Psychosis Didn’t End My Career, It Redirected It

Source: Guney Akin / Unsplash

I’m sitting in one of those 1970s black and white, tweed-cushioned, metal-framed chairs. It’s the artist’s lounge of the KickstART 2001 Disability Arts Festival at the Roundhouse Community Centre in downtown Vancouver. The Society for Disability Arts and Culture is hosting this inaugural international event. Out the window and across a tiled plaza, I see the neon sign of Gen Sushi. I am not hungry.

Beside me is David Roche, a seasoned storyteller, author, and actor who is presenting his acclaimed show The Church of 80% Sincerity, which is about—among other things—his facial disfigurement. I, at this point, feel like a mass of quivering sea cucumbers. I’m a trained actor, but I haven’t been in front of an audience for years.

Three psych ward stays, each due to psychosis, and one very public naked run down a street, not surprisingly, derailed my promising TV and film career. The diagnosis: rapid-cycling, mixed state, bipolar 1 disorder with psychotic features, mild temporal lobe epilepsy, and generalized anxiety disorder. Yeah, I know. Not what you would call plain language.

At the festival, however, what sticks most, above all my nausea and nerves, is that I feel among friends here. I am one of many disabled artists presenting very personal, sometimes very political works.

I'm to read excerpts from my book Crazy for Life. At the time, I called it The Truth Will Set You Free, but First It Will Piss You Off. Too long for decent sound bites; I am a shameless self-promoter, and I made it more digestible for the media.

Months earlier, when I eagerly filled out the festival application, I wrote that I could share sections from my book about my recovery from bipolar disorder, psychosis, and anxiety. The thing was, I hadn’t written a book yet, and I had barely written any scenes. One or two, maybe four minutes long. Nothing like a deadline and a hungry audience to make you sweat a few creative bullets. Why did I lie on the form? I’m not sure. I think because a book sounded impressive, certainly more than essays, short stories, or, God forbid, a skit. And I really was planning to write a book. I just hadn’t started it. But the organizers deserved more credit. They were looking for depth, not pedigree.

Over the three months building up to the event, I wrote, tweaked, and rehearsed. Then I did my reading. It’s received with hoots and hollers (the positive kind), and I’m asked to do an encore reading later that afternoon. Holy! I had no idea if what I created would be interesting to anyone. Apparently, it hit a nerve. From that small, shy reading, I was invited to present at three other disability arts festivals. England. New Zealand. Calgary. The positive response made me rethink what kind of career might be possible for me.

When I got out of the hospital from the last psych ward stay, it took a good (and I use that word loosely) three years before I was even ready to think about working. Sharing my story was not part of what I thought my work could entail, or even if I wanted it to. I just wanted a job I liked at least moderately, one that could eventually support me. After two vocational training and testing programs, I wobbled my way back into employment.

In another two years, I had enough stamina and confidence to work full-time. I had a nice, tidy job as a receptionist at a small graphics company. But over the course of working there, my acting bug gnawed away.

That’s when I decided to start on those excerpts. Excerpts sounded harmless, right? They wouldn’t seduce me into throwing away my stable office job for a life in the arts again. Writing was something I could do on my own time, and it didn’t depend on an audience. I could satisfy my creative itch without kissing my monthly paycheque goodbye. Or could I?

To be continued…

This is part one of a series about sharing my story of bipolar disorder and psychosis, and becoming a mental health keynote speaker. You can read part two here and part three here.

© Victoria Maxwell