Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - 73: David Leite, Food Writer, Memoirist (LIVE!)

Episode Date: April 19, 2017

In a special edition of the "10% Happier" podcast, Dan Harris leads a discussion with David Leite, author of "Notes on a Banana: A Memoir of Food, Love and Manic Depression," in front of a live audience in New York City. Leite talks at length about struggling with bipolar disorder for decades -- and going undiagnosed for much of that time -- but also shares funny stories about navigating relationships and his passion for food. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

It kind of blows my mind to consider the fact that we're up to nearly 600 episodes of this podcast, the 10% happier podcast. That's a lot of conversations. I like to think of it as a great compendium of, and I know this is a bit of a grandiose term, but wisdom. The only downside of having this vast library of audio is that it can be hard to know where to start. So we're launching a new feature here, playlists, just like you put together a playlist of your favorite songs.

Back in the day, we used to call those mix tapes. Just like you do that with music, you can do it with podcasts. So if you're looking for episodes about anxiety, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes. Or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist of all of our anxiety episodes, or if you're looking for how to sleep better, we've got a playlist for that. We've even put together a playlist of some of my personal favorite episodes. That was a hard list to make. Check out our playlists at 10%.com slash playlist. That's 10% all one word spelled out..com slash playlist singular.

Let us know what you think. We're always open to tweaking how we do things and maybe there's a playlist we haven't thought of. Hit me up on Twitter or submit a comment through the website. Hey y'all, it's your girl, Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, singer, and entrepreneur. I'm a new podcast, baby, this is Kiki Palmer. I'm asking friends, family, and experts,

the questions that are in my head. Like, it's only fans only bad, where the names come from. And where's Tom from MySpace? Listen to Baby, this is the ski parmer on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, so we're doing something slightly unusual on the podcast this week, unusual in a couple of ways.

First, we recorded this episode live at the Barnes & Noble on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with a dude named David Leet. David is a friend and he is unusual for us in that the major thrust of his work is definitely not meditation nor is he inactive and ongoing meditator right now, although he's dabbled with it and aspires to do more of it.

But he does fit on the show because he's written a really funny memoir about of all things living with mental illness. David is by trade and by training a culinary writer and a cook. He's written cookbooks. He's got this big website called Leets Culinary,

which has won some James Beard's awards. But he's also lived with bipolar disorder for decades much of that time, unfortunately, undiagnosed. And so he's written this new book called Notes on a Banana, in which he talks about dealing with this situation, and the plot of the book is intertwined with lots of funny stories from his life and lots of stuff about food. So we recorded this, as I said, at the Barnes & Noble just a few days ago, and you're going to hear me talking to David, but also we then take questions from the crowd

So here it is here's David Lee From ABC, this is the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris Thanks for everybody for coming and congratulations to you, man. This is great. Yeah. We've been talking about this book for a long time. So, almost three years, yeah. Almost three years.

How are you feeling? Exhausted. Yeah. Absolutely. You know what it's like. I do. I do. I do.

I do. I do. I do. I do. I do. I do know what that feels like. I'll get used to it. And then try having it living with a two-year-old. It's a live edition of the 10% happier podcast. My name is Dan Harris, as I said, and this is David Leite. Normally on my little show we talk about meditation. This is a bit of a broadening because while David is interested in meditation, and that's kind of how we met actually. This is a book that is

about much more than that and it's a very brave and funny book in which David goes into some of the most personal and difficult aspects of his life. So let me just start by asking you about the title. Notes on a banana. Notes on a banana comes from Mama Leet, my mother, who ever since I was very young, she would have a banana with something written on it every morning in my breakfast spot at the table. It'd be on one end of the banana would say, God bless, other side would say, we love you.

And then the middle part, which is the big real estate, with anything that was going on that day. Have a good day, break a leg if it was school, drama club, do well in geometry test, whatever was going on that day. And it was kind of a way to kind of lift my spirits. And I call it the 1960s version of Snapchat. It's there, you eat it, it's gone completely. But we were communicating.

That's where the title came from. And she calls me Banana and Banana Head. That's her nickname for me. Hey, Banana Head. That's my motherly. Why did you want to write this book? Because you really lay it all out there in terms of mental health issues

that you've been wrestling with ever since you were a little boy. Why'd you want to do this? Because when I was going to write a small, little cute book about funny food essays, I had a lot of them on my website, things in Bonaparte, other places, and I posted something on my blog called Bipolar Disorder and Julia Child My Therapist. And I was going to do it for the 100th anniversary of Julia Child's birthday, and Alan, the one, said, that's a really bad idea. Okay, explain what you mean by the one.

The one. When Alan and I met 24 and a half years ago, he's the handsome guy standing back there. That's it, you know. Wave, you'll, you'll, when you read the book, you'll, you'll, you'll know all about him. He's having flops wet. He does not like that kind of attention. And so he said, it's really a bad idea. No one knows you was food. Everyone knows you as, no one knows you bad idea. No one knows you was food.

Everyone knows you as, no one knows you was mental illness. They know you was food. And other people in my industry said the same thing. So I said, no, forget it. I'm not going to do it. And then two years later, I said, no, I just have to do this. So I put it out. I thought, let's see what happens.

The response was so amazing. Setting aside the congratulations, it's brave. But what tell us what you wrote? Oh, that's a good point. It was when I was a kid, I would have these real sort of, I had a lot of anxiety. I had panic attacks starting at 11 years old. I mean, true, full-blown panic attacks.

And then I would also have these periods where I was just dark, bleak, punitive thoughts going through my head. I couldn't lift myself up. I couldn't, I just, my grades plummeted. But when I'd go home in the afternoon, Juyacha would be on TV on reruns. And for that half hour, those punitive thoughts just stopped. You would said to me a long time ago,

it was a distraction. It was a good distraction. I didn't think of it that way, because other things didn't distract me the same way. And I looked forward to it because I could just turn off the pain for half hour. And so I wrote about that. And then in it also goes saying that I had manic depression and what happened in Alan was brought into it. So it was kind of a condensed version of the

book. And so the response, setting aside the congratulations and it was very brave, people saying, you know, I have this. Oh, you know, my husband has this and he doesn't take his medication. And then it was one woman who said, who wrote an email to me, who said, you know, I wish my son would have written a red this before he killed himself. And then I went, there's something in my story, obviously it reached people.

And I thought I just had to tell it. I just thought, I have nothing to lose by telling the story. And so that's when I told my agent, Joy, I said, I'm not going to be doing this funny little book. I'm doing this much bigger, maybe funny. I'm not sure yet, book on my life. And she said, okay, I'm, she was game. It is funny.

And you tell you, weave in food, humor, and a third ingredient that very few people would have ever predicted, but mental illness. And it's a hard thing to do, but you manage to do it. Just on the not funny part of it, give us a sense of how, you talked about panic attacks, but give us a sense of how bad it got when it got really bad. Okay. When it got really bad, and first of all, imagine being an 11-year-old kid, and you do not know what's happening to your body. I walked into how it all began for me, was I walked into the House of Wax. Remember that movie with Vincent Price, the old 3D movie

award, the paper glasses, one blue, one green, or whatever it was, one red, one green, I think. Well, there was a scene there where all the wax dummies were melting, and I had this explosion in my chest. That just was awful, and this heat just went through my entire body, and my whole face felt like it was being embroidered. There was just so much prickling all over my body, and I didn't know what it was, and I was panting, and I was getting very nervous nervous and so I just jumped up and there was Brian Davis and his brother Jeff and we were 11 years old and I just fell over them to get out of the movie theater and I just ran

out into the lobby. I had no idea what happened. It's as if someone had like shot had had had had led off a shotgun or something in the theater. I just ran from something but I didn't know that something I was running from was in me and it wasn't gonna stop. And so I paced back and forth on the sidewalk for about 10 minutes, I realized that I had to get back in

or I'd look like an idiot, went back in and it happened again and it happened again and happened to third to fourth time in the movie. And from that point on, it just kept on bottoming out. I stopped eating, I lost so much weight, I couldn't sleep, I had insomnia, I'd wake up at three or four in the morning, and lie in bed, just waiting because my parents get up very early, like four, thirty in the morning, and so they would know that I was not awake if I had gotten up, so I'd just lay there and wait for the sun to come up.

And my mom and dad would say, how did you sleep? And I'm like, fine. And I would lie. And that was as a kid, but then as a good older, when I was in Carnegie Mellon University, it was excruciatingly painful because I couldn't function anymore. I was an acting class.

And I remember with this teacher, Angela Dan Brozier. And I was in the class, and I remember with this teacher, Angela D'Ambroge, and I was in the middle of a scene, and I shut down, and it's as if the world, I was looking at the world through the wrong end of a telescope. It's as if all of you were about a mile away. I just could not see any of you. I couldn't feel any. All I could hear was my heartbeat in my ears.

All I could sense was just this. My neck just swelled up against my collar, and just, I went home and I told the teacher I'm dropping out, she said, I think you should. And that was Angela. And I went through a two or three year period that it never got better. I just couldn't get out of, I could barely get out of bed, barely function. Talk about the modalities you used to address it. One of the big problems was you didn't actually get an accurate diagnosis for decades. But what did you do to try to fix this issue?

What was wrong with me? Yeah. Well, at many things, I threatened, cajole, tried meditation. But I also joined an interesting group for a little while. I did, I did. Well, that was the gay stuff. We can talk about that later, but that's the gay stuff.

But at 14 or 13 and a half, I told my mother, if you do not let me see a psychiatrist, I will kill myself. And she does not remember this, and I know exactly when I had said it, and I knew that I wouldn't kill myself, but I knew it was the only way that I could as a 13 and a half year old, explain to an adult how desperate this was.

And I was in a doctor's office in a matter of weeks down at Emmett's, Emmett's, Emmett Penelton Bradley Hospital in Providence. And I got the diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder. They didn't think kids back then could have manic depression. And then later on, you on, a lot of times, I just tough things through, tough things through. My family doctor wanted to give me tranquilizers at 11 years old, valium at 11 years old.

And I said, no, my father said no. And then I tried meditation. I remember this was the Shirley McLean error, and I would try to meditate. Now, try being manic depressive. You have in a hard enough time meditating, and you're just a normal regular person without a mood disorder.

Try being manic and trying to meditate or try being so depressed and meditating. It's virtually impossible for me. It's virtually impossible. Because I couldn't get beyond that hamster wheel in my head of what was going on. It's if my eyeballs were swiveled around and looking inside my head. So I tried that, and then I journaled and journaled and journaled. I talked the ear off of every single person I was close to, someone in this room, and they tried to help. They didn't know what it was. I went to God.

I went to church. I went for walks, exercises, tried to change my diet. I didn't know what was wrong with me, so I couldn't address it. So it's like throwing everything at the wall and hoping something is going to stick. What finally did it for you? Getting the diagnosis. And diagnosing myself. I had to diagnose myself with manic depression.

And when I finally diagnosed myself and then I went to a very competent doctor. And I said, just evaluate me. I don't doctor and I said, just evaluate me. I don't need to see you, just evaluate me and he took me in and he evaluated me and he said, you have bipolar II disorder, which is a milder form of bipolar. Bipolar I is the real big broad spectrum, the psychotic, all that kind of craziness

and craziness, I shouldn't say that, that's like the politically incorrect word, but all that kind of behavior that's very large and very big. A lot of it can be very suicidal to terrible depressions. Mine had hypomania, which was sort of a mini version of mania. So I felt great. I could be really creative and I could stay up all night and do great things. But my life didn't collapse during the mania, but it bottomed out on the depression.

And took four years from that point to get the proper medication, a combination. And when that happened, I felt as if all this armor that I'd been carrying around since I was 11 just fell off of me in pieces. And I actually understood my weight and my size and the volume I took up in the world because I was no longer fighting this invisible enemy.

And that's when I feel, that was kind of like a second birthday for me. The other modality you talk about in terms of trying to get some measure of healing while you're suffering was food and cooking. Specifically the act of cooking with the one. With the one. Absolutely. It started actually first when I was in Carnegie Mellon University and I decided to quit or take a leap of absence and that eventually became withdrawal. My college girlfriend at that time

said that she found a job on some bulletin board for a professor who wanted a family cook. And I took the job and I knew nothing about cooking. And he says, so you've cooked for before. And I'm not guessing, of course, I have, which was technically true. And he said, you've cooked for others. And I'm like, yes, which was technically true.

I had cooked for other people. And he explained, I just go in five days a week, three hours a day, cook the family meal, leave it on the stove. They will eat it. And I give a shopping list on Fridays, and they will shop for me, and then I'll do it again on Monday. It was the act of being in that kitchen when everyone at Carnegie Mellon was,

their butts were up in the air doing, you know, downward dog, I just knew that's what they were doing, but I was chopping, and I was doing different things, and it was that rhythmic talk, talk, talk of the knife, just chopping through herbs, or doing something that just slowed me down, and I talked in the book how time became very elastic. It didn't, it wasn't sequential anymore. Like everyone at Carnegie Mellon was still sequential, class, class, class, class. Me, it just became elastic. And there were these moments, because I don't know, to me,

I just see time stretch so much, there were these breaks and time were just a little bit of happiness came through. And that was the first step. And then when I had another massive break when I was with Alan the one in 1994 or 5, just I would go to the kitchen and I would cook or bake, baking was a big thing. And I talked in the book about how just watching a pad of butter heat and start to melt and just slump to the side of the cast iron skillet. It was just so comforting to me. It slowed me and made me just feel grounded to something. So, I mean, is that mindfulness? Is that mindfulness that what I was doing? Watching a pad of butter? Yeah, I mean anything you're paying attention to,

carefully, and knowing that you are paying attention to it is mindfulness. Then I was practicing mindfulness meditation before danded. I heard that. Yep, you and the Buddha. So now that we're talking about meditation, you said, circa Shirley McLean, you got into it, but how was that an abiding habit? Have you ever come back to it?

Where is it? Where does it fit enough? In Carnegie Mellon, it was a desperate attempt to just slow things down, and it was not particularly successful. My girlfriend at the time got me into it. And so I would try all these things. I just did whatever Shirley McLean did.

I talked to trees and try and make their leaves move. And when they did, I thought I have so much power. But it was desperate. But later on, when things evened out, and I wasn't on medication yet, but it was before medication, but I had a meditation habit that I would do 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes at night. That's a lot.

Every day, seven days a week, probably for about, I guess for almost a year. But then that's when I got really kind of the hoopy-doopy stuff that you talk about and I had spirits talking. Oh, and say that again. Hoopy-doopy stuff. Yeah, I've never used that term.

You never used that term. I've never used that term. I'm a clear. I'm not a clear par on the record. But what do you do? What do you mean when you see that? Well, the whole thing about everybody was talking to the disembodied at that point. Everybody had spirits coming from it. This is when you did the 30 minutes a day thing,

or this is back when Shirley McLean played. 30 minutes a day thing. I started playing around with some of that. And so I started kind of talking to spirits. So yeah, I did. For a while. You know, I mean, you have to question with some of that. So I started kind of, you started talking to spirits? Yeah, I did. Yeah, for a while. All right. You know, I mean, you have to question the validity of that.

But I do. And as you should. As you should. But that was, I mean, really, there was just a whole movement of everyone talking to the dead at that point. But what it did, though, and that was when I was working at Windows on the World, it was, and that's happened. And the restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center.

Yes, it was in our jewelry. So we had the Southern Eastern view. And I remember that was after a particularly real bad manic phase, which we really haven't talked about, and then a really bad depressive phase, which was very short and very discreet, that I started feeling very even. And when I felt very even,reet that I started feeling very even.

And when I felt very even is when I started doing the meditating and that's when I began writing too. I was doing journal writing, but there were other writing that I started to do which I didn't expect. Do you do it anymore? I try. I try to do mindful meditation. That meditation was like going under deeper and deeper down and down deeper and deeper

than you Heading a mantra to yourself. Yes, and it's the cocking out kind and you wake up and you feel good because you just slept for a half hour But I do I try and I've been trying to do more of the mindful stuff. I use actually your Your pot your app The cost 10% happier available your pot, your app. It's 10% happier available than you have left. And it's really obviously it's. Thank you for mentioning that.

And he did not pay me for that. It's an unpaid solicitation. That's how you appreciate that. And why don't you put it in the book? Just by 100 books. That's all I've probably found. And so I started using that. And just most recently, just kind of a side thing,

I've lined this piece. And I was diagnosed this past year, didn't know what was going on for the longest time and to sort of deal with some of those symptoms, I did the, your, with Joseph, it was Joseph's voice and my head Joseph, Goldstein in his head, in my head. And so that was, I am trying to get there. It's harder when you have all this chatter.

And chatter that I think other people just don't have. Because of my illness. I, it's hard to know about the levels of chatter, but just take comfort in knowing that the human condition seen clearly is insanity. Just if you close your eyes and watch what happens, it ain't pretty for anyone. And so, I don't doubt that it's entirely possible that it is more intense in your mind, but just know you are certainly not alone. Everybody who's ever lived is stealing

within insane torrent of thoughts. And if you think you are, you haven't looked closely enough. Okay, well, that's I have, I have,, well, I'm a good company, that's very good company. One of the biggest, I'm interested in sort of text-onymizing the reasons that people don't meditate. And one of them is that they think they can't do it. And the key thing to understand is that when you think you're failing, you are actually succeeding. The game is noticing, oh, I've become distracted. I'm a selfish, ego maniacal, fully random, completely absurd, human being, thinking about all these things.

Noticing that and then starting again, returning your attention to your breath is success. I was just talking to the one about this, as a matter of fact. So people fall victim to what I call the fallacy of uniqueness that you are somehow uniquely crazy. Welcome to the human situation. David may actually be.

You're uniquely crazy. You're uniquely crazy. I know that's politically. That's the name of your next book. You're uniquely crazy. So we brought something up and I don't want to let drop earlier. I said, you joined an interesting group and you said, that was the gay thing.

We can talk about that later. Tell me about the group. It's the later time. I also do want to talk a little bit about Mania, but I'll talk about the gay thing. We do that too. You can do it in whatever order you want. OK, we'll do the gay thing.

The gay thing's fun. It's being gay in the 70s, it's just not what you want to do. It's just you don't choose to go. I'm going to be gay in a time that nobody wants to deal with me. But I knew that I was. I knew that when all those boys were going down and just doing what we did on that road, and suddenly all these other guys start taking this swerving right to girls and I'm going, whoa, that's just not a road I want to take.

I don't understand this. I just kept going and I thought, okay, well maybe I have a later turn off. You know, maybe I'll just take the next exit. Maybe it's going to happen for me later. Maybe the exit after that. And so I was aware at teens that I had this. And I just, I didn't want to be gay.

And then I went to college, and I basically kind of stepped out of a closet. I did not like come out to me this big dramatic statement. I kind of like tiptoed out in stages. And so I kind of, I say that I went in gay and I kind of came out, I went in faux straight and I came out gay. Then I went to Carnegie Mellon University and what happened was I met a woman. The last thing I thought was gonna happen

was meeting a woman and she swept me off my feet and I just, I fell madly for her. And I thought, well, okay, that ex is gonna happen. It's something going to change. The sexual stuff will catch up with all the emotional stuff, because the emotional stuff was so incredibly powerful, but I was waiting for the other stuff to catch up. And it was a very tumultuous relationship,

it was a very difficult relationship. It didn't, the sexual stuff didn't catch up. But then I heard about this thing called aesthetic realism, which is down to... A aesthetic realism. A aesthetic realism. And is down to aesthetic realism And it's downtown on green streets. Does it still exist? It still exists. It still exists and One of the things they do

They did was to change gay men and women's straight And so I thought this is for me because I will change We will get married. We will have two boys, Joshua and Joshua David Benjamin, Michael, and a girl named Amelia. I was all set. And then things didn't work out between she and me. And so she started seeing someone else. And I came to New York to be an actor. And when I came to New York, I continued studying this. And it was the most to me, my opinion, the most abusive, the most upsetting, the most moralizing, the most hateful experience I ever could have gotten involved with. It was just an extraordinarily

difficult thing for me because I, they just kept on insisting I wasn't trying enough, I wasn't being respectful enough. I don't want to go into the whole philosophy, it's a very complicated, convoluted philosophy. And I, after two years, desperately trying, my whole social life was in the organization. And with everyone was there. And so when I was done with work at Windows on the World, I went to see them.

They wanted me to tell my parents about this. They wanted me to get people at Windows on the World. I went to see them. They wanted me to tell my parents about this. They wanted me to get people at Windows in the World to come to their programs that they had at the terrain gallery on Green Street. And when I fed up, I decided to leave. The breaking point for me was they had victim of the press buttons. They felt that they were victim of the press,

victims of the press, because the press would not fairly report on aesthetic realism. So I never wore one, and I got caught one time without it, because I would slip it on and slip it off when I went to the meetings, and I was caught without it, and someone gave me a big, big dressing down, and I thought, this is it, and I walked out, and then when I left, now one person contacted me, I was shunned by every single person I knew. And that's when I said, that's it. And I took all the material, because you have consultations where you have three people just chattering at you for an hour.

All my consultation tapes, all the books, all of the brochures, and I did a big fire, and just burned it all. And then took it all out, put it on the trash, and I've been gay ever since. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha Absolutely true and absolutely shocking stories about the most famous families and biggest celebrities the world has ever seen Our newer series is all about drag icon RuPaul Charles After a childhood of being ignored by his absentee father Ru goes out searching for love and acceptance

But the road to success is a rocky one Substance abuse and mental health struggles threatened to veer Roo off course in our series RuPaul born naked We'll show you how RuPaul overcame his demons and carved out a place for himself as one of the world's top entertainers Opening the doors for aspiring queens everywhere Follow even the rich wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad free on Amazon music or the Wendery app So I don't know anything about it, just to be journalistically upfront. I don't know anything about this group. But what strikes me is,

I'm gonna walk up to the line of breaking a rule, it's my rule. I have a rule that I never tell people they should meditate. My wife doesn't meditate. I often reference a great cartoon that ran in the New Yorker has two women having lunch. One of them says to the other, I've been gluten free for a week and I'm already annoying. I feel like the same thing applies

to meditation. So I talk about it if people want to talk about it, but I don't ever wag my finger until people they should do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it.

I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it.

I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. I don didn't want to be Portuguese. Right, right. It wanted to be a wasp. But some of the great parts of the book are really about Portuguese-American culture in the state of Rhode Island.

But yes, of course, you had mixed feelings. You wanted to be more mainstream, and you wanted to eat McDonald's, and your parents didn't like it. And so yeah, it's constantly at war with your own experience. And what I like about meditation and might be of use to you, maybe, and this is where I'm tiptoeing up to that line, is that it actually is about leaning into what is actually, whatever is happening right now,

and being fully who you are without judgment. And so you're not battling with reality in a way that you will never win. Yeah. That's a very good concept. I just don't know how to do it. I just don't know how to do it. And I'd done it. I would have done it years ago.

But I mean, I understand what you're saying. And I have always... See, there's something on the Portuguese culture, especially with my mother, called Veneta. Now, Veneta is an untranslatable word. It's another huge part of the book. Huge part of the book. Veneta comes up a lot.

I will kind of describe it for you. It is an indomitable force of will. It is a determination. It is a rage. It is a passion, a power, all rolled up into one thing. And in my family, the embodiment of my mother, and she gave it to me. And so she taught me, just by sheer Veneta,

I could move mountains. That's what she did. She got what she wanted by sheer Veneta. So I just battled and battled and battled every single one of those things, which is now, you know, my age, and I'm tired of battling all that stuff. I cannot battle myself back to being straight, never was straight. Back to being straight, I can't battle myself to not have you mental illness, I cannot battle

myself to being blonde hair blue-eyed and be adopted by Samantha Stevens and Darren Stevens of Bewitched. I cannot do that. But that's what the whole book's about. It's me trying. Yeah, but by the end, we realize you're pretty great as you are. Well, that's kind of where I can thank you. And that's an ongoing construction. I'm still trying to deal with that one. Yeah, let's get Alan's view on that later.

That's exactly what his book's going to be about. Exactly. You asked me to ask you about the notes on a banana project. Oh, it's called the Banana Project. The Banana Project. My apologies. The Banana Project. Tell us.

You are all sitting on or holding two bookmarks that have this big beautiful yellow banana. And the Banana Project is kind of taking what my mother did, are holding two bookmarks that have this big beautiful yellow banana. And the banana project is kind of taking what my mother did, which was writing notes on a banana to me, which cheered me, lifted me, made me feel better. And when people started seeing this, I would, I posted my mother's bananas online on social media. So it started in the 60s, kind of that 60s version of Snapchat.

And then I took a picture of a banana she wrote me on Mother's Day 2014. She's like, you're the reason I'm a mother. And God bless you and we love you and little hearts. And the book was called at that point in my mind was called Happiness Backwards. Because I kind of backed into happiness. But when I put that online, it went viral. People that this is the most amazing thing. And I'm like, what's wrong with you people?

Don't your mother's right on bananas? It was the most foreign thing in my mind that no one had mothers who wrote on bananas. And so then people started writing on bananas to me. So I want to have this banana project. And it's starting now where you take the bookmark, you write words of encouragement, love, support, anything to someone that you love, take a picture of it, you can hold it up and have someone take a picture of it, put it on social media if you'd like, put the hashtag notes on a banana.

But we want to create as a big, wonderful digital quilt of love, support, and caring, that just now I think in our society and our world, I think we need more of that more than ever. And someone's having a bad day, write something on the banana, throw it on their desk at work. Yeah, your husband has grouchy, write something on it, you know. Propose to your girlfriend, a boyfriend, write it on the banana. Whatever it is, I just think that if we can have something that's just that kind of fun and silly and simple, a simple statement,

I just think it's just what I'd be a wonderfully compassionate movement of love. I want to open it up for questions, but while we're opening up for questions, those of you who want to fill out your banana can do so. So let's do two things at once. Let's walk and Choo Banana at one. But we have a microphone, who has a microphone? This handsome gentleman in the rear here has a microphone, which as I know daunting, but it only takes one to break the ice. So who's going to go first? Okay, I love you. What's your name? Sinda.

Sinda. And here is... And here is... Oh, okay. Congratulations. Thank you okay. Congratulations. Thank you, Lucinda. I want you to go back and you said you were gonna talk about the mania.

Oh, right, right. Thank you, Lucinda. She's doing my job for me. That's perfectly fine. I sometimes hijack interviews. The mania for me, when you're bipolar too, your manias are not these sort of neon colored, tetanacolor spectacular big things, you know, where psychosis can happen.

You can go out and you can spend all of your money on really risky things and such. You can buy like three cars. I have hypomania. So my hypomania, I didn buy like three cars. I have hypomania, so my hypomania, I didn't understand my pattern. I had these depressions, and I didn't know until I was 30 something years old, I was having depression. I was in such deep denial

that I didn't know I was having depression. The pattern was, there was this slight revving up of an engine, just slight. So I would suddenly get a lot done today. And I'm like, wow, this is good. I like this. I like me. And then it would go a little bit more. And then I'd start making lists, let's say. And then I'd make just the to-do lists. And I get them done in half a day. Then I would start doing the capital to-do list, which is let's do something that saves humanity with capital H. Really kind of,

okay, but I thought I can do this. I can do something like that. And it would just start to build. And they'd be more energy and the locomotive would go more and more. And then, as Alan knows, there comes a point where you all want to come to our house for dinner, because that's when I am the perfect host. I will do the perfect dinner. I will do the perfect dinner, I will be perfect in charming and funny and witty, I will sing songs, I will do whatever you'd like. That's when you want to be with us. I've done that, actually.

Yeah, it's great view here. Some of you here have actually been there in our house when I've done this and then it just starts to go and then it starts to get a little bit gritty and a little bit angry and a little bit irritable. And why the hell is everyone in the world so freaking slow? Why can't things go faster? Why is this cashier so ridiculously slow?

And then I start getting angry and rageful and really upset. And it gets bigger and bigger and I start screaming. I scream in the book you'll find out the f word at a cop over and over and over again because he gave us a ticket and I don't know where this came from. And then it just explodes into this skyrocketing of anxiety and panic and then it's this plummet straight down into this abyss of depression

and there's nothing that catches it. So for me, that's what it's like. I never went out and bought cars. I never spent lots of money. I did some risky behavior. I will even. I've done some risky behavior, some like for instance, with a cop. But that's kind of my thing.

And I noticed when I have that real panic, or I start to feel the rumble of panic as it gets there up there, I look and I go, I haven't been sleeping. I haven't been eating. I haven't been regular with what's going on. I've been doing too much. I've been staying up too much. Alan will tell you, we will have dinner, and we won't have dinner.

He will have dinner. I will be on my computer working. And then I feel really bad about it, so that I beat myself up. And then I stay up longer to get more work done, so tomorrow I can't have dinner. I will be on my computer working. And then I feel really bad about it, so I beat myself up. And then I stay up longer to get more work done. So tomorrow I can't have dinner, but I didn't get it done. So I was beating myself up, so I stay up longer the next night. And it's just that kind of abusive punitive thing that builds.

So for me, that's my particular one. I know other people who their manias are very, very different. But that's me. At this point, do you sense that revving and have a way to subvert it in your coping mechanism that you've learned? But see for me, does the medication not for stall the revving or?

It does, it does. If I didn't have the meds, I'd be flipping out, left and right. I've had four or five major, I call them grandmaw breakdowns. That's what I call them. When just life fell apart, had a drop out of Carnegie Mellon, had a drop out of Hunter University, everything fell apart. I do. The thing is, what's so tantalizing about being bipolar is you start to feel so good and you don't realize at first that you're feeling bipolar good. You just think, you know, it's a sunny day. It's Julie Andrews Day, you know, that's what you feel.

And Alan usually says to me, well, you are right. And so I try to walk up to that line, you walk up to your, I try to walk up to my line before I cross over it. And sometimes I do cross over, but I try to get close to that line so I can keep on feeling good. But inevitably, if I get too close to that line so I can keep on feeling good. But inevitably, if I get too close to the line, it's just going to suck me in. So I need to push away, and I don't do it very well, and go to sleep, take naps. That's one of the coping mechanisms.

That's one of the coping mechanisms. I do talk, go to therapy, talk to my psychiatrist, the medication guy, for any kind of adjustments. It's not easy. If anyone, if anyone, I don't want to have you reveal your cells, but if you're living with someone or you are someone with mental illness, you know how hard it is to walk up to that line, not cross it, and try and still maintain a life. So yeah, we can talk more also about coping mechanisms if you want later, I'm happy to.

Congratulations. Thank you. So my question to you is, it sounds like you had an incredibly loving and supportive mother and that you still do. When did she find out that you had been fake sleeping and that you were going through all these issues and how did you start?

And I think when I- I think when I- She knew that something was wrong because the night of the House of Wax, I still didn't know what was going on. I didn't tell her what I did call her from the movie and she's like, I thought you were in the movie. I said, I am. She said, why are you calling? I said, I just wanted to say hi. She goes, hi, so get back in the movie and then hung up. And so I was like, oh, I was, you

know, I didn't know what to do. And so she knew that something was up. She had sensed it. But you know, when you're a kid, everything was just sluffed off to he's a kid. He's going through a phase, he's sensitive. We all got that, that's what happened. And so they watched me very closely, but that night what happened was, things started to calm down. I was a member watching all the family,

the Sandy Duncan show, when I think Mary Tyler Moore, maybe. And by the time I get to Mary Tyler Moore, I was feeling okay. And I started to drift a little bit and then it just this eruption happened again. That was the panic attack. It just happened again. And I screamed, my mother jumped up,

she was sleeping in her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her, her recliner my father jumped up and they realized something was wrong so they tried very hard to kind of tamp it down to help me Understand it bring me to the doctor. That's when he said you can take tranquilizers, and I'm like, no, that's what Julie Garland did I'm not taking tranquilizers. I'm not you know sparkle Neely sparkle. I'm not gonna do that and And then but thing the thing about this is it went away. It happened so quickly. And I remember I was visiting my grandmother and grandfather the next town over, and we were, it was gone.

It was as if it never happened. It was gone. I thought, well, this just was one of those weird things that happened. And then it happened a year later, like six months well, this just was one of those weird things. See, that happened. And then it happened a year later, like six months later, when I watched the Beside Adventure. And it's not movies that trigger it specifically, but I'd be meeting motion pictures,

but there are things I think in movies that kind of triggered stuff. And it happened again, but at that point, it lasted for a long time. And that's when I said, if you're gonna let me see a doctor, I will kill myself. That threat got her up and out. But my mother was resistant to me seeing a psychiatrist. She I don't know what secrets she thought I was going to tell. We didn't have secrets. Well, I think there was some social aspect.

Right. The Portuguese. Well, I mean, being in that time none of us knew anyone who had seen a psychiatrist. None of us even knew psychiatrists. It was seen as a weakness. You deal with things in what I call the humid huddle of the family. That's where you work things out. The humid huddle of my family did not work for me, because I wasn't getting any better. And I had that vignetta that my mother gave me.

And it's like, hello, world, get off my runway. I'm going to go out there, and I'm going to do it. And that's when I had that vignette that my mother gave me. And you know, it's like, hello world, get off my runway. You know, I'm gonna go out there and I'm gonna do it. And that's when I said that. So once she realized that I needed to see a doctor, a psychologist, she basically was like, fine, she says, when they said, well, I think that you need, you and your husband should come in for case work. She said, I don't think that's necessary. But we'll bring David in, because there was this sense of, we're not responsible for this. So, and we had a kind of a rocky relationship about this, because she was making it at one point.

She says, I did this to you. I did this to you. I go, my command. It's your chromosomes or daddy's chromosomes. I don't know which, but let's not do the blame game here. Let's just get me better. So it was, what I had was this bedrock of a family. But it was, she had a hard time dealing with,

my son has mental illness, my son is gay. She had no problem with her son being Portuguese. If he wasn't, there'd be a problem. But those two things she really had a problem with, it took her a long time and credit to both of them. They are evangelical Christians, and they have embraced both completely. So applaud for them.

I really appreciate it. That was stepping out of their comfort zone. Any other questions here? So you get all the way through this, and then you decide to write about it. Maybe some of the people in this room are writing memoir, and they'd love to know about the choice to go back and look, how hard it is, and whether or not that aspect of the work

itself is therapeutic. To me, writing this book was like crawling on my belly across broken glass. It was so good. Yeah, it felt great. I didn't... I thought I had dealt with all of this stuff. I thought I had dealt with all of these things. I had been in therapy for 12 years with this therapist in the book, David Lindsay Griffin, Funny Guy.

We're gonna be work through a lot of stuff. I had been in a relationship for that point 22 and a half years. My life was settled, life was good. And I realized in order for me to do this, I had to un-unseek my life, unhinged my life, break it all apart into its constituent parts. And then you have to look at which ones do I need, I want to include. There's a lot that happened to me that you guys don't know about, and I'm not going to

tell you, because they weren't important to this particular book. So if anyone is writing memoir, or anyone wants to write a memoir, I think that you have to ask yourself, first of all, age of life interesting enough, and I think most of us have interesting enough lives, but secondly, are you willing to be honest enough with yourself?

If you're not honest, it's never, I don't think you're ever gonna get something that works, and it's not gonna touch people, because I've always said, when I taught writing for the briefest, briefest time, I was a terrible teacher, was the more specific your story, the more universally appeal. And I think that's really important when you write these stories, because I always say, who cares about the tale of a fat, old, homo?

Who really cares? And I'll tell you, I was shocked to find so many people actually care Because so many people can relate was like is he talking about himself? Regardless of what the what what their life stories are they were able to relate they were able to find parts of their lives That related so that was I don't know if I answered your question fully, but Yeah, so it was a very hard process. I'm glad that I did it. And reflectively looking back, I see myself in a way that I have never seen myself. I'm more three-dimensional to myself because I've done this exercise.

Hi. I just want to say thank you so much for saying that the mania is tantalizing. I really, I wrote that down. I'm a clinician. I work with kids with severe mental illness, and oftentimes I have to work with parents. What message would you want to deliver to those people, specifically, working with children,

where there is a lot of confusion of, you know, I feel really great. Why would I want to get rid of this? And then I feel really sad. But like, how would you explain that to people and what would you want us to deliver? Yeah, I think that first of all if you do not have a mental illness if you do not have bipolar or any kind of mental illness you cannot imagine the horror. It is especially to a child who doesn't have the cognitive ability to be able to go, this is what's happening.

They just can't jump onto YouTube and go, want to spend all my money, you know, all these different, and then come up with a, you know, bipolar disorder. They don't know what's going on with them. So number one is great, great patients, and they have to understand that. I think terrific patients for these kids. And I think, kind of this, it's really hard to, you know, try to think back what would I have wanted. I would have wanted to be assured, I would have wanted to be deeply and truly assured

that I would be okay, that there is a medication, a doctor, a modality, a person, a place, a thing that will help me. And to use that wonderful campaign that they did for gay youth who are getting bullied, it does get better. David, you would have also wanted just to have read your book, a proper diagnosis. Yes, yes. I think you're saying these are, or these kids already diagnosed properly, right? Yes, definitely. That's number one is a proper diagnosis. And then parents watch the doctors. I mean, if there's any doctors in here, please forgive me, but watch the doctors. Because not every doctor's right for every patient,

let alone every kid. And I think it needs to be a dialogue. I think 90% has to happen between parent and doctor and then 10% between doctor and kid. That's where the real work is the parent and the doctor because they really, that's where that work will happen at home when the doctor's not there. They keep can't take care of himself

and I don't know how well they are, but you know, an eight year old, 10 year old, 12 year old, they really can't take care of themselves the way a 25 or 30 year old can. They can't make the right choices. So that's some of what, I don't know if I answered fully, but that's what I would have wanted. I did the biggest thing was the reassurance.

I could hold on to, I could feel miserable for the longest time. If someone just told me, you will be okay. That little bit of hope is what got me through. I have a very, very fine writing teacher who always calls it the human pilot light. And that human pilot light is what got me through. And these kids all have a human pilot light. We all have a human pilot light. Make sure it doesn't blow out.

Well said. Let's do one more question in the back here and then I'll hold to my commitment to getting us out on time. At what stage were you in mentally when you met David? When I met. David. You mean Alan? I mean Alan. Alan?

Alan? I was in a fine state of mind. Actually, I was so over men at that point, I was willing to go, I was willing to try and be straight again. Because dating in New York and dating other men in New York is something you do not want to do. But trust me, you don't want to do it. So when we met, I was very leery.

I placed an ad in New York Magazine. I placed an ad in Village Voice, and it was a disaster. I had this parade of very interesting characters. And then I put it in New York Magazine. And his was the very first that I answered. And so we went out on a date and I looked at him and I thought, oh my god, this is never going to work. Never going to work.

And he looked at me. It's not on the book. He looked at me as if this is never going to work. Wait, what about him? Because he's a handsome man. I thought he was gorgeous. He implant hair blue eyes. I mean, I mean, talk about my wasp fetish.

I mean, he was, they was, I mean, you know, I just wanted like a wrap of mine, like a coat. I mean, it'd be a wasp. It's all I wanted. But no, he was wearing and he will deny this, but he was wearing a Hugo Boss jacket. His shirt on button down to there, sprayed on jeans and cowboy boots.

And all I thought was, oh my God, fire Ellen Queen, I am outta here. And to his credit, I was wearing a green, Kelly Green, Hugo Boss jacket, a yellow ox for sure, tastefully buttoned, loose jeans, penny loafersers with dimes in them. And he took one look at me and went, oh my god, Hilton head.

It's never going to work. So all I kept on thinking was, can I get back in time for Murphy Brown? And but I'll tell you, that date just turned around. We had it. We dated someone in common. We didn't realize it. And it was that guy that we dated in common that just made us laugh and laugh and laugh.

And then I thought, oh, and then what did it? I write in the book, we walked away. And now I'm not going to cry. He looked back once. He looked back twice. He looked back three times. And I say in the book, you can fall in love with the guy who looks back three times. At say in the book you can fall in love with the guy who looks back three times at this point

Where you are in medication? Huh? Were you on medication? Oh no, I was So is the implication you're not sure he actually saw three looks He might not have looked back at all. Right, exactly. I didn't even want to date with the man. He actually was in the ER, he was the ER doctor that I met one day. No, I was not a medication at all at that point.

We did the medication journey together about three years later when my life fell apart really again. It fell apart in high college with my college girlfriend. It fell apart with him and fell apart three other times prior to college. Four or five major times it fell apart. So the one really emerges as a hero in this book of standing by you throughout all this, which is a huge, huge asset.

Huge asset. I don't, you know, I think that, yes, and I don't want to joke about it, I want to be funny about it. Yes, he had every reason to run. Every reason to run. It's hard to run in cowboy boots. Because I get a run in my, in my, by penny loafers, he had every reason to run and he didn't, and I don't know why he didn't. to run and he didn't and I don't know why he didn't and he stuck by me and he went to doctor after doctor with me and there's a scene where I took my shrink and I took him to talk to a doctor who was really an arrogant arrogance son of a gun and he helped me he just he helped and I don't know why I don't I dies I would have left me. I would have left me, but he never did. So it was the baked goods.

What? It was all that stuff you were baking, man. Yeah, it was. Well, actually, he's the one who got me into food. Actually, it was, it was Alan who got me into food. That's how my whole food career started. It was because of that man. I was young, thin and beautiful at one time. I was. And I had the same hair. But young, thin, and beautiful at one time. I was. And I had the same hair, but young, thin, and beautiful, and then never looked back.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Congratulations on the book. Thank you. Thank you. I want to thank everybody here for coming. Thank you very much. Also, thank you everybody who's watching on the ABC News

livestream, and also to my producers Paul Forfum, I believe her back there, I had to take a lot of hustles at this up live, thank you guys really appreciate a big salute to you. Thank you. Okay there's another edition of the 10% Happier Podcast, if you liked it please make sure to subscribe, rate us, and if you want to suggest topics we should cover or guess we should bring in, hit me up on Twitter at Dan B. Harris. I also want to thank Hardly, the people who produced this podcast and really do pretty much all the work.

Lauren, Efron, Josh Cohen, Sarah Amos, Andrew Calp, Steve Jones, and the head of ABC News Digital Dan Silver. I'll talk to you next Wednesday. Hey, hey, prime members. You can listen to 10% happier early and ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. Before you go, do us a solid and tell us all about yourself

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