Your Relationship with a Bipolar Brain | Inside the Mind of a Bipolar Person: An Interview (Part 1)

Mihir Bhushan Bhole
Jul 2, 2020
5 min read

Updated: Aug 9, 2020

Thursday 02/07/2020, By Mihir Bhushan Bhole

[Disclaimer: The interviewee (Sandip Dust) has agreed to allow publication of their name and details to S&S, and has allowed for a complete analysis of their words. This is a full written interview that I conducted for S&S and has been written from an Audio recording, available in full, to both the interviewee and S&S. Any Opinions stated by both parties are fully independent of the opinions of each other and should be treated as such. Any reference to Study Material, or External Media, shall be linked to inside the article, as well as at the end of the interview. This interview was not a medical counsel. Far from it. S&S does not have the authority to publish or conduct medical counselling, and hence, should not be contacted for it.]

This is the full write-up of an interview, recorded on 28/06/2020. It has been divided into parts for ease of categorization and media sharing.

Part 1: Your Relationship with a Bipolar Brain. (You are Here) Part 2: Journey of Bipolar Disorder. Go to Part 2. Part 3: The World of Mental Illness. Go to Part 3. Simple Summary of the article: (Coming Soon)

Part 1: Your Relationship with a Bipolar Brain.

Q. Please, introduce yourself as much as you can. A. My Name is Sandip Dust. I’m currently studying Computer Science Engineering (F.Y.). I’m 26 years old. I’m a full-stack web developer. I’ve been working with Companies from the United States very recently. I’ve been struggling with Bipolar Disorder for the past 3-4 years.

Q. Thank you for taking the time to talk with me. With this interview, I intend to get insight into the world, as seen by a bipolar patient. What do you think of this interview, i:e what expectations do you have, from this interview? A. Whenever I go to Social Media platforms, especially Instagram, I see a lot of posts about Mental Health & Awareness, and people posting various stuff about it. Especially messages like, “If you’re depressed, Contact me” etc. The people that do this, do not always know the full extent of Mental Health Conditions, especially about Bipolar Conditions. Through this interview, I would like to make people more aware of what a Mentally ill person goes through, especially Bipolar patients. That’s my primary expectation of this interview.

Q. Let’s Begin, then. How, is your relationship with your brain? What did you pinpoint as the root cause of this for yourself? A. Scientists have found that people with Bipolar disorder have different Brain Structures. Other mental issues like Depression and Schizophrenia may get cured, but Bipolar cannot be fully cured; it is lifelong because it is a different brain structure. It looks like a full cure may involve brain surgery in the future. [I see.] About me and my brain, well, I’ve felt suicidal during my past. It is a thought that I get due to my brain. Consider a Pizza or your favourite food item. When you see it, you get an impulse to eat it. Or, If you were a straight guy walking down the street, and see a beautiful girl across the street, maybe you’d get attracted to her, you’d wanna talk to her, maybe you actually approach her, but you feel an impulse, an urge to interact with her. People with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), or Bipolar Disorder in their Depressive phase, they get an urge to end their own self, for no reason. It’s due to an imbalance of the hormones or something close, but that’s what creates the urge. It’s not rational at all; it is the body chemistry acting on you. You have to learn how to control/ push aside these impulses. In the past, I was very impulsive. Whatever my brain used to say, I’d do it. I’d Blow all of my money on food, engage in high-risk activities, whatever my brain would tell me, I’d act upon it. With proper training and self-control, I’ve learned to deal with it. In a way, my current relationship with my brain is better than before; even if I’d get an urge of suicide, or I feel down, I have learned to ignore it. I have PTSD from a rather terrible relationship I’ve had around 2011-2017, and that was one of the key events that triggered the disorder. However, irrespective of whether this event happened or not, the disorder would’ve triggered, because Bipolar itself manifests in my 20's. I would’ve had to experience it because my lineage has a genetic history of mental illnesses.

Q. You mentioned in your Reddit Post, that some had Schizophrenia, some had Bipolar, same as you. Is there a connection to the lineage of your family, in some way? Is Mental Health a defining issue in your lineage, so to speak? A. My maternal grandmother committed suicide due to schizophrenia back in 1998. My maternal uncle is in his 50’s right now. He is homeless, even though he owns a huge home. He’s so mentally ill, he cannot live there alone. Sometimes, he’d show up at our house, and my mother would give him some food. It is a very miserable life for him. My parents and I cannot fully provide monetary support, but we still try to help him as much as we can. That was from the maternal side of the family. My father had Schizophrenia ever since I knew him, basically. Schizophrenia stems from Paranoia; my father has always been paranoid in that sense. My younger brother is 21 years old, and he has none of these problems. I conclude that my condition passed from Generation to Generation. Some are able to skip these issues altogether, but not me. I think this is down to Luck, and Genetics.

Q. Could you tell some more things related to trigger events in the family? A. I can’t say much about my family, but I’ll tell you one of my own. As you’d know (Reddit Post), I initially dropped out of Chemical Engineering in 2015. During that time, I had worked with Kareena Kapoor, Ajay Devgn, and a few other Bollywood Stars during a few movie promotional events in Kolkatta. Once I realized that I do not have the financial capabilities to invest and upgrade my career in photography. Then, I worked on my own YouTube Channel around Early 2016. I used to upload pranks and other related stuff. The channel garnered over 4M Views back then. But then I realized that You don’t gain much in Indian YouTube, because the Click-through rate on ads is low. Slowly, I’d changed my channel to cater to American Viewers. That let my channel grow further; I even had a video made on me by LeafyIsHere, an American guy from Seattle, who was pretty popular for Roast videos. Around Jan-Feb 2017, YouTube terminated my Channel. There was no explanation provided, they just did it. That was the onset of a major depressive phase. My brain refused to do any sort of work, it was a very bad time. I did not know what was going on in my life. When I went to my first doctor, he initially diagnosed me as having Depression. He couldn’t really diagnose me as Bipolar since that requires both Depressive and Manic phases to have occurred, and my Manic phase hadn’t yet fully happened. I was fully diagnosed in 2019 as a Bipolar patient.