Tainted Love: Bipolar Disorder, Sobriety, and Reclaiming Your Identity with Louise Barnett (A Confidence Classic)

Yeah.

I mean, the best way that I can explain bipolar maybe to somebody that either doesn't have the baseline knowledge of it or no experience with it is to use a metaphor.

And so the metaphor I use is, is that of a hummingbird.

So imagine just for a second, you see a hummingbird and she's beautiful and she's colorful and she's vibrant and she's kind of flying everywhere from place to place.

And she's chasing nectar and she's chasing nectar.

She's really erratic.

And imagine now for a moment that we put a blindfold on the hummingbird.

And now the hummingbird is just even more frantic and going faster and faster and faster.

And eventually that hummingbird, bam, smashes headfirst into an unyielding brick wall and plummets to the ground.

And now imagine that there's a raven who's been circling up ahead the entire time.

the raven now swoops down and brings with him a cloak and covers the hummingbird and smothers the hummingbird so the hummingbird can no longer see hear smell and is trapped and believes in its heart of hearts that it will never escape and that metaphor is the reality that i lived with for 15 years until ultimately it brought me to a crossroads where I, I didn't want to make a choice.

Got you.

Now that's really good metaphor or what you use there in terms of the hummingbird.

Got it.

And you, you meant you talk about also in the book about like addiction as well and like overcoming that.

Was that, yeah, I'd love to hear, was that kind of something that impacted on your bipolar? Was it kind of like disconnected?

This is like such a common question that I get all the time.

And the answer is really personal.

But the question is, which came first, right? The addiction or the bipolar, right? It's kind of, it can be a chicken or an egg question.

For me, the answer has always been very, very clear.

One thing that's, I guess, more unique about my drinking journey or my addiction story is that for me, substances, I think for a lot of people, they start off as something that maybe is fun or enjoyable or social.

For me, that was never the case.

It was always an attempt to numb or to hide or to an escape.

It was always... coming from a much darker place.

And so because of that, I really identify my addiction as being a symptom of my bipolar, not a product of my bipolar, but really a symptom of it.