Jenifer Lewis on bipolar disorder, and being the Mother of Black Hollywood.

Saw some videos pass through on my feed featuring Jennifer Lewis talking about bipolar disorder, and taking care of yourself. I thought her advice was on-point.

I got no problem talking about bipolar disorder or anything that I went through, or am going through. It doesn't go away. Mania is exhausting. It can ruin your entire life, and your families life - and those who love you. You gotta look in the mirror. You got to see that something is wrong. You then have to make a choice whether you want to live or die. It took my therapist 5 years to convince me to go on medication... You then have to be patient for your level of medication... 

Nobody is going to save you. Nobody is going to  rescue you. Nobody can wear your shoes. You have to make your own bed and build your own house. Do your best and leave the rest. Can't handle every fucking thing. Love yourself, so love will not be a stranger when it comes. And it will come, if you take care of yourself. 

For some reason I can only find the video on Facebook - which fucking irritates me to no end.

Also, this interaction with Josh Gad is pretty good. 

After a quick google search I see she was also on Oprah talking about being bipolar. 

She's indeed fabulous. There's also a wee bit on mental health on another piece on her on The Root's website, where she also talks about her work and playing "the mother" for many black-Hollywood productions. I think the first thing I saw her in was Fresh Prince.

Maria Bamford is indeed hilarious.

Maria Bamford on The Hilarious World of Depression is everything.

Her story matters to me. I can't explain it otherly. I adore her am grateful for her.

She speaks about psychiatric facilities as being a "holding facility" and not a place of healing, as well as her experiences with an eating disorder, OCD, and bi-polar 2.

Both she and Joe talk about how accessing good care is a life-long struggle. Something that is really difficult to accept, and is discouraging, and is just brutal sometimes.

I cannot recommend it enough. I rarely laugh out loud at stuff, but a few of her bits really got me.

Added little pleasure, when I said this on twitter, she hearted my comment.

♥

This episode is excellent, thank you @mariabamfoo - you speak my language and it's a relief to hear.https://t.co/hOY8lRCEQ7

— krimrat (@krimrat) January 11, 2017

∞ ♥ ∞

Carrie Fisher.

Carrie Fisher's death was a brutal one. Followed by the passing of her mother, Debbie Reynolds, it was a somber few days. I'd written about Carrie before, she's always been open about mental illness, and she's a funny writer and a great example of an older woman not taking shit, and you know, living her fucking life past what people want or expect from her.

Huffington Post has some of her quotes up. I hope her daughter is well surrounded, because she lost a lot in 2 fucking days.

Lady Dynamite.

I have been looking forward to Maria Bamford's Lady Dynamite for a good long while.

I'd heard through stand-ups and comedians on Twitter that she was working on a television show for Netflix and knowing it would deal with her life, and her living with mental illness got me all riled up.



If you're not familar with Bamford, I wrote about her a few times here, so click on the label of her name for more on her.

The Atlantic has a review up. Hopefully I can carve out some time this weekend and watch it.

Netflix has been big on my list this past year, with The Fall, Jessica Jones and Kimmy Schmidt, it's a feminist scream fest: stellar female-driven comedy and complex, well-written female drama leads.Whodafuckingthunkit.

When the Hospital Fires the Bullet.

The New York Times published a piece last week while I was on holiday in Victoria. I e-mailed myself the piece to make sure I read it when I returned to my world. When the Hospital Fires the Bullet discusses the way which those in need of mental health services are often faced with systems that ignore their mental health needs and are faced with violence.

The article focuses on 26 year-old Alan Pean, who was shot while seeking treatment for bi-polar disorder. The violence Alan faces is by no means an anomaly:

The same day Mr. Pean was shot, a patient with mental health problems was shot by an off-duty police officer working security at a hospital in Garfield Heights, Ohio. Last month, a hospital security officer shot a patient with bipolar illness in Lynchburg, Va. Two psychiatric patients died, one in Utah, another in Ohio, after guards repeatedly shocked them with Tasers. In Pennsylvania and Indiana, hospitals have been disciplined by government health officials or opened inquiries after guards used stun guns against patients, including a woman bound with restraints in bed.

Pean's story is very sad, I hope the justice system dismisses the charges against him, and that these hospital policies are reviewed. It makes no sense that considering his history he wasn't placed in the psychiatric ward ... and that he wasn't seen by a psychiatrist.

I'm sorry Alan.

Carrie Fisher on being bipolar.

 
 
 
 

I crossed this set of gifs of Carrie Fisher describing what it is to be bi-polar to a child.

I checked out her Wikipedia entry, and it does mention her being open about her drug and alcohol addiction and her bipolar disorder. She's even spoken publicly about ECT (electro-convulsive therapy) treatments, and how she gets them every 6 weeks.

P.S. Her episode of 30 Rock is a magical jewel.

Maria Bamford on NPR.

Finally found the time to listen to the Maria Bamford interview on NPR.

On her high anxiety and OCD:

When I was about 9 years old I stopped being able to sleep at night, because I had fear that I was going to kill my parents, act out violently, and/or in some sort of way — it's even hard for me to say now — act out sexually [towards] something, somebody. And so I wanted to be isolated so that I would not be around people at all. [I would] stay up all night, making sure I wouldn't fall asleep and somehow lose control, fearing I was going to do those things. 

That is a type of obsessive-compulsive disorder. What it is, it's the equivalent of washing your hands, thinking you're going to be dirty or that you're somehow dirty, but it's with thoughts. So as soon as you try to not think of the thought, the thought pops up again. Most of us have weird thoughts floating through our heads once in a while. I heard a comedian once say, 'You ever think, "Hey, my dog looks kind of sexy today." ' Things where it's kind of like, 'That's wrong,' but usually nobody thinks twice about that. You just go, 'Oh, that's weird.' If you are an anxious person and somehow on high alert, you think, 'I just thought my dog looked sexy, that must mean I'm somehow a dangerous person' — sort of this spiraling effect.

It's a great interview. 

 

Maria Bamford.

I've been aware of Maria Bamford for a while. First there aren't that many good female stand-ups (nothing to do with gender, more to do with stand-up, there aren't many good male stand-ups either, but yes, women are under-represented). I like her, but she also stresses me out sometimes.

This piece, however, is fantastic. Bamford is bipolar, and openly plays with themes of depression, anxiety and suicide in her stand-up.

The following is a story-time segment done for Above Average, called Psych Ward Visit.

Warning: this is her telling a story about being arrested and being placed in a psych ward, so it could be triggering.



She's just wholly original and this impresses me to no end. Brilliant.

There's also an interview with her on Modern Comedian. It's more of a personal interview. She talks about "cognitive confusion" that affected her after her new medication was administered, since thinking and speaking are a big part of being a stand-up (and you know, thinking is part of most jobs) she expresses how confusing it is to just accept that loss. Here we are, medicated and feeling incapacitated (to a degree) and needing to figure stuff out.

She references Crazy Meds, a site that helped her research her drugs, and have a laugh while doing so.

I'm also listening to her interview with Marc Maron, which is no longer available on his site (for free) but can be found on youtube. It's a fantastic conversation, there's a lot about mental health, anxiety and depression, and the way in which the neurosis of it all affects relationships, romance and basically our lives, constantly.

2015-08-03 - Update: Also watched Bamford on a public access show on mental health.

Here she is with W. Kamau Bell talking about her new special, which I need to find.

Neil Hilborn's "The Future."

As a transcript:

The worst thing about being naked and then being hit by a car, is that road rash is a problem for skin. Why was I naked in the middle of the road at noon? I'm glad you asked, imaginary other half of this conversation. I have no idea. Some characteristics of bipolar disorder include dissociation, hallucinations, and fugue states, so sometimes I wake up in places I didn't go to sleep.

So, there I am. Nude, splayed out on a car like a slutty chicken, screaming about the government conspiracy to take away my feet- not my real feel, just my brain feet. I'm about six inches away from the concrete when I realize, in slow motion, like the exact opposite of a rhinoceros attack, this was not how I imagined my life would turn out.

When I was little, I broke both my ankles jumping off a roof because I was sure a cape would enable me to fly. My parents attributed this to my strong imagination. Last year, my therapist called it a delusion. I failed to see the difference. Also, I really can fly, and see the future, and make stupid people leave coffee shops with my mind, forty-three percent of the time. Sometimes I see people as colors, this guy right here is purple which means he just got a promotion, or a blow job. A blow-motion, if you will.

The point is, the point is here is a list of things that my brain has told me to do: join a cult, start a cult, become a cabinet maker, kill myself. So, in essence, become a cabinet maker. Break into, and then paint other people's houses. Have sex with literally everyone who reminds me of my mother. Fight people who are much more, fightier than me, like the cops. So, in essence, kill myself.

I think a lot about killing myself. Not like a point on a map, but rather like a glowing exit sign at a show that's never been quite bad enough to make me wanna leave. See, when I'm up I don't kill myself because holy shit- there is SO much left to do. And when I'm down I don't kill myself because then the sadness would be over, and the sadness is my old paint under the new. The sadness is the house fire or the broken shoulder, I'd still be me without it, but I'd be so boring. They keep telling me that seeing things that aren't technically there is called disturbed cognitive functioning, I call it having a superpower.

Once, I pulled over on the one-ten freeway and jumped out of my old Jeep because I saw it burst into flames, twenty seconds before it actually burst into flames. I knew my girlfriend and I would be together because she turned bright pink the first time she saw me. I know tomorrow is going to come because I've seen it. Sunrise is going to come. All you have to do is wake up, the future has been at war, but it's coming home so soon. The future looks like a child in a cape, the future is the map and the treasure. The future looks just like gravity, everyone is slowly drifting towards everyone else, we are all going to be part of each other one day. The future is a blue sky, and a full tank of gas. I saw the future, I did, and in it, I was alive.

You can check out Neil's Timblr, Keep the radio on softly.

Demi Lovato's Be Vocal campaign.

I had heard via social media that Demi Lovato was part of a mental health sensitization campaign called Be Vocal. I'm not super familiar with Lovato. I've heard a few of her songs on the radio, but I know her mainly as someone who has been open and vocal about her experiences with eating disorders and depression. Over time, she's become increasingly candid about living with bipolar disorder.













I just googled Lovato. She's 22. That's bananas to me. In my early 20's I was barely human. No doubt she's had to grow up really fast though, I think she was a Disney/Nickelodeon starlet (à-la-Miley and Hilary Duff). I can't imagine going through everything she did publicly. She's extremely well spoken on the issue, so she must be well surrounded and supported. I'm sure Disney money means top-notch mental health professionals. Good on her for being open and honest about it, she'll help a lot of her peers and younger fans.

HA-HA, I just realized the website is sponsored by big pharma. Of course it is! Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc. - how quaint!