Introduction

A few months before finishing this book, I decided that I would, most likely, adorn it with the brilliant and highly original title, A Quiet Mind. I thought this title was a rather pithy warning shot across the bow of the psychiatric establishment, which Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, author of An Unquiet Mind, firmly represents; and why not? It seemed to me to be the perfect response to a book which has taken the world of bipolar disorder by storm, and in the process, stripped countless people of hope for a truly better life, medication free.

There was only one problem. I hadn’t actually read her book. In fact, I had been almost avoiding it.

I mean, what was the point? Why did I need to read, in detail, how bipolar disorder is a terrible mental illness with horrific ramifications for all involved? I’d already lived through that, so why did I need to read about how it is an incurable biological disease, like asthma, which I have had since birth, when my own life experience said otherwise? The very idea of reading her book left me feeling, well, constipated. But, wherever I went and whenever I got into conversations about bipolar disorder, that damn book would pop up!

Only when I decided to “steal” her title did I actually choose to read her story. I couldn’t, in good conscience, name my book A Quiet Mind without reading hers.

However, before reading it, I realized, in order to be fair to her, I needed to organize some sort of psychological truce with my own dark side. I basically scolded myself in advance. The mother inside of me insisting that I “behave myself” with Dr. Jamison; for $13.95 she has been nice enough to let me read her book and, in return, I would not simply gloss over it, probing the book for flaws and weaknesses; and so off I went.

Not surprisingly, inviting her book into my life was in many ways an uncomfortable experience. I often felt as if I were at one of Dr. KRJ's magnificent dinner parties, where everyone is happy and gay, (in the 1940’s sense of the word) and we would spend the night sipping sherry, discussing poetry and listening to Mozart; a perfectly marvellous evening, during which I would casually glance at my watch every two minutes to see how much longer I would have to endure her fine gathering of esteemed colleagues.

The one saving grace which gave me just enough inspiration to keep reading was that, while An Unquiet Mind taught me nothing about bipolar disorder (or manic-depression, as she refers to it), I did gain quite a bit of insight into who Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison was, as a person. With that understanding I was at least able to muster some level of compassion for this woman, as someone who has struggled for decades with her condition; albeit from the painfully limited perspective of mainstream psychiatry.

I guess what made it easier was learning just how overt our differences were. From page one it became very clear that Dr. KRJ and I not only have different opinions on bipolar disorder, but that we have lived all our lives in entirely different worlds. She was raised among the top military brass of Washington, D.C. A self-proclaimed WASP, she reflects longingly on the marvellous pageantry, romanticism and formality of her experiences at cotillions and other events of high military society. “It was a small, warm, unthreatening, and cloistered world,” she says.

Born on March 27th 1966, I grew up in one of the sprawling, generic suburbs of Toronto, Canada - Scarborough. Living on the somewhat humbler side of a rather WASPish neighbourhood, our immediate neighbours were Greek Jamaican, Austrian, Native Indian, German, Chinese, etc… Growing up, I felt rather estranged from the kids in my neighbourhood, as my brother, Glen, and I were both bussed out to a mostly Italian Catholic School, about 3 miles away.

To my knowledge, none of my friends, either at school or in the neighbourhood, had parents with a university education. While my father, who spent almost his entire career in real estate sales, was somewhat famous on the street for his ’74 Corvette Stingray and three-piece suits; our environment was about as middle-class as you can get. In fact, the only truly recognizable thing that consistently set us apart from the rest of our neighbours was that we would take vacations almost every year, which most families on my street would never have even dreamed of. By the time I was 16 I had been to Disney World, Bermuda (three times), Cuba, Hawaii and Jamaica. We also went skiing together every winter. During the summer I would spend hours by our backyard swimming pool. Up until about the age of 10, I thought we were rich. Looking back, I think we were, in the most important ways.

“I wish I had your parents,” was something I would hear from more than a few childhood friends.

Dr. KRJ’s high school years were filled with nights of diligent studying, student council participation and other resume building activities. Personally, good grades and popularity came easy to me all the way through primary and secondary school. In fact, like her, I had earned a reputation as being one of the "good kids" in the class, never causing a problem, homework always done, that sort of thing. However, as I moved into the heart of my teenage years I started to tire of the never-ending series of hoops which we were all required to jump through every year. I found the early years of Late Night with David Letterman (which finished at 1:30am), my job at the grocery store (with shifts ending at midnight) and weekends in Toronto’s after-hours clubs (12am-8am) to be far more interesting than trying to get my B+ grades up to A’s. Obviously, my biggest challenge back then was getting enough sleep! Approaching graduation I was doing the absolute minimum I needed in order to get into a “good” university. By that time, I was too busy with my first real girlfriend to care about chasing grades.

Away from school, Dr. KRJ was discussing poetry and listening to the classical music of centuries past. Meanwhile, I was delving into what would become the music, not of my generation, but of the generation to come - Hip Hop and House. Her heroes were Beethoven and Bach; mine were Afrika Bambaataa and Eric B. & Rakim.

While these differences may seem rather superficial, they indicate a definite orientation towards life. Dr. KRJ relished her “cloistered”, elite past as well as her rare female access to the “old boys club” with its “good parking.” I found the more WASPish Canadian pastimes to be tedious, boring and, above all, phony. Rather, I was always on the lookout for the next big thing, the latest sound; another adventure. Being allowed to go downtown by myself at the age of 12 was a real thrill; travelling alone to Fiji, New Zealand and Australia at 20, even bigger.

In some ways my adventurous, exploratory attitude was motivated by a genuine desire to escape my bland surroundings. While I always felt that my family was special, I found normal, suburban life comfortable, but uninspiring. They didn’t call it “Scarberia” for nothing. And, looking into the eyes of my tired, often exasperated teachers didn’t make it look like the adult world was going to get much better. Peering at the endless sea of comparatively lifeless, brooding adults around me, I would ask myself,

“What is going to happen to me that is going to turn me into one of them?”

Perhaps, in that question lies the biggest difference between us. I was always after the bigger, deeper, picture. What most people accepted as “reality” left me slightly bewildered. I was often perplexed by how the vast majority of people I met would speak their opinions about things with such factual certainty, whereas I was barely sure of anything. Most people, especially adults, just had a, “Well, that’s just the way life is,” attitude about them, where if you didn’t immediately agree with what they were saying, you were either stupid or, “a little off.” In retrospect, I can see how the ability to consider different points of view was utterly lost on most people around me; especially the teachers.

In this way, Dr. KRJ seems no different than the “perfectly normal” adults I was probing as a teenager. In her introduction she writes that manic-depression (bipolar disorder), “… is an illness which is biological in its origins…” as if this were a proven fact, which is clearly not the case. Despite the billions of dollars spent by the pharmaceutical industry in research, they have still yet to find any scientific proof that mental illness is biological.

Her repeated assertions that, for a person in her situation, the only options are “death or insanity” may be true for her, but certainly not for all of us. During the 1970’s, while she was studying in Los Angeles, a short flight away in San Francisco, psychiatrists Dr. John Weir Perry (Diabasis) and Dr. Loren Mosher (Soteria House) were both healing people suffering from acute schizophrenia, a condition considered more severe than manic-depression.

Meanwhile, psychiatrist Dr. Stan Grof, a founding father of transpersonal psychology, was exploring the spiritual aspects of insanity. He would later coin the term “Spiritual Emergency”, in reference to these clearly beneficial “manic” episodes. His work has proven to be so influential that, thanks to the efforts of Dr. David Lukoff and others, DSM IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) accepted "Religious or Spiritual Problem" as a category of mental illness which should not be medicated.

It was in learning of Dr. Grof’s work that I was finally able to find an appropriate theoretical explanation for my own experience. This process of “insanity” can be a sacred one. It is an attempt by your repressed Soul to bring itself into your consciousness, so that you may lead a life which is more transparent, spontaneous, loving and alive. In this way, many more episodes of mental illness than we have ever imagined are clearly intended to be a spiritual, healing process. As tumultuous and horrifying as they can be, they are intended to bring us to life.

If I could offer one criticism of the content of An Unquiet Mind it would be this: Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison doesn’t talk very much about her episodes. Yes, like most parents in describing the experiences of their bipolar children, she gives us the terrible lows as well as the ecstatic highs, but more as a highlight reel than as to what actually happened. She spends much more time relaying the details of dining with peers at St. Andrews or Oxford than she ever does regarding the “inner-world” in which she resides during her episodes.

I wish she would have shared with us more of her experiences of mania, from her own "insane" perspective. I think that if, as a society, we are ever going to deal with so-called mental illness in a healthy way, we need to start sharing these mad inner worlds, so that more people know what to expect when these powerful experiences overwhelm our loved ones. It comes as a surprise to almost everyone, even people with bipolar disorder, that experiences of insanity are not nearly as chaotic as they appear to the outsider. In fact, most manic/schizophrenic people undergo a very similar series of sensory experiences and mythological themes which are shared by people around the world. Discovering that you are not alone is a huge relief for many. In a sense, it validates something that everyone else has dismissed as simply crazy and to be quickly forgotten.

For all of our differences, there is one passage near the end of An Unquiet Mind with which I agree. In fact, when I read it, I was shocked. It turned out that Dr. KRJ wasn’t nearly as oblivious to the deeper reality of her situation as I had imagined. She writes, “We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadness of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds." In whatever way we do this - through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs or medication – we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime." Here, not only does she clearly and eloquently identify what she is doing to herself, she also frames the deeper pathology of our entire society. As a whole, we try to block out our unwanted thoughts and feelings by any means necessary. In this way, Dr. KRJ reveals herself as completely “normal” by today’s standards. Unfortunately, what passes for normal today can hardly be considered optimal, or even healthy.

Fortunately, there is a way out of this dilemma.

Those “sea walls” she refers to are what transpersonal psychologists would refer to as our Ego, or “False Self”. That turmoil from which she is protecting herself is the Ocean of the Unconscious, where resides all of her repressed trauma, anger and pain. It is also the domain of her very own Soul, her “True Self”.

As you will see, while Dr. KRJ has worked at building, defending and medicating her walls, I’ve spent nearly all of my adult life examining my walls; exploring them, then taking them down, sometimes painfully, brick by brick. During my manic episode, I welcomed the sacred “demolition crew” that invited itself into my life to do most of the dirty work. However, internally, work was being done to take down my walls long before that. The work continues to this day. To me, the secret to happiness is a continual dying to one’s False Self, or Ego, brick by brick, day after day. Let in that seawater, as much as you can! Feel your pain and ecstasy to its fullest! Deny nothing.

Once you have truly felt the full extent of your repressions, your traumas, your pain, your karma; only then will you find peace. This madness, which always arrives unexpectedly, wants to heal us and then leave; if only we would allow ourselves to surrender to it. Rather than fighting to hold back the flood, we need to allow this mad, sacred tide to overwhelm us entirely and simply….let…go…

For most people, this idea will be completely new, even frightening. However, among the true spiritual seekers of history, this approach to the Divine has always been a central truth. Diminishing the Ego through meditation is a central principle within Buddhist and ancient Hindu teachings. The mystic saints of Christianity (all of whom would certainly be diagnosed as bipolar by today's standards), such as St. Francis of Assisi, St. John of the Cross, St. Augustine and St. Teresa d'Avila, were very aware of the need to surrender to this Divine Madness as well. Perhaps theologian Evelyn Underhill said it best over 100 years ago, in her classic book, Mysticism, when she wrote of the mystic saints,

"…their shells were wide open; they knew the tides of the Eternal Sea."

As for me, I was given my first small taste of this Eternal Sea years before my actual manic episode, in some rather surprising locations – the dingy after-hours clubs of downtown Toronto. In those clubs, particularly the “legendary” Twilight Zone, I would learn something about myself that, up until then, had been hidden from me. Dance, which was always my true passion as a teenager, could help me open up parts of myself which found no vehicle for expression anywhere else. With a little time, maybe 3 or 4 hours, I could arrive in a new “space” where the music and I were completely seamless. During the first few hours, it was clearly “I”, my ego, that was in control; but as the sunrise approached, and all but the faithful had gone home to bed; I would willingly find myself at the mercy of the powerful, complex, soulful rhythms that would resonate within each cell of my body. Alone, in some tucked away corner of the dance floor, a second wind would fill my exhausted corpse. It was in this state that I would first taste the Other Side of those Walls, my first morsels of Cosmic Ecstasy.

This was no secret to the small group of regulars that I would leave the club with every Sunday morning. Why do you think they had stayed all night? We were all waiting for our fix. But this experience was hardly a drug, nor was it caused by one. You could tell the difference between someone moving from that honest, earned place inside of themselves, and those that had cheated there way into a cheaper imitation.

In many ways, a great DJ is like a great psychologist. His task is not to analyze you. No, the great ones feel you. They see where you are at and they lead you to where you need to be. A great DJ will start the evening with music of mild intensity, and then slowly build the energy in the room until it reaches its zenith. At that peak, or perhaps just before it, the DJ will take out his secret weapon: the 12” inch track that he knows will take his people into the timeless space that dwells within. Back in the day, one of those “peak” tracks was by a guy named Robert Owens. It is with a touch of regret that I can’t share the music with you, but even if I could, I still wouldn’t be able to convey the feeling of it, which is what I really wish I could communicate. His mantra-like lyrics, as simple as they were, told me exactly what I needed to do, not only on the dance floor, but with my entire life:

Bring Down the Walls

We’re gonna strip those bricks and let you release all that heat inside….
All your passion, covered up by pride….

We’re gonna bring down the walls…
Let’em fall… fall… fall.

We’re gonna bring down the walls…
Let’em fall… fall… fall.

There’s a magic in this feeling that moves us all,
Shake your body to the rhythm let the Spirit fall,
But you’ve got to shake the tension and move the walls,
You’ve got to bring… down…. the walls…

Let’em fall, fall, fall, fall, fall!!!!

You can’t fake this feeling, don’t you waste this feeling,
You can’t fake this feeling, don’t you waste this feeling,
You can’t fake this feeling, don’t you waste this feeling,
Let it fall!

Let it down, down, down, down…. walls…

It feels so good.

May my story inspire you to take down your walls….

One nasty brick at a time.