Bipolar is an identity. Earned at altitudes most do not reach, at depths most do not survive. Carried because of and in spite of the symptoms, and the stigma.
Circular insanity. Manic-depressive insanity. Manic depression. Bipolar. The name keeps changing. What we make keeps showing up.
A note on the canon below: some figures publicly disclosed bipolar disorder or received documented diagnoses. Others are included because historians, psychiatrists, or biographers have retrospectively associated their lives or work with mood disorders. Bipolarist does not diagnose public figures.
You want the inventions?
You want calculus and gravity? Newton.
You want the first computer algorithm ever written — a century before there was a computer to run it on? Ada Lovelace.
You want the second law of thermodynamics in its modern form — entropy, the Boltzmann constant, the equation carved into his tombstone? Ludwig Boltzmann.
You want the sound of the century?
You want the Fifth, the Ninth, Ode to Joy? Beethoven.
You want “Lose Yourself” — the first rap song ever to win the Oscar? “Stan.” “The Real Slim Shady.” “My Name Is.” “Without Me.” “Rap God.” “Not Afraid.” “Love the Way You Lie.” “Mockingbird.” “Godzilla.” 220 million records. Fifteen Grammys. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Eminem — “Borderline bipolar disorder since my stroller.”
You want The College Dropout, Late Registration, Graduation, 808s & Heartbreak? “Jesus Walks.” “Through the Wire” — recorded with his jaw wired shut after the crash that almost killed him. “Gold Digger.” “Can't Tell Me Nothing.” Produced “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” and “Heart of the City” for Jay-Z. “Find Your Love” for Drake. Put Yeezys on every foot that mattered. Wrote “I hate being Bi-Polar / it's awesome” on the cover of his own album. Kanye West.
You want five octaves, nineteen Billboard #1s, “Fantasy,” “We Belong Together,” “All I Want for Christmas Is You”? Mariah Carey.
You think we're Toxic? Crazy? Oops, she did it again. 100 million records, “…Baby One More Time,” the whole Toxic / Crazy / Stronger / Lucky pantheon, The Woman in Me. Britney Spears became one of the most publicly pathologized women in modern celebrity culture.
You want Woodstock, Monterey, Are You Experienced, Electric Ladyland, the song literally called “Manic Depression”? Jimi Hendrix.
You want Nevermind, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the song literally called “Lithium”? Kurt Cobain.
You want the world?
You want the speeches that held the line against Hitler, 43 books, a Nobel in Literature? Winston Churchill called it the Black Dog and rode it into the work that saved the free world.
You want eight thousand miles of the American West mapped? Meriwether Lewis.
You want Rough Riders, the Panama Canal, the National Parks, a Nobel Peace Prize, a bullet to the chest that didn't stop the speech? Teddy Roosevelt.
You want the paintings?
You want Starry Night? Van Gogh painted it in the psych ward.
You want No. 5, 1948 — $163.8 million, the fifth most expensive painting ever auctioned — the whole genre of abstract expressionism? Jackson Pollock.
You want The Scream? Edvard Munch painted it after a visual hallucination on a walk.
You want the fight?
You want Iron Mike — “I was born with this disease”? Mike Tyson.
You want the voice who called Tyson's last two fights, plus Mayweather–McGregor — the biggest combat broadcasts of the era? Mauro Ranallo. Made the Showtime doc Bipolar Rock 'N Roller about why.
You want the screen?
You want The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, The Conversation, Bram Stoker's Dracula — five Oscars by age 36, two Palme d'Ors? Francis Ford Coppola. Diagnosed in 1977, prescribed lithium. “Little by little we went insane.”
You want Iron Man, the MCU, Chaplin, Tropic Thunder, Sherlock Holmes, the Oscar for Oppenheimer? Robert Downey Jr. Diagnosed bipolar during his prison stint. Came back and anchored the biggest film franchise in history.
You want Ace Ventura, The Mask, The Truman Show, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Jim Carrey.
You want the comedian, the memoir, the recovery advocate? Russell Brand.
You want the BBC Emmy-winning documentary The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive? Stephen Fry.
You want Princess Leia, Postcards from the Edge, Wishful Drinking, Harvard Humanist of the Year? Carrie Fisher. “I am mentally ill. I am not ashamed of that.”
You want the Oscar at 16 for The Miracle Worker, the memoirs Call Me Anna and A Brilliant Madness, twenty years of lobbying Congress? Patty Duke.
You want Touched With Fire — the film Spike Lee exec-produced, the SAMHSA Voice Award winner? Paul Dalio wrote it, directed it, and scored it.
You want the business?
You want Tesla, SpaceX, PayPal, Neuralink? Musk says he thinks he's bipolar.
You want CNN, 24-hour news, the Braves, $1 billion to the UN Foundation, two million acres returned to buffalo? Ted Turner.
You want Kayak — $1.8 billion to Priceline — plus six more exits after that? Paul English. Founded the Bipolar Social Club when he was done.
You want The 4-Hour Workweek, 200 million podcast downloads, early checks into Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Alibaba? Tim Ferriss. Turned his near-suicide into a tool he gave away from the TED stage.
You want VaynerMedia, Wine Library TV, Crushing It!, and a platform that has hosted some of the most candid public conversations about living with bipolar? Gary Vaynerchuk.
You want Bonobos — $310 million to Walmart? Andy Dunn. The stat he brought receipts for: 11% of entrepreneurs are bipolar. Baseline is 3%.
You want the books?
You want Don Juan and the Romantic movement? Byron.
You want Moby-Dick? Melville.
You want The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Of Mice and Men, the Nobel? Steinbeck.
You want Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse, A Room of One's Own — the voice that invented modernist fiction? Virginia Woolf.
You want The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, the Nobel, the Pulitzer? Ernest Hemingway.
You want The Raven, the invention of detective fiction, the American Gothic? Edgar Allan Poe.
You want The Bell Jar, Ariel, the posthumous Pulitzer? Sylvia Plath.
You want the doctor?
You want An Unquiet Mind, Touched With Fire, Exuberance — the books that rewrote how clinicians think about mania? Kay Redfield Jamison. Johns Hopkins. Wrote the canon. Has it.
You want the advocates?
You want the Mental Health Parity Act — the law that made 140 million Americans' mental health care get covered like a broken arm? Patrick Kennedy.
You want Kenya's first mental health crisis hotline — 25,000 messages in its first year, in a country where people still thought bipolar was a curse? Sitawa Wafula.
You want Today, Dateline, CBS Sunday Morning, the memoir Skywriting? Jane Pauley. “I take my meds every day. No holidays.”
You think we're toxic? Crazy?
We're the soundtrack. We're the script. We're the first algorithm. We're the second law. We're the speech that won the war. We're the law that pays for your therapy. We're the calculus. We're the map of the American West. We're the Nobel. We're the novel. We're the number one. We're the hotline that picks up in Nairobi. We're eleven percent of the entrepreneurs building what you'll buy next year.
They've called it circular insanity. Manic-depressive insanity. Manic depression. Bipolar. Whatever the next name is — we'll be there too. Writing it. Scoring it. Discovering it. Mapping it. Launching it. Legislating it. Building it.