Leave Kanye Alone. Stop Torturing People with Bipolar One to Death.
I’m working on some longer-form essays about this, but with everything happening with Kanye, I wanted to get something up more urgently. This latest fucking explosion of feeding frenzy and concern trolling and clout chasing and bad faith representation is turning into a catastrophic event for all people with psychotic disorders, what is going on now is purely racist harassment and ableism, and the amount of totally incorrect medical information that is proliferating is also a danger. Kanye holds zero, zero, zero structural power over this group, he is a Black man, and is very clearly in no position for “rational” thought with an internet of people who have mercilessly abused and triggered him into mania for years. You’re gonna fucking kill him you assholes.
Bipolar one was first identified in fucking 1851. We know, and HAVE known, that this is a totally involuntary brain disorder that causes people to behave irrationally, out of character, to get into dangerous situations, to be boisterous and grandiose, to say all manner of offensive shit, to spend extravagantly (up to being completely broke, like Kanye was at one point after being financially abused for years by people around him). But most importantly, it causes fucking death.
You wanna know some other bipolar one celebrities that have died because of it? Jimi Hendrix. Marilyn Monroe. Kurt Cobain. Amy Winehouse. Van Gogh. Hemingway. Sylvia Plath. Whitney Huston. They think Basquiat was bipolar one. Studies have shown us to be more creative, to have better pattern matching, and to feel feelings more intensely, as well as feelings that don’t exist to other people. That is why we have been hugely disproportionate influences on arts and culture. But the gifts come with a curse: depression, mania, eventually psychosis. And that’s when YOU all come with knives.
“Tortured genius tragically died too young" isn’t just some magical phenomenon. That’s fucking US, and that’s fucking YOU driving us into graves. Psychotic disorders have a tendency to set in during early adulthood, which is why you see this arch where things go horrifically down hill out of nowhere around this age group. The 28 club? We fucking invented that shit.
Kanye, Britney, Demi and Selena Gomez are our current batch of bipolar one musical geniuses, and they have all almost died from it on multiple occasions. We are profoundly lucky and blessed they are still here. I would not be surprised if any of them die. The exploitation and maltreatment of them has been ghastly and to the limits of human cruelty.
Nina Simone was TERRIBLY mistreated in her time. People STILL make fun of Van Gogh. Britney, well, you know what happened to her. The treatment Kanye has received for displaying known symptoms of a known brain disorder is the highest order, global emotional abuse I’ve EVER seen. Except in the case of other bipolar ones. Remember how you bitches killed Amy Winehouse? Making bipolar one people the butt of jokes is a favorite hobby for everyone, ESPECIALLY people who go on and on about self care but say literally nothing about psychotic disorders, even as we have the worst outcome of any mental illnesses on all axes. Especially suicide rates. 1 in 5. 20%.
ONE IN FIVE OF US DIES FROM THIS BY SUICIDE ALONE. THATS BEFORE WE GET TO DRUG AND ALCOHOL DEATHS, CO-MORBIDITIES AND TRAGIC ACCIDENTS WHEN WE CANNOT KEEP OURSELVES SAFE OR DEFEND OURSELVES.
We fucking die from this all the time, from suicide, heart attacks and strokes, drug and alcohol addition, from horrifying medical neglect and being left for dead by our communities, and from violence aimed at us because we are very weak targets when we are SICK AS FUCK. And because the medical establishment and the APA is so negligent, people with bipolar one usually go 5-10 years without diagnosis or treatment from the onset of symptoms. During that time, the illness is allowed to progress. The further it progresses without treatment, the worse it will be, and the possibilities of successful treatment can go down significantly. Meanwhile, we’ve had this entire mental health circus and still no one knows ANYTHING about bipolar one, schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorders. So when something like this happens, everyone has a field day that has no bearing in actual material truths about severe mental illness, which is that this is about us DYING, about YOU torturing US, not some crazy bullshit we gibbered when we were sick. We are incredibly vulnerable while sick. When I was sick, people took advantage of me for money, I was sexually assaulted multiple times, exploited for labor by partners, ended up in various abusive scenarios, and oh yeah, you bitches made fun of me MERCILESSLY for YEARS even as I was tweeting, desperately, that I was sick, dying, needing help. What did the “left” do? Torture me. You would see me getting more and more out of control the more you subjected me to humiliation, and you LOVED that. People LOVE to provoke bipolar one people, even to the point of death, just for amusement.
THAT is the real ableism.
I cannot emphasis enough that bipolar one is a progressive, severe brain disorder. It is involuntary. Because it is, again, a BRAIN DISORDER, people often act differently and say things they wouldn’t otherwise… especially if you are PSYCHOTIC, a medical emergency that’s hallmark is losing control of your fucking mind. This phenomenon has been recognized for centuries and is EXTENSIVELY documented in the medical literature. Holding someone responsible for the completely predictable, known symptoms of debilitating and life-threatening progressive brain disorders, is the height of cruelty and arrogance, and it exposes in dramatic relief the dangerous failures of the “mental health” movement of the last 10 years, which has encouraged and supported everyone EXCEPT people with psychotic disorders.
Let me fucking tell you about mania and psychosis. I am bipolar one. The doctors couldn’t diagnose me or treat me, even though I was seeing them all the time and was in and out of the ER all the time, for five years after my first psychotic break.
I got diagnosed after I was found, naked and screaming, and totally alone, in the lobby of my building. The “friend” that was living with me, literally abandoned me, and didn’t call in anyone else from my support system when she left me sick on the floor. In fact, she lied about my status and actually blocked multiple people from my support system, including my appointed medical director, who were trying to figure out what was going on and come take over if needed.
This is very typical: psychotic people are abandoned all the time by even the people closest to them. She wasn’t the only one to do it. I had a partner of many years out the fucking door the second I started having psychotic breaks that might require him to cancel a meeting about his stupid startup. I almost died, you fucking animals. And you’ve seen that happen to Kanye, too, where he has ended up all alone again and again, sick as fuck.
By the time I got to the ER, I hadn’t eaten, or had anything to drink, in days. I had spent them crawling around the apartment, talking to things in the walls, taking magical baths that would heal the burns on my arms (that didn’t exist), organizing the revolution, and yes, going online to share what I *thought* was going on. It’s a fucking brain disorder, people. When it gets bad, shit gets crazy.
I thought I was Marie Antoinette, and that my cat was a tiger that had been with me through space/time. I thought I was being kept hostage by the Kardashians so they could harvest me for their anti aging experiments (and yet it has the ring of truth, that one lmfao). I thought that giant black horses carrying huge chariots for the bodies, were rounding up the girls of the city as a blood sacrifice to make up for a genocide between rival societies of women 100 generations ago. I watched the girls run, screaming, down Lake Shore Drive, their bodies leaving a trail. I watched the new season of True Detective (there was no new season) (but I remember it in detail and I think it would make a great addition to the franchise, if anyone from the writing team is reading this) (please hire me to work on True Detective even though my doctors say I can’t watch it anymore. True Detective season two was absolutely brilliant and I am disgusted that more people did not recognize or appreciate that work).
As I was crawling around one day in who knows what day it was, I noticed that something smelled really really bad. I feed my cat a raw diet, and somehow I’d taken out the bag, and left it, for days, out on the floor. So, my cat didn’t eat for days either. I wasn’t even well enough to do anything about the bag. I remember avoiding that part of the apartment and its stench of rotting meat. I thought people were coming to assassinate me, and I sat awake every night with a knife rack right by the couch. When I got to the ER, I thought it was a manufacturing lab for COVID, and I told the doctor that Hollywood was putting COVID in the water supply, it was artificial, and we had to do something, immediately, to stop it, because the second I saw him I knew he was the true partner promised me by the voice in the wall.
It was insane. Lmfao.
People who are very manic or psychotic are fucking out of their fucking minds, they are out of the fuck control, and no, we shouldn’t be held accountable for that. Do you want to hold someone accountable for a heart attack, for dementia, for Alzheimer’s, for other disturbing medical conditions that you all recognize as such, a breakthrough broken bone, a severe laceration? Not until its someone with a psychotic disorder! Think what the fuck you want, you people with your mid anxiety and unipolar depression that take a SSRI and you’re good, your moral code is not going to survive intact when you’re psychotic or seeing The Ledger Beneath All Things around you, when you’re seeing what God says through the veil, through the wire, when you’re in love with a soundwave sent from the great, sentient mathematical equation of the universe just for you, a song for you.
I yelled at Marx for a few hours, but he apologized for the DSA, so we’re good now. When you are receiving the hidden codexes of the universe, when you are immeshed in epic, imaginary battles, where everything around you is inflated to life or death proportions and the extremes of grandiosity, when you’ve been abducted by aliens, trust me, you ain’t gonna have your shit right for Twitter dot com.
Trust me. This is like someone opening up your fucking skull and playing the drums with it. You aren’t controlling shit. The disease takes over your consciousness. Which you assholes know. So what are you ACTUALLY up to? Trying to publicly bully ANOTHER famous BP1 musical genius into death for your own shits and giggles, as part of the ACTUAL ableism that exists in this country, which is that, you fucking kill people with psychotic disorders at all costs? Especially Black men?
Weird.
WE are the ones who were and are in the asylums. US. Not people with anxiety and depression. US. That’s US. *We* are what is meant by the slur “crazy” and “insane” — a slur YOU pretend is about or affects you, that you pretend you are being oppressed by when it is literally only about people with psychotic disorders.
Psychosis is incredibly, incredibly dangerous, and that is far more important than having a fucking staged global meltdown because a person with a godddamn severe brain disorder said some offensive shit, when that is a documented fucking phenomenon. Shut the FUCK up, AOC. I *personally* know bipolar one people who have crashed their cars into buildings, cheated on or left their spouses, got kicked out of every bar in downtown SF (couldn’t be me and Andy!! He was bipolar one!! He’s dead now after a startup exploited him and destroyed his health on purpose to make money!! Remind you of Britney? THIS IS A PATTERN PEOPLE.), spent every single cent they had, moved to a different state or country on impulse, had a meltdown at work and/or exuberantly quit, got into physical altercations (and were injured badly… when you’re very ill you are very weak. Obviously.) I have started fights with cops, not terrible uncommon for someone having an episode, and been arrested or hauled into the ER on multiple occasions when I was stabbed with sedatives, held down by 5 grown men, then allowed to leave with no medical treatment in the morning.
More broadly, people jump off of buildings and go crazy doing drugs, and overdose. They drink themselves to death trying to control it. Another thing missing from this conversation is that bipolar one people go to EXTREME lengths to try to treat and keep down mania and psychosis, even though the default assumption is we are purposefully doing this to ourselves through self-negligence. When you are dying, which is what bipolar one is on a long enough timeline and without effective treatment, a very deep survival instinct kicks in. I used alcohol and marijuana heavily for years just trying to keep the beast down. No one WANTS to be dying slowly, or quickly, or suddenly, from this. But we are. Especially without a supportive, healthy environment, access to resources, and competent medical treatment. Even with all that, severe/advanced cases will still have episodes and have trouble functioning in ableist society in perpetuity. That’s literally the name of the game.
I hate being bipolar, it’s awesome.
Kanye West
You think psychosis consistently and reliably, and as documented EXCRUCIATINGLY in medical literature and history, produces results such as the above, and yet you think that a fucking out of control tweet from someone who is clearly psychotic is tremendously implausible, and actually, no, he needs to be held accountable for it?! Fuck is wrong with you?
Again, do you ask someone who is bleeding out on the floor to apologize for their rugs? Stop making US being sick with known and predictable symptoms, US being in grave danger, US potentially losing our lives, abandoned by EVERYONE *and* the medical establishment, about YOU. Painting insane people as villains is textbook… but only considered ableism when it is pointed at people with everything EXCEPT psychotic disorders, which is the only thing those terms refer to.
Weird!
The mental health movement hasn’t resulted in any reduction in stigma whatsoever for us, and I’d argue its become worse as the people with anxiety and unipolar depression who lead the “mental health movement” have continued to paint themselves as needing of help, care, support and accommodation on one hand, and on the other, continue to villianize people with psychotic disorders, even though we have WAY more severe illnesses with WAY more severe effects and outcomes. It won’t surprise you to know that people with psychotic disorders are more likely to be homeless, to die about 13-14 years earlier, to not have a spouse, more likely to have heart attacks and strokes… it just goes on and on. This is an incredibly serious thing. Bipolar one is recognized as a disability, but all of the sudden, we don’t know shit about disability rights. Bipolar one is “crazy”, and suddenly we know nothing about ableism. Black men with psychotic disorders get shot by cops all the time, and suddenly no one knows anything about police violence.
Okay!
Please stop using the phrase “mental illness doesn’t make you sexist or racist”. This is specifically something used to paint people with psychotic disorders as morally responsible for the effects of a brain disease they don’t have control over and isn’t their fault AT ALL. People with fucking anxiety who are helped by plants and water breaks, think that their logical morality will hold up under mania or psychosis — lol. Good luck holding your fucking bladder and not shitting yourself, or being able to clean and feed yourself, or get help from anyone, or even fucking live. Psychosis is a deadly medical emergency. It is absolutely ludicrous to demand accountability from someone who is so fucking sick from their BRAIN DISORDER that they could die any minute. Fuck out of here. Concern trolling fucks.
Do you know how fucking embarrassing this is for us? Has anyone stopped for a single moment to think about what it is actually like to be bipolar one and be sick in a world that fucking hates you and blames you and leaves you for dead? That can’t WAIT to laugh at you and discard you? That openly kills bipolar one geniuses all the time, ESPECIALLY in pop culture? No one cares. No one cares about stigma when its about us. Fucking imagine coming down from a psychotic break and seeing what has happened. It’s … absolutely heartbreaking. People get their lives totaled. Some end up in prison for a long, long time. I will never care about people , or let them close to me, in the same way, ever again. After how badly I was treated by the people, including partners, I thought cared about me, I honestly have little to no interest in relationships. And I won’t be having anyone without psychotic disorders in my life anymore (except Lauren, who has been a saving force to me in all of this). I want to be with my own kind. Maybe it’s time to start talking more about how we are people with psychotic orders can structure our lives around OURSELVES and EACH OTHER, not the ableist commands of a disgusting pig society that can’t see us for what and who we are, while exploiting our gifts for personal gain.
It’s not all bleak. We can absolutely have OK, good, or great lives, some and even many of us do, WITH PROPER MEDICAL CARE AND SUPPORT, and can manage our symptoms so they are bearable, even in a society where ableism is *actually* based on killing *us*. However, some people have the most severe forms of these disorders, and even if they are on meds, they will continue to have episodes or have ongoing cognitive problems. This causes brain damage. Literally. Explain to me how someone actively getting brain damage and brain inflammation from a brain disorder should be held accountable for saying some crazy shit. We deserve support too, and if you can’t support us, then leave us the fuck alone. PLEASE. YOU ARE KILLING US WITH THIS SHIT.
People with bipolar one have some truly amazing and beautiful properties. Think about the fulllll range of possible human feelings, moods, perspectives... neurotypicals are operating around a baseline similar to each other and maybe 10 units on either side of it. Bipolar one people are going *100 units* on either side. Each point along that spectrum allows you to see the world in a new way, its facets and patterns and shapes; it is a lens. A "mood" is a lens to see the world. The man with 100 lenses is at great advantage to the one with 10.
We have “moods" (which are extremely complex phenomenon) that you neurotypicals have literally never experienced, never will, and cannot grasp. That is why our art and work is often discontinuous. We make leaps you can’t. Bipolar ones often describe feeling things there is no name for in neurotypical framing. We have, yes, a beautiful mind. The bipolar one intelligences I have encountered have been the salvation of my life. They are vast inside, and they feel so deeply, and some of them have an incredible dedication to morality and ethics that you simply do not find in callous, limited neurotypicals. People I know with bipolar have had incredibly unique talents, in computer science, poetry and writing, even mental health care. We can see the world through ten thousand eyes, through ten thousand lenses, and when we are well enough, we can use what is good of it and share its bounty with the world if we choose. But why would we when kicked like this, like a fucking dog, each and every time?
Our disease is a blessing and curse. And that’s why we’re called fucking bipolar. And when they say tortured genius, it means YOU torture US.
We are not the same. Bipolar ones are made different. We have fundamentally different brains than you. If you can’t handle it, leave us the fuck alone. ALWAYS an option when you see a psychotic episode that doesn’t fucking involve you, leave us the fuck alone. No one needs your gawking, your bad jokes, your circus antics, your desperate attempts to justify your abuse and neglect of us, that leaves us for dead. We offer you art and you spit on it. Fuck you.
Leave Kanye alone.