Stephen Fry: "An Uppy-Downy, Mood-Swingy Kind of Guy" | Big Think

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Stephen Fry’s own experience with manic depression lead him to create a documentary about the condition.

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STEPHEN FRY:

Comedian, actor and writer Stephen Fry was born in 1957 in London and brought up in Norfolk. He attended Queen’s College Cambridge from 1979, joining the Cambridge Footlights Dramatic Club where he met Hugh Laurie, with whom he forged a highly successful writing partnership. His first play, Latin! or Tobacco and Boys, written for Footlights, won a Fringe First at Edinburgh Festival in 1980. He wrote again for theatre in 1984 when he rewrote Noel Gay’s musical Me and My Girl (1990). This was nominated for a Tony Award in 1987.

He has written for television and screen, and as a newspaper columnist – for the Literary Review, Daily Telegraph and The Listener. Stephen Fry's four novels are The Liar (1991), The Hippopotamus (1994), Making History (1996) and The Stars' Tennis Balls (2000). He has also published a collection of work entitled Paperweight (1992); Moab is My Washpot (1997) - an autobiography; and Rescuing the Spectacled Bear: A Peruvian Journey (2002) – his diary of the making of a documentary on the plight of the spectacled bears of Peru.

His book, Stephen Fry's Incomplete History of Classical Music (2004), written with Tim Lihoreau, is based on his award-winning series on Classic FM and is an irreverent romp through the history of classical music. The Ode Less Travelled - a book about poetry - was published in 2005. His latest book is Stephen Fry in America (Harper Collins 2008).

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question: Can you discuss your experience with bipolar disease?

Stephen Fry: Yes. I was first diagnosed actually not to my knowledge as being possibly bipolar when I was about fifteen. I didn’t know this until much later when I made a documentary about my life as a manic depressive or someone with bipolar disorder, whatever you choose to call it, an uppy-downy, mood-swingy kind of guy. In fact, technically I believe the correct diagnosis for my condition is psychothymic, which is like also known as bipolar light in America, which is rather nice and makes it sound like a variety of cola, but bipolar disorder is a mood disorder rather than a personality disorder such as that might mean to anybody, but I think we all kind of get what that is. To me mood is the equivalent of weather. Weather is real. That’s the important thing to remember about weather. It is absolutely real. When it rains it rains. It is wet. You get wet. There is no question about it. It’s also true about weather that you can’t control it. You can’t say if I wish hard enough it won’t rain and it’s equally true that if the weather is bad one day it will get better and what I had to learn was to treat my moods like the weather. On the one hand denying that they were there and saying I can’t… I’m not really depressed. Why should I be depressed? I’ve got enough money. I’ve got a job. People like me. There is no to be depressed. That’s at stupid as saying there is no reason to have asthma or there is no reason to have the measles. You know you’ve got it. It’s there. It’s not about reason. You don’t get depressed because bad things happen to you. That’s getting pissed off and annoyed. That’s reasonable. Someone hits you in the face you go ow, you know that’s… but depression is something that happens like weather to you inside you and it’s not about… It could be triggered by something unfortunate, but it isn’t… You know it’s not enough to talk yourself out of it by saying but I shouldn’t be depressed because I’ve got people who are nice to me, which is frustrating for people outside. They go, “Don’t be depressed.” “Everyone loves you.” “You’re really happy.” “You’ve got a good life.” I know. That is what is so depressing. I can’t help it. So but once youo take a lot of alcohol with it as well, so for many years really I never went out without at least four or five grams of cocaine powder on my person and I would ingest it intranasally as was the fashion through the use of some sort of straw or rolled up currency note and managed to get by on it. I never did that when I was working. I didn’t do it onstage or on while filming or anything. It was a way of ending…

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