Her manic highs felt invincible, but the lows were crippling - bipolar explained it all. Photo / 123RF
I would buy strangers shots and fork out $1200 on concert tickets. I’m surprised I’ve made it to 30.
It’s midnight on a Tuesday and I’m bouncing up and down excitedly outside a bar in central London. I’ve had a few drinks, but the night is yet young. Animated, I’m urging a friend on my phone: “Come out with me! Come out to play!” Get in an Uber now!” I beg. Then I promise, “I’ll pay! I’ll pay for everything!”
Dropping hundreds of pounds on a single night’s partying might seem excessive (and more than I could afford at the time). But when I’m in the mood of mania, there are no sensible thoughts. The “Jager bomb Olympics,” as I called it, involved buying every stranger in the bar a shot. And naturally, drinking one myself. Woo-hoo! Before moving on to the next bar and doing it again. I’d consumed so much Red Bull that night I didn’t sleep for 36 hours afterwards.
I was 27 before I learnt that I was bipolar. In the decade before that, there were misdiagnoses of depression and anxiety, and I’d been put on Prozac which – being an upper – typically led to this kind of carnage.
Being bipolar is a bit like having a press conference inside your own head. There are lots of different voices all shouting out questions. It’s having every emotion intensified by 10. It’s utterly exhausting; no wonder I can sleep for 14 hours straight.
Growing up in Hertford, I was a well-loved, only-child blessed with my supportive mum, Tina, a former actress, and dad, Rob, who had a manufacturing business. “Sensitive,” was how I was often described when I was young. One of those kids who had to be collected early, in tears, from the school sleepover.
Feeling and thinking so differently as a teenager led to me attempting to take my own life aged 15. By sixth form I was self-harming and restricting what I ate (not to be thin, but because food was the only thing I could control).
I went to drama school rather than university, because pretending to be someone else was better than being me. But my early 20s were a hugely confusing time as I struggled with an undiagnosed, severe mental illness on top of being unsure of my sexuality.
I’ve scared friends along the way, waking them up in the middle of the night in hysterics, incoherent with deep and dark sadness. And my inappropriate behaviour (careering around town on 72-hour booze benders, sleeping with all the wrong boys and girls, and blowing vast sums of cash) hasn’t always made for good company.
I’m not trying to use bipolar as “an excuse,” and of course mentally stable people can go on benders and sleep around too. But my motivations were the wrong ones – to escape, to avoid going to bed because I was scared to wake up, to blot out the pain I felt, and to silence the voices in my head.
After 10 years of torment I finally got a diagnosis in my late 20s – sadly this is standard. When I described my recurring episodes of extreme, overwhelming mania to the psychiatrist, and then the crippling depression and the suicidal ideation that was constantly lurking (and still is) she knew. I’d seen many doctors in the past, but within minutes this one told me I had type II bipolar.
Getting a label was a relief by then.
Knowing it wasn’t just me “being born wrong”. I went home and Googled it, and found between 1-2% of us in the UK have bipolar, as do several famous creative people I admired. I spent a whole year educating myself about the illness. Within that time I was also diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, a separate mental illness that makes it difficult to manage emotions, making me a rapid cycler (someone who experiences at least four mood episodes in a year, that meet the criteria for mania, hypomania, or depression). That also made sense.
I now take three medications each day, and you’ll know if I haven’t as I’ll still be buzzing around at 2am. I have a fourth emergency medication which I take if I feel an episode coming on or someone gives me it if I’m in the midst of one.
At first I kept it a secret – confiding only in my parents and close friends. It took 12 months before I felt ready to “come out” publicly. Thankfully, the response was overwhelmingly supportive.
While outside of work life has been mayhem, somehow I’ve always managed to keep the show on the road in my professional life. One of the best parts of having bipolar is that when I’m on top form (at the risk of sounding horribly arrogant) it’s as if I can enter any room, assess who’s in it, and make myself malleable enough to dazzle people.
Much of my success as an actor and film producer can actually be credited to my mental illness, there are benefits to seeing the world in a way most others can’t. Having a brain that works differently can come with an abundance of energy. I can get surges of creativity, powering through a month’s worth of work in just a week.
My lovely dad once called it my “spark of genius” and over the years, that’s how I’ve tried to reframe it myself.
People ask how having mania feels, and my reply is that it’s like walking a tightrope. At first it’s exhilarating, like the best drug imaginable or a perfect first date where there’s crazy chemistry and butterflies galore. I’ve described it like that moment in Titanic when Leonardo DiCaprio shouts “I’M KING OF THE WORLD!” I feel invincible.
I’ll go on wild spending sprees. VIP Taylor Swift gig tickets at £600 ($1300) a pop? Abso-f***ing-lutely! Plane tickets for family to LA? Essential! Treating my friends to festivals? Hell yes! Click, buy, click, buy. The reason I spend so much on others is an attempt to buy their love and make memories, I realise. I’m not alone, 70% of us with bipolar have issues with managing money during manic episodes.
Episodes of mania might be thrilling at the time. I just about had the money, but spent it on the wrong things, and never considered investing in my future because I didn’t think I’d live to see my future. Plus the Amex points were really useful…
After always be aware that everything that goes up, must also come down. And the higher you soar the further the fall. That’s the tightrope walking.
Mood stabilising drugs help, but they’re not fail-proof. Even taking them, I have between six and 10 episodes a year and because I’m a rapid cycler, they all look different, lasting different lengths of time.
I never know what the tipping point is because I’m normally incoherent when “in it”. I’m too busy buying the whole bar a round of drinks …
It’s only later when I can analyse my behaviour, realising the messy mistakes I’ve made. Then mortification hits me. Or with very severe episodes, I simply don’t remember. One of those episodes I woke up covered in bruises; my friend told me he was trying to stop me from thrashing about. Or I’ve woken up not knowing how I got home – when I’ve been sober. Generally, I try avoiding people during episodes (other than my parents and very close friends) as I know it’s scary for them.
As you can probably imagine, I’m not the easiest person to date. Relationships I can cause havoc in, normally ending with me shrouded in great shame. I’ll be the love of your life for three weeks – and if we get past that, we’re both in trouble. As one ex memorably noted, before they even knew I was bipolar: “You’ve done so well to keep the psycho inside, April, but please can you just keep the psycho in?” I knew they meant it as a joke, but they were right. And that’s the crux of it – I simply can’t.
Frankly, I should be banned from dating apps. In fact, in 2023 I remained celibate for a year during which I worked on myself and got to a better place.
I’m at the stage of life now where friends are getting married and having babies, and sometimes I look at them sadly, thinking “I’ll never have that”.
I’m lucky enough to have Sara, my business partner who I co-own Mini Productions with, the company I started at 21 – no doubt in the midst of an undiagnosed manic episode. Crucially, she looks after our finances.
Sara’s also the first to know when I’m on my way towards mania (sometimes even before I do). She understands that I’m contending with constant voices in my head that say I’m “too much”, that I’m “hard work” and feel desperately alone. But with Sara, over the past decade, we’ve built a successful company together, focusing on producing films that tackle topics such as mental health and sexuality.
I call the bad days “the mist” as that’s how it feels descending upon me when I feel so drained by the “here we go again” mornings when I can’t get out of bed. “Riding the mist” can mean sitting in an armchair and holding on for dear life. Or some days, just staying in bed.
But I want people to know that as crippling, exhausting and embarrassing it can be living with bipolar, it’s not a failure in our strength or character.
If I’m honest, there’s always a lingering feeling of not wanting to wake up, it would make everything so much easier. But instead of seeing this as a doomy thought, I’ve tried to turn it into more of a soothing one – to know there is an escape route. That helps, strangely, but that doesn’t mean it’s one I ever plan to take.
I’m overjoyed I made it to 2025 – I never imagined I would see 30, let alone be well enough to see my lifelong dream of moving to LA two years ago come true. Or get to see a film I produced premier at this month’s Sundance Film Festival.
I’m not saying it gets easier as I get older (it doesn’t) but I’m certain there’s too much life to be lived, and that means accepting the lows as well as the highs.
And, yes – I still very much enjoy a Jager Bomb, thank you.
For support and advice, see mentalhealth.org.nz
Source: Bipolar UK and NHS
As told to Susanna Galton
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