Famous bipolars

Depends on my Mood -

Yes, I've read "Touched With Fire", it was an amazing read! It really shows how mania & depression can influence people's art. Gives a lot of deep feelings to write or paint out. It was brilliant.

Adam Ant and Terry Hall (singer with the Specials)are both Bi-Polar

The lead singer of Radiohead is supposed to be Bipolar

Edgar Allen Poe was a poet as well.

-- Thu Sep 15, 2011 6:10 pm --

Also, you could include Till Lindemann from Rammstein. That guy is bipolar on steroids.

Anyone mention Ozzy Osborne? (I havent read every page of replies [Note: now i did read all pages and didn't see it, and Ozz was diagnosed BP in 1982)).
He made millions using bipolar dilemmas, though he said he was schizoid in a couple songs, and this dates back to the early 70s. Here's a guy who actually wrote his bipolar/schizophrenic ideas into music for over 40 years !!
Listen to "Am I Going Insane" with Black sabbath, or "Diary of a madman" when he went solo in 1981. If you ever watched his TV show he is almost out of it. And in his later years recently when he goes to concert (he's 62 now) he is bouncing off the walls, super hyper and screaming "Lets go X%&@ ing nuts!" Then he forgets the words to his songs.
I even heard he got in trouble for peeing on some statue in Texas years ago.
And many of his songs are about madness, mental problems, or take on a religious overtone where it seems he is wrestling between God and the Devil.

Or this, from his song "Megalomania"

"I hide myself inside the shadows of shame
The silent symphonies were playing their game
My body echoed to the dreams of my soul
inside is something that I could not control

Where can I run to now?
The joke is on me
No sympathizing god exempts sanity, yeah
Why don't you just get out of my life, yeah?
Why don't you just get out of my life now?
Why doesn't everybody leave me alone now?
Why doesn't everybody leave me alone, yeah?

Obsessed with fantasy, possessed with my schemes
I mixed reality with pseudogod dreams
The ghost of violence was something I've seen
I sold my soul to be the human obscene

How could this poison be
The dream of my soul?
How did my fantasies take complete control, yeah?
Why don't you just get out of my life, yeah?
Why don't you just get out of my life now?
Why doesn't everybody leave me alone now?
Why doesn't everybody leave me alone, yeah?

Well I feel something's taken me I don't know where
It's like a trip inside a separate mind
The ghost of tomorrow from my favorite dream
Is telling me to leave it all behind
Feel it slipping away, slipping in tomorrow
Got to get to happiness, want no more of sorrow

How I lied, went to hide
How I tried to get away from you now
Am I right if I fight?
That I might just get away from you now
Sting me!

Well I feel something's giving me the chance to RETURN
It's giving me the chance of saving my soul
Pictures of demigod are fading away
I'm going backwards but I'm in control
Feel it slipping away, slipping in tomorrow
Getting back to sanity, from the depths of sorrow

Was it wise to disguise
How I tried to get away from you now
Is there a way that I could pay
Or is it true I have to stay with you now?

How I lied, had to hide
How I tried to get away from you now
Am I right if I fight?
That I might just get away from you now
Suck me!

I FEEL ITS MANIC SCHIZOPHRENIA THATS MESSING ME UP
I've CHASED my soul through the fires of hell
Peace of mind eluded me, but now it's all mine
I SET THE TRAP, BUT ITs me who fell
Feel it slipping away, slipping in tomorrow
Now I've found my happiness, from the depths of sorrow

No more lies, I got wise
I despise the way I worshipped you yeah
Now I'm free, can't you see
And now instead I won't be led by you now
FREE!!!"

(Now if that doesn't say it all)

When I was first told (a month ago) that I was bipolar, one of the first things this gal told me was, "oh, but there are SO many famous people who live with this!!!" like it was wonderful news.
I know she meant it in the best of ways, but my first thought was, "Okay. They have zillions for therapy, they live in a world where 'nutty' is normal, and if they have a bad day/week/month/year, they still have a couple million laying in a gold threaded mattress somewhere and aren't in any danger of getting kicked out of their apartment next week.
I actually started laughing that she compared me to Jim Carrey. Good lord, talk about two lives so totally unlike.
I took it in the spirit it was meant, even though it gave me the giggles.

Beethoven and Mahler, bipolar? Are we supposed to believe that the Missa Solemnis and Resurrection Symphony were the products of diseased minds, the result of "chemical disorders"? Thank God they weren't on lithium.

There's something absurd and monstrous about Psychiatry passing judgment on these men, trying to reduce the greatest achievements of our species to an excess of dopamine, as though genius isn't intrinsically mysterious but a "condition" these glib little quacks know all about.

I'm pretty sure Jim Carrey is not bipolar. I believe he just had depression.

I don't know if anyone mentioned Florence Nightingale

bipolarworld wrote:I know its possible to be bipolar and not be an artist, but recent
studies show that the majority of artists are indeed bipolar.

Can you point me in the direction of these studies? I'm an artist in NYC with a BFA and an MFA that generally socializes in the art world and in my experience artists are no more bipolar than the general population. I'm pretty much the only "tortured" artist I know