PREFACE
Unless it already has, bipolar will take over your life. You sought out the demon, gave it a name, had it clinically diagnosed, and have succumbed to the inevitable “fact” that bipolar is a lifelong disorder of which there are only 3 highly debilitating medications and absolutely no cure.
I refused this diagnosis. Nothing is chronic. Nothing can’t be overcome. I refused to live as a victim of life, a victim of my genealogy, a victim of bipolar 1. After years of self-administered medications and self-discovery, I no longer live with bipolar disorder.
In this article or writing or blog or podcast, whatever it is, I attempt to track down scientific studies which back up my theories, and the links to all studies are purple on the blog, and a link to the blog will be in the podcast notes, but let me make it perfectly clear. I’m using studies to try to prove to you what I’m already experiencing. I could care less what the studies say, because I’m experiencing it already. When I write about metaphysical phenomena, it’s easy to say, “That’s not science,” but on the particular subject of bipolarity, I Am living all the scientific proof I need.
It’s easy to laugh away ancient scriptures, to say ancient peoples all had stupid beliefs, but my experience of these phenomena all happened before I read any ancient scriptures. Of course, this is impossible to prove, so I won’t mention it again. But it appears that the same ancient peoples who wrote about Darwinian evolution millennia before Darwin, fully understood the phenomenon of bipolarity. When we get stuck bouncing between two modes of existence, rajas and tamas, the key to overcoming this cycle is to introduce the third mode of existence into our lives: sattva.
The simplest instruction is to become aware that you are aware as often as possible. Everything else I write is an attempt to inspire you to become intellectually convinced of this instruction. Truly, awareness is everything. You may become aware of your awareness in the moment of reading this, you may try to stay in awareness, and two days later you may remember that you were trying to stay in awareness. An hour later you may become aware again. And when this becomes a minute-by-minute phenomena, the three modes of existence have no influence upon you.
To say, “I don’t have time for this or that” when dealing with a debilitation which affects every aspect of your life, is the mind attempting to keep its illusion of control over the situation. This thing, this demon, this disorder, will wreak havoc on your life. Why not attempt to know it, to understand it, to overcome it? Strengthen your awareness. This simple instruction may be carried out in the car, in a meeting, at work, at school, while doing yard work, while running, while doing any other activity. This is not something which requires any special place, any special time or any special training. Your awareness is the training.
Understanding the role of the cyclical nature of time is crucial, hence I repeatedly emphasize focusing attention upon the cycles of Earth, Moon and Sun. The moon is of particular significance in the “bipolar” person’s life. Everyone’s cycle is different, but the key to overcoming bipolarity is awareness. The cycles don’t matter if we’re not aware of them.
You can trust the “experts” and live like a victim, or you can seek the solution within yourself using your own awareness. I am an avid hater of religion. No belief system is necessary. In fact, the opposite is true. Beliefs will only slow us down. I attempt to inspire you to find the solution within your Self.
Bipolar Disorder Is An Energetic Phenomena Which Does not Originate In the Brain
In a 2011 study with 11 different countries participating, 2.4% of the international population was shown to suffer with bipolarity. The United States was shown to have the highest lifetime rate of bipolar disorder at 4.4%, and India was shown to have drastically lower rates of bipolar disorder at 0.1%.
All across India, ancient traditions persist, with energetic kriyas, yoga, meditation, conscious consumption, fasting rituals, and an awareness of the cycles of nature, the cycles of the earth, moon and sun. The Indian calendar is based around these cycles, with certain days of the month designated for fasting and certain days of the year designated for ceremonial rituals, long held traditions which serve to balance the individual, synching his and her cycles with the cycles of life.
The average Indian needn’t understand the significance of these rituals and cycles. They just carry on as their fathers and mothers did before them. These traditions are significant in many ways, but for this piece I focus only on “mental health” and the specific phenomena which we refer to as bipolar disorder.
In a 2014 study, researchers hypothesized how to test the energetic significance of bipolarity with some interesting results.
In a 2018 study, bipolar patients’ sleep patterns and mood swings were observed to “wax” and “wane” with the moon.
In 2021, another study revealed that even healthy people’s sleep cycles are affected by the moon. In this study, sleep cycles of undergraduate students at University of Washington were shown to be synched with the moon’s cycle, despite the students clearly having no visual relationship with the moon through the cloudy skies and light pollution of Seattle.
I hypothesize the real correlations between mood cycles and moon cycles will be better understood with testing of the gut, showing not only the relationship between the lunar cycle and mood swings but also the importance of diet in regards to overall “mental health.”
The aforementioned studies are only relevant to naysayers who have already concluded bipolarity to be a purely physiological, psychological phenomena. I need no further “proof” or evidence than my own personal experience with bipolarity. Skeptics may click the links I provide and make up their own minds.
“Mental illness” in the west is a growing phenomena, effecting more and more people across the globe annually, despite all efforts towards curing it with modern medicine. As James Hillman’s 1993 book title suggests, “We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy--And the World's Getting Worse.”
In my life, born into a family of bipolar patients, suicides, artists, writers, musicians, psychologists, alcoholics and other weirdos, I was diagnosed with bipolar 1 at a young age. I took every medication known to man. Over the course of twenty years, I was treated by some 70 different psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors and therapists to no avail.
In 2018, on the verge of 33, I was introduced to the concept of seasonal polarity. I began to take note of the cycles in my own life, past and present, in relationship with moon cycles and annual cycles. Notable holidays throughout my past stood out. Looking back, I realized every Independence Day since I was a teenager, I was in some state of trauma. Every Christmas and New Years week, I was in a state of deranged, blissful mania. This corresponds perfectly with the weeks following the summer and winter solstices.
Kay Redfield Jamison’s 1996 book, “Touched With Fire” notes that many artists’, poets’, writers’ and composers’ lives followed certain cycles, with certain seasons in their lives showing significant creative output and other seasons showing the same artists in extreme depressive states, often institutionalized.
This “macro lens” on the cyclical nature of one’s own life can be extraordinarily enlightening. In looking back on our own personal histories, we may begin to acknowledge our personal relationship to the cosmos, our own personal cycles and how they correlate with the cycles of earth, moon and sun. Solar cycles are the most difficult to assess, because they’re 11-12 years long. But the lunar cycles and the annual or seasonal cycles should become obvious to those whom begin to deepen their awareness.
Simply observing one’s own nature can lead to magnificent things. “Mindfulness” meditation has seen a resurgence with psychologically perturbed individuals in recent years. It’s not so much about filling one’s mind, rather emptying it. I would call it “mindlessness” if there weren’t negative implications associated with the word. It’s a process of becoming an observer to one’s own thoughts and emotions, simply watching them come and go, deepening one’s own awareness of Self. With a small space between me, my emotions and my thoughts, they just scroll waywardly down the screen like closing credits in the film I'm directing and starring in. The game is to avoid getting caught in them, or worse yet, getting carried away by them, flung unto oblivion, into mania and depression.
Observing women’s menstrual cycles in relationship with lunar cycles is perhaps the least subtle of empirical cyclical human phenomena. A 2021 study’s findings: “We hypothesize that in ancient times, human reproductive behavior was synchronous with the Moon but that our modern lifestyles have changed reproductive physiology and behavior.”
Skeptics may point to a 2021 study which appears to disprove the correlation between lunar cycles and menstrual cycles with evidence that modern, young, western women follow cycles spanning 25 to 30 days, while the lunar cycle follows a strict 29.5 day cycle, so according to these findings, there is no synchronization with the onset of period and lunar phase. However, the study found that “good sleepers” menstrual cycles began during lighter moon phases and “bad sleepers” cycles began during darker moon phases.
Using common sense, which is more likely? That each cell in the human system evolved on earth from a single cell, multiplied into a human being day by day, moon cycle by moon cycle, season by season, solar cycle by solar cycle, life cycle by life cycle, upon a tiny pale blue dot gyrating around the same star with the same satellite swaying the tides, ebbing and flowing oceans, for some 3.7 billion years without those cycles making an impact upon the human system?
Or is it more likely that the vast majority of modern human beings are no longer synched with the cycles of nature? Is it possible that distancing ourselves from the cycles of earth, moon and sun is creating imbalance within the human system? Is it possible that many of the perceived “problems” of modern life are, in fact, caused by modern living? Is it possible that the average, modern, western human is not balanced, not synched to her and his natural rhythm, no longer synched with the cycles of earth, moon and sun?
I hypothesize that female yogis’ menstruation cycles follow the moon cycles perfectly. Although I’m not suggesting everyone in India is a yogi, I would venture to guess that if the same study were performed in India, menstruation cycles would average much closer to 29.5 days. The aforementioned study still found a correlation in women’s sleep cycles and moon phase, but the correlation was that the onset of period during certain moon phases effected sleep quality rather than onset of period. It also shows that perhaps modern western women are experiencing more periods more often than women who are, perhaps, in synchrony with nature.
Everyone’s cycles are different. But like an orchestra with each instrumentalist playing his and her distinct part, each individual’s cycle follows a macrocycle, an earthly rhythm. Synchrony requires awareness. When we’re not paying attention to the conductor (earth, moon and sun), we may lose sight of the music and begin writing our own absurdist solo pieces, disappearing into our individual identities, our self-made horror scores.
Whether one is diagnosed “mentally ill” or not, body, mind, emotion and energy follow these macrocycles, and these cycles can only be truly understood in the individual’s personal experience. If her mind is going east while her body is going west, and her emotion is going south while her energy is going north, she can expect not only to feel “mentally ill,” but her life will be one big, foggy malaise. The process of yoga, meaning union, is not about the physical body alone. I’ve never partaken in any kind of physical yoga class or anything of the sort. I don’t own tight enough pants for all that. Yoga is about union, uniting one’s body, mind, emotion and energy, so they’re all moving the same direction.
My hypothesis, put simply, is that bipolar people are extremely sensitive to the cycles of nature. We're sensitive to life's cycles and life energy. These sensitivities can either be a strength or a weakness. The good news is, the ultimate decision has been left to us. Free will doesn't mean life will be easy, but it does mean life can be joyous, creative, exciting and entirely fulfilling.
Just as trauma breeds trauma, imbalance too, may be insidious. Just as women who live in close proximity with each other synch menstruation cycles, imbalanced people and psychologically perturbed people may influence each other’s imbalances and psychological wellness without consciously realizing it. In other words, a society of unawareness may create an imbalanced population, and an imbalanced population may create an unaware society.
The paradigm of modern living is bipolar in its daily expectations of rigorous, fast-paced, stressful workdays followed by long periods of lethargy and inactivity, with a vast majority of people’s faces glued to blue screens all night. To live and work in high-rise buildings, several stories above the earth, and to rarely feel or see the sunlight, modern humans who eat artificial foods and walk across paved sidewalks wearing rubber soles rarely have any contact with anything natural in a “normal” day. And through the smog and the light pollution, does the modern human have any awareness of the moon?
Society’s solution to the modern human’s unnatural lifestyle is to prescribe more medication. 70% of Americans now take medication daily. The stigma of “mental illness” has significantly waned in modern times, so more pills are being prescribed than ever before. But should our society be incentivizing this?
Medication is a bridge. Sometimes a bridge is necessary to get to the other side of troubled waters, but no one should build a home on the bridge. If a person breaks his leg, he should not walk for awhile. He should spend time assessing his injury, modifying his life accordingly. If he medicates his leg and continues the same vigorous activities which led him to a broken leg, his leg will become severely impaired. Yet, this is our modern society’s solution to “mental illness.” Continue your stressful job, your unhealthy diet, your limited sleep, and medicate your mind and emotion so that you may continue striving towards the artificial paradigm of modern society.
One cannot simply medicate the broken “part” of the human. Humans are not the sum of our parts. We are a whole system, a whole technology of nature and nurture, directly affected by our surroundings which are, in turn, directly influenced by our actions. Our thoughts and emotions are not “parts” of the brain which can be medicated. Our minds cannot be separated from our bodies and vice versa. We cannot be treated as broken machines.
The dogmatic rationalist says, “But it’s a chemical imbalance!” to which I respond, “Yes, I HAD a chemical imbalance, and when I began seeking union through awareness, I began balancing my chemicals.”
I hope to inspire individuals to seek their own knowledge of Self, and to stop outsourcing knowledge to doctors and scientists. Science and medicine are important in their own right, but we can only know our true Self by seeking it for ourselves.
Keep in mind the incentive structure of both fields of study, science and medicine. Both are funded by grants and private institutions whose ultimate goal is capital, not health. Who would fund a study that concluded, “All human problems can be solved through self-awareness”?
The reality is, no one understands the functionality of “mood stabilizers” on bipolar patients. No one understands why or how drugs like Lithium operate in the human system. Lithium is actually an element on the Periodic Table. It took decades from its discovery to its being regularly prescribed to bipolar patients, because it’s not patentable so no one makes much money selling it. “Mood stabilizer” is a benign term for three major classes of extremely debilitating medications prescribed to bipolar patients: Lithium, anticonvulsants, and antipsychotics, and all three come with a long list of side effects.
These three medications are the only three options for bipolar patients. The idea is, by combining the extremely debilitating medications, Lithium, anticonvulsants and antipsychotics with “antidepressants,” the “antidepressants” will counteract the extremely debilitating effects of of the Lithium, anticonvulsants and/or antipsychotics. Many patients will then need more medication to counteract the debilitating effects of the previous combination of medications, adding sleep aids and anxiety medication to the overwhelming cocktail.
In popular culture, the arc in the story of bipolarity is always the same. The bipolar protagonist is shown to suffer with extreme mood swings, then she uncovers the anagnorisis of her “illness.” She struggles with treating her “illness,” because she likes her productivity and her creativity. In the third act, she gets herself into trouble during one of her extreme mood swings. Finally, she agrees to take medication, and she lives happily ever after, taking 5 pills per day. There’s never any followup to this story, because the next 60 years of her life are entirely uninspired, uninteresting, and unfulfilling. The sequel finds our protagonist a decade later, fat and lethargic, now asexual and diabetic, having given up her creative spirit to work a monotonous nine to five job.
Success rates for bipolar are measured by mortality, not fulfillment. Lithium can keep bipolar people from killing themselves, but are bipolar patients finding fulfillment in life? My experience with all three major classes of “mood stabilizers” and every combination of the three with every class of “antidepressants,” anxiety medication and sleep medication, was twenty years of horror, twenty years of hell. I experienced extreme side effects of weight gain, loss of sexual desire, loss of inspiration, loss of compassion and loss of will to power. Mood stabilizers like Lithium and Abilify turned me into a fat, lethargic schlub with no will to live, no sense of purpose, no sense of adventure, no love for life. Sure, I didn’t kill myself. I didn’t feel sad. I didn’t feel happy either. I just didn’t feel. To live life without feeling renders life useless. That’s my personal opinion, based on my own personal experience.
It’s no wonder so many bipolar patients turn to alcohol and other illicit substances. Keep in mind, the history of the human race has known many extraordinary bipolar self-medicaters. I self-medicated for decades, and I no longer feel shame in saying so. In a way, alcohol and drugs saved my life. They made life worth living when I had nothing else. As a society, we have to stop punishing drug-users and realize their suffering, but that’s another issue entirely, one which I will expound upon soon.
If we discover the “bipolar gene,” do we really want to remove it from the human experience? This is a dangerous game. To remove the empaths of our species without removing the sociopaths, simply because we live in an society which rewards sociopathy with power and money and renders creative-empaths nearly useless, valueless. On this topic, I’m willfully biased. After writing and recording hundreds of songs, many of which are featured in TV and film, I survive on $0.005 per song stream, which is the going rate for all music now. I’m the son of a lifelong journalist who quit writing after journalism stopped paying her, and the son of an exceptional visual artist who stopped painting to earn a living as a glorified Kinko’s copy-boy for the military. Dad’s a true artist who’s made the most of being stuck in a sociopathic society, but I just couldn’t do it. Perhaps there are creatives who aren’t being punished or hardened by western society, but they’re still being used to sell products and “content” for the exponential gains market. Our society has no place for true artists, empaths, creatives, or anyone who isn’t motivated by capital, except in the mental institution.
If you were to line up a thousand different bipolar patients, what would be the commonality? They would all report radically different symptoms. They would all have radically different personality types. They’d all have radically different motives, different intellectual abilities, different life experiences, different sexuality, different characteristics, different skills, different habits.
So, really, what is bipolar? Bipolarity is a profound sensitivity to life. We are extremely sensitive, intensely swayed by the rhythms of life. A good friend of mine once said to me, “Bipolar is a superpower once you learn to harness it.” I now know this to be true. In ancient societies, we might have been shaman. We might’ve been heyoka. We might have been medicine men. We might have even been court jesters, mocking the absurdity of royalty. But nearly all of us throughout timespace were and are empathic creatives in some way or other. In the modern age, we are artists, musicians, writers, poets, architects, producers, designers, developers and the list goes on. Bipolarity isn’t an illness. It’s a gift which our society hasn’t yet figured out how to harness.
As long as people with bipolarity define our personal health by our relationship to society’s psychological “norms,” we will always conclude it’s an “illness.” We simply are not normal. And there’s no getting rid of our sensitivities to life. We cannot forcibly remove it, because it’s not a “thing.” We can block the chemicals in our brain artificially using modern medicine (paid for by Big Pharma), OR we can take control of our own chemical soup, balance our chemical imbalances through awareness, energetic kriyas, meditation, yoga, other sadhana, and by participating with the cycles within us as they correlate with the macrocycles (instead of fighting them). We can either be dragged around by these cycles, kicking and screaming, OR we can “go with the flow,” accepting the majesty of this world and moving in synchrony with her.
Perhaps the pagan rituals of the ancient western hemisphere held within them some wisdom about the cycles of earth, moon and sun, with Saturnalia and the divine feminine. Unfortunately we burned them all alive and stoned them all to death. Any woman in the west who honored her innate connection with earth, moon and sun was ultimately accused of witchcraft. And the invention of the Julian and Gregorian calendars further screwed up our synchrony with life’s cycles. Every ancient calendar was based on the cycles of earth, moon and sun. Westerners turned the only metric of the human experience of time into another artifice, another lie. The modern calendar is based on nothing, no cycle whatsoever.
Perhaps the West once understood the cyclical nature of life. Judging by anthropological studies and archeological remains, earth, moon and sun were the focal point of every ancient civilization in the East and West, with huge structures built in perfect alignment with cycles of earth, moon and sun.
In the modern era, scientists arrogantly presume these ancient civilizations believed the earth, moon and sun were “gods.” Scientists arrogantly assume these ancient civilizations were stupid, unscientific, and simply obsessive about the big, bright circles in the sky, creating dumb religions and traditions based in nothing whatsoever (like the modern church). It might be wise to consider the people who occupied these ancient civilizations had discovered systems by which to deeply enrich their own lives, their own physiological, psychological, emotional and energetic systems, by synching their own cycles to the cycles of the world, something to which every human being who’s walked the earth has had access.
For centuries, perhaps millennia, tribes across the Americas had no problems with psychosis or addiction. There’s absolutely no history of drug abuse or mental illness in any Native American tribe, from Brazil up to Alaska, before their respective gentrifications and genocides. The “5 Great Tribes” of the southeast are well documented, working side by side with American colonies and states until their forcible, horrific removal, signed into law by Andrew Jackson in 1830. Before 1830, the Native Americans didn’t even have words for “mental illness” in their respective languages.
Now, in the 21st Century, Native Americans are statistically more likely than any other ethnic group to suffer with all forms of substance abuse, and they are all at higher risk than any other ethnic group for developing all forms of mental illness. They’re also at higher risk for suicide, obesity, teen pregnancy, unintentional injuries, sudden infant death syndrome, heart disease, cancer, stroke, liver disease, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and the list goes on.
If mental illness is a “disease” in the classic sense, it is one with a very obvious, very clearly defined origin: trauma. Trauma is the root of addiction, mental illness, and perhaps even some physical health problems. Humans carry trauma in our bodies, minds, emotions and energies, and these traumas may be passed down generation after generation.
Native Americans are experiencing generational trauma. What is trauma's effect upon the human genome? Clearly there’s a link between trauma and mental illness, but there’s no research on it, because modern science has so far stuck with its stubborn, rigid ascertain that all psychosis originates in the brain.
Our trauma manifests in radically different ways, but certain obvious generational relationships exist. An alcoholic parent might have an alcoholic son. An abusive father might produce an abusive son. Interestingly though, an abused daughter might unknowingly seek an abusive husband. How in the world could this be written in the genes?
Whether or not these patterns can or will be discovered in the genome, I don’t know. But I do know that I live in a society which systematically bypasses trauma, ignores trauma, sweeps trauma under the rug. Our society teaches us to be tough, to ignore our personal trauma, our generational trauma and our collective trauma. That’s what the pills are for!
We’re taught to act before we’re taught how to be. We fill our heads with fast-paced, stressful activities. We don’t sleep or exercise enough. We fill our bodies with tortured animals and corn syrup. And we believe pills are the solution to all our problems. We collectively ignore all the genocide, oppression, and slavery, and yet we carry it all around with us. As a country and as individuals, we’ve never faced our trauma. We’ve never “dealt” with it, so we just keep racking it up, carrying it all on our shoulders as we march onward.
Along with my own personal traumas, I was born with my grandfather’s trauma and his sensitivity to life. I don’t fully understand the correlation between trauma and sensitivity to life. Perhaps it’s the vulnerability of the bipolar person’s predicament which leads us to confront our traumas. Perhaps we have no choice. I feel as though I have been forced to reckon with my traumas and to give up on the idea of “normal.” But the experience has led me into realms of existence I never would’ve believed existed. I’m not a “finished product,” but through conscious, vigilant self-awareness, diet and sadhana, I’ve begun finding psychological well-being and internal and external balance. Other than my time, I haven’t given up anything in exchange.
What some may call "mysticism," I now simply call life. The same energy westerners call "mania" is now manifesting within me as an energetic phenomena which is impossible to describe. When we burn up these life energies, there's burnout, which westerners call depression. There's nothing supernatural about acknowledging one's energy system. It’s the same energy which transforms a child into an adult, beats the heart and digests the food. There is unfortunately a spiritual propaganda campaign full of disinformation being led by idiots across the web. Perhaps many people whom experience these energetic phenomena lose sight of their rational discerning senses, becoming believers and religious zealots, but this shouldn’t entirely discount the experiential awareness of the human energy system. Again, eastern philosophy, eastern medicine and eastern spirituality are all based around these energetic phenomena.
I could go down a rabbit hole trying to put mysticism into words, further repelling the skeptics. But I dare say the most difficult step in the process is becoming intellectually convinced that this energy exists in the first place.
After years of experience with this elusive energy, I'm convinced that my experience with bipolar and my ongoing experiences with energy are one and the same phenomena, now simply being redirected in a more natural, equanimous way. My experience with energy still waxes and wanes with the lunar cycle. Only now the experience has become an entirely conscious one. I redirect the flow of energy as I redirect the thoughts and emotions, through awareness. Although the actor is still playing his role, I Am the director of this film now.
I strongly intuit that my experience can be every bipolar person’s experience. I strongly intuit that the “thing” we call bipolar is the human system’s way of telling the individual that her and his sensitivities are ripe for evolution. Convincing oneself of this is by far the greatest challenge. It requires experimentation. It requires a lot of time for contemplation, mediation and what I call "vigilant awareness” or “mindfulness.” Perhaps most importantly, it requires inspiration. And that's my job as an artist, and that's the point of this article or essay or whatever the hell this is - to inspire you to try something new, to acknowledge that you’re not a victim of your genealogy, and to convince you that your suffering may actually be an evolutionary gift rather than a curse. The eastern definition of “grace” is synonymous with “suffering.”
By no means do I proclaim to have it all figured out, but I suffer much less than I did two years ago, and suffering is what led me here. Call it grace or call it mental illness or call me crazy, but my experience of life is that I am not haunted by sorrow or slung haphazardly around by mania anymore.
The conscious person redirects the flow of her and his energy, but the challenge is in becoming conscious. It’s not an overnight solution. For anyone who’s happy with their current situation, doctor, medication, and whomever is enjoying life, this article isn’t for you. It is for those whom suffer that I write. You whom suffer in this very moment are ripe for a new exploration, a new step in your own personal, existential evolution.
To give up on the poetry of life in exchange for society's elusive “norms” and ideals of safety, security and stability seems like an unequal trade. Safety, stability and security are ultimately illusory. One can save his money all his life only to have his money stolen or trampled upon by the vermin of Wall Street. Tragedy can strike at any moment. Nothing about this life is safe, stable or secure. It’s a false promise our society sells us, and we buy it because we don’t know any other way. But who really wants the speaker at our funerals to say, “He was a very safe man, extremely safe. And he was secure. He lived a very safe, secure and stable life.”?
Even for the healthiest among us, life isn’t “normal.” Comparing bipolar symptoms to the "norms" of an increasingly sick, sad, anxious, stressed, overeating, under-sleeping populous might not be the best approach in one's personal growth, bipolar or otherwise. But the decision is up to the individual, and that’s the beauty of free will.
“Mental health” is a booming business. If we all got healthy overnight, the world economy would tank. Keep that in mind. Trillions of dollars is an unfathomable amount of money. I’m not suggesting any single conspiracy or conspiratorial leader of this business. I am suggesting that their are a LOT of societal incentives for leading you astray, for convincing you that your “disease” is chronic and un-curable, that you are a victim of your genealogy, and that the only means of living a “good” life is by taking multiple medications every day.
Of all the literature I've read on bipolar over the years, no one's truly understood it. Psychology is just taxonomy of the human brain. It's a system of categorizing and classifying symptoms. It's by no means an exact science. Some would argue, as I do, that psychology is not science at all. Neuroscience is a true science. Ask a psychologist and he'll tell you he knows all there is to know about your brain. Ask a neuroscientist and she'll tell you that humans have very little knowledge of the human brain.
Perhaps neither Sigmund Freud nor Carl Jung ever treated a healthy person. Perhaps modern cognitive behavioral “scientists” don’t understand the paradigm of psychological health. They certainly don’t seem to understand the human system, the cycles of life, or the evolution of humanity. Perhaps more studies should be done in India to understand why there are so few cases of bipolar disorder there. Perhaps we should repurpose our use of the term “norm,” beginning with healthy yogis who’re proven to be perfectly succinct with the cycles of earth, moon and sun. Perhaps if we use western science to understand eastern health, we might better understand the two hemispheres of the human brain. Perhaps the uniting of opposites by seeking union, or yoga, is the cure for bipolarity.
Life is always in flux. Life is evolution. It's evolving in more ways than one. Life can also be an exploration. It's uncharted waters out on the high seas, and their tides ebb and flow with the moon. Bipolar folks will experience the most turbulent waves, but with awareness we may use these waves to further our pursuits, to discover hidden realms of which modern psychologists and psychiatrists are entirely unaware.
A bipolar person who desires to be normal will probably always struggle in life. But to embrace one’s abnormality may lead toward greater and greater truths. We can only evolve on an individual basis. My music was about facing trauma, facing suffering, finding the light by facing shadows. Now my writing and podcast is about the same thing. We whom suffer have an extraordinary opportunity. We who’ve been diagnosed with “mental illness” have already made the grueling first step towards recovery: we have begun to face the fact that we are suffering. This is the basis of all the world’s religions, notably Buddhism. The root of all the world’s major religions is evolution, not belief. Once we begin to acknowledge our suffering, we may begin to evolve.
I hope to inspire the reader to take the second step. Find your true Self. I know this sounds like a big, dumb platitude, and it is, but some platitudes are based in reality. Face your suffering, and begin to deepen your awareness of your own personal cycles. This is a gradual process. I don’t recommend quitting all medication immediately. Medication should be treated as a bridge to get across the troubled waters. But once you begin down the path of awareness, you may find you don’t need the medication anymore.
Fast. Eat once per day. Cut out all meats and sugars and starches. Make sure your one meal per day is mostly living cells. This means, eat raw fruits, raw vegetables, raw nuts and seeds. It may be difficult for the first week, but you’ll find over time that eating this way actually reduces your hunger. Your body will no longer crave meats and starches and trans fats and sugars. Drink as much water as possible, not in small sips, in big gulps. And whenever you’re sitting, keep your spine erect. Become conscious of this every time you sit down, even while driving.
When all your energy goes into digestion, there’s no energy left with which to play, with which to evolve. It takes 2-3 hours to digest most foods. Eating three meals per day with snacking in between? That’s half of your day your energy is working only on digestion. You’re dedicating half of your life to basic survival when you could be using the same system to evolve. And the spine is the main artery for energy. Let it flow, whether you’re conscious of it or not. Always sitting with an erect spine and intermittent fasting will completely transform your life.
And if you’re paying attention to your mood swings, you’ll probably notice that the three days and nights surrounding new moon and full moon are significant in your transition from mania to depression or from depression into mania. You have to figure out your own cycles, but I promise that the simple act of becoming conscious of these cycles will begin to transform your awareness. Awareness is the key to everything. Awareness is the key to health. Awareness is the key to well-being. Awareness is the key to the universe.
Bipolarity can become less like an illness and more like a game. I laugh at the recurring thought patterns every time they reappear. They’re the same stupid things which used to haunt me. I now find them fascinating. The human mind is nothing but a fancy storage unit with repetitive, redundant cycles. Nothing originates in the mind but regurgitation. How many times do we have to relive our traumas before we see them for what they are?! They’re just a loop, a memory loop, replaying our worst fears, sorrows and angers. Why should we have to relive the worst things that happened to us? It’s our awareness which permeates those cycles, allowing for the louder, clearer voice of intuition to guide us.
Although I haven’t used any substances in years, psychedelics played a big role for me in the beginning. I did my own “research,” and I did it the illegal way, because I was desperate, sick and poor. I had many life-altering experiences with mushrooms, LSD, MDMA, ketamine and other drugs. Just imagine instead of blocking and controlling chemicals in the brain, as antidepressants and mood stabilizers do, hallucinogens flood the brain with chemicals, lighting up the entire brain. When we take hallucinogens, our brains are overwhelmed and we are forced to “surrender” to the majesty of life. In those states of consciousness, our awareness is at its peak, and we see the minutia which has previously plagued us for exactly what it is, minutia. This can be a great lesson in awareness.
There are horror stories about hallucinogenic substances bringing about schizophrenia. We must enter into these states with respect, modesty and humility. People who use these substances recreationally are abusing these states of consciousness with blatant disrespect. Central Americans, for instance, treat the mushroom as a deity, a living god. We must pay our respects the substance the way a mountain climber pays respect to the mountain. It’s not about a belief system. It’s about our state of mind when we enter into these unknown territories. If we enter into these places egoically or egotistically, with guns drawn, we will regret it.
Although, with hallucinogenic substances, we are always forced to come down, back to our regular lives, sometimes one hallucinogenic experience is enough to reverse symptoms of “mental illness.” Please check out MAPS.ORG for more information. There is a “medicinal” approach to psychedelics, perhaps a better way of going about it than the ruffian way I did it. And I don’t recommend it to everyone, but one trip can give the sufferer a glimpse of life without suffering, and some “mentally ill” patients have been proven to overcome their “illnesses” after only one trip. This has been proven repeatedly with sufferers of bipolar, major depression, OCD, ADHD, PTSD, addiction to other harmful substances including alcohol, reducing fear of death among the terminally ill and victims of rape and assault. There’s a documentary on Netflix about this, as well.
Psychedelics are a shortcut across the troubled waters for so many of us. They’re significantly less harmful (link: 1,2,3) than pharmaceuticals (lithium toxicity, antidepressant overdoses, anxiety med overdoses), and many of these magical, miraculous medicines grow directly out of the ground. Why are they still illegal!? Click HERE to play your role in decriminalizing nature! Anything medicinal which grows from the earth should be legal, safe and readily available to all whom seek!
If you want an honest guru, someone who offers many different approaches to meditation, kriyas, and other sadhana, someone who’s deeply inspired me, and someone who’s altered my experience of life immeasurably, check out Sadhguru. I’m not affiliated with MAPS or Decriminalize Nature or Sadhguru or any other organization. Hallucinogens unlocked the door for me, and Sadhguru has helped me walk through it. I’ll also give the disclaimer that I’m not a doctor. I’m not a scientist. I’m an artist dedicated to sharing my experience with anyone who’ll listen, with an emphasis upon those whom have begun to acknowledge suffering. I’m just an artist, and I only wish to inspire.
Stop believing you’re a victim of your genealogy, and take the reigns. We are not victims. I Am NOT a “victim,” and I most certainly am NOT “mentally ill.” I Am the leader of my mind and emotion, not vice versa. I haven’t used any drugs, alcohol, mood stabilizers, antidepressants or hallucinogens in years. I haven’t been sick in years either, not even a cold. I haven’t seen a doctor in years. I don’t need them anymore.