Ep 2: Bipolar in College: How Depression, Mania and Psychosis Sidelined My Life

By the end of freshman year, Janine’s persistent depression worsens into insomnia, loss of appetite, distorted thinking, and mania.  Not yet diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Janine pursues her drama degree, deeply clinging to the belief that being a successful actress will cure her mind. Instead, she deteriorates into psychosis and feels compelled to perform for an invisible “master camera” in which she is the main character, continuously being watched.  With antidepressant medication starts and stops, and frightening therapy, Janine soon has suicidal ideation.  She calls the police, on herself.  This episode focuses on warning signs, support, and how a hospitalization and family silence planted the seed of stigma and shame.

Transcript

Bipolar in College: How Depression, Mania and Psychosis Sidelined My Life 

JANINE: I was just eating like cheese sandwiches. I had no money, and I would go down to the tube station and I would creep my toes up to the edge and just think, huh? What would it be like? What would it be like if I just jumped?

ISADORA: You're, you're one of the first people I know that are bipolar that I actually know deeply. And so I always wonder like, what was the pivotal moment when you discovered you were bipolar, but what was your life like right before, you know, before that you suddenly had this thing happen to you and life changed overnight.

JANINE: I guess there was some change overnight, but it was actually pretty, pretty gradual. Oh, I was just a college [00:01:00] kid and I was depressed and I didn't know what that depression was. This is actually just my freshman year. I just wanted to come home. At the end I was like crying seasonal affective disorder type stuff and my mom was like, no, you're staying. And then I went back in junior year, I. I was depressed again, and I thought, let's just change the, let's change my environment. Maybe that will help. And I went to an acting program actually at the Eugene, at the Eugene O'Neal Theater Center in Connecticut. And so I thought, oh, if I'm acting and I'm gonna be happy, and, and that will solve all this, you know, sadness. But it didn't really work out like that. I had a really tough time there. I wasn't eating much. They called my mom and said I was anorexic and my mom, oh, you really weren't eating? Uh, I wasn't eating much. Yeah. And so then my mom called me. My mom like calls and gives me orders. You know? You know you better eat. Thanks. That helps. I was, I was able to solve that issue though, and. Then I came back and I was sad again at darkness. So then I decided I'd go on this foreign study to London actually for drama. We saw like 30 plays and did all this stuff. And again, I thought I was gonna be super happy 'cause I'm acting, but I was so sad and everybody else was out at pubs and they were, you know, had their cigarettes and they're having the time of their life. Yeah. And I was just eating like cheese sandwiches. I had no money, and I would go down to the tube station and I would creep my toes up to the edge of the, of the train. Yeah. Yeah. And just think, huh? What would it be like, what would it be like if I just jumped so I got low? 

ISADORA: I have to say, I want you to answer this, but you know, I, when you, up until you just said that about the toes on the lime. I, I was very depressed in college too. But I just thought, I have depression and I'm weird. I'm just a weird person. And I had eating disorder for a little bit and I think later on in my life I heard a lot of women or people say I was depressed during college. It's scary and it's a time when, so then what makes your experience of this depression different than? A lot of people's just being depressed or sad during college, those college years. 'cause they're scary and they're new and it's, you feel crazy and you know, you're just growing up and you're not, you know, feeling at home with anything to a place where you were like, I think the fact that you went up to the edge and thought, yeah, what would this be like? That takes it to a whole different place. What do you think, so do you feel that that depression that you were experiencing was leading into. Bipolar. 

JANINE: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. That was the beginning of it. And so bipolar often starts with, sometimes with the major depression, it actually, you kind of define it as you have these deep lows of. Major depression, and then your mind also goes into a state of mania where it's kind of an overdrive. It's taking in all these senses, it can be somewhat outta touch with the world. And then the next step. Psychosis to where you are in a different world and you are believing that you are. And so your whole reality becomes twisted. So my bipolar began with these very deep, dark depressions and uh. I came back from that London trip and I knew something was wrong and I went to the student health center and they gave me a questionnaire like, do you feel blue? Do you cry? Do you all these things? And I remember just checking, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And then they sent me to, they sent me to a psychiatrist and then she put me on Paxil. I went off of it and then back on it, and it was, I mean, during that time I knew something was. I knew something was wrong with me. I mean, I, I was drawing these like charcoal drawings of myself and they were really like bleak. I would sleep about two hours a night. Wow. I was waitressing. It was a summer and I'd wear this like wool coat and I had these little clog shoes and I would just sweat into them. I was, I was really out of touch and. I think if there's one moment that I feel, so I was starting, so during that time the depression was starting to lift into mania and these were some of the it, and for me it was always a little bit of grandiosity.

There was, there was a parade, it was the 4th of July parade, and I could hear the music and it was just swelling and there were Shriners driving around in little red cars and red hats and I, and so, but then the parade, that music kept coming into my head and it didn't really leave. And so it would go on for days and then I'd have to convince myself like, well, I'm kind of unique. Okay, so. There's a little parade music in my head, like I'm, it's like, that is unique. That's pretty, that's pretty unique. And then I got involved in a play in a Midsummer Night's Dream. 

ISADORA: Where was this now? 

JANINE: This was during the This is at, yeah. Well this is later on. So after I came home from London after I'd been on Paxil. And so then I did this show, this, well, it's actually really sad because I wasn't even enrolled in college at this point because Oh, I couldn't concentrate. I couldn't read a book. Mm. So I was just waitressing. But they did give me a role in the play, even though they didn't have to. 'cause I wasn't even an enrolled student, but they gave me like a tiny role, a fairy in the play, and I do remember during that summer, during that show going down to New York City, and this is kind of where things felt like they, this was that clique, that moment. Okay. 
 ISADORA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you were at Dartmouth coming back down to New York? 

JANINE: Yeah, I was just on a trip with a roommate and we were visiting. It was just a really fast trip. Okay. And. I went into a Betsy Johnson dress shop. I love Betsy Johnson. I loved her so long. Cindy, it's a Cindy Lauper thing, you know, at the time. Oh my God. And like the girls, the counter were in their like black boosters and they were so like living their life so awesomely, like I couldn't even imagine doing that. But I wanted to be them. And I found a dress there. That was like a Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz dress, like gingham. It was blue gingham, oh God. But had this like plunging neckline and I like, ooh, I felt like I was showing my cleavage. It just made me feel so strong. It like clung to my ass and I'm like, I feel powerful. And this, it's not quite the vlog booster, but this suits me. And so I bought it and I remember like saying, oh, I wanna wear this out. And I like. Had little gap pink shorts and a tank top. And I like put it in the bag. And then I asked them to cut the tags on my dress because I wanted to wear it. You know, like when you're a little kid and you go to the shoe store?

ISADORA: Yeah. And they put your old shoes in the box and you, it's the best, the best, the best. I know you're a whole new person. Once you put them on, you know, you're like, oh, now I'm this person I know. Got the patent leather with a little bit of a heel. And I'm older and I get new shoes. Yeah, I know. 

JANINE: So I was totally doing that with the dress. So great. And I walked outside and I started sort of walking with very proud my shoulders back and doing that tightrope model walk. Mm-hmm. You know, you crisscrossed your feet crisscrossing. Yeah. And then I was like, boom, there is a camera watching me. I am being followed. Whoa, the camera is watching me. This like master camera of the world has focused in on me and I've gotta guide it. I've gotta behave, I've gotta, I've gotta perform and act and be, and maybe it's just natural in real life, but this camera's following me now. Wow. So it was just like walking the model walk and then all of a sudden, boom. A camera and that's the moment.

ISADORA: That's like the moment. That's the moment. Wow. I know you didn't realize it at the time probably, but it's, what do you feel, I mean, I want you to continue on, but I just wanna know, like looking back at it, do you just kind of, what do you feel when you know that—

JANINE:  -- like I feel very sad about it actually. Yeah.  Thinking about myself at that, that year and that time. Right. It's the beginning of a pretty horrible psychiatric resume, for lack of a better word. Yeah. You know, it's, it's when the, the awfulness began, so it makes me, it makes me sad to think of that. Yeah. Because there's also grandiosity in that. Like, I thought I was, you know, I'm super special here. I maybe I am the next big actress. Hell, there's a camera following me. So, I mean, it's kind of, you feel a little energized, you feel like, to me, I was always like, Ooh, it's, I feel this energy on the tips of my fingers. I feel this like zip zap this like connection to life and to the energy of the world. 

ISADORA: So that part was a, there's, there's an excitement to it.

JANINE: Totally. Yeah, but then there's gonna be these dips, so it gets exciting and then it gets scary and then exciting and scary. But yeah, when I think back at it as a whole, it's like it shouldn't have happened really. Like I should have had better mental health care and it's kind of, and I fell through the cracks. It's like there was nobody to look out for me. And I feel. You know, it could have been, a lot of this could have been prevented. 

ISADORA: So do you think, like how do you think if there was more awareness of around the different symptoms? 

JANINE: Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting you say that. 'cause I'm relating to it in a weird way. 

ISADORA: Like I go, oh yeah, I was really depressed. And then also I love Betsy Johnson and I try things on and I think I shall be the next great actress, but I have all these fantasies too. But it doesn't, I'm. Actually in my right mind, I'm just, maybe I'm the nutty one and you're the slutty one. I don't know. But I don't have a psychosis about it. So I think that's the only difference. And so for, for me to understand what that psychosis is, it's, I'm like, I'm with you all the way, girl. And then I don't know what happens. Like I don't know what it feels like to you to slip off into that other place that is not just a big imagination. Well, I think it is a big imagination.

JANINE: It's definitely imagination for me is part of it. During, during that play, we had these costumes and their green gauze and. You know, my little fairy outfit. I liked it. I felt pretty in it. I liked to go on the, you know, I liked being on the stage dancing in it. And then, then I started to have these ideas of, of dying in it and dying in the theater and hanging from the rafters. And then I would make it kind of a beautiful death. Like I'd be lying on a. Table of some sort. And so I, when I'd walked into the theater, I would just see my death up there. Wow. So it was like, it was beyond imagination. Yeah. I mean, it was. Almost, well, it probably was hallucination too. Yeah. Yeah. And, and there was a pond at Dartmouth that would freeze over very, very beautiful. But this was in the summer and I'm like, I could just wade into it. Could wade into it and pull in Ophelia, just like so. But the Shakespearean imagination, I did have a Shakespearean imagination. Yeah. But. It's when that mania and grandiosity, it got scary for me. I mean, it's kind of. This doesn't sound like anything scary, but for me it was very scary. And so I'm taking this Paxil, I was on and off of it and it did a lot of weird sensory things to me and I wasn't sure if I should be on it. And then I was like, well, screw it. I'll just take all of it and you know, die. Let's just take it all tonight and die. Oh my God. 

ISADORA: And there were, why did, wait, why did you feel that suddenly that you should do that? What was the impulse in you that said, oh, screw it. I'm just gonna take it all. 

JANINE: It was sad, like just sadness. I go back and look at my journals and they're like, I'm so sad. I need to get out of here. How can I go on? You know what I mean? It was just like this deep pit that I was living in, and I remember there were our neighbors were these like. I don't know. I call them like back East Girls. They all played lacrosse and rugby and they were big and strong. And then I was like, this little pink, uh, this, this girl who loved pink from California. But like the East Coast girls were playing drinking games and they were playing that song. The devil goes down to Georgia. Yeah. He's looking for a soul. He was looking for a soul. And so in the state I was in, I was like, he's looking for my soul. This devil's coming for my soul. Oh my God. And I'm like, well, shit, if the devil's coming for my soul and I would wanna die, I'm, I better make it happen tonight. 

ISADORA: Yeah. Did you think by, by doing that you would escape the devil or you would be giving your soul to the devil?

JANINE: I think it's escape. Escape. I don't know. You know? But I don't think I, I don't, wasn't gonna sacrifice myself, but I was able to, I was able to think like, Hey, I feel awful. I wanna die. But I would be really sad if my sister found out about this. Oh, and so maybe I should stay alive. 'cause I think my sister.

Yeah, like I think, I know my sister would be sad. That's about as far as I could get and that's when I called the cops on me. I called the cops on me, called the cops on me, in my mind. Oh my. So I had on myself, called them on myself. So I had, oh my God. So I did have a little functioning going on. Right.

ISADORA: What did you say to the cops? 

JANINE: Uh, I remember. My psychiatrist was at a hospital just, you know, down in a different part of the city. And so I said, Hey, can you take me to my doctor? She's at the hospital, but this was like at five in the morning. It was really early or something. And they came and got me. And I still remember I, uh, I had my purse with me and I had my baby blanket with me. My gosh, like my little pink baby blanket. And I remember, you know, telling them, I swear they came in and like shook the bottles, but I, I don't know if they really did. That could just be my imagination. But yeah, and this, and like, I remember that very vividly and looking at the campus and that was also a moment of like, whoa. I'm never going back to that life there. Like that's somehow I'm leaving this life of perfection, uhhuh and high achieving people, and it just felt like a really big division. And somehow I also really felt that. 

ISADORA: So when you called the cops on yourself and they came in the, you had the baby blanket with you and they were taking you somewhere and they put you in the car and you were watching. Essentially Dartmouth, the campus go by and you had this sense of like, oh my God, this whole life it was, is no longer going to be. And was there a moment in your head where you thought. I am tipping into a mentally ill place. Or did you just think, I don't know what's happening to me, but I don't, I know it's not good.

Or did you think, okay, it's just this moment in time, this is totally recoverable. Like, what was your feeling as you were being taken to the hospital by the police with your baby blanket? 

JANINE: I, I knew something was deeply wrong and I knew I was doing the right thing. But I could see the loss too. And the loss is just visual. And the thing is, when I think about this, I picture it as this really like snowy day. In Hanover with these ice banks. I mean in, 'cause they had such intense winters there. And so when I drove to the hospital and I think about it, I had these rangers and like ranger hats and this cop car and this icy snow. But it all happened in. July or half. Wow. The summer, oh my god, my memory has like frozen it. Wow. Literally, yeah. Into the chill of, of that place. So it became this Iceland as Ice World that I was now Wow. Longer a part of. Yeah. And then I got to the hospital, I mean, I. I think there was grandiosity in this that kind of, that was helping me through it. That part, you know, like the camera had been following me around for a while on campus, and when I went in I asked to talk to my psychiatrist and I was very angry at her actually, because I thought she had caused all of this. So I knew this was not. A regular state, and I knew someone was at fault for it, and I wanted to blame her.

[00:19:38] I wanted to get her fired, or if I died, I wanted her to have to pay for it, and they wouldn't let me go into that area. And then they said, we're gonna admit you. You have to sign these forms. And I wouldn't sign the forms because I thought they were, so this is the acting stuff we had been told. Somehow I learned this along the way in, as in these acting classes, they'd bring in professional actors and we get lectures, right? And so Uhhuh, somehow I've been, I had been told that you gotta be really careful when you sign a contract with like an agent or a manager. For anything. And so I just, I screamed and I refused to sign and I was like, I'll not sign. I need like, I don't know what I was saying, but I refused. I'm like, they're giving me an acting contract. I can't read it. I can't sign it. And so I threw this fit. Oh my gosh. And that's where my mind was. And then boom, I'm in the ward. I dunno how I got there, but they probably gave me a shot or something. Wow. You think so? I don't know unless they calmed me down, but it seemed kind of sudden. 

ISADORA: Wow. Oh my God. How terrifying and sad, you know? I mean, you were probably, what, 23 years old or something? 

JANINE: No, I was 20. 

ISADORA: You were only 20? 

JANINE: I was 20. Oh God. It's too young. Yeah, it was too much. But see, then I would spin it again and I'm like, oh, I'm in the hospital. This is general hospital, they're gonna come record, or this is gonna be part of a soap opera. Mm-hmm. Or, you know, so I would just keep turning this world in a way to keep it positive and to keep the psychosis or the grandiose stuff focused on something good. Yeah. 

ISADORA: How long were you in the hospital for this, that first admittance? 

JANINE: I don't think I was there longer than a week. A week is a long time. Yeah. I, I, I think it was almost a week, and then my mom came and got me. 

ISADORA: So your mom was in California? 

JANINE; Yeah. So she had to fly across the country, I guess. Yeah. 

ISADORA; Did your whole family come, or just your mom? 

JANINE; Oh no, just my mom. My mom came and she was, she was angry. She was angry. She was really pissed off like why she wanted me to go to Dartmouth and get this degree. That was important to her. I understand. But she was angry at the fact that I had to leave, and I remember packing boxes there in my. In my apartment and she is just angry. And she says to me like, I am the only one who will ever be there for you. Oh, don't ever, you know, count your count on your dad or anyone else. I am the only one here for you. And like, God damnit, this shouldn't have happened. I mean, she was angry. I remember she was throwing shit in the boxes. Like, and then I have this weird memory on the plane coming home where she turns to me and says, don't tell anyone about this. No one. Oof, oof. In my memory, I'm wearing like a hospital gown, like a green hospital gown, and she's telling me this, but I'm not in a hospital gown.

I'm obviously on a plane wearing jeans and, uh, but I, I guess it was like the patient role like kind of began then. Yeah, a mental patient robe was on. Would I get it off? 

ISADORA: Oh, that's an incredible question. At that point in your life, I mean, it is the question that you've been struggling through for a long time.

JANINE: Would I get it off? 

ISADORA: Ugh. Lemme break my heart. What a what A terrible beginning.

JANINE: Thank you so much for listening. Please share this episode with someone who might need to hear it. 

ISADORA: Until then, go out on top when you can, and if you can't, it'll make a great story.