reviews [Accessed 18th June 2022]

⁴ Harperbury Hospital, Radlett — Whatevers Left — https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/thttps://www.whateversleft.co.uk/hospitals/harperbury-hospital-raddlet-2/ [Accessed 18th June 2022]