Stephen Fry: The secret Life of a Manic Depressive (part 1) transcript

[Music] 11 years ago I was starring in a new play in this theater in the West End after just three performances I walked out [Music] in the early hours of the next morning I came down from my flat in central London to this Lane I went into my garage sealed the door with a duvet I brought and got into my car sat there for at least I think 2 hours in the car my hands on the ignition key was a you know it was a suicide attempt not a not a Cry for Help I drove to the south coast and took a ferry to Europe I just knew I couldn't be at home I couldn't be in London I couldn't be in England I really believed that I would never come back to England Run Away Steven fry broke his silence last night to reveal the torture he's been suffering they all are worried that I've committed suicide that's the awful thing [Music] but after a week I secretly returned to England to this hospital and to a doctor telling me that I was bipolar I'd never heard the word before but for the first time at the age of 37 I had a diagnosis that explained the massive highs and miserable lows I've lived with all my life there's no doubt that I do have extremes of mood that are greater than just about anybody else I know the psychiatrist in the hospital recommended I take a long break I came here to America and for months I saw a therapist and walked up and down this beach my mind was full of questions am I now mad how have I got this illness could it have been prevented can I be cured of it since then I've discovered just how serious it is to have bipolarity or manic depression as it's also called 4 million others in the UK have it and many of the seriously ill end up killing themselves so I've decided to speak out about my mental illness and it is a mental illness I want to talk to others who have it about what triggered it in them and how it took over their lives and I want to find out answers to what still worries me was I diagnosed correctly and am I getting better or [Music] Worse let's start with a remark made by a Hollywood producer to me you don't need to be gay or Jewish to get on here just bipolar he meant of course Larger than Life furiously energetic endlessly creative manic types do well in Hollywood in all of show business for that matter euphoric highs and crippling lows seem to go with the territory and don't attract the stigma found everywhere else since my own diagnosis I've kept working and found ways to cope and I've also kept quiet about my condition now I want to speak out to fight the stigma and to give a clearer picture of a mental illness most people know little about visiting my old friend Carrie Fischer known to the world as Princess lair in the Star Wars movies she's always been she's on the edge of Sanity she's um you know constantly not you know not mad enough to be committed but not saying enough to to lead much of a normal [Music] life when you're Galloping along at a great speed it is better than any drug that you could ever ever take God if you will is saving you parking spots songs are being played on the radio for you you're just so enthusiastic about [Music] everyone and everyone must be enthusiastic about you and it just come along I've got a great idea I've got this unbelievable idea let's go to India exactly then you'll just start going way too fast yeah and you're faster than anyone that you're around and that's not fun you're on the phone far too long you're not getting any sleep nothing is going fast enough for you come on keep up with me you guys come on and even if it's not true that you're um more talented when you're manic you feel like you are yeah which is half the battle I am standing on rocks flaming speeches to the world you know I have a lot to say I have messages from deep space in fact and I stayed awake for six days and I did lose my mind this friend of mine says to me does your doctor know that you behave this way what do you mean then we sort of have an argument and I cry for 4 hours and I am unable able to stop and I know there's something wrong with that I call this doctor and I go in and I see her you know we're talking and I'm laughing and I'm spinning around in chairs and the doctor says that's that's the diagnosis that's bipolar that's manic depression Carrie had Years of Living with such extreme moods and feelings before she got that diagnos es She's Got It Bad you know it's not a rock star film star uh accessory it's a it's a real mental condition that she has to live with every single day of her life she's on medication you have to picture what she'd be like if she went a medical expert told me almost half of those suffering from manic depression aren't diagnosed at all frightens me to think of people for having symptoms like carry and not knowing what's wrong with them I'm told it's an illness that's surprisingly difficult to pin down to achieve a diagnosis now I'm diagnosed bipolar and bipolarity is a disease of the brain so a brain scan will surely reveal a sign of what I have the research being carried out here at the morsley hospital in South London Compares normal brains with bipolar ones like M so we're coming right to the front of the brain goodness and so just grabbing the front of the nose and then and then we'll scroll back through that's my face little chubby chubby cheeks there as well my little chubby cheeks but by looking at a sample of slices from a brain you can't tell or can you whether someone is bipolar or when it comes to bipolar looking at a single subject's structural scan would not give you diagnostic information at this stage is there anything you see in my brain that leads you to the view that I am Bal no I think it's the short very short answer to that so there is as yet no brain test that can diagnose bipolarity but I've been hearing talk of a bipolar Gene to find out more I've come to have my DNA tested as part of the world's largest study of bipolarity based here at Cardiff University they have 2,000 subjects already and now for 2001 do I get my wipop now so this is your DNA my DNA thank you so much oh it's so attractive I knew it would be it's beautiful isn't it so which way now okay so we we'll go up to look at the secr you know it must be good just from the name it's fantastic welcome to the sequino Mr Bond what we have found is that if you simply compared people with bipolar disorder against people without controls we don't actually see any overall difference unfortunately the Press you know as you know they'll publish reports saying the bipolar gene or you know whatever and it's that's completely incorrect there will be many genes that are involved in bipolarity So at the moment there is no clear-cut test to show if someone is bipolar how then do you tell how was I diagnosed all those years ago well a psychiatrist simply asked a lot of questions about my behavior and my feelings at Cardiff Nick uses the same process but involving 2 200 questions to carefully build up a picture of a person's life history of manic depression we've developed a scale when I found out of information from you I'll tell you where you score on our scale looking back times when you think perhaps it it was something a bit out of the ordinary unusual caused a problem or you needed treatment well I suppose the first time I needed treatment I think I was [Music] 14 in hindsight my symptoms really surfaced here but the problem for almost everyone was that they just looked like bad behavior I was nearly expelled from my prep school I was expelled from [Music] here it's very strange revisiting a place where one was so intensely alive as to be um almost in a constant state of edginess and I suppose what one would call Mania now CU I cut games I was so often Alone um wandering around on the [Music] roofs I think I used to crawl all over the roof for a mixture of risk and power when you're looking down on people the the effect of my behavior was of course to make me unbearable really I mean that it's a showof and loud mouth and um completely impossible to handle and disruptive oh my God see thin I may I may never have been a good-looking boy but I was once thin I got out the fry file oh no meeting my old housemaster and his wife ensures an uncomfortable reminder of past crimes like being given permission to go to London and then not returning we went to see films we just went nuts yes yes I mean one of one of which was the Clockwork Orange that's father thought oh my God all the films that he might have seen but I was consumed and gripped by it well you should have been back a lot ear I had the Metropolitan Police out looking for I didn't realize that I never realized that Steven has been a problem the letter from Gerald th that psychiatrist suggesting various things um adolescent depression mild depressive illness rather than just unhappiness behaviorally he can be quite infantile I think Mr Fry that's your father may have mentioned that the advice given to him by doctors in London suggests that he might have some brain damage to account for this that's a crude way of good Lord we were not aware of any drug taking or sexual offenses however few well go he didn't know much then he and then the awful thing which is the stealing that gripped me couldn't you didn't need money you didn't need to steal no so odd so you didn't know it would me it was I who was the I I I wouldn't have suspected it at all St you laid a trap in maton we did which Elizabeth you were you were hiding in in in M room I was in her ble it was a terrible shock to see you strange emotional turmoil I was in stealing things that I couldn't possibly want you know as well as stealing money must be said which I did want I suppose did I feel shame when I stole things I suppose I did but there's something very extraordinary about going through you know going through a room where you're not supposed to be looking for things and it's like when you watch it in a movie you know when the hero is burgling somebody's flat or something it's very nerve-wracking your heart is in your throat and it's a real Buzz and considering I didn't do any sports or anything else that gave me any kind of adrenaline rush which sport is supposed to do maybe that was maybe that's what it was whether it was part of a disorder that can be given a name I don't know it was bad enough for me to have to go to a psychiatrist anyway that didn't lead to a diagnosis of manic depression probably because like the school authorities like my parents and to be fair like me at the time why would you have thought it was anything other than bad behavior so I was expelled and just stumbled on continuing to steal as I went by this time I had progressed to credit cards stolen from the jackets of my parents' friends this led to my next big manic episode when I used the money in the most grandio way when I was about 17 um going around London on the stolen credit card it was a sort of fantastic reinvention to myself an attempt you know I bought ridiculous suits with stiff collars and silk ties from the 1920s and would go to the with the seavo and the britz and uh drink cocktails the morality of it never crossed my mind at all I think it's more that when you're in a sort of grip of a a manic fantasy you don't really believe other people exist you are the center of your Universe I wanted to be in there that's what I and Steven fry sitting there and the white coats are so appropriate aren't they the B and but their nurses in a in a wonderful mental hospital it didn't of course last after months of traveling the country using my stolen credit card I was arrested I was sent to puckle church Roman Center so um this is kind of what in my day would have been a long sterile Corridor with cell doors and wow I mean it's just so so different I had spent the last 10 years of my life virtually boarding schools of one kind or another so this was for me it was nothing really to be honest it was just instead of being called prefects or or School Masters they were called prison officers or screws the only thing that really twisted my guts was my mother coming to visit on the first occasion she visited and I used to be very keen on doing cryptic crosswords at times crossword things like that and she had all the time I'd been away she'd cut out the times crossw every single day and that sort of simple demonstration of love and being there for me and thinking of me was a you know really stuck in my how many times in your life would you have had an episode like that I would think four or five of of that extremity if I'm to take my past history then I I sort of believe maybe it's perhaps every 5 years a huge storm will come I don't know but that's sort of often the way it is so when would the first time have been that you had a um depression I would think it was about 6 months before that manic experience odly enough when you been depressed like that what's your self-esteem like oh it's absolute zero but stand up from a sofa and watch in the fridge is an act unbelievable effort everything that happens is because you are a [ __ ] it's cuz I'm complete wanker that's cuz I'm an ass you you you kind of almost have a Tourette's view of yourself you think of death all the time and even if you're not feeling suicidal you're just constantly aware of death and aware of your own death and and how welcome it would be that's when I tried to kill myself right so you'd have been 17 it was tablets was it yes I took as many as I could as many variations as I could in order to make them as toxic as possible unfortunately just made me projectile vomit and I do remember absolutely that it was a you know it was a suicide attempt not a not a cry for help looking back through your life just roughly how many episodes of depression like that do you think you've experienced just roughly I should say five or six okay I think Nick kck's getting the picture but so am I adding up all that extreme behavior is making me a little concerned about what my eventual score will be something that always bothers me is whether I could have avoided some of these harrowing moments if I'd just been diagnosed earlier but that's actually now a very controversial issue because in America psychiatrists seem only too happy to diagnose children as a result Susie Jensen who lives outside San Francisco has known for 5 years that both her young teenage sons are by po I'm Steven fry nice to meet you how do you do thanks so much for letting us come thank you absolutely no problem is there a thing you can say you know your child's bipolar when dot dot dot you know your kids bipolar when they're putting their feet through a plate glass window in a rage after they have been raging for 3 hours about something that you can't even remember what triggered and certainly risky and dangerous Behavior I mean Ian at one point went up on we had an a-line roof and he went up and was trying to walk the the narrowest point of the a line you know with his eyes closed I Didn't Do It on the a little extreme you know yeah you know your kids bipolar when the behavior is so extreme that I had um a neuros pych evaluation done on Ant and when I went to get the results of the testing the psychiatrist he met me in the lobby he said you know I've just in all the years that I've been doing this I I haven't been this concerned about you know the results and he went on to tell me a story that Ian had told him about he was walking into a room with bare feet and could feel a sensation under his feet that he couldn't recognize he tell all of a sudden he looked down and realized that it was my dismembered body all over the floor that he was trotting over um now that is yeah you don't want to hear that really D concerning how old is he then six six years years old do you ever enjoy your menu or do you find it a real real no I don't I mean I don't like it when you're doing something like bad like throwing something or in a bad mood in a fight or something yeah do you feel that's you and that you're right to be in a bad mood and the rest of the world is is [ __ ] I do sometimes yeah yeah I do diagnosed at 11 Ian's now 16 by that age I'd already been expelled from school so listening to to him reminded me of my own attitude it's actually it's a drive it's like it's feeding some need that he has can see it you can see it it's yeah it is kind of Drive something I need something that happens Ian's brother Todd is 13 he was diagnosed with only eight his behavior even at the special school Susie has managed to get both boys into is causing problems while I with her she's called to the school I'm normally not here till 2:30 but I got a call from the uh administrator saying that Todd had had a difficult morning and had actually um unfortunately thrown a chair at a staff member and and hit him was there a reason when you just cross I was just um well I just wanted to take a walk cuz I was kind of feeling pumped and angry and they wouldn't let me do that and so um I just kind of got mad you just got yeah frustrated yeah and the uh chair at the guy I was about I think it's was about 8 or 9 and there was a nurse at my school and I was trying to do my laces on and she told me to do double laces and I didn't know what that meant and I actually slapped her right across the face and I I've never known anything like that absolute rage inside me and it's really and it was such a stupid thing because she told me how to do my laces up after a blow especially a major one very often he'll just shut down like this I mean I know that he's suspended for three days he's been suspended for three days for three days I know Todd's School sees it as bad behavior but I have to say I feel a twinge of sympathy I recognize the rage being in the grip of powerful feelings and the shame that comes afterwards but Todd and Ian are different from me in one key respect at the same age they know they have an illness on the other hand I know from speaking to psychiatrists in Britain that they don't agree with labeling children at such a young age the norm in Britain is 19 so I wanted to speak to the consultant who diagnosed Ian and Todd you having fun what Kiki Chang is well placed to talk about this because not only does he run a research project at the prestigious Stanford University just outside San Francisco but also he has a 2-year-old child and knows that some of his colleagues would diagnose as young as that once you get down to say age two or three it's very normal to have complete discont control over your mood tantrums and crying one minute and laughing the next minute but I certainly have colleagues who are clear that they see it in three-year-olds even certainly I have seen children who I think were four and a half who fit the bipolar criteria they're having wild mood shifts and they're having unsafe Behavior they're not functioning they're not developing correctly they're losing a lot of time in their normal development everyone remembers the rise of a ADHD over the 80s and 9s it's and indeed the cynics would always say well this is the new fashionable label to put on a bad kid a disruptive kid I want to be careful to say that I don't think we're we're uh we're over diagnosing I think that um by by increasing the diagnosis you're catching more people it's good because then it leads them to a bipolar diagnosis and they realize that there's something going on that may be treatable and it's not their fault and come take your meds for KiKi Chang diagnosis is good news for Ian and Todd it means medication Ian showed me just how much he takes every day Welcome to our Pharmacy that's what I we're proud of it so you got Prozac let me tell adol MH Clon pins like a tranquilizer type yes I can tell they help me uh behave when I'm having a hard time this is ambient which I take oh sleeping pill isn't it yeah and conserta it's should take in the morning conserta is um that's like Rin kind of it takes me the better part of an hour to stand and fill both of their medications all of that to take the edge off a 16-year-old's Wilder Behavior what I think I'm not sure I know British psychiatrists are concerned about the harm strong drugs might do to Young brains especially when they're not 100% sure the diagnosis is correct but if the drugs help in and Todd to avoid wrecking their lives and their mothers then surely that's a good conclusion so would I have wanted diagnosis at 16 if it meant being on medication since then I feel that in some ways I've been helped by my manic depression and that complicates my view would I have had success without it please welcome your host for the evening Mr Steven fry would you know me if I wasn't driven by energy to be creative you very oh stop it thank you thank you how kind I am delighted honored and let's not be Co about these things financially rewarded this is a stressful time because apart from the else you're making an ass of yourself potentially in front of people you admire now stress is often a key factor that people say pushes them into manic depression and certainly when I was diagnosed the psychiatrist told me not to work so hard relax avoid stressful situations as you can see I took his advice seriously enjoyable some people might imagine this kind of thing is they're the same kind of people I think it's enjoyable to have someone stub cigarettes out on your nipples and certain dark clubs and what I believe are called torture Gardens in the leakier areas of the West End come in and for the week leading up to it I had the most appalling anxiety dreams in which I drop out of my clothes or I pee myself and it rolls off the front of the stage oh God I don't know if stress is what pushes me into a cycle of either Mania or depression because I can't think of a time in my life when I haven't been subject to stress happy y happy I remember that 7 years old ice cream holiday that was happy not since then really so I stress is something I I can't live without on the other hand it is a dangerous thing and no disaster so far but it's hot work and I can't wait for it be [ __ ] over frankly oh God here we go again because I am delighted honored and let's not be too coy about these things financially rewarded to uh welcome you to this most prestigious well the real thing seems to go off okay for another year I do manage to function despite my manic depression and I'm sure it does help me to succeed to stand you and that's the problem with connecting stress to the onset of manic depression my stress is your easy day at the office one person copes the other goes mad off I've come to Cornwall to see how manic depression wrecked the career the marriage and almost took the life of a man who was once liutenant commander on the Royal yacht britania here we are Princess Margaret one side leftenant Commander Harvey there and Majesty of the queen there 22 years ago and you were a well bunny then weren't you I mean I was well four years on the Royal yacht led to a senior posting in NATO under huge pressure working in a nuclear bunker Rod became so deeply depressed he had a breakdown my self-confidence seemed to be just um seeping away and my self-esteem and that I couldn't sleep awful sort of feeling desperation eventually invalided out of the Navy he still became Secretary of the royal Yacht Club in Plymouth that lasted until at a prize giving ceremony Rod now managed awarded it to the wrong person the real winner wouldn't accept Rod's apology until in the end I just lost it and um in front of all the spectators I just shouted excuse my friend you know [ __ ] off and marched off into the night I actually hallucinated by seeing the devil burning black coals of these eyes of the devil you know that's what I saw that was frightening I believed I was Jesus at the time you know though I didn't tell people that because then I wouldn't have been Jesus you know Rod was brought back to England and sectioned at this Psychiatric Hospital in Plymouth he was now overwhelmed with depression I was experiencing pain in my head I've been given a touch of hell I was meant to find out what hell feels like so I contrived to escape from the hospital they let me leave the unit to go upstairs to turn right to the occupational therapy unit unescorted so I didn't turn right I kept walking through the main doors to the Dual carriageway walked a bit down way from the roundabout so that Vehicles could pick up speed waited for Lori to come along and then walked in front of it chist I had actually compound fractures of um of both legs of every bone in my legs I have to lower my tri okay fair enough to actually um see the full extent really I've seen a lot of naval officers in this condition don't worry I'm not like this I don't oh my goodness no oh God that is really extraordinary can you just give a twirl as they say that is indicative of what must have been a Savage injury that all happened over 10 years ago and with medication rod says his condition is now stabilized but twice a year in the spring and in the Autumn he starts to feel the Mania build again and despite what's happened to him he's reluctant to take extra medication to control it I believe there is another world running in parallel to the normal and it to come as boring which I find boring world that there is another world and that the the the curtain gets lifted the veil gets lifted when I'm psychotically manic and then I enter into the parallel world and then I see things in a totally different way [Music] I will go into pubs and I will see Angels you know I I know that they know who I am and I know who they are and we have a tremendous sort of um bond between us because of a shared knowledge do you regret the fact that you were born with this strange disorder that is called bipolar or manic depression it's a very easy question it's a very easy answer no you don't no not for a second cuz if you've walked with angels all the pain and suffering is well worthwhile wow [Music] you'll be pleased to know I don't see Angels or the devil or think I'm Jesus on the other hand I agree with Ron we manic depressives do love our manic periods and I know that doesn't help diagnosis when we're up we're not ill don't be silly we're fine no need for a doctor but that doesn't disguise the fact that Rod so nearly killed him himself and that he really wanted to when he was in the grip of the other side of this illness the legacy of any suicide for the family Left Behind is extremely painful but when the cause is manic depression suicide also leaves fear the fear that the same thing might happen again with another member of the family because manic depression is an illness that's always handed down in families and that's what's brought me further down the coast in Cornwall to see an old friend who's had to live with that thought since he was 18 that's when he found out that his father was bipolar oh I say and this is where you would come every summer holiday yeah we did we were great memories for me as a child I must say we just all used to sit out on that um deck chairs on that slate bit down there have lashings and lashings of lemonade well we we did very um Famous Five isn't it oh isn't it just wonderful just imagine having every summer holiday [Music] here so I mean slightly mixed emotions you coming back here I suppose well yeah cuz I mean my father actually killed himself well just over there actually so uh it's not it's not the best one of the heartbreaking things about his Sude was that he actually went out with his sister your aunt and and threw himself off that cliff in front of you he dived off you know so I mean it wasn't messing [Music] about so I I'm afraid they've all broken up a bit but trying to find a decent picture of him there he is that's that's your father yeah the idea of having a looney father is just you know very sort of embarrassing and shameful really at 18 I I was so Keen to sort of hide the whole business really you know you just want to be normal at that age you know I just became morbidly sort of aware of it and very very depressed and and you get these panic attacks my way of coping with it was to to sort of like almost pretend it hadn't happened as shortly after he died I went away to Australia and America and Mexico for two years just running away from it really Rick returned and built a huge success story just miles from where his father died but he also spent his life wondering if he'd inherit the condition that made his father kill himself I was always you know so worried then about ending up like him the thing is that he thought I was particularly like him and I think he was incredibly troubled by that my father didn't sort of show signs of it till his mid-40s really so I mean I you know I'm well over it now but then you think about my son I think about my sons too course you know my sons are still in their mid-20s so there's plenty of plenty of time do you see a psychist I do I do you do see a psychist yeah and that's helpful well it is I do believe but only probably through seeing the psychotherapist that that really what happens to you as a child is indelibly printed on your brain you know they [ __ ] you up your mom and dad you know what the research shows is that if you have manic depression someone in your family will have had it before you could be a grandparent aunt or Uncle as well as a parent and often they might not have been diagnosed so there appears to be no warning but there will be somebody on the other hand as Rick's experience shows just because your father has it doesn't mean you'll necessarily get it but the worry remains for bipolar parents will I pass it on and now for bipolar mothers researchers have made another devastating Discovery pregnancy itself and the act of childbirth are now proved to be enormously dangerous to the mental health of women who are already bipolar so when I saw you K I said that in my opinion the risk that you had of becoming unwell again in pregnancy or certainly following the delivery were were very high I think probably 60% or more is the kind of rate of of risk that you you'd need to to think about Gana Thomas lives in Wales and is part of the same research study that I'm involved in she's trying to decide whether she dare risk getting pregnant again knowing that her manic depression has already led to unusual behavior [Music] oh see that one goes there I think that's better there we are going to there's one there look Mommy I had kind of delusions of grandeur did you believe you were richer than you were or better born or that you were you know some people believe they're princesses or mine were quite religious in in nature one of the episodes I thought that I was one of God's chosen people for want of a better word it I I thought that I was able to to um heal people um I thought I had kind of special powers and I thought that I'd kind of been sent to gather together a group of people to change the world in some way I was seeing a psychotherapist at the time and she identified that my ideas were becoming very strange and called in uh what would have been the equivalent uh of the Community Mental Health Team who treated me at home yeah with medication with medication yes right and then came a very traumatic thing very wonderful thing for most people which is pregnancy and you did have a medic episode while pregnant how did that show itself the more religious side came in after I'd had Thomas well I just thought he was uh not just a special baby but a very special baby but sort of like a messiah almost almost to that degree yes um and that uh I'd kind of been chosen to to give birth to him and we together we were going to change the world it's such a small step and yet it's such a huge one in terms of embarrassment if you were to say it at a party you know yes there's a way of saying my child is the Center of My Universe and saying my child is the center of the [Music] universe initially it was kind of postnatal euphoria uh but it became postnatal Mania I couldn't sleep I was so excited called the psychiatrist and said I think I need to see somebody because things are kind of getting out of control gaina was sectioned in a psychiatric hospital for a month the drugs the hospital put her on calmed her down but now she's frightened that it might happen all over again if she gets pregnant Ian Jones told me Gainer is right to be scared women with bipolar disorder are at very high risk of having a much more severe episode of illness in relationship to child bur often with psychotic symptoms like hallucinations or Illusions and really these episodes can be some of the most severe episodes of illness that we see in psychiatric practice really in all psychiatric practice the last two confidential inquiries into maternal death have showed us is that suicide is now the leading cause of death to women around child birth in this country gaina wants Thomas to have a brother or sister but Ian Jones's information is hard to ignore and it made me just rethink the whole idea of having a baby I'm you know I'm I'm sad that I I won't be able to have another child um perhaps for Thomas's sake but I've got to accept that uh the risks were probably too high down the stairs we go now no as you say you don't know what might have happen noely Slow Down slow down I love the heels of his shoes [Music] manic depression's capacity to destroy the lives of people makes it all the more important for it to be diagnosed early but often it goes undetected because of what most sufferers do to help them cope with the mood swings they cover up their symptoms certainly I did for almost 20 years it's called self-medication or as you would quite properly call it the taking of excessive amounts of drink and drugs vodka and cocaine in my case the effect of it is is that coke is a is a stimulant and that alcohol is a um is a sedative supposedly and I'm naturally often so Manic and uh energetic that I often took Coke to calm me down I found it very hard to go to any kind of party without knowing there are a couple of grams in my wallet you know it just I just had to have them [Music] there feel slightly embarrassed about using a phrase like self-medication because it sounds like like you know you're sort of excusing yourself or saying you're doing it for Noble reasons I did find and this is the point that it it it stops one from from feeling in a strange kind of way we've got an agenda to work up you're no longer sort of depressed or manic you're just kind of you're just going you're just on you know that's what I was doing all during my successful ' 80s and '90s my friends if they' thought about it at all would have said heavy user not manic depressive they'd have mistaken the symptoms for the cause and that happens a lot I did it with someone I went to University with worked on the stage and Telly with and even made a film with the first time it really manifested itself was at a time when I was doing this film Peter's friends I was having a gloriously happy time and I was in employment and I had money my personal life was happy and so on paper there was absolutely no reason for me to be suddenly uh plunged into uh um this this sort of pit of abnormal psychology this low mood good evening and why don't you get a shovel in your hand and do a decent day's work your lazy sod you know I wasn't drinking excessively then I wasn't taking any kind of um uh psychotropic substance either prescribed or prescribed and it it it came out of the blue you know if you're down and you can see a reason why you should be down then then then that brings with uh with it a certain Clarity but but if there's if there's no reason you tend to think why why on Earth am I feeling like this I don't understand if left to your own devices you can often try and stop um the cycle of ups and downs through um self-medication ingestion of alcohol and narcotics cocaine in particular but with me the depression came before the substance abuse everyone thinks of depression as being a very low despondent mood but there's agitated depression there's psychomotor agitation where you're endlessly pacing and uh and you can't sleep and uh you're short tempered I rented a huge um Warehouse by the river temps and uh just stayed in there on my own and uh didn't um open any mail or answer any phone calls for months and months and months and just in this in this pool of Rapid Cycling Despair and uh three full bar Optics of vodka um to try to get you um uh to sleep when you haven't been uh to sleep for for for three days just spending time howling at the moon and throwing your furniture in the temps uh which which what I did really what I did yes through through all my electrical equipment in the temps a long time ago this was with the River Police going up and down with their megaphones saying Tony stopped throwing things in the temps did they know who you were they recognized you they said there's that Tony Slattery Tony Slattery off the tell yes that was that thankfully was a long time ago that was that was a that was a that was a dark hour so I suppose what I'm leading to is this question is that here's a button and if I were to press that button you would take away every aspect of your bipolarity to cyia it's still not caused you the greatest happiness over the years but maybe it's had something to do with who you are so do you want to press the button no I'll keep it at the moment because I'm in an equable State I choose not to press the button but I'd like to have the option do you know almost everybody I've spoken to a s that it says something about manic depression that despite it being the greatest killer of all psychiatric illnesses many of those suffering from it if given a chance don't want to get rid of it if I'm honest I don't but I came across one woman who absolutely would press the button Connie Paris lives in Birmingham and is just in her 40s her symptoms are so severe that she divides her life into before bipolarity and after one of the difficulties is coming in here and feeling a bit paranoid I see what I think is someone looking at me and I'm thinking why is she looking at me well why is he watching me she's following me and I think he's giving me funny looks and I then Clicks in the thinking I'm getting paranoid again right people give me funny looks cuz I'm giving them funny looks before she was a lawyer captain in the territorial Army a black belt in iido and active in the community now Connie can hardly get to the [Music] shops when I very depressed I slow down and slow down and slow down and it gets to the point of which I'm just not moving at all inside my head I can see I can hear but somehow I just don't have the energy or the oomph to move forward and it can be a bit embarrassing when I'm out in the shops and I'm just stuck there not [Music] moving so can I can I before we do that can I just Pace up and down the corridor slightly cuz I'm getting quite shaky of course you can absolutely no no I can feel the shakes getting slightly worse so sort of have a have a pace to bre just just Pace that that's a week's pills wow that is quite a serious um slab of medication isn't it yeah there's two different ones that try to stop me going too high and too low one slows down the swings one stops it going too High stuff for my thyroid because that also slows mood swings down there's something to help me sleep and something to deal with the paranoia and another psychotic thinking and then there's the mineral supplement to try and stop my hair falling out from the mood stabilizers golly Wally every day every day and in your depressions have you considered you know the the worst side of depression which is suicide one in the period of 4 days I took an overdose I stepped out in front of an oncoming train I tried to drill a hole in my head with an electric drill and I cut my wrists trans dig a hole in your head with an electric drill that's that is I was just so utterly despairing I didn't think I could take anymore how do you see the future I don't see it I try to take it a minut of time because at the moment I don't see it I'd like to I really wish I could but at the moment I don't I so very much bitterly resent having IC depression I wish I could say otherwise but that's how I feel I resent it deeply it's perhaps a hard fact but one we should face that of those people who have severe bipolarity and aren't receiving treatment half attempt suicide and 20% succeed having met coni I realized I was lucky originally to be diagnosed at the mild end of the bipolar scale but that was 11 years ago now I'm concerned to know how my way of dealing with it will affect my rating on Professor kck's scale of mania now zero on that scale is somebody who has absolutely no features of being bipolar at all but between 1 and 39 that's somebody who has what we call subclinical episodes of of mania 40 to 59 on our scale ale is people who only get hypom Manas so that's the milder episodes and then 60 and above is the range where people experience full maners from from what you've told me you you would score probably about 70 although to be honest I wonder if you got close to having grandos delusions in that first episode if you did on our scale that would actually put you above 80 yeah okay well yes that's well it's good now not wasting your time and that my little jeans may be of some help to you in your in your [Music] research well I didn't expect that it's worrying that I seem to be getting worse clearly I must now consider treatment I haven't been on any medication since my original diagnosis should I I be I think my life needs to change dramatically [Music]