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Mindscape: Oscar-winning Actor Richard Dreyfuss on Living with Bipolar Disorder

 
' When people say I looked up at the stars and I realized how small I was well when I looked up to the stars I realized how big I was and and I knew that within me was a universe an enormous vast territory that was ultimately put together as Richard and I wanted to get to know my brain my soul my inner life...............'

'I said to my doctor one day how I was ready to die and I I hadn't who cared and I heard a little voice inside my head that said Richard they're going to be studying your work in two hundred years so how bad could it be and I remember that voice is being very far away so I could hardly hear it but it was saying you're wrong you're nuts you know hold on to me and I did and I got back'

‘a lot of what was preventing me from all of that was my own inability to find the right protocol of medication and it became a spiritual question I would say to my doctor am i Richard inclusive of my drugs or am i Richard and the drugs are an add-on and to me the answer was obvious that I was Richard inclusive of my drugs that I was born with certain problems and certain drugs help me ‘

I am interested in

‘why people who have what I have or something worse could not find the diamond in the soil because in a manic state you are always in a incandescent ecstasy of creation and it's not just bull.….. it's great and I knew that I had I have been a creative font I have ideas novels performances things that I was able to achieve or perceived because of my manic state ‘

whereas

‘in my public career as an actor I can point to X number of performances where I say those are the result of my being depressed ………..  not good, and there are plenty of people who have severe depression but don't have the other end and don't have the manic episodes

‘I do know it's one thing to talk from the point of view of basically 50 years of a manic state of high about the depression the darkness of depression you have to learn the difference between self-hatred and humility because when you have self-hatred it's because you believe something that someone told you a long time ago your dad your mom whatever and you reinforce that self-hatred’

………’when you're in the midst of the darkness of depression you feel like there's nobody there and there's no hand reaching out to you.  And the thing is take it on faith the same faith that's in Indiana Jones and the silver chalice whatever it's called where he stepped out on a bridge that he couldn't see that's depression when you step out on a bridge you can't see and feel it you'll know that it's there and you don't have any fear ‘