Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 57:41 — 79.3MB)

Podcast Player Image by Photo Mix from Pixabay

Show Notes:

Welcome to the Bipolar Excellence Podcast, Episode Six, the Jeremy Ellenbogen interview at the Seven21 Media Center. So this is the fifth, the final in a five interview series. Happened a bunch of years ago. And this is the intro bringing me current into December, 2021. And there’s another intro from when I did something very similar, about three years back.

And I don’t remember what I said in that. So I don’t want to be repetitive. Just let it be known: Jeremy Ellenbogen and his family are just salt of the earth people, some of the best people I’ve ever met. And what brought me to them was the start of this entire mission with helping people with bipolar, really.

I was looking to get a TV interview that happened with me at a local Kingston station. I needed to get it reformatted into something I could put on the Internet. And I just did a search and found the Seven21 Media Center that had the tools I needed to get that done. That’s all I knew about them at the time.

I’d never even heard of them. I’d driven by the building probably many, many dozens of times and never knew what was in it, nor did I ever care. So this was all completely random as random could be. And it completely changed my life. A whirlwind of adventures and some misadventures kicked off the day I walked into that building.

Couldn’t foresee any of it. Some of it was so far out. Most of it was positive and helpful and productive. All of it helped me become what I am now talking to you today. It all helped. But I got myself into some situations that I didn’t need to be in. Like I said, all good.

Regardless, I had fun. I walked into a ball of interesting people, the likes of which you can’t invent. It had to just happen. And to this day, I’m doing everything in my power to position myself as someone who has a solid reason to go back to that building.

I haven’t been part of that world for some years now. And I’m dying to get back in there. I visited a few times over the years since I’ve left and I miss it.

The place has an energy to it. It has a smell to it. There is a vitality in the hallways that I can almost taste and I want back in. And I am going back in, but for now, well, you’ll listen to one more intro and then you’ll hear my bipolar story told from yet one more direction as Jeremy interviewed me.

It was a little rough. I remember that. And I do remember one of the things that lingered from bipolar was I had a tension in my body, a constant tension that made it hard to breathe. And if I was in any kind of situation that would ratchet up the fight or flight, it made it even harder.

So I don’t think you can even hear it on the interview. If I hadn’t have told you, you wouldn’t notice, I believe. But it was something I dealt with quite a bit, just fighting to breathe and not sound like I was strangling or something and weirding out the people around me.

I say that that was a leftover from bipolar. But now that I have, I don’t think that’s what it was. It was just a leftover of me dealing with the totality of me. I don’t think this was even bipolar. Because… the breathing? I fixed it using Network Spinal Analysis Chiropractic. That was definitely why that went away.

And there’s multiple stories I have to share about that kind of care. And I will. All right. I’ve already talked longer than I cared to. So I’m going to transition you now into the original intro and then to the original interview. It was a good thing. And I miss all those people and I miss that building. All right. Enjoy!

Original Review Starts Here

Hey everybody. This is Ken Jensen with the After Bipolar Podcast, Episode Six, the Seven21 Interview or The Whole Enchilada. I don’t even know what the hell an enchilada is. Hopefully I can find a picture of one to make the post make sense on the website. So this is the final interview in the interview series, the initial interview series that kicks off this podcast.

This interview, like the rest, I haven’t listened to it since it got made. And this was pretty interesting because this was actually a video that got shot. I pulled the audio out of it. I’ll see if I can get the video on my site. And when I do, I’ll put the link on the page on Outsiders Journey.com. Actually, I’ll put the video right on that page.

I do that. I keep talking until a better or correct answer presents itself. All right. Jeremy Ellenbogen, who owns the Seven21 Media Center in Kingston. His building was where the Mad Demigods Episode era of my life took place. Jeremy is not a mad demigod. He’s an accomplished businessman and a very solid human being and citizen.

The guy that I met there, whose organization I became part of for quite a while, he was the Mad Demigod. Jeremy was solid. Jeremy, I don’t think at this point in the game, he had done any interviews like this. I could be wrong, but he interviewed me and it was a professional video shoot. His video producer is Filmographer David Zoltan.

Oh, no, sorry. I always get this wrong because there are two first name- sounding names. Zoltan David, “Zoly” shot this. Zoly, after he heard my story. He’s from… I can’t remember. And I apologize Zoly if you’re listening to this, I think Yugoslavia, maybe Hungary. He escaped a communist soldier invasion.

He was in jail for a while. His stories from what he endured in prison were incredible, before he escaped and fled to America decades ago. But he thought of all of that after he heard my story. And then he shared with me. That was incredible. I wish I had that on tape.

Anyway, this was a really good interview. You can’t hear… we didn’t do it completely right. You can’t hear Jeremy asking me the questions, unless you have the volume cranked up to a hundred percent.

But you’ll understand what the questions must have been based on what I’m saying in response. Cool thing about this was I laid out all the steps of my system. And I hit on a lot of really nice key points for each step. And I never did that before in any onstage venue or anywhere else.

I never hit on all the steps. Cause, honestly, I can never remember them. If you put a gun to my head and asked me to tell you, I always forget some steps. Because the way my mind works, I wrote it all down. All I gotta do is send you to the website and I’m gonna do the same with you guys now.

But as you listen to this, you’ll hear exactly what’s in my system. But if you want in-depth explanations with action steps and video, explaining even more, way more than what’s in this interview, then go to Outsiders Journey.com and you’re going to click on the wellness guide, the green field. Click on that. Boom. You’re in.

10:00 Min Mark

In this interview, I remember you’ll hear as the interview moves along, I get a little more amped up. That’s in part, because I used to get real excited in sharing what I knew. I was very super passionate about it. I’m not _super_ passionate about this stuff anymore. I feel good about it, but I take more of a passive role in getting this information to people.

I let the system do its own talking. And that’s how I saved my time and energy. And I’ve just simply calmed down. The more time has passed, the more relaxed I become as a person. So I don’t get that wound up so much when I’m talking about anything. It can still happen. I’m still a bit of a wild child and I can get wound up over something. I really can.

But I don’t choose to do so about this material anymore, which is cool. I bring that up because if you’re bipolar or supporting someone who is, some of you, it’s not all bipolar people, but you know what it’s like when you get hit in the face with a manic episode. It’s a lot of energy. I had a little of that leftover. The manic side/ anxiety side of bipolar, were the last things to go.

But as I’ve said before, on a list that contained dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of symptoms, all of which were bad, to have it get down to just those last couple things, as they slowly trickled away, that’s a success far as I’m concerned. That’s an acceptable success, a big one. You’ll hear that a little as the interview proceeds.

So. Go listen to the interview.

Interview Starts Here

Ken: I’m here to share my message with the world on how I overcame bipolar disorder. I’m using a system I developed called TORQUE BACK that I developed to save my own life. And I now teach this to other people so they can get out of the despair filled pit that is a bipolar disorder.

It’s a pretty God awful existence when you’re deep in the symptomology of bipolar disorder. And people need to know that there is reason to hope, and there are answers that they’re not have ready access to. I had to do a lot of digging to find what I found, and I have answers that are going to surprise people and give them reason to keep fighting.

Jeremy: So tell me how do you help people? What have you done?

Ken: I authored a book called It Takes Guts To Be Me: How An Ex Marine Beat Bipolar Disorder. And the reason it’s titled that is because my training in the Marine Corps, played a huge part in what enabled me to develop the system later in life.

I am also a speaker. I am a life coach. I specialize in walking people through the system that I share with them. And I share the system for free. So if somebody has it in them to just follow my steps, they’re going to be fine.

But I find that a lot of people have need for somebody to personally walk them through these steps. The transition to get off of medication and onto the natural steps that I use can be a rough one.

I also like to make it very clear that I tell nobody to stop their medication and to not hide any of this from their doctor. Get permission. Do whatever feels comfortable. I’m an option if you reach the point where all hope has been exhausted.

Jeremy: So what are some of the benefits that you had to be able to offer the world?

Ken: Well, primarily with my system, you regain your health. When you regain your physical health, your mental health comes along for the ride. The biggest problem with the traditional methods of treating mental illness is, they approach the brain as if it’s in a separate compartment, having nothing to do with the human body.

That couldn’t be more incorrect. The body and the brain are intricately linked. They depend on one another. If one is not well, the other one has no hope of being well. The system has a by-product of not only helping somebody to overcome their bipolar disorder or severe depression, addiction, since all these things are pretty much interrelated. ADD, schizophrenia even.

It has a by-product of improving your entire existence of life and the usage of my system, and as you build upon the steps, and I teach people how to do that, your whole life improves beyond… you fight to get back to zero.

And then you go beyond whatever your best point was in life in the past. You can go beyond that with my system. I didn’t even know this when I put it together. I was as surprised as anybody to find out what had happened to my life, as I got better. People need to know there’s hope.

This is a very hopeless illness.

Most people become worse and worse and worse. About 75% of people relapse into their symptoms, even while following a doctor’s strict orders. It’s just… there’s this pervasive feeling of “there’s no way to win.” And I was there. I felt that. I just refused to give up and I found a way to win, but it was a very hard ride for me.

And people need to know I’ve compiled it all into one nice, neat package. They’re not going to have to take as long to get the results I got. What took me years I can deliver to them in minutes.

Jeremy: Tell me, what is bipolar disorder? Give me a rundown of like some of the symptoms and what things you experienced, why it was so difficult for you.

Ken: Bipolar disorder, at its simplest, is mood swings. You have mania, which is very high. You can do no wrong. All your ideas are perfect. You’re very expansive in your thinking. You’re very confident in your way of behaving to the point that you’ll take unnecessary risks.

At the low end is depression. It’s a form of depression and despair that is mind numbing. I spent many days in the fetal position in whatever apartment I might’ve been living in, not knowing how the next five seconds of my life were going to work or why I should even try. And you can oscillate between these two things.

Bipolar breaks down into different classifications, which to me is a moot point. It’s all related. What form it takes doesn’t matter. But the moods oscillate between… you can get locked into high for a day, a week, a month. Or all your symptoms can go away for any length of time, then come back. Or you can bounce back and forth in any kind of a time span.

The worst being, you can go back and forth between ups and downs in seconds. All day long. You feel great. Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s perfect. Life is fantastic. And just as fast, there is no hope to live. There’s no reason to take your next breath of air. You want to die.

Now, I also got to a point that’s called mixed. Mixed, I believe… because I experienced every form of a bipolar disorder that you care to look up, I experienced every version of it… mixed was the worst.

You have the energy of mania coupled with the despair of the depression. So basically you have an indescribable amount of energy being applied to a level of despair you can’t even imagine. So you pump juice into the despair. It’s exponentially worse than the worst case of depression. You experience both at the same time.

Your body has too much energy in it. I used to refer to it as like a black electricity. You are juiced with a sense of power and movement. And it’s indescribable. It seems to defy physics in how you perceive it. And it just, it burns you alive and nothing will turn it off until it’s ready.

Jeremy: When was the first time you noticed that you had this problem? What age do you think it started? Or, I mean, obviously, physiological you’re born with it. Is that right? Or how does that work exactly?

Ken: When I noticed bipolar cropping into my life? There’s two answers that question. Basically about the time I was 30 was when the symptoms hit so hard. I ended up in an emergency room. Now that I know how bipolar works and what it’s all about, I realize it’s been with me most of my life, ever since I was very young.

It has a genetic component but it can lie dormant in people. A traumatic trigger can kick it off in some people. Some people, it just organically shows up on the scene. For other people, they’d have been fine if something terrible hadn’t happened to kick it into play. And once it’s on, it’s on. There’s no shutting it back off.

I can realize now, all the way back to my youth, how I was the outsider. I’ve always been a unique person. I’ve been the more creative type. But I never knew where to apply that creativity. So I created things that never should have been created, in an effort to expend this energy.

And like I said, by the time I hit about 30, I perceived what was happening to me to be a huge amount of stress. And over time, the stress became constant. It became all consuming. And eventually, it branched out into the further symptoms of bipolar.

I forgot to add that earlier. Bipolar has a middle meaty content to it. I have a list I drew up of 85 symptoms, all of them bad, that have nothing to do with mood swings, that also are a part of bipolar.

20:00 Min Mark

Your body basically goes haywire. You life goes haywire. You’re not a normal person. And that’s in the middle of the mood swings. So you’re not a normal person with a lot of energy of mania, you’re not a normal person coupled with the despair, or you’re blessed with the mixed state: you’re not a normal person with all this high-level amplitude to apply to this crushing despair.

It’s pure chaos. It’s a vision of looking into the bowels of hell itself. Anyone who’s bipolar knows what I’m talking about. You would do absolutely anything if you thought it would make it stop. All bets are off. It just has to stop. It’s that bad.

Jeremy: Tell me, you mentioned that normally it’s triggered by some kind of trauma or something. And you really noticed in when you’re around 30. Was that part of the Marines, or was there some event that you can share with us?

Ken: The Marines played a big part in this. There’s a reason why that was a subtitle to my book. A traumatic event can trigger bipolar disorder. My whole life has been packed with trauma and I won’t spend a lot of time on all the gory details. It’s not necessary.

But I was beaten as a child repeatedly. When I wasn’t beaten, there was just a constant state of dis-ease in my house. My mom was mentally ill but this was in the seventies. And a lot of what’s understood now was not understood then.

She was massively, massively overmedicated with multiple drugs that do not belong in anyone’s body at the same time, because she had so many doctors trying to help her. She took out all her frustrations… and what we now know, we didn’t know for decades was her mental illness… on me.

I took the heat off my little brother. Would draw her attention. My dad was never home. He worked. Sometimes days on end, he was gone. And he just worked to keep everything going. And that’s how my life was growing up.

As I became a teenager, everyone in my world, my dad in particular, but my whole family tree and just everybody, I learned that drinking would solve pretty much any problem. So by the time I was 15, I was a stellar alcoholic. I could outrank men. My liver seemed to have this unbelievable capacity for handling alcohol.

I immediately got into trouble. I experienced my first coma from an alcohol overdose when I was 15. I was in a coma for about four hours. I died numerous times. They kept bringing me to life with the paddles. I share all this because I’ve had so many traumatic events. I’m not sure which one of them might’ve set this off.

I ended up going into the Marines. The Marines, for anybody that can be fairly traumatic. Parris Island, all on its lonesome is pretty traumatic. You survive it. It’s the threat they hang over your head that you’re never going to leave the island until they let you leave the island. And it’s real. And so there’s that.

While I was in the Marines being the creative kind of person that I am… and I didn’t understand any of this. til decades later… I felt trapped. The Marine Corps to me was a type of prison. I had a lot of fun in the Marines. I had fun, the likes of which people would pay any amount of money to do some of the stuff the Marine Corps allowed me to do for free. I don’t regret any of it, honestly.

But a lot of it led to my bipolar making the scene. But being the kind of person that I am, I did not want to have a boss. I did not like discipline. And the Marine Corps in general, it was just a job. It was boring. I had a lot of fun. I did a lot of interesting things. I did a lot of mind blowing things.

But the day in and day out tasks of being a Marine bored me to tears. To fill this boredom and get rid of it, I did absolutely everything wrong one could think of, to entertain my mind. Led to more traumatic events. I’ve been in brutal physical fights. I’ve been all broken to pieces on the jobs I did in the Marine Corps. I survived missile attacks, pirate attacks on our ship ride across to the war.

I’ve had friends that took the word violence to a level most people never see, that were my roommates. I was either with them or being mauled by them, because that’s how the night went . And by the time I got out of the Marine Corps, I was an unbelievable alcoholic. I was a drug addict. And believe it or not, I was huge and physically fit because I had kind of a construction worker job in the Marine Corps.

I was tough. I was mean. And I was out of my mind. Bipolar was already moving much of this along. I think my Marine Corps training allowed me to keep it at bay. And as nuts as I was, in the Marines, I did not really stand out. I was just more interesting than everybody else.

The Marines is the Marines. And whenever I got violent or nuts, which happened a lot, it wasn’t really a standout moment, compared to everyone around me.

Then as I got older, I had various jobs where my body just took some severe poundings. I’ve had my back folded over backwards, right in half. How my spine didn’t snap, nobody who saw it happened knows. My body has been run through the mill.

Later in life, I had jobs where I did security in really bad situations.

I fought entire gangs by myself, refusing to lose. I fought other mentally ill patients. And then the course of my life has caused me to have many confrontations with the cops. The cops have worn me out, I mean: Worn. Me. Out. On numerous occasions. Any of these things, I think altogether, they piled up.

By the time I hit about 30, bipolar was like, you know what, that’s enough. Let’s look into this now. And then I started having all the bipolar symptoms, the worst of which was a panic.

Jeremy: Wow. That’s quite a story. That’s amazing. You basically covered, the Marines. You covered, you when did it hit.

Ken: Right around right around 30. It hit me hard. I’m 41 now.

Jeremy: We’ve heard all the bad stuff. What have you done? How did you climb out of this pit?

Ken: Well, okay. As bipolar basically deconstructed my physical and mental health, the answer was… you asked me how I climbed out of this pit.

I would need to lead up to how I was helped. Basically. I was “helped” through the injection of massive amounts of medication. Medication had no effect on my illness. It only added to my physical problems and it made my illness worse. My bipolar simply got stronger every year.

When it got to its worst, I ODed again. I was drunk one night. I ate a whole month’s worth of lithium in one shot, not as a case of suicide, but as an act of frustration. And as like the most masochistic way I could think of to upset everybody in my life.

Because the pain is so much, you want to give it away. You develop a hatred for normal people because you can’t believe they can just walk around and not have to feel this.

You’ll do anything to share this pain. And it’s out of your control. That’s what happened to me that night. When we reached the bitter end, my doctor told me, he said we have maybe… and this is my fifth doctor across six years… he said, maybe we have two pills left to try on you. And he said, you and I both know they’re not going to work. You’re, you’re a hundred percent resistant to everything. I’ll try them, but it’s not going to work.

And the thing that I hate as your doctor is, I know that you’re one of my rare patients. You don’t just take the pill and call it a day. You want to know why I gave you the pill. You go home. You research. You dig. You look things up.

He said, this makes you aware. And as your doctor, it makes me hurt worse for you because you know, better than probably any of my other patients, absolutely how screwed you are. You’re totally aware of how hopeless the situation is. And he said, I do not like your prognosis for your future. And so basically that was a death sentence.

I drove home. That was from the Albany VA. And I drove home on the Thruway running this cycle in my mind. My life had already proven to me that what I was thinking was going to come true. I’m going to die in a psych lockdown ward. I’m going to die in a jail cell.

Or I’m going to die on the street one night when I’m out, flipping out and I meet the other Kenny, who’s just bigger and meaner than me, and I’m going to get into it with him and he’s going to wipe me out. That’s where I’m going to find my body.

So I go home… it moves me a little now to even tell it, cause it it’s just such a massive amount of pain I dealt with. I sat at my desk, and this is where the hope comes in, at this point, I had been a recluse for two years. I lived in my parents’ basement. I took medication, smoked cigarettes and tried not to hurt anybody or myself.

All I ever wanted to do was hurt everybody. And I was very capable of hurting just about anybody I cared to, until somebody stopped me physically. I heard a little voice in my head and it was a normal voice. The voice was the Marine in me. I hadn’t heard him in a long time. The voice said this is not the way a Marine goes out. Do something! Fight! Do anything!

And then he went away. It was that loud. I just heard it. And for the first time in about two years, it was the first time I felt any strength as a human, as a man, as a former Marine, anything. I had been wiped out by this illness, the Marine Corps perked up in me like, this is what we’re famous for.

If we go into a battle and it’s completely clear we are going to get annihilated, then we’re like, well, they’re going to remember we were here at least! And away we go! I applied that to myself without even trying. And through a course of events, I started finding sources of help. I tried everything. Everything under the sun. And a lot of stuff was wrong.

30:00 Min Mark

A lot of stuff was rip off scam stuff. But piece by piece, I did find legitimate sources of help. And I started building the system, took me about two years to build it, across a two year span the whole time my health improving. And then I just fine tuned it once it was clear that I was sane again.

Jeremy: That’s pretty amazing. So you hit rock bottom, but it wasn’t to the point where, like I was thinking, you were going to say, you drove off the road or something on the Thruway, you hear that story. But luckily that never happened.

Ken: One of the sick things about the illness… and this was another thing… I mean, there’s so much worse. But one of the things that you expected me to like end it all with the horror of what I was feeling, it gets even worse.

One of the symptoms of bipolar disorder, just one of the dozens and dozens and dozens is an obsessively strong fear of dying. The thought of the unknown is crippling with the amount of fear it dumps into your soul.

When you stop and think as a bipolar person, "What happens when we die?", you get this psychic hit to your self… that is so huge… of terror. Because you don’t know what’s coming next. And the not knowing is… it’s awful. So every day you want to die because life is completely pointless.

There is no purpose to keep waking up every day when you get to the point where I got. It’s purposeless. It’s like waking up and voluntarily being on fire all day and can’t put the flames out. Why would you wake up for that? Yet…dying is so horrifically out of the question. You don’t want to die.

So you’re in this no man’s land of just the worst sort of purgatory. You don’t want to live, can’t imagine dying.

Where does that leave a person? It rips you apart inside like silly putty. You think you’re destroyed, until you hit that point. And then whatever’s left of you just get shredded.

Jeremy: The system you developed: can you kind of pinpoint it piece by piece? Like what it is that you’ve done? And you said it’s a mixture of like natural herbs. And thought process. There’s a checklist. Tell me about what it is that you do.

Ken: The system I invented is called TORQUE BACK. The reason I did that is because out of the 30 jobs I’ve had in my life, many of my jobs were repair.

I’ve repaired just about anything under the sun. And it’s part of how I went about repairing my own health. I looked at myself like I would any other piece of machinery. I looked at my life and my body and my mind like a mechanic, which I basically am at at the heart of all that I do.

What’s going on that shouldn’t be? What is going on that should not be. That’s where every mechanic starts when addressing a problem. And then I took it from there. So the system TORQUE BACK, I envisioned like a torque wrench.

A torque wrench is used to apply just the right amount of force on tightening something so that it holds the load together just right. If it’s not enough, it comes loose. If it’s too tight, the bolt will break. So a torque wrench puts just the amount of right pressure on the job to bear the load.

My system has 10 steps. The steps I used and, and I’ll have to be brief cause it involves so much, but there’s a company called Truehope.

They invented a supplement. It’s a vitamin and mineral mix and it addresses bipolar disorder directly. The gentleman that developed that had to do so because his family tree was committing suicide all around him from bipolar. He was running out of family. He was an engineer. He didn’t know anything about any of this.

So he was my first savior. Basically, Truehope is the foundation to everything else I do. I don’t believe anybody has much hope without putting them in their system. Even if they don’t use my system. If they got completely different nine other steps, I believe they’ll do so much better if Truehope is in their world.

It’s a nonprofit company and they’ll work with you for free beyond paying for their supplement. They will work with you for free with counselors. Endlessly, no charge. That’s the first step. And in the beginning of my illness, that was the first thing I did that had any effect at all on giving me relief.

I had the horrific chance to test it. I ran out of money. I started getting better using Truehope. I ran out of money, had to go back on medication, got the sickest I ever got. And it was in that period that I went into my second coma. I was in a coma for two weeks from that lithium OD. I died a number of times.

They kept restarting my heart with the paddles. They kept pumping something in me that was absorbing the lithium and taking it out of my blood. I defied every physical odd there is to be here and have this conversation. And when I came out of the coma, I was in a lockdown ward for four days, cause they thought I was a suicide. Truehope turned all that around.

Then I added a supplement, from a company called OmegaBrite. OmegaBrite developed a fish oil to fight depression.

I picked OmegaBrite because basically you need omega-threes in your diet. And you need them from a fish product. And within omega threes are two sub-components called EPA and DHA. You need the right ratio of EPA to DHA. Most fish oil brands on the market, get the ratio wrong. So OmegaBrite covers all of that.

And omega-3s have a humongous impact on our nervous system. And they are a component of every cell of our body. And they are almost non-existent in the modern diet, not to mention the omega sixes, which cancel out the omega threes, are, for most cases, 20 to one in strength in the modern diet. And they’re inflammatory. They’re the cause of many illnesses.

They in themselves are not harmful unless there’s too many of them present. The omega 3s cancel them out. So what you have is a lack of omega-3, which in itself is causing illness, and an overabundance in the the modern diet of the omega-6s. So you need to have omega-3 on board.

Nutrition just made sense to me for years. No matter what I did, drugs, drinking, anything, I lifted weights. I’m an oxymoron that way. So nutrition made sense to me. I didn’t have to be convinced that it was necessary component in the fight.

As nutrition leveled off my body, intuitively, I got to thinking, "I think a large chunk of my problem is me. I don’t think there is a problem per se, as much as I’m causing a lot of this."

That’s not to be confused with… bipolar people… it causes such pain when someone tells a person who’s bipolar, or depressed “snap out of it,” as if it’s a will control thing, a willpower thing. It’s not. It’s out of your control. Your only control is to try and do steps like what I have. So I’m not talking about that.

But I realized my way of thinking… Very simple. Every decision any one of us has made in our lives, ever, got us to this exact point. Whoever you are watching this video right now, every right, every left, every yes, no, up or down got you right here to watching Kenny speak on this video.

A lot of those decisions were not good ones. If you’re not happy where your life is, rock bottom? There’s no one to blame but you. And in a lot of cases, even the illnesses we have, you have control.

You have more control over your life than you realize. Most people are on autopilot. They don’t realize they can greatly affect their life for the better, because they just don’t know. And we’re taught not to know.

So I looked into a company called Centerpointe. Centerpointe developed a method of meditation that is scientific. I knew meditation would help me but I was not going to sit in a room and stare at a candle and do all the traditional meditation stuff.

I found a guy whose backstory was pretty similar to mine. And he had been a traditional meditationist for 16 years. He said, “End result? I was a drug addict. I was an ass and I couldn’t keep a good marriage going.” He goes, “I was a wreck.” And he said, “Nobody in America meditated more than I did.”

So he used his brain to figure out a scientific way to meditate. And in the long run, he came up with Holosync, which is now part of my system. And one of the things it does is… everyone in the world, everyone, is walking around with a case of brain lateralization.

One hemisphere is doing the bulk of the thinking in a day, and this is completely unhealthy. And it causes many problems, all kinds of problems, to arise in your life. And you’re just unaware of this. Meditation and Holosync enable the brain to let one side calm down and the other side to ramp up.

It also gets them talking together. You can’t have one side of your brain being quiet and one side doing all the work. This causes chaos in your life. Also, we walk around on autopilot, making decisions in our life like I had just said.

The system teaches you to become aware of why you do things like you do, why you have decisions, beliefs, thoughts, and feelings like you do. You learn to look at them without judging yourself and just deciding like, “Is this bringing me good in my life? Or is it bringing me what I want in my life, this thing I just did or how I think. If not, how about we change that?”

And you develop a way to do this without even trying. The beauty of that comes in later in one of my other steps for fighting addictions.

Now, that’s the next step. Quit addictions. That’s a very blase thing to just say, “quit all your addictions.” Anyone who’s tried to quit anything knows that’s just a nightmare. The meditation I mentioned lets it become a natural organic process. You lose interest. You don’t fight to quit your bad habits. You just start losing interest and they fade away.

40:00 Min Mark

You need to remove undue stressors in your life. There are situations in our life that don’t absolutely have to be there. We just think they do. I found for me this applied mostly to people in my life that I loved or held close to my heart. But whenever they were around my life seemed to take a hit.

I realized some of these people, no matter how I felt about them, or them me, they had to go. I had to cut people free. Sometimes it’s a job. I quit many jobs because I was stressing out and I left before I either got sick or did something to somebody else or just did something stupid in frustration. So you need to cut out undue stress, wherever possible in your life.

You need to eat right and exercise. By the time you’re someone who’s already mentally ill, there’s no longer a situation where “I ought to take care of myself.” You’ve left “ought to” in the dust a long time ago. You have now reached “have to.” You have to take care of your body and give it what it needs.

This amounts to eating properly and getting some form of exercise. You don’t have to be a gym rat. Just move. Find anything that you enjoy that causes you to move and not be on the couch, start doing it. To eat right, that’s a huge thing too. Either one of these things is too big to discuss here.

But eat right? Very simple. Shop the edges of the supermarket. Don’t go into the aisles so much. Eat everything in the form it came off the farm as best you can. Eat a piece of meat that still looks like it came off an animal. Eat a vegetable or fruit the way it got picked off the farm.

As soon as it’s been processed and packaged, most of the nutritional value, if it hasn’t been just slightly damaged, it’s usually mostly gone and it’s not going to give you any health benefits. You’re just eating calories and empty ones usually at that.

The next step is to be okay with your life where it’s at right now. This is more of an advanced step. It actually comes into play with using the meditation I use. But basically it amounts to… your life’s right where it’s at, whether you believe this or not, to teach you a lesson. If you can pull the lesson, even if it’s pure terror, “What’s the lesson I’m supposed to be pulling from this?”

Maybe you got to get through the moment, but then look back on it. You gotta learn to be introspective and retrospective. Start looking at why your life is like it is, but know that it is like it is right now for a reason. And if you can figure it out, there’s really good stuff waiting to happen for you in the future.

You need to address all physical ailments. Physical pain of any form directly feeds into mental distress. The mental distress causes you to be more sensitive to the physical pain, and on and on and on.

So if you have some sort of, usually for a lot of people, this is back pain. You need to address anything. If you’ve been sitting on an illness that’s physical that can be addressed, waiting and putting it off. If you get that out of the way, you’re going to find your mental health improves greatly.

Great example for me? My lower back it’s in pieces. I’ve got torn stuff. One of my disks is half as thick as all the rest. I got arthritis. There’s just all kinds of destruction has hit my lower back. At one point I was eating… half of the pile of pills I ate every day was for back pain.

The doctors gave me a prognosis of basically “We got about three different ways we need to cut into you, fuse things, cut things, inject stuff. That’s your only hope. And you’re going to be in pain the rest of your life.”

At this time, I had just got underway with using my system, TORQUE BACK to fight my head. I refused to do anything they wanted me to do with my back. I’m not saying that’s always the way to go… ignore your doctor… just for me, I didn’t agree with what they wanted to do.

My back was… I did not move ever. I didn’t even turn my head without thinking, “Where is my lower back before I move?” Because everything would cause my lower back to hurt. And it’d be like a mule kick of agony in my spine. Through the process of doing my system, only thinking of bettering my head, my back pain went away.

It’s not a hundred percent, but it’s about down to about 5%. From pure agony, to about 5%. It’s a nuisance on some days that’s about it. So there’s another reason to hope.

Now let’s see you need to address physical elements and the last two steps. You need to chat. You need to talk to someone who’s nonjudgmental.

And in particular, if you’re going to follow my system, you need to talk to someone who’s not going to be judgmental of you not going the medicine route. You need someone who’s willing to just listen to you. Say whatever. Whatever comes out of your mouth. You just need someone to hear you and know they’ll listen to you.

That is so therapeutic, it’s amazing. Whether it’s a friend or a professional, doesn’t matter, find someone to talk to. And lastly, you need to keep a journal, the act of writing. It triggers a device in your brain that allows for more healing, learning. This is a direct connection to the written word. As soon as you’ve written whatever it is you want to write, you can get rid of it.

You don’t have to keep the words. It was the movement of the pen on the paper and the thought process that goes into why you picked those words and wrote them. That’s what we’re after. That’s where your healing comes from.

The other way a journal is really good is you can dump in that thing the stuff you don’t ever want anyone to hear.

When you’re bipolar, you have urges, thoughts, and flights of fantasy you don’t want anybody to ever know. I mean, the stuff that used to go through my mind, you wouldn’t want me living in the same county with you, if you really knew what I was thinking.

And me as the sick person, I didn’t have control over any of them. It’s just where my head was going. Some of it horrified me. You feel so down on yourself, you’re feeling, “As a good person, I should not be thinking these thoughts.”

And me with my background, combat vet, the drinking in in the Marines and everything I had done… mine usually revolved around hurting people. Badly. Nothing was off limits.

You dump all of that in a journal and then burn the journal. You don’t really want anybody finding what’s in it. But the pouring of your soul onto that page… there’s the device I mentioned earlier, and then you’re getting all the darkness and blackness out of you. It is so freeing. And then you’re not holding anything within you.

That’s my system in a nutshell.

Jeremy: Wow! I don’t know what to say!

Ken: Well, it’s a lot to it. I mean, there’s the steps. And now to go through that… it’s where I come in as a personal coach, because that’s a lot to work with. But I’ve done it all and I can teach it.

Jeremy: So tell me how long you feel that you hit that recovery state and, or is it always like you’re always working hard at maintaining that? Tell me about that.

Ken: Well, as far as my recovery, how long it took, how long it’s lasted and it’s how it works in a day for me… It took me about a year for my symptoms to stop assaulting me. And it’s pretty much a full on assault.

It took a year of just sticking to my program and doing everything I just shared. And I was designing it as well. Some of it didn’t exist. I was putting it together as I got better.

I hung in there just on faith alone because I knew I was out of options. And I had been trained to think, “Well, if this doesn’t work, I can always go back to the doctor.”

And I had that war in my head because no, "I got a file this thick showing doctors don’t work for me." so I was in fear a lot, not knowing if my system would work. So I went a year gradually getting better. And basically my appearance changed before my feelings changed.

People around me just said, “You’re just looking better. You’re not so pallid looking. Your skin texture’s looking better. You’re not looking so sinister these days. I feel more safe around you than normal.” That was a common one for me.

And then I started feeling a little better. I started getting a sense of relief. My symptoms fought hard to survive.

So basically what I experienced was a very gradual lessening in duration and frequency. And by the end of the year… it took a year before I felt sure that like, “I think I’m going to be okay.” So across the whole year I was getting better. And now it’s been about three and a half years now, since I took my last pill for any kind of mental illness and my whole life just keeps getting better.

And the illness itself, I have some lingering anxiety issues that will present themselves in a need to yawn too much. I feel like I can’t quite get a full chest full of air. And it doesn’t seem to be connected so much to anything that’s going on in my day. It just seems to come when it wants. And really it’s just a nuisance.

To maintain what I have? It’s not hard at all. I just live a good clean life, really. But for me, part of my bipolar, why it lived was because I had a lack of fulfillment in my life, a massive lack of fulfillment.

I never knew where to put my energies and my thoughts and my creativity. And I have recently found it. And it just makes my whole life improve.

And I know this is a key thing for many bipolar people, cause bipolar people in general tend to be your artistic types, writers, singer songwriters, painters, architects. they get this urge to create. To show up every day and do something is a prison sentence.

They need to build something new and then move on to the next new thing. To not be allowed to foster that side of your personality is crushing.

I now do that. That’s something I want people to know that are sick. Part of why you’re sick is because you’re missing some kind of major point or two. We address the body. We address the mind on a physical level. Then we start looking into why you think like you do. Then we start looking into how your life ought to be.

There are joys waiting for you that you can’t imagine. I’m living proof of it.

Post Interview

So that was Jeremy and I. I trimmed down a little bit of the audio. You could hear me talking to the crew, doing a little production talk after the fact. There was some more things we discussed about how we were going to put this video together and further things we had to shoot.

And Jeremy asked me one more question and I gave another certain amount of five, 10 minutes to that. None of that really was any help to what I’m trying to do here, so I clipped it. But it was fun.

My years at Jeremy’s company, the Seven21 Media Center… and it’s still there… it does better every year. Jeremy fought tooth and nail to make that thing come to life and become what it is now. And the basis of it stays the same. It’s a place where many media production companies of all types can come and work together and help one another, in a non-competitive environment.

It’s more of a communal effort. Everybody gets along and supports one another, rather than try to chase the same piece of pie. It’s if you ever come to Kingston, New York and you can find a reason to go there and say hi to the Ellenbogens, it’s, you’ll be glad you did.

It’s the only place, at least in my experience, it’s the only place I’ve been that the hallways crackle with electricity. It’s got a lot of good vibes, a lot of cool people walk in the hallways. It’s very laid back and yet there’s some heavy-duty action taking place in all those various rooms.

It’s one of the coolest places I’ve ever been in my life. And for a while, I did whatever I could to help the Ellenbogens run the place. I gave time. I gave labor. I found more labor. We had different projects where I went and got people so that we could do mass projects.

The Ellenbogens let me use space pretty much however I wanted. If they had spare room and no one was renting something, I could use it, as well as some friends I was working with. And I had a chance to experiment and investigate a side of my self, my mind, my thinking, my dream building that I never found before, or since.

Now, it ran its course. Everything ended on a good note. And I’ve been back there a few times since. And I’m very glad any time I get to go see anybody from that building. It’s just a pure delight.

But I realized after a while I was turning into a fanboy. I was just hanging around. I was helping. But everything I had come there to do, none of it panned out. None of it became anything long-term or viable. Just a lot of cool things took place. We helped a lot of people. I learned a lot. I had a lot of fascinating experiences. But I needed it to become more than that.

I needed it to become something that fed me. And nothing there was. But I hung out a little longer than I’m proud of. And what I mean is, I couldn’t cut that cord. I couldn’t walk away from that excitement and the sense of potential that that place offered.

And I was hanging out a lot, just talking to anybody in the building. And it took me awhile to realize everybody would always talk to me. Everybody was always polite. Jeremy would never say no to anything I asked for. And he would never stop offering help and material and equipment if I needed it. Cause he’s similar except he was actually getting things done.

And I realized I was starting to getting in the way, like a fan boy. He was never going to say that to me. And different company owners in the building. They love, you know, we all love that vibe, but I was just floating around .For a while it was good. And I did help a lot of people with a lot of things.

But then I started realizing, this is, it’s just getting a little embarrassing now. I’m just here. I’m just hanging out. And I’m not getting anything done and I’m starting to get in these people’s way. So I realized that. And I left so that I wouldn’t wear out my welcome. Which I didn’t.

It was a humbling realization, but also something that represents how well my system was treating my evolving wellness.

I was getting better. I could see things about myself, that when I was bipolar, I’d’ve never saw that. I’d’a stayed and stayed and stayed and stayed. And if anybody ever told me I maybe had to go, I’ve been destroyed, I’d have been ruined. I would have took it so personal. So this was just one more way that I realized I was growing.

So take from that, what you will, if you’re still in the fight. I’m going to put all the links in Outsiders Journey.com for this page to everything I talked about. Again, with the little bit of mania that was coming out of me still, I shared a lot of information quick.

I’m going to put it all on the page for this episode because I won’t share this much detail the way I did ever again, in anything I do related to this.

So it’ll be one of the permanent things that I make sure somebody goes to first, if they want to learn more about what it is I’m doing. And this applies to what I do more on the Outsiders Journey Podcast, for those of you that might be listening to this to see how it integrated into that.

I’m multifaceted and part of why this podcast After Bipolar came to be, was I realized I couldn’t cram everything sensibly into the Outsider’s Journey Podcast. And there’s another podcast coming. A separate one, just for the NSA work that I do, the NSA chiropractic.

So if you’re listening just to see how I did all of that, I hope you pulled a little something from this episode that helps you see how you might do the same.

All right. Back to the bipolar folks. If you need help with bipolar, go find my wellness guide on this page. Look for the green field, click on it. And you’re in. That is exactly what I did to beat bipolar disorder. I left nothing out. I simply refined it and I added more action steps.

It’s the same system that’s in my book, It Takes Guts To Be Me. But with the system online, I was able to share more things in more ways than I could in a print book. Plus, you got links. You don’t got to find anything, you click it and you go right to what it is I’m talking about.

If you want to see what someone with a mind like mine once was, is now turning into, click on the blue lady. And that’s what I’ve built so far, to show how to make use of all this stuff you’re listening to now and hopefully seeing as well. All right. On that note, I look forward to meeting you, whoever you are and be well.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:44 — 57.3MB)

Podcast Player Image by Rizal Deathrasher from Pixabay

Show Notes:

Welcome to the Bipolar Excellence Podcast. Episode Five, the Karen Gupton interview. This is the fourth interview out of five from a podcast called After Bipolar I used to have, and it no longer exists. I’m not going to say too much in this introduction because there is an introduction connected from years ago to that interview as well.

So just a three-stager like the ones before it. Karen? I can’t find any evidence of her online anymore. She was a sweetheart. And I was led to her by my coach, Ronda. My writing coach. Ronda helped me write my book. Ronda’s all over Amazon if you look up Ronda Del Boccio. Ronda’s pretty incredible. She’s in a category of her own. Somebody very special.

And if she offers something that speaks to you, you’re going to do well by connecting with her. I can’t say enough good about Ronda. I’m going to leave it at that because I really like what I said in the old introduction to the old interview. So just go right into that.

Original Review Starts Here

Hey everybody. This is Ken Jensen with the After Bipolar Podcast, Episode Five, the Karen Upton interview.

This can also be called the ultimate retelling of my bipolar origin story episode.

Karen came my way from my writing coach. When I wrote my book, It Takes Guts To Be Me. My writing coach Ronda was partnered with Karen on an internet talk show of a sort, I guess you could say. Pretty much a podcast. Must’ve been exactly a podcast. Ronda’s very cool. Ronda Del Boccio.

Karen was very nice. I think they had actually interviewed me on another… I think there had been a second episode. I remember something because I remember something in an interview I wasn’t happy about on my part. And I couldn’t find a copy of that. So …good. In this interview, Karen got me to share my entire bipolar origin story.

And then obviously what came after. And she did a real good job of asking me the right questions. And I did a good job of keeping my answers rather concise, short and sweet. A lot of drama filled information without a drama filled delivery. I was real happy with it. I haven’t listened to that interview in years.

So if anything, I maybe should have made this my first episode. I didn’t know, until I listened to it, how well that that came out. On another note, you’re going to hear links to a website that don’t exist anymore. And at the very end I reference what… everything was true. Everything that you’ll hear me saying was true

But really in terms of talking to a bipolar person, it almost sounded to my ears, like I was sliding back into some sort of bipolar, mania driven dream world. That’s what I would’ve thought. If I heard this interview and didn’t know the backstory of what it is I was sharing right at the very end, cause it was all real.

And it’s connected to the… I got a lot going on. It’s all mixing up in my head… the Outsiders Journey Podcast Episode Two. My Mad Demi Gods episode. As I was improving and evolving and excited to share my story is when I crossed paths with both some rock solid people who themselves… well-established business people …with a vision for the city that we were in.

And also the biggest Mad Demi God. I met them both at the same time. And together before any of us realized how mad the Demi God was, we had kicked off quite a project.

It was all real. And we were working with some millionaires. And we were working with city planners. There was a group of us that were going to different cities and having meetings with city planners. And it was all real as far as that was happening. And everyone involved for the most part was legitimate, but it never became anything. But it was awful interesting and awful fun.

I learned a lot. I got myself into meetings, in places I could never foresee myself being. I got people to listen to me that I can’t even believe to this day we got that far. But it was all real, but never became something you could touch. Fascinating times. And I’m still friends with three-quarters of the people involved, all good people.

Everyone’s either continued doing whatever they were doing when they met me or they’ve gone on to other things equally cool. Just an interesting take on being someone who was bipolar as well as, as I call it, bipolar prone, to have the kind of personality characteristics that someone like me has.

Now, we’re getting more into the DaVinci aspect of a person. The things that happened with the mad demigod and the legitimate people… these things get drawn to us. And we get drawn to things. And we’re able to start knitting stuff together that I think, most of which doesn’t come true. But some of it does.

You’re in one example of a thing coming true. This website, outsider journey.com. Well, if you haven’t been to the website yet, please go to it and you’ll see what I’m talking about. So go ahead and listen to this interview with Karen. She’s a real sweet lady. Going to try to find the link to wherever it was, she was inhabiting when she interviewed me, I’ll try to find something.

I’ll link to Ronda. Ronda is incredible. We haven’t talked directly in a couple of years or more, but I’m very proud to send people her way. She’s not working with the company she was when she and I first met. But there’d be no me today. There’d be no book. And subsequently this, without Ronda.

She was a key part in unearthing my whole story from my head. I couldn’t see it. I was in it. She is the number one person that helped me see what became, eventually, all this. So I owe her a big debt of gratitude for that. So. Here’s the Karen Upton interview.

Interview Starts Here

Karen: Hello, this is Karen Gupton. And today I’m talking with Ken Jensen. Ken is a Marine Gulf War Veteran, who overcame came bipolar disorder without using meds. This wasn’t by choice. It was survival-based. Doctors couldn’t help him. And medicine only worsened his health. But the development of his system, TORQUE BACK, and the great results it delivered him have led him to life he never imagined possible.

He became a public speaker, life coach, consultant, motivator business development specialist, and an activist for the disabled and disenfranchised of all sorts. He rebuilt his life from the ground up and even regained his family’s love and trust, after losing both due to the behavior his bipolar caused.

10:00 Min Mark

This list of achievements can be copied by others if they so desire, including, and especially the overcoming of bipolar disorder, in an all natural sense. Life is good and anyone can change for the better. Ken Jensen is living proof of that.

First of all, Ken thank you for joining us this afternoon. And I’m looking forward to talking with you.

Ken: Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Karen: Okay, well let’s start at the beginning. When were you first diagnosed with bipolar disorder?

Ken: Probably was about 1997. I was about 29. I started experiencing constant stress on a higher level than I’d ever felt in my life before. And it was picking up steam. More and more was upsetting me. The size of an issue that it took to upset me, was getting smaller and smaller. And my response to how I wanted to handle the stress was getting more intense, more severe, more anger based, more violence based. And it seemed to be growing by the day.

I went to a doctor who was a regular medical doctor. And he gave me a full physical because he was detecting a pattern. He said, you keep showing up here asking me for Valium and I’m not quite sure what’s going on with you. But after the physical, he said, you’re absolutely physically my healthiest patient. You’re a bear. I think what’s going on with you is between your ears.

And he asked me if I had any problems with going to a psychiatrist. And at that point, my stress had become so intense and I knew it was problematic. I knew it wasn’t in rational or normal. I said, I don’t care who I got to see. This, this has to be stopped. It’s getting too intense, it’s getting scary. What I’m getting ready to do when anybody upsets me.

And it’s taking almost nothing to upset me. And I’m a combat Marine vet who bodybuilds. That’s a bad situation if I got too upset. So I went to a psychiatrist and within 20 minutes he diagnosed me. At that time I was classic bipolar. And then my Odyssey with medication began that day.

Karen: Okay. So, did he recommend medication at that time?

Ken: Oh, immediately. And I was hurting so bad inside that I really didn’t care. I wanted relief. And it made sense to me at the time to do medication. The very first thing we tried was Depakote. And within 24 hours, I became suicidal in nature.

I wasn’t going to kill myself and I didn’t want to. But I got so just slammed with despair and angst and just hurt on a level I’d never experienced before it scared me. And I called the doctor and told him what was happening. And he said, that’s the Depakote. You’re responding to it poorly. Don’t take another one. We’ve got to switch it up.

So that became a theme that followed me for the next six years, switching meds and mixing cocktails. And you know, a lot of people that listen to this interview will be familiar with that.

Karen: Okay. So, you would basically try different combinations and see how you reacted. Did you finally find a combination that worked?

Ken: No, never did. I would experience brief periods of respite, sometimes only lasting days, sometimes weeks, maybe a month where the symptoms wouldn’t be as intense, but they never actually left. And over time they just kept getting stronger.

The only thing that even sort of put a dent in it was benzos. But I got to a point where the doctor told me Take them like candy. It really doesn’t matter at this point. If you’re freaked out, take them. It’s the only thing that even has any kind of effect, which is, you know, that’s terrible.

Those things are disastrous to your physical health, the liver and all of that. But yeah, the benzos a tiny bit, but other than that, no. I would just get a moment of reprieve and then the game would be back on and almost out of spite, it would get even stronger.

So what finally happened to turn you to an all natural approach?

That would be my death sentence that my last psychiatrist handed me. I’m a vet. So I had all my healthcare handled at the VA. I had some civilian doctors in the middle just out of desperation. I was trying anything because nothing was working.

And my life was just… by the time I got my death sentence, there was only three things I could feel. Fear, despair and rage. That’s it. There was no other emotion. And I had no life. I was a recluse who smoked cigarettes, held still. And the only thought I used to think was, well, two things:

I can’t understand why I’m still alive because it was pointless. And two, I can’t hurt anybody.

I would just go through those two statements in my head over and over. The doctor, we always talked straight. I said don’t mess with me. Tell me straight up. And he goes, I promise. I will. One day we were doing our last meds change and going over the results, which were nil.

And he said, you are absolutely meds resistant, a hundred percent, nothing is touching your illness. It’s getting worse. He goes, we’ve tried things we both knew weren’t even going to work. And he said I don’t have high hopes for your future. In all honesty, you’re going to be dead in about six months, one way or the other from bipolar.

This illness is going to take you out, due to the behavior you exhibit when you lose it or something. And I sat there I was like Cripes. You’re right. I’m gone. And he told me he just shook his head. He was like, I hate this about you. I go what.

He said, you’re my only patient who doesn’t just take the pill and call it a day.

You go home and research. You’re on the internet, you’re in a library. You’re talking to people. He said, you know. You know, more than any other patient I have, absolutely how screwed you are. And he goes, I wish you were ignorant. I think it would give you some modicum of peace. And he said at this point, if you’ve got to see a witch doctor, you got my blessing.

He said, I can’t help you. No doctor really can. We know this now. It’s been six years and we’ve tried everything. He said, do whatever you think might work.

Karen: So then what was your, what was your next step then?

Ken: Well, I went home. On the drive home is a long way to the VA center. So I go home thinking about this.

I sat home and I knew I was going to die. And I knew the way I died was going to make the newspapers. I wasn’t going to go quietly. It was going to be spectacular. And it was going to hurt everyone I loved. And that was the way I was. I was over the top in my actions.

I heard a little voice in my head, a normal one, and it was my Marine voice, which I had not heard in years.

And he just said, this is not the way Marine goes out. Do something. Fight. Well, I didn’t roar back to good health. I wish there was an immediate victory story. There wasn’t. Over the next two years, I started putting pieces together and testing.

The very first thing that came my way that gave me some hope was an article on a company that had a nutrient based approach to fighting bipolar. And one thing immediately struck me. Discover magazine could not risk its reputation by doing a cover page article on snake oil.

So before I even read the article, I was halfway sold. And then as I read the article, based on what I knew from bodybuilding… bodybuilders try to max out their body’s performance, get muscles to grow.

To do that you have to be very meticulous in how you eat and what you supply your body. It’s like a high tuned race car. You got to give it the absolute best if you want the most out of it. As I read the article, it matched everything I knew from training. And I realized I had usually eaten very well, but I needed far, far more nutrients than non bipolar people.

That was the first step. When I did the nutrient based approach, I found a few other nutrients over time that I threw in that made sense to me again, from a lot of the builder’s standpoint and just from a biological and chemistry standpoint. And after a certain point, I actually had about a 75% turnaround for the better.

And then it dawned on me. Part of my problem with my polar had nothing to do with my body. It had to do with how I looked at the world as a person, how I interacted with the world, what my habits were, why I thought like I did, why I believed what I did… about anything. And I realized I was wrong in a lot of key areas.

And I needed to actually go about changing who Kenny was. And then I found another company that had a kind of meditation that was science-based. And I read the story behind how the guy invented it. And he was like me. He was an animal, which that appealed to me, and then he figured some things out and he did the same thing.

He put a bunch of facts together. He goes, none of what I’ve done is new. I’ve just kind of assembled in a new way. And here’s what I came up with and it’s having fantastic results. And he didn’t do that for bipolar. He did it just to help anybody have a better life. Made sense to me. So I threw it in and I definitely experienced another surge upwards in good health.

20:00 Min Mark

And then from there I started just really pulling apart the rest of my life. And I just took much better care of myself and started just working very hard on changing how I did anything and try to be proactive and positive. Put all of that together and it worked. I just kept getting better and better.

And I still do.

Karen: Now, as you were going through all of this from the time you were first diagnosed until now, how has this affected your family? Are you married? Do you have children?

Ken: Yeah. Both. Yes. To both. Well, as the illness started to consume me, I lost my first wife. I think the only reason she lasted… she saw some pretty spectacular badness.

I went psychotic a few times. I was, at that time,at my peak ,physically. So when I wanted to destroy something, I never did anything to her, but I destroy inanimate things and whatnot, I just was very scary. I attributed the fact that she was from Queens, New York that she hung in with me as long as she did because she was pretty tough.

But she cared for me. We divorced amicably and we’re still friends, but she sent me packing. She said, go home, get with your family and start trying to work on this. You’re a mess. Now in the middle, after I came home, I was living out in Denver and I moved back to New York.

I was losing ground fast and at the time I became a security guard in a very violent hospital. I got hired for my Marine background, my fighting capabilities and my size. The hospital was incredibly violent. That’s where I met my second wife. I picked up her with three step-kids and we had a son together.

And the stress of being married… I wasn’t ready. As a person, I totally wasn’t ready to have a family let alone bipolar. And then with the bipolar of course I was a mess. So I degenerated fast and then that wife saw… put it this way… I snapped one night and I went through a wall of bouncers at a bar that I happened to be in.

The only reason I was in the bar was cause I had racing thoughts and I couldn’t turn them off unless I drank. And after I mowed through all the bouncers, they couldn’t stop me, I went home and they had to call the cops on me because I was bashing my house all apart. And when the cops came in, there was four of them.

And my wife said they did not want a single bit of you. They came in and they hesitated. And at that point I was just sitting there. And she had finally seen enough. I was of no use to her as a husband, only a harm. I couldn’t take care of the kids and we separated. Now, given all of that, she lived with basically Satan.

She saw… I was unbelievably terrible. Like I said, I never touched her, but I was a scary thing to live with. And over time as I repaired myself, I did so well, she took me back. I wrote a book about all of this and the book ends off with me saying I lost my family, but I know why. It wasn’t all directly my fault, but some of it was. Can’t all be blamed on bipolar.

And I’ll just do my best to get the next person in my life and care for her right. Well, I got the same wife back. She was so impressed with how I improved, she wanted me back. And that right there is my greatest testimonial to how well what I do works. If anybody, you know, she should have been the last person to accept me back in her life.

Karen: Right. Now what about your relationship to the children? How do you explain your condition? And do they understand it and accept it?

Ken: Well, my son was just a baby, so he doesn’t really know. And the two older children they saw just enough. I ODed on my Lithium one night and was in a coma for two weeks. I died multiple times on the table and they just kept restarting my heart. The kids knew all of that.

I somehow came back to life and live. All the kids loved me. I’m like the cool dad. I’m an eccentric guy. Put it that way. And not due to bipolar. I don’t look at life the same way as many people around me. And it’s a fun kind of thing that I do.

And I made life fun for the kids. And they respected me as well. And so they’ve been very, very happy to have me back. They’ve been through too much in their short lives with bouncing around. Their mom’s done an incredible job of raising them under severely difficult circumstances. And I’ve made it my mission, besides missing her and loving her and loving them.

It was my mission not to just get them back for my own sake and peace of mind, but they need me. My wife needed her husband. My kids needed their father. And I realized I was the only one who was in possession of the tools and the perspective on life that I had, that could help them actually get out of where they ended up, partly due to me.

And it’s been working!

Karen: K. What mistakes do you think people who have bipolar make most often? What do you think are the typical mistakes? I think you mentioned a while ago with the trial and error, on the medications, I think everybody has gone through that at some point. But are there any other mistakes you think people make most often?

Ken: Well, that would be: Number One: taking meds without being your own best advocate. And assuming that that’s the only way to do it. That’d be the number one thing. Number two, you can be on meds and still do most of my system. And a number of people do. I find what people don’t understand, and this can be anybody, not just bipolar people, but with bipolar you, of course, can lack ration at certain times.

You get confused easily. All of that. They don’t realize how critical taking care of yourself is. Eating right, exercising, not having negative influences in your life, different things that anybody should know about how to just get a life done better. If you’re bipolar, it is absolutely critical that you take care of yourself.

You no longer are in a situation where you should take care of yourself. You are in a situation now where you have to take care of yourself. And I believe if people did what any of us that have lived long enough know, common sense wise, you ought to do to take care of yourself. If they did that even on meds, they would experience a much greater rate of improvement in their lives.

People take their health for granted quite simply,

Karen: Um hm. Whether you’re bipolar or not.

Ken: Totally! But with bipolar, you’ve already had one leg chopped off. You’re hopping around on one. You can’t be messing around with your other.

Karen: Well, as far as coping strategies for you, is there one particular strategy that you’ve found that makes dealing with bipolar easier for you that you would like to share with everybody?

I know you’ve mentioned a couple of things like meditation. But is there one particular thing that you think has made coping easier for you?

Ken: Well, I’d have to say it would depend on where in the process you caught me that how I’d answer that. The meditation, I use covers a lot of ground because it literally rewires your mind and you learn a different way to think.

Nothing dogmatic. Nothing religious. Nothing weird. It’s just flat out science and biology. Now that covers a lot of ground. And when I used to get very freaked out with my panic attacks or what have you, as I was healing, I would lay into that quite heavily, more so than the normal recommended amount.

Having a sounding board, somebody who has the patience to just hear whatever you have to say. For me that had been my mom.

She sat and listened to me for hours. She had no clue how to respond to me. How could she? And her just letting me talk. I actually developed most of this system just by… I basically was having a one man mastermind. My mom was helping, but she had nothing to tell me. I was figuring it all out myself just by letting me get it out.

So having someone to talk to is huge. That can be a therapist, a friend, anybody. And I find another thing that helped me very much and still does is, if you get a little shaky, if you get a little tremors of the past that are creeping back up on you.

Or even if you’re deep in the game still. If you’re doing something like what I do, cause I’m not the only game in town and there’s a lot of similar things to what I do, if you’re doing something, then almost chant to yourself like a mantra, I am literally doing everything I can think to do to take care of myself. Let that bring you some peace of mind.

Tell yourself that part of what you’re feeling isn’t even real. Your mind is literally messing with itself. You have more control than you realize, and you have to develop a faith and a belief that you do.

And over time you can, if you’re doing all the right things, People are too… and again, this is all society and it can cover many problems. People are too ready to accept the victim mode and to have a savior come and rescue them.

30:00 Min Mark

People need to take responsibility for their situation. Now, granted, when you’re very sick, you can be weak on all fronts. I was a shell when I began this process. There was nothing left of me. But something in me said, there’s a tiny something. Just get something underway and stick to it.

For me, I learned that thought process in the Marines, but anybody can do it. You just got to want it bad enough.

Karen: Okay. Well, you talked about having somebody to talk to as you’re going through this. What would you say is the biggest don’t for friends or family members or anybody that you’re talking with. What is the biggest don’t that you would like to get across to those who are trying to support someone with bipolar disorder? What should they not do?

Ken: I’d say there’s a handful. But I think the one that irritates a lot of bipolar community the most is when a normal person says something along the lines of why can’t you just snap out of it? That’s like a dagger through the heart.

That’s kind of like having you sitting there with a broken arm and someone’s telling you to basically will your way into a good arm.

Karen: I agree. That’s my personal pet peeve. as well.

Ken: Oh, it’s terrible. And they don’t… bipolar is intangible. If there’s other than your behavior, your complexion, how big the bags are under your eyes and your behavior, there’s nothing a normal person can see. They’re basically taking the whole thing on your word.

And I tell people, it’s like, if you’ve ever done LSD, there’s no possible way to describe that to someone who hasn’t to where they get, oh, I understand. Bipolar is no different. It’s too weird. It’s too freaky. It’s too large.

And again, normal people, if you’ve always been normal and I put that in quotes. You’ve never lost your health. You don’t even realize how many things you have going for you ,until they’ve been stripped away. So when you tell a bipolar person, why can’t you just, you know, fight harder and get on track, do this.

I talk about having the will to fight your way out and everything. But like I said, it wasn’t easy for me. It took years before I even felt secure that I had a shot at staying healthy, once I got there. I didn’t even trust it when I had it, but I grew to trust it. So it takes time.

And normal people gotta be willing to let their unwell loved one have the room to do what they want. And it takes an incredible amount of patience. To be fair to the supporters, this is a hard, it’s no different than having an addict in the house. In a lot of ways it’s worse because bipolar people tend to be addicts. They can be addicts as well. It’s pretty common.

It’s a lot to ask a family to put up with until you can get out of it. And that’s a hard road to walk for a family, no matter whether it’s a sick person or the well people. A lot of love and patience.

Karen: Yep. I agree. I agree with that. Well, you have a website. You want to tell us what that website address is?

Ken: Okay. I’m in any development of a new one. I have a very large old one, but I have found a much better way to help people. And that website is now called bipolar dash survivor.com. That’s the new site.

There’s not a lot to look at just yet, but there is a link on there to my book and I will, as time progresses, it’s a lot of work and I’m in the middle of a lot of other projects that have nothing to do with this.

It will be interactive in a way that it brings a lot of help to people and there’s going to be a community there. I had this all established elsewhere online, but I made a lot of mistakes in how. it worked. And I learned from it.

I’m going to have a much better version. People can share their points of view and their opinions and talk to each other. And I will have tools and links to other helpful sites that I have found and trust, ad nauseum.

I’ll have a whole armada of tools for people to pick and choose from to help themselves get well from bipolar. It can be done.

Karen: OK. Very good. Are there any last thoughts that you want to share with the listeners or the readers or anything else you would like to share?

Ken: I would. Two things. To get well from bipolar and for that matter many different illnesses, it’s going to take more than a trip to the doctor and doing whatever comes of that next. You have to completely examine your entire life. That’s called holistic.

You have to look at everything because everything matters. Absolutely everything matters as to why you are like you are. That’s why medication doesn’t always do the trick for a lot of people. It’s one facet on a many faceted stone.

The other thing is, since I’ve begun all of this. I’ve been on stage, I’ve been on TV and on radio. I’ve done a lot of these things. I’ve met with the public frequently. I’ve talked to a lot of organizations from the podium. In the doing of it people have seen stuff from me that I didn’t even notice about myself, just characteristics.

And it’s led to unbelievably large offline projects. Like I said, they have nothing to do with mental health. And they’re in the area of saving cities millions of dollars and creating jobs for the people that normally can’t get hired at a much higher than normal working wage. I’m in the middle of developing all of that with three other men and two other engineers.

And we meet with city planners and leaders, and this has already gone national. Now in the middle of all of this, I just put my family back together in June and put us in a house. And I got back into the gym recently. I had to put the gym on hold to do all of this. The point is the list of what I do in a day is long.

It’s extensive. It’s complex. I’m beholden to many people. If anybody should be stressed out or have an excuse to be, it should be me. And here I am a former bipolar person. Again, there’s another rock solid testament to the fact that what I have to teach works. If I was going to break and go back to being bipolar, it should have happened long before this point.

My list of responsibilities at this at this time are humongous and I love it. There’s a piece of me that likes that. I can’t hold a job. I never could. I have had over 30 jobs. I’m good at anything I take the time to learn. And I’ll learn it fast. I’ve realized I have to have my own thing. I am not employee material.

I think a lot of bipolar people are like that. They need to look into what drives them and answer it, separate from the illness, and watch how fast your illness starts to bleed away. Part of bipolar is just not answering what your soul is trying to tell you.

That’s probably one of the most important things I can share.

Karen: That’s a very positive and very uplifting message. And I know it was for me. And I’m sure it will be for those that are listening or reading. Well, Ken, if you have any other thoughts, we’d love to hear them. If not, we’ll close and hopefully people will go to your website, see what you’re all about and take a look at your program.

And I wish you a lot of luck in all of your endeavors, both mental health wise and not mental health wise.

Ken: Thank you very much. No, I’m done. Too much, they’ll get sick.

Karen: All right, Ken, thanks a lot..

Ken: Thank you very much again for having me.

Post Interview

You could hear Karen’s heart in her voice, right? She cares. She knows things. She’s been down some of the roads I was down and who knows what format, but a lot of what I was talking about, wasn’t new to her. Real sweet lady. Glad I got to meet her, even if it was just by phone,

Hopefully, I’ll have found something cool that’ll direct you guys to wherever she lives now, online, if she’s still doing that. But I was real happy with how that interview went and it really caught all the key points of my whole story, in relation to bipolar disorder. That was some years ago, about nine.

All these interviews were about nine years ago. So, but that one came out really well, I thought. I think it’s a real helpful thing for bipolar people and to a degree, supporters of bipolar people. On that note, please go to outsiders journey.com and look for the green field. It’s a web book. It’s full of action sheets, explanatory content and videos from me, all of which show how I beat bipolar.

But can also be used just if your life’s gone off the rails, for any reason, this will get you back on track. I’m glad to give that stuff away to those in need. Took me years to put together… it took me years to discover the pieces of the system and benefit from it. Took me more years to put it together in the format you see there in that web book.

So you’re getting many years worth of work, compressed down into what could amount to a piece of your afternoon’s viewing and reading, to know all that I learned across however many years. That’ll save you a lot of trouble. If you’re bipolar or supporting someone who has bipolar, you’ve already got enough trouble on your hands.

Let me at least save you that much. I’m very glad to give that away. And then if you want to see what a mind like mine can turn into, once the bipolar aspects are quieted, controlled, redirected, then you’re going to want to click on the blue lady. That’s what I did with all of this. And it just keeps evolving from there, but start with the blue lady and you’ll be in contact with me from there.

And then I’ll be able to share even more. Help even more. It’s just going to keep growing…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:07:53 — 93.2MB)

Podcast Player Image By: RitaE from Pixabay

Show Notes:

Welcome to the Bipolar Excellence Podcast. Episode Four, Dr. Larry Smith: Embracing The Journey Of Recovery interview. Dr. Larry’s a really cool dude. He’s a chiropractor out of Canada.

We both wrote the books about our life stories at the same time, using the same company. Once again, with these old interviews I did, there’s the interview.

And then I revisited it years later for an old podcast I no longer have. And I gave an explanation of what was in the interview there. So I won’t carry on here. This one’s going to focus on addiction more heavily than anything else.

But if you’re a follower of mine, I feel strongly that unfortunately, this might pertain to you. Seems addiction and bipolar seem to go hand in hand. So with that here is the old interview. Enjoy!

Original Review Starts Here

Hey everybody! This is Ken Jensen with the After Bipolar Podcast, Episode Four, the Dr. Larry interview.

I’m not sure exactly when this interview happened. Dr. Larry and I both used the same company to help write our books. And that’s how we got connected to one another.

It was on a group call of some sort with the owner of that company, Glenn Dietzel. Glenn has evolved a number of times into something completely different from when I first found him. And I got to meet Glenn once.

That’s a side story. I’m going to link to Glenn in the show notes. And I’m going to talk about that sometime. That was an interesting day in Manhattan with him, as I broke probation to go meet him.

Back to Dr. Larry. Larry is a chiropractor in Canada. And he had a long run with addiction, starting from when he was young, same as me, but his lasted far longer than the mine did.

He wrote a book called “Embracing The Journey Of Recovery: From Tragedy To Triumph”. And I interviewed him in relation to my story. And his story was so, you know, so similar. Addiction is addiction.

And he had a lot to say about it. And he read some stuff out of his book in this interview that you’re about to hear. Very pleasant demeanor, very fun to talk to, a very nice guy.

We talked a few times before this, before I interviewed him over the months. And it was just really nice to meet him. I fell out of touch with him years since, but I don’t know. I’m going to have to find him again, maybe and bring him on as a guest.

I’m sure he’ll be willing if he still even focuses on sharing his message as he once did. I don’t really know, just a real nice guy, real positive thing to bring into my life. Just meeting him as I brought him into others.

So here’s that interview. I handled it well. I liked how I did it and I wasn’t any kind of uncomfortable like I was when I did the radio interviews, the actual radio station interviews that proceeded this one.

I just can’t remember when I did this, exactly. But Larry wrote his book in 07. I know my book, its final version was in 08. And Larry read that. So I’ll bet it was around the same time. I was just having a better day and Larry was an easier situation to deal with, I guess, for my nerves. So here’s that interview. Enjoy!

Interview Starts Here

Ken:This is Ken Jensen, the Bipolar Eradicator. And I am speaking with Dr. Larry Smith in Canada. He’s a chiropractor who overcame many addictions and went on to become a triathlete. And Dr. Larry is a friend of mine that I met through a book authoring program.

And we see eye to eye on the benefits of exercise in overcoming addiction. And just leading life to go the way you want it to go, so that you can stay healthy, stay on the right track and get what you want out of your existence.

Dr. Larry wrote a book about this. He’s going to be talking about it some more. And he’s going to go into specifically what his life travel was all about and what he did to beat his addictions. And how he stays clean and sober so that you folks might pull something from it as well.

Okay, Dr. Larry.

Larry: It’s great to be on the call here with you, Ken. So I’ll just give you a little bit of my background and let’s just say I have a lot of qualifications in alcoholism and drug addiction.

Ken: Don’t we both.

Larry: I graduated from a treatment facility in both 1997 and 1999. And I guess I didn’t learn my lessons. So I had to go and suffer for a few more years. Usually in public, I give them my academic qualifications, but for the sake of tonight’s call yeah, that’s my qualifications there.

The good news is. I have… it’s about nine and a half years clean and sober. And these have been absolutely the best years of my life.

And as you mentioned, I’m a chiropractor and practicing in beautiful Vancouver Island. And for, coming up to 22 years now. I have a live apart/ together relationship with my girlfriend, Laurie and her family. And we’ve been going out for about eight and a half, nine years. And I also still have my father and my sister in Winnipeg.

Just lost my mum back in last September 29th. And as sad as it was to see mom go, it was great to be with the family at the time of passing .And also it was great to be clean and sober, you know, enjoy the last moments of mum’s life.

Right now you can’t see it, but I am wearing a marathon shirt that I should have earned back in 1997.

I’m wearing it because that’s when I was in treatment. And I kept it with me because I really wanted to do a marathon that year, but I was so sick and distraught and very, very ill and nearly died that I couldn’t do it. But again, the good news is that since cleaning up, I’ve done six marathons, six half Iron Man triathlons and two Iron Mans.

And that’s something I always wanted to do with the Iron Man triathlon. But I never could quite seem to train for it because the drug addiction kept on getting in the way.

Ken: Yeah. It eats up time.

Larry: Yep. And I’ll just go over my early years of just a little bit how I got started with my drinking later on to the teen years and then the university years. I’m sure many of you who suffer from addiction will relate.

I first got drunk at age 11. My parents… see my mum was a non-drinker and my dad was a social drinker. And they had company over and they didn’t realize they shouldn’t be leaving a full bottle of white rum in the kitchen unguarded. Because I got to watch people drank and seemed like it would be a fun thing.

So, you know, I guzzled about 10 ounces of it straight. And let me tell you that was the highlight of my life, getting drunk for the first time. Oh my God. I was, I was so high. I felt wonderful. I was on top of the world. I was funny. I was Mister Magnificent. And that lasted for about an hour or two.

And then things didn’t go well for me after that. Because I went up and then I came down and got violently ill and threw up all over the place and all over the company’s shoes.

And basically the next day is probably the sickest I had been in my life. And my parents of course, were quite upset .And that’s when I declared to myself and to the whole world, the Alcoholic National Anthem. You know what that is?

I’m never going to drink again.

Ken: Complete with many promises.

Larry: Yes. And unfortunately it took 30 years after that, for that to come through. So I started age 11 and I didn’t quit till age 41. So 30 years of drinking and lots of other little drugs in there to go along with that.

10:00 Min Mark

So that was one of the big things that happened to me at age 11. The other things that happened to me age 11 was I was molested by a priest. And I won’t go into too much detail into there, but obviously a traumatic experience. But another good thing that happened to me at age 11 is I received my first chiropractic adjustment.

And it impressed me so much, you know, I thought, gee, maybe I might become a chiropractor one day. I really loved the guy, Dr. Kramer. He was a such a cool guy. And I thought, maybe I’m going to do this. And did the things that happen at about age 11. I was started to become really involved in community and school sports.

I was into football and hockey and gymnastics and you know, the thrill of scoring a goal in hockey, you know, that was just, you know, and it just was such a wonderful feeling. And you know, I’m still playing hockey as of this day. Same as scoring a touchdown in football and then came gymnastics, and then went to do my first back flip.

So a lot of things were happening in my life in the formative years, you know. Some of them positive, of some of them not so positive but you know, that’s how life goes. But as you see, as I’m going to be talking about the, you’ll see how it all turned out.

So takes me into my teen years. And I was continuing to do well in school and in sports, you know, I was mainly interested in the sports and I would do well in school, just, you know, enough to get by.

But when I got pushed, I could get the good marks. But you know, I wanted to get the parents and the teachers off my back and play sports. And then there was a thing called alcohol I wanted to do on the weekends. So by the time I was 13, 14, I was basically the weekend alcoholic. We would go drinking Friday and Saturday.

And we used to call it fishing. Go outside the liquor store, the beer vendors and the drinking age was 21 back then. We had to get the older people to buy it for us. And that never seemed to be a problem. And the only important thing was hiding it from mum and dad.

And that seemed to get harder and harder. Because they saw I was sick on Saturday and Sunday morning, they would suspect I had been drinking. And with my mum, you know, drinking alcohol and being drunk, that was only what the vagrants did and what bums did.

And no son of mine is going to be a drunk. But little did she know that I was doing it all the time. So that continued on. And there’s this one story I can tell you when I was age 16, I didn’t even have my driver’s license.

Back then, I guess we had run out of a beer or alcohol. So I decided to steal my friend’s car and go pick up some some alcohol and at the same time, call on a girlfriend.

I thought that she was my, my girlfriend. Good news was, I got back to the apartment safely without smashing anything up. But my friends weren’t too happy with me, so they kicked me out. And so I tried to hitchhike home and ended up being picked up by the police.

So it was a good thing they picked me up while I was walking and hitchhiking rather than driving, or it would have been even harder to explain to my mom who had to pick me up to the police station. So that was my first and last experience being at a police station. I’m pleased to say.

Ken: Oh, just that one time?

Larry: Yeah.

Ken: That’s incredible!

Larry: Yeah, there’s some other stories there with with being caught. And this is just before I went into treatment: I got pulled over and I told them I had a hypoglycemia. Hadn’t eaten in three hours. And I said, well, if he doesn’t believe it, I’m just going to say, take my keys away. But he believed it. He brought me some granola bars.

So I was incredibly lucky, however, with the drinking and driving. AIt’sdangerous. I have a lot of guilty feelings about that over, you know, over the years that I did that. And fortunately I didn’t kill myself or others.

Ken: Well, it is a miracle guys like you and I didn’t do more damage with a vehicle than, than we did, but you know, we’re here now to make sure others that might be listening to this don’t take it at least as far. Turn it around faster than we did. Not take the decades that we did to turn it around.

Larry: Yeah. And I’m getting at the new generation here with my, my girlfriend’s son is he’s found some mood altering chemicals. And I keep on telling him about, you know, I don’t want you to go down my road.

And he quite understands that, however, it hasn’t stopped him so far. Now I’m beginning to feel what my mum and dad felt. I can say the helpless feeling of, oh God, the kid’s going to do it. We’ve got to keep them safe.

So, moving on to university years. That’s where we up the ante here, because I went through both the university of Manitoba and a Canadian Memorial Chiropractic College in Toronto. And of course there’s more academia. You have to study a lot. And I was still doing gymnastics at the university of Manitoba.

And what it meant is I had to work hard er. And I had to practice harder doing gymnastics. But of course that meant there was more of a reward on weekend. I got to drink harder, since I deserved it because I worked so hard during the week.

So my typical university day classes, I go from eight o’clock till about two. Have gym practice till five, and basically study all night. And as they say, starting to party all weekend.

One morning I started to get sick and I was getting a cold or a flu and my sister had some 222s. And all I knew was my clogged up nose and my fever went instantly away and I got instantly high with that.

It was that hit of codeine. And the only thing was it bothered my stomach and I fixed that problem. So instead of taking the 222s with aspirin, I took a Tylenol with codeine. And in Canada, it’s readily available over the counter without a prescription. And unfortunately that one I held onto with the booze for the next 30 years.

It just, I can’t even tell you what it did for me. All I knew was I needed to have it. If I didn’t take it, I would get a rebound headache. I needed it to study. Basically needed it to function. So at that time university and chiropractic college, amazingly enough, I was trying to stay straight during the week.

But on the weekends it was the alcohol. But in the meantime I was onto the Codeine and my favorite were the the benzos. All your Valium and Xanax and what have you as the head… the voice of anxiety in my head, because I had to study so hard. I had to work so hard. And I was so worried about passing.

And I just wanted to quiet those voices and that’s what did it for me. And unfortunately I became more and more of a recluse. I did have friends, but I would never tell them what I was doing, outside they may see me with a beer or two. So I was hiding and hiding everything. And it was the pills, unfortunately, were readily available.

You know, the advent of the Internet. The doctors didn’t give it to you. You just you know, you went on to the internet. So this was becoming a problem for me academically. I had not done well on a few courses and I knew I couldn’t drink anymore.

So I would take Antabuse. For those of your listeners who don’t know what it is, it’s a drug that makes you sick instantly as soon as you take it.

So I would take that on Monday to Thursday, stop taking it on Thursday and started drinking on Friday. But unfortunately one time I was drinking on Friday, but the Antabuse hadn’t left my system and I was turning violently ill. I was bright red. My heart was pounding. And all I knew was I felt very sick, but you know, I had to get drunk.

So what I decided to do is I had to clear this from my system. So I found a sauna and I started to exercise in the sauna so I could get the Antabuse out of my system, so I could go and get drunk. Now isn’t that insane? Or what?

Ken: That’s pushing the body and the heart and everything so hard. I know they were big on Antabuse when I was in the Marines. And there were guys that same thing, just how to get drunk. They’d take it, they’d just vomit throughout the night and just keep drinking anyway.

I never got stuck with Antabuse for all my drinking. But it was pretty horrendous to watch what they were going through and we were made of tough stuff. So they would just keep going.

Larry: Yeah. And basically it doesn’t work. For short periods. Yeah. But just as we’ll get into later on in the recovery, takes a lot more than taking a pill to make you sick.

So meanwhile, going through the university chiropractic college years, you know, the, a series of volatile relationships. Geez. I couldn’t figure out why. It ended in a quick marriage and a disastrous divorce and that’s something I actually am grateful for happening. Because my ex wife, she threatened to tell the world my secret, and she did.

This, guy’s an alcoholic.

But the thing is I don’t have to hide from that anymore because now I’ve written a book on it. I’ve overcome it. She was trying to use that to, for me to stay with her. It didn’t work though.

Ken: Yeah. Gimmicks don’t work. You just got to fix the problem and that’s that.

Larry: Yeah. And then I had a, quite a concerned priest.

I was attending a church at the time, just to meet some people. And they were a nice group of people. And he finally took me aside one day and said, “You know, son. You can’t get close to God if you got all this stuff going on in your head.” And he says,” My brother is an alcoholic.”

20:00 Min Mark

And he gave me this big blue book here. It’s the Big Book. And I was reading with quite a lot of interest. Till I found out…I was learning how to control drinking. They said they, you couldn’t drink at all. And so I thought, well, this is no good. So that was the end of that experiment.

I mean, too bad and it made a lot of sense, but it means you can’t have any? And I remember talking to my sister back then, “How can you possibly live a life without alcohol and drugs?” I was screaming to her as I was going through another tantrum of how bad things were.

Ken: That’s the biggest, that’s the biggest thing I think, besides the problems it causes for any of us, whether we’re mentally ill or not, or, you know, quote unquote, just alcoholics or drug addicts.

You, you just, you can’t imagine how to fill whatever hole you mistakenly think it’s filling in your life. You can’t see how to operate without it. And it’s horrifying.

And that fear keeps people, on so many levels, from just kicking it out of their life and living a better life. That’s like, it’s just around the corner.

Larry: I know. I mean it just.. It’s there. I just couldn’t conceive of it at the time. Talking to you my stomach is turning because I know how messed up I was.

But those emotions, those feelings, they’re still, I’ve got them. I knew exactly what I felt like. And just I like to talk about the stuff. I like to keep it at arms length, but I don’t want to forget what it was like. Cause I don’t want to.

Ken: Yeah. Right.

Larry: At that time I thought I was seriously mentally ill.

I said there’s gotta be something wrong with me. And when I went to treatment, I go to psychiatrist and they were talking about me having borderline personality disorder. Cause I like to ,you know, harm myself physically. But they said they weren’t sure. “You stay sober for a year or two and we’ll see how you’re doing.”

And you know, sure enough as you say, just an alcoholic addict. There was no mental illness. And at the time I was hoping I was. Then it could take Prozac or then it could take some type of drug.

I really, for the first year or two was hoping there was something else wrong with me.

Cause I just, I wanted to have that prescription. That fix. But I must say I know people who have the dual disorders and you know, that’s no fun. When you never really know what’s causing the problems until you clean up.

You know after reading your book too, I think you were masking your illness through the booze from what I understand.

Ken: Right. And then at different times, one or the other’s in the lead. You can’t tell really what… it’s the snake chasing its tail. You can’t tell which one’s actually driving the show. And they both make each other stronger.

Larry: Yeah. But that’s the background between the early years, teen, university.

And as I say, amazingly enough, I did set up shop on Vancouver Island. And I put on the image of looking very happy and healthy on the outside, until I finally crashed back in 97 and 1999. But as I’ve mentioned to you before I’ve written a book and we don’t want to talk about all the war stories and how bad it was.

I mean, we have to recognize that’s part of our story. But one of my main themes of Embracing the Journey of Recovery, it’s hope. I’ve made it. You’ve made it. And the people, your subscribers, they’re either making it, or they have made it, or they will make it as they keep trying.

So what I would like to do for you, Ken, if you would allow me to, is just go over some of the stories from Embracing The Journey. And what I talk about in the first chapter it’s called “A Message Of Hope.”

And it’s basically not about what’s happened to you nor is it a contest of who has most pain, worst trauma or serious disease. Because to each person suffering from a life-threatening injury or illness, his or her situation seems the worst, doesn’t it?

Ken: Definitely.

Larry: Yeah. So the focus is on the present: what an individual can do to move forward. And we explore the issues of the recovering individual, but we actually confront the many problems and dilemmas that inevitably arise.

And you want to embark on the journey with a balanced approach of the mind, body and spirit. If you’re injured, mind, body, and spirit, the recovery has gotta be mind, body and spirit.

And as we talked, you talked about earlier is, we’re basically into the fitness part of it. Because I see a lot of people, they do their meetings or what have you to stay clean, but they still have so many health issues.

They’re not leading a quality life, even if they are clean and sober. So from the beginning my story is the getting into recovery. I was 41 years old. Had a well-established practice. Was a sports enthusiast. You know, I really appeared happy and healthy on the outside. But after my divorce, I finally realized I had a real serious problem with alcohol and you know, the other mood altering chemicals.

I had contracted pneumonia. I’d lost nearly 35 pounds and I could barely walk.

And that basically when I gave up and finally asked for help. And I was on a very rapid, downward spiral. And just before I crashed I ended up writing into a journal my thoughts and feelings. And I’ll just read that for you here. Actually quite powerful.

“It was dismal, dark and damp outside, which perfectly mirrored my inner world. Lying on the cold bathroom floor, I perceived that struggling helpless boy from outside my body and wondered how he could escape. I’ve been hiding so many deep dark feelings for so long. And I now realize that I’ve just been masking my pain with alcohol.

I need to get help and to find the courage to tell somebody my story, but I’m so afraid. And I’m so lonely. It seems that the grown man I have become, can find no way to escape the feeling of pain, humiliation, hopelessness, and despair. Who will listen to me? Who will believe my story?”

I feel much like the character described by T.S. Elliot in The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.

‘I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floor of silent seas.’

And that was the last coherent thing that I wrote before I finally was dragged on into treatment. A very, very low part of my life.

Ken: It’s pretty dark image.

Larry: So, I have a humorous anecdote too.

The two people that dragged me to treatment. And this is what I have seen, what you attract into your life. I guess this one person thought that we had a relationship. And I really didn’t know what she saw in me.

But she had watched me get married and she was going to, after I got divorced, she was going to marry me. And this was while I was dying as a drug addict.

And then two years later, I stumbled upon, only this time it was a guy, who thought I was I gay. He was going to clean me up. And then I would realize that I was gay. Then I could have my life back. So I have to bless both of them though, because they got me into treatment and they saved my life.

It’s amazing what you attract into your life.

Ken: It is. And one of the things I like people to understand is, life does not happen to you. It might feel that way, but that’s not the case. You’re directing it and you’re bringing it to you. Whatever you’re seeing in your life is really a reflection in the mirror. You’re seeing your thoughts brought to reality. Nothing’s happening.

Larry: It’s a reflection of where you are at that particular time. And, you know, that’s what it was. There’s a lot of hurt. There’s a lot of confusion. But again, I am grateful for having survived that because without that, I wouldn’t be where I am today to appreciate what I have.

And and that’s the next topic I would like to talk about, is gratitude. And I know you have a lot of gratitude after reading your story, Ken.

Ken: Yeah.

Larry: I couldn’t put your book down. It has to end sooner or later, all the things that were happening to you. But it was like, oh my goodness.

Ken: Yeah. That’s, that’s a common reaction. I won’t use the language of 70 some odd year-old lady told me once. But she had had friends read it and say that, geez, he just wouldn’t quit.

And he just kept going until he made it. But even with you, I mean you know, with you say like 30 years of drinking. And for all my problems we had different shaped problems, but you were at it probably even longer than I was. So you hung in there too.

Larry: The memories.

Ken: Thank God they’re memories.

Larry: Burnt, burnt in there. Where was I?

Ken: Gratitude.

Larry: Gratitude. Okay. So how do you practice gratitude when you’re feeling shit? I get that all the time with the “easy for you to say, doc, and you know, you’ve got this beautiful life of yours. And yeah, yeah, yeah. Look at me. I’ve lost my job and my wife and my car. My kids hate me.”

So I go back to what happened to me in treatments. And basically, it’s practice it every day. You know, at the end of each day, you take inventory and it’s not to say you ignore or deny events or situations that are painful. You acknowledge them.

30:00 Min Mark

But at the same time you acknowledge the good things that happened to you. And you know, simply understand the truth that in each and every day, there are plenty of things to be grateful for. And I strongly feel it’s virtually impossible for a person to heal and become well, if they’re a hundred percent focused on pain and suffering.

Ken: Right.

Larry: Yeah. And you go along with that, I’m sure.

Ken: Right, because even if you find tiny things to be grateful for, it’s like banking money. They just start adding up and they add up and give you strength to go forward. And it’s a way of looking at life too.

It’s not just banking them and pulling from them. Like you just said, it’s the reverse of talking pain and suffering constantly. You’re talking some positivity.

Larry: It keeps you going. I mean, if you can hang on to that.. and the early days of my recovery, you know, I could barely walk. I was pissing my pants People were making fun of me. And I was detoxing and withdrawal symptoms, you know, the hallucinations, the shaking.

And I basically didn’t even know if I was gonna live. And then I felt humiliated because these drug addicts were laughing at me. Didn’t they know I was better than them? The arrogance!

So they ended up being some of my best friends. So in my severely weakened state, the counselors would come up to me and they made me find one good thing that’s happened to me each day.

And of course I’m looking at them, what good can you possibly find since going into treatment? And so they just sat there and said, you sit down there. We’re not letting you go until you tell us one good thing that’s happened to you today.

And then I remembered, there was one of my peers named Shauna. She’d basically seen how the other people were making fun of me. She befriended me. And she said, she went through the same thing when she was detoxing.

You know, she says, I know what you’re going through. Hey buddy, you’re in the right place. You’re going to get better. I’m going to be your friend. And says, let’s just hang out together.

And that, you know, the act of kindness, that was the flicker of light and hope that kept me trying for just another day. It was just the one act of kindness. And the next day they’re basically saying, “Okay, you found something yesterday. What did you find today?”

And there might’ve been 10 bad things. But there was always one or two good things. And I have practiced that faithfully. And I’m actually proud to say too, even more so as the years of sobriety go on, have become more grateful. Even though at times I guess we all get down and despondent and things aren’t going our way.

But when my mom was passing, I would recite 15 or 20 things I was grateful for about her and her life. And then saying, gee, there’s a great family around me. Hey, I’ve got a great career. You know, I got a house. I’ve written a book. I’m in good shape. What the heck is it that I was so depressed about?

And I’ve seen a lot of people coming into my practice. They were really in a lot of pain. They’re not doing well. And I just have to keep getting snapped on the head. Which is why I make a practice every day: count 10 things that I’m grateful for, each and every day.

And I do it most days, but I have one for you that you probably have already done yourself too. You pick the worst day of your life and just pick five things that you’re grateful for that happened on that day. You may not be able to get it on that day, but there are great things that have happened because of the tragedy.

And you know, I can’t say I was blessed when I was down there. Down not only in the dumps but nearly dying. You know, why am I grateful that I’m dying? But right now I can see the gratefulness, because I was down there. Now I’ve survived. I can help others. What a wonderful thing, isn’t it?

Ken: Well, that is! I mean, even for me, it took me a long time, once I even started to become better. It took a while. It took a solid year for me to even handle getting off all my medications. I was off of them in months, but it was a year before my body and mind stopped assaulting me with panic and whatnot.

But now, you know, same thing. At one point I was a recluse in my parents’ basement for two years. And God help anybody that got too close to me. I wouldn’t even know what I would do. But I can guarantee you, it will be bad if my mind told me to do that. I couldn’t even stop it. And now I help people like you do.

So that ties into, as far as gratitude, like on two of my worst days, I was dead- dead. My heart magically restarted after the millionth time they electrocuted it back to life on two different occasions.

So I’ve always been grateful for the docs in the ambulance. Cause I wouldn’t be here now doing what we’re doing to help people, you know, hopefully get out of this or avoid it entirely.

Larry: When they hear it, they know it’s possible too. And everybody’s got their own story.

Ken: And like you had said earlier too, it, there’s no need to compare. I mean, I’ve been dead, all the way dead. So I’m a medical miracle. But you… if you haven’t done that, it doesn’t matter. Because like you said, wherever you’re at on the pain ride, you just can’t imagine it being any worse and that’s that.

Larry: Yeah.

Ken: So don’t think because someone’s worse than you or you’re not as bad as someone else, you’ve got room to keep going. Either way, pain is pain and you just, you want out. And it ‘s unnecessary. Even with mental illness.

Larry: Oh, definitely. Speaking of mental illness, my partner, Lori the reason that we’re together is through a tragedy. Her husband committed suicide. And he was the one always helping other people out. And a total surprise. And no one knew.

He went to the doctor to get meds two or three weeks before he did himself in. And you know, that was the end of it. I guess he reached out too late. And so Lori and I were comparing our notes.

I was new in recovery and she was new in her recovery too. And that’s what we said. Let’s not have a relationship of who’s got it worse. Why don’t we help and support each other? And you know, it’s worked that way. You know, watching the kids grow up too. I mean, that’s another thing.

The kids, you know, without the father and the resentment of another man coming into the house. Which is why we stayed apart was a smart move, but they say, yeah, there’s, we all have our story.

And I I’m grateful that, you know, we attracted each other into our lives and we were still going strong and yeah, it’s no piece of cake. We we have our moments, but we worked through everything. And a lot of it is just you know, working the recovery program. And she’s grateful for what she has too and she has hope and she helps others.

And that’s my next topic. Basically is when you’re in recovery, do you help other people or do you just spend more time working on yourself? And the person that I wrote about in my book whose name was Joan, she had cancer.

And basically she had spent her whole life looking after other people. But she thought for her recovery, the hell with it. I’m going to look after myself. The other people will have to wait.

Now, in my case, it was the opposite because I’m devoted to looking after my patients all day long, but I didn’t have any dependents to support at home. And in the early months in the recovery, you know, I lived on my own. There’s no significant other, there’s no children.

So after about six months clean and sober, I was encouraged by my sponsor and peers to begin helping others. And by, you know, doing service volunteer work I’d be helping others, but they said, yeah, it’s going to help your recovery. So I took this really seriously and I regularly became the chairman for my support group.

And I found out a lot of things. Number one is the, I already knew before, but the harsh and cold reality of alcoholism. You know, I was really privileged to lead a meeting at a local detox facility on three different occasions. And it really kept me in touch with the physical pain, the emotional anguish, the hopelessness of those suffering.

And all I gave was a very simple message to those attending the meetings. I’ve experienced the same things they were going through. I understand their pain and I was giving them hope. If I can recover, so can you.

So after about a year of sobriety, I had a day I always remember. I signed up with another member of my group and we went to a local prison. And they say the cold, hard reality of alcoholism hit home that night.

And we walked in the doors and I know the prison guards, they graciously welcomed myself and my friend, Pat. And they said most of the inmates were in prison because of crimes related to alcohol and drugs.

And the meeting went very well, even though we only had about five people there. And I remember this one guy was describing all his problems with alcohol.

He’d committed all the break-ins and robberies to feed his habit. But, you know, I listened to the guy. And I really believed that he meant business. And you know, when you get out, I’m going to take you to meetings. So after the meeting, my friend, who is a little longer in sobriety than me, basically had two sobering things to tell me.

40:00 Min Mark

He says, yeah. Yeah. Don’t get your hopes up too high about trying to turn some of these guys around. Because they’re just at a very high risk to relapse and re-offend, once they’re released from prison.

And then the other thing he told me, it was very sobering, as the person that had very bad news, but one of my peers from the treatment center… the disease had proven too much for my friend and he committed suicide.

And this is a guy I looked up to in recovery and I thought he was doing a lot better than I was. That he couldn’t take it anymore and he decided to end his life. And you know, how could it possibly happen when the guy seemed to be doing so well? But you know, that was a jolt back into, “This thing is serious you know, it’s really serious.”

And then three weeks after that I had news about the person I talked to from the prison meeting. And it was more bad news. The man who I had expressed a great desire to clean up and go to AA after he got out of prison was once again, in trouble with the law.

So the the fellow, what he did is he got out of prison. The same night he was released from prison he got drunk, committed another robbery and was arrested and he was back in prison.

Ken: Yeah. I think when I got like that, and ourselves included, cause we’ve probably done it with just trying to quit drinking alone. How many hundreds of times, if not more, did we swear up and down we’d quit.

And then, you know, as soon as the hang over cleared we went back to it. But it comes down to habits. And this transfers even to mental illness. That’s the interesting thing I learned.

There’s a lot of parallels and similarities between addiction and in various mental illnesses. There’s a lot of crossovers. And if you have a dual diagnosis, you’re almost, you got double work on you because you’re almost blowing it twice as hard.

But a lot of it comes down to habits. And you can mean from your heart and you’ll probably want it. I mean, all of us that have drank long enough, we want nothing but to never drink again. You really don’t. But until you change how you think and your habits, you will return back to it.

Larry: Yeah. And that’s you’re hitting the nail on the head. Cause that’s the next thing I’m going to talk about is, what’s the plan? We’re talking about hope and we’re talking about helping others. But you know, let’s get down into the nuts and bolts. What they gave me at treatment was an aftercare plan. And that was to replace all the habits.

And then this is all to do with accountability. They weren’t gonna let me go unless I came back to the facility and work part time, come back and tell people how my day was. Get my meetings set up in the neighborhood, get setup in the community.

I had to go to my banker and my accountant and the lawyer and my office manager. They’re all concerned, but you know, basically at that point is now could they trust me?

But I had to assess. Here’s what’s been going on. Come clean and actually it was very cleansing. People were very helpful. But unless I did that just to let them know… what’s wrong with him now? So the plan that came up for me was, number one, is three meetings a week.

And I did basically five to seven a week. I would go to work all day, have a supper, go to a meeting, go home. On each Tuesday, I would go back to the treatment facility for aftercare. That’s another an hour and a half of group session. And they recommended 14 months. I did 18 months.

And I’m not the outgoing type. I lean towards introversion. Although I can talk when I’m really interested about something. Like about recovery, I can talk for a long time.

But coming to these group meetings here, I actually dominated the group, which means I would be talking about my issues and have the counselors and the peers jump all over me just to make sure I was on track.

And I’ll tell you that was tremendously helpful, especially the last four weeks. Cause as I said, this could be my last session. I really wanted to get strong feedback. What was I in danger of doing? Was I getting too overconfident? That type of thing. And I really got hammered. And I used to hate that in group.

I hated getting hammered. I wanted to hide all my secrets. But there was no secrets cause we were all basically the same.

Ken: Yeah, we’re the same guy or girl, pretty much.

Larry: We have all the same fears. We have hopes. And it’s through that I got the wonderful connections and another thing to be grateful for.

You know. Real relationships, instead of what kind of clothes somebody wears, what kind of car you drive or… you know, those things are nice, but I want to know a person with a big heart and helping others. That turns my crank. And then you get to know somebody on a real feeling basis.

And that’s what I get from the support groups is just now that real connection with people. And I had a very diverse group come to my 50th birthday party. Yeah. Support group people. There’s a few professionals. Some kids, some neighbors, family and everybody just had a wonderful time.

And it was just so nice to have people like that. A caring group of people. And you can have fun too. And you don’t need the alcohol to have fun. I mean, I sort of believed that when I was drinking, but I thought really not, it’s not possible. You have to be drunk.

Ken: Exactly. Yeah.

Larry: How could you, how could you have fun without it? So, anyway, yeah. That’s so the meetings, the aftercare and the other thing is to find somebody. A mentor, a sponsor.

We’ve had that through our book authoring too. As somebody who’s been through that before and then like you and I talking to each other too, is, you know, mentoring each other.

You need that. To know somebody who’s been there before. And I have had a really, quite a good sponsor. He would just put me back on track. If I would be whining, he’d look at me and he goes, you’re okay, just do your work.

He didn’t want to hear any crap. Very quiet and firm. And that’s all I need is just a little, you know, smack in the head, just, you know, shut up and just do your job.

And so the sponsoring was another thing. And then it’s reaching out to people, you know, make three phone calls a week to somebody in the recovery circle. And it could be the same people. It could be different people. And in fact, in lieu of my meeting tonight, that’s what I’m doing is I’m calling you here.

Cause I was so excited. I can have a, a whole meeting where I get to talk for a whole hour rather than listen to everybody else.

Ken: Well, I’m glad to have you, so…

Larry: It’s nice. And the other thing to recover too, is you need to look at your nutrition. And I can’t go into specifics here for you, you know, for those who want nutritional advice.

But I think a lot of people: let’s start out with three meals a day. A friend of mine and he would go to work, eat nothing, have nothing for lunch and then come home for dinner and have a nice big dinner and then a meal before he went to bed. And I mean just, oh, not healthy. Recovery or for your heart.

Ken: No, and that’s the first step in my system that I teach and it applies to addicts and alcoholics as well. Probably even more so if you’re mentally ill and don’t have addictions. But yeah. I look at the bodies as a simple machine.

It’s more than that, but if you just take it as a machine, it needs things to go. And in this case for this topic, addictions, when you drink and do drugs, your body to fight the destruction you’re causing, it uses up all its resources to try to keep the boat afloat. And now it’s out of parts and your body will consume itself in a mad effort to fill holes elsewhere.

It’ll create a hole somewhere else. It’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. And for my listening audience, that’s one of the things that leads to bipolar or very severe depression. So one of the first things you have to do is start repairing the nutrition deficit.

Larry: I love that analogy. That’s from your book, isn’t it?

Ken: I don’t know. I talk so much. I don’t know where they come from.

Larry: I just love that because it makes so much sense and I could really relate to that. I work on trying to improve that to a sense that Lori and I have been together, I worked on a nutrition. As it was too much, I don’t have time to eat so I’ll eat a Hungry Man.

And it just, you know, like way too much fat man. I mean, it was a meal. It’s just not a very healthy meal. So tonight I did a little better there. I had a nice pasta casserole with tuna in there. And I steam some vegetables. Very nutritious. It’s got all the food groups in there. I have an orange for dessert. There you go.

Ken: One of the things people don’t realize like, in the case of let’s just say drinking, we all know enough drinking’ll give you a heartburn. You’ll almost never go anywhere without your Tums or Rolaids when you’re drinking hard.

50:00 Min Mark

Besides the body being poisoned, and by fighting it, it depletes its reserves of enzymes and vitamins and minerals and everything to get rid of all the alcohol and repair the physical damage, you also wipe out the lining of your intestines and all the little bacteria that are in there that are supposed to be in there that actually help you digest your food.

So now not only are you using up your pieces, you’re not getting the fresh pieces added back in, even when you do eat. And then to top that all off you start damaging… people don’t realize the intestines are where almost all of the serotonin in your body is made, which is what keeps you naturally happy.

If you mess up your intestines, you can physically damage your ability to be happy.

Larry: Wow.

Ken: And a lot of people don’t seem to realize you need the healthy guts, not just to look good or be strong and fit. Your ability to be happy is directly in jeopardy. And drinking and drugs. I mean, between the poisons themselves, and then the way you’ll eat or not eat while you’re high, you’re killing the center of you that keeps you happy.

Larry: And we wonder why we didn’t feel well.

Ken: Exactly.

Larry: I’m glad you brought that point up too, cause some of the simple things too. And again, the scientists and society is looking for the magic pill. It might be a part, but you know, it’s the whole, the whole healthy living. There’s the whole, the whole recovery.

Ken: It is. You have to take the universal look at your situation, whether you’re mentally ill, or an alcoholic or a drug addict, it’s all related. You have to look at your whole life and start fixing everything, in a sensible fashion. And do whatever’s the easiest first.

But taking a pill? I tell people by taking a pill, it’s like putting out a pan fire on the stove while the rest of the house is going up in flames behind you, you got your stove under control. That’s it.

Larry: So next, the other thing that’s missing as we both talked about, here’s the exercise. And for me that wasn’t a problem, you know, a marathon runner, triathlete, most people don’t want to be getting into what I’m getting into. It just happens to be part of me. You want to start out though the three to four times a week.

I mean, in treatment, they made us walk twice a day, which was, which was just great. Small steps as well. If you haven’t been exercised and you’ve got to get the medical clearance, you know, we want you to be doing a little bit of cardio and a little bit of stretching.

You do that for a while, get your body used to the movement and you’ll feel better. Then when you’re starting to feel better, then you can start adding things like some weights or maybe some Tai Chi and yoga. Whatever turns your crank. Try working all the systems in the body.

But again, one of my pet peeve is standing outside of some of the support group meetings is the people smoking and exercise doesn’t seem to be important. And it just drives me crazy.

It’s like my mom will say, I’m a weird person because of all the exercise I’m doing. I’m going no, God, you guys got it all wrong. You should be doing stuff. I mean, I love some of the people dearly. You know, they’re dear friends, but I lost one cause he continued to smoke. You know, five years sober, but he got throat cancer and died.

Ken: Well in a way I’m grateful in a backwards fashion. And I almost wish other people… I know other people do, but… I mean, like on a higher percentage, I wish people could experience what I experienced.

Part of how I ended up quitting smoking and all the drugs and drinking and staying away from it to this day, is not so much any of the loftier ideals involved in what people do to stay clean.

But going back to mental illness, I know that if I throw something down the hatch that does not belong in the body as food air or water, I’ll have a panic attack. And my panic attacks are so huge, I will do anything to avoid them. And in this case, all I have to do is behave. I kind of wish more people could have that effect; have that happen to them almost.

They’d stay straight too. And it’s hard. It’s hard. And then I used to get very mad, because once I went straight, I had whittled it down to nicotine. And then I got mad because I realized like, okay, it just dawned on me one day. I will not have fun or I will not be able to relax if I don’t have any nicotine.

And then I just did the rest of the math. I’m like, so that’s it. So you’re telling me without nicotine, -this is me talking to me- I’m not going to enjoy myself. Just simply because a bag of chew or a box of smokes isn’t around. And that just seemed ludicrous to me.

And I got real mad and I realized that I needed to find out why- like you had said a crutch- why does there always have to be at least one thing on board? And I got very annoyed at myself of my weakness.

And a lot of people do, but I just, I kept getting annoyed until I was in a rage about my weakness. And I decided I’m going to figure out why I seem to need this crutch. I didn’t want to be beholden to a substance, made me feel tiny.

Larry: It’s just, yeah, it’s fascinating. When we talk about getting addicted to things. And it blows my mind away what people can get addicted to and for how long and some never overcome it. This is a tragedy.

Ken: And then back to your exercise, you brought up another good point there. I write a lot about what I do and I when I’m in the gym, I’m one of those guys that you’re not so sure you want to come right up and say, “hi”. I look kind of intense.

And I’m usually lifting as hard as I possibly can. And that’s how I’ve done it for years. And I love that. And people, for a little while, till I addressed this, were thinking, that’s what I wanted them to do to beat their bipolar.

Or like you with hockey. That’s pretty insane right there. That’s flying teeth and blood and gore and then running a triathlete. There’s only about, I don’t know, a couple thousand a you guys, period.

So that’s pure madness in my opinion, you know, jokingly. But people don’t, they need to know, you don’t have to go to the levels you and I go, that’s a personal choice.

Larry: Yep. Yeah. You get movin’. You find something you like, you know? And I got a friend of mine. He doesn’t do much physically, but it’s consistent. Half hour, 45 minutes a day. He says, it’s not much, but it keeps me going and it keeps me happy. And I said, that’s perfect. There’s nothing wrong with that at all.

I mean, he’s got quality sobriety in there and he’s helping an awful lot of other people. So yeah. You gotta work at your own pace. Find what works for you. And there’s a lot of resources. There’s personal trainers.

There’s coaches, there’s your friends, there’s your family. Somebody out there will be able to help you. And then in your book too, you talk about that as well, I believe.

Ken:Oh, yeah, definitely. It’s one of my steps. Big time. You have to get moving. You have to. Your body’s not designed to hold still. If you think about it, think of a person who’s a paraplegic, who doesn’t have their legs, or use of their legs.

A lot of the times, these people don’t live as long as the rest of us. And I would think it’s got a lot to do with just the body not being able to move. There’s something about moving, locomotion in general, that keeps the body healthy.

Larry: It was meant to. We were meant to move. The last thing before I get distracted we’re talking about physical exercise. For myself, I needed vigorous. But the other thing I found I needed was some quiet time, which is what I’ve done now for the past nine and a half years. I do a personal meditation for about 25 minutes.

I go to work, have my lunch, and for 25 minutes, I let my mind and my body go and it just restores me so I can go out in the afternoon and work very hard. I feel rejuvenated.

And also right now I’ve trained myself too is where I need to relax after dinner for 10 minutes, I can close my eyes and go, you know, right down the well, and it rejuvenates me.

And I have the most relaxed feeling in the world, which is what I was looking for taking copious amounts of Valium. It brings me right down. I feel relaxed. And that’s without a chemical in my body. In fact, it’s way better than any chemical I’ve put in my body.

And so I was able to train myself and I just… the last two or three years, I thought, geez, this is the feeling I was chasing after all these years, I just wanted to have quiet and not have these voices bothering me.

I know the demons coming in my head, just screaming at me. And I am able to, for the most part, now if it’s a really bad day, quieten myself down. And of course on the bad days, I’m not doing well. That’s another story. And you know, I can’t sleep, but I think that’s going to happen to anybody at any time.

But for the majority of time, through the quiet time in the meditation has done wonders for me.

Ken: Yeah. There’s definite benefit to holding still. Not taking a nap. Holding still. Staying conscious, but not energizing any thought processes. There’s a big health benefit.

Larry: Yeah, they’ve done a lot of studies on it. Whether it’s transcendental meditation or mindfulness meditation, or just sitting still breathing, they know it doesn’t really matter. So that’s what I’ve got for my aftercare plan.

And then when I go to the treatment centers, I’ll read it to the people when I’m taking a medallion or when I’m telling them my story. And I basically, you know, look in the eyes at them.

I’m saying, I know half of you guys I’d hear you’re working on your aftercare plan and you’re just about ready to get up and already you’re thinking, well, I don’t need to do this and I don’t need to do this.

You need it all. You know, I know the counselors are jerks, but they really do know what they’re doing.

Ken: Well, yeah. And that’s another scary part for people in trying to even undertake something like what you and I have done to fight our, you know, in my case, mental illness and both our cases, addiction. It’s not a one shot deal and you’re done. You have to change your life and stick to that plan forever and forever is a very scary word to people.

Larry: Yeah.

Ken: But it can be done. We’ve done it. And I know personally, you and I both have our different ways we can teach people to be cool with that, so to speak.

Well, that’s what’s good too, is the diversity. There’s no cookbook way. There’s some basics you need to do, but I mean, we all come from diverse backgrounds.

Yes. Now where can people get a copy of your book?

Larry: Basically right now if you go on to amazon.com or amazon.ca or any of the online bookstores, that’s where we have it on sale, or if your first-hand callers call me, I can give you an online version for free if you just send me an email, say you want my book, I’ll send you an online copy right away.

No problem, no charge. Because I really believe strongly with what you’re doing in helping people here. So I know I’m very excited to help you out Ken.

Ken: That’s very good of you. And what was the name of your book? One more time.

Larry: It’s “Embracing The Journey Of Recovery: From Tragedy To Triumph“.

Ken: Okay, good stuff. Yeah. This is going to be a big help because I had so much on my plate with helping people in just mental illness. I’ve never dug too deep into fighting addiction. And I think there’s some different, unique ways about how I went about it that don’t seem to translate well in a lot of different other systems.

So I enjoy taking people to guys like you who have a clear cut system and working it into what I do. It’s a big help to people. And then, like you said different systems are better for different people, too.

Larry: Exactly. And I’m working right now with the with the local group, the Forward House Community Society. And basically, it’s mental illness. And if you happen to have a mental illness with an addiction, they’ll take you as well, too.

So I have done presentations with them over there. And I’ve become a little more familiar with types of mental illness, how people are dealing with it and seeing them in all stages. And it’s really neat to see these people turn their lives around and see the happiness, the joy.

You watch them through the struggle. And then, I haven’t been back in six months and I see these people and they have transformed themselves.

Ken: And you personally know how huge the sense of relief is when you know you’ve got it and your life’s improving. And to be able to pass that knowledge on to someone else and watch them take it and use it. That’s a supremely gratifying. I mean, not because we’re so great or nothing. It just simply is very gratifying.

Basically we took our wreck of a life and we turned it around and did something good with it. And those people can go on to do the exact same thing or do something, whatever.

They can take the good out of that and help someone, in some other completely different fashion. But they’re not going to be able to help anybody if they’re still down in the hole.

Larry: Oh, exactly. So as long as you get out to face each day, you do something a little each day. If you’re feeling crappy then get up and call somebody. Have you have your breakfast first. Get on the phone.

There’s a lot of things you can do. No one says you can’t feel crappy. Because you know, you will for a lot of the time, but you get up there and then you got to do something every day.

Ken: Same thing with my system. No difference. It’s not going to be an easy switch. And make your mind up and stick to it.

Larry: You liked my comment too. You read my Ironman story? When I was going up the hill, for your listeners, I said about 180 K and I was at about 130 K and I was having a horrible time against the wind. And I was just swearin’ and cursin’ and I didn’t have any gratitude. And near the top of the hill, there was a sign that said, “Suck it up, princess.”

Ken: That is something you would most definitely hear a lot in the Marine Corps. I laughed very hard when I read that. “Come on girls! You can make it!”

Larry: You got somebody behind me. He was 78 years old The sister, Madonna Bruder. She’s a nun. She had the most respect anybody there.

Ken: Yeah. You’re in this fight to get well… you think you’re all done, but you’re not. You can always give it one more tiny. push. That’s something I learned in the Marine Corps too.

You always got another, you got another round of push left in you. You just have never been pushed this hard before to have to prove that you have it. And you’ve done it and I’ve done it and we can show other people how to do it too.

Larry: Oh, absolutely. That’s why I’m excited to be on a call with you tonight. And I hope we can continue doing this in the future.

Ken: Oh, definitely. And in the not too distant future, side-by-side onstage. That would be fantastic.

Larry: Oh, geez. I would love to absolutely love to!

Ken: Well alright, Dr. Larry, I thank you very much for your time and I know it will be a big help to people listening.

Larry: Yeah. And they’ve got the email. If they have any questions for me anything in particular, if you want a copy of a copy of my online book or get it on the online bookstores, amazon.com. And I think our books are, they kind of work together, hand in hand, a lot of the same themes.

Ken: Yeah, definitely. All right then. I appreciate your time and I think we’ll cut that off right there. That should hold people for quite a while.

Larry: All right.

Ken: All right, Dr. Larry, have a good night.

Larry: Ah, it’s beautiful. I’m watching the Lakers game, so …

Ken: You’re happy. I know how you basketball people are. Okay Good night.

Post Interview

So that was Dr. Larry. Cool mellow dude. Right? I really hope I connect with him again. I know, I feel strongly, he’s still working on sharing this message, I’ll bet, in one way, shape or form. And I’d really like to connect with him again.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll reach out to him. I’m not sure what I’m doing with a lot of this just yet, but it would be nice to interview him again and just see where he’s at. And see what new things he’s learned.

And then just just to say hi to an old friend. I really liked him. Fingers crossed. I hope you liked that interview. I hope you go get Larry’s book, Embracing The Journey Of Recovery. And between his story and my story. Maybe you find what you need to overcome that particular demon set.

If you want to know exactly what I did to overcome that demon set, go to my website, outsiders journey.com. Find the Greenfield for my free wellness system, click on it. And you’re in. That’s exactly what I did to beat bipolar. And my addictions, bad as they were, were just one facet of the bipolar problem.

The much larger problem. If you’d like to know what I did with the wellness that followed then click on the blue lady. Give me your email address and let’s start building out your dream together. That’s it guys. Thanks for listening. Catch you on the next interview. Two? Is It? Two to go!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:08:11 — 93.6MB)

Podcast player photo by Kotaro-Studio from Pixabay

Show Notes:

Ken: Welcome to the Bipolar Excellence Podcast, Episode Three, the WKNY Interview Part Two. As I said, in part one or in Episode Two of the show, this interview was done many years ago. I was only a couple of years out from defeating bipolar. So I didn’t have bipolar anymore. But I had lingering mania to a certain degree.

It was really hard to control. I remember that. It used to make breathing a little tight and I was very easily excitable. And in this interview, even though it was a year after the first interview with Jody, I was in a pumped up way that day. I barely could contain my energy. I spoke about it more in the intro to this. That’s already part of the old file, which you’re about to hear.

So I’m not going to carry on too much cause it’d be repetitive.But I’ll tell you this much bipolar folks: you just got to go. Your stuff in the beginning is going to be raw. For us in particular, for bipolar people, you might be embarrassed by yourself. Initially.

You might. Cause as you continually get better or at least improve the way you do your work, you know, you’re going to just see where you could have done better. You’re going to see where, what you thought about yourself, wasn’t quite as true as you thought it was at the time. But really that’s anybody doing anything.

Don’t let it hinder you. Don’t let it slow you down. Just go, just start making something, just be okay with the fact that you’ll either be fantastically happy with it as you make it and just call it a day. Should you dislike it later, who cares? And if you weren’t quite so happy then, ultimately what’s it even going to matter?

This shit doesn’t matter that much in the overall scheme of things, if at all. The more important part is your intention and your ability to just go and create. Without having the right intention and without doing anything nothing’s happening, you’re dead in the water. Nothing’s going to change.

If anything, you’re going backwards with your inactivity, if your fear is directing that, if that’s what’s keeping you from hitting the go button. So I want to let the old file do the rest of the talking for me. And it’s humbling. Enjoy.

Original Review Starts Here

Hey everybody. This is Ken Jensen with the After Bipolar Podcast, Episode Three, my WKNY interview, the second one.

I just finished listening to that interview from about nine years ago. Man, that was hard. I got invited back to the studio, WKNY, to just do a, just touching base, I guess. See where I was at from when we did the first interview. And if you listen to the the first interview, which is episode two on the After Bipolar Podcast list, you’ll be able to hear the difference.

I was much calmer in the first one. In the second one, I was clearly having a bit of a manic… I wouldn’t call it an episode. I guess you could. Little mania was in my mind as I spoke. I was talking so fast. It was hard for me to listen to, partly for professional reasons. I just wished I’d had my composure, my shit together a little better.

But partly because I just remember how hard it was to… even then, even a couple of years into my wellness, it could still grab a hold of me. Mania to a certain degree, just seems to be inherent in my personality. It’s not like it was back then, but it can be there. And a little bit of anxiety. I do remember being unnaturally anxious going into that interview, for no reason other than that’s what bipolar can do to you.

Now, I wasn’t bipolar, so I should clarify. I’m kinda generalizing my memories and then how I present my thoughts here. Anxiety and even mania or just two small pieces of a massive bipolar pie of symptoms. I’m saying I got it down to just those two.

And the mania for further clarification. I didn’t really have mania. Like when you got decent mania, I’d go for three days with no sleep. Wouldn’t be closest thing to tired. I wouldn’t be able to go to sleep.

That was one of the ways I first knew I was becoming well. I got tired. And it wasn’t a depression based tiredness. It was just a natural “we’ve done a day and then let’s get some rest”. When I was able to experience that again, I knew I was good. I knew I was on my way to being well and staying well.

So when I did this interview, let’s see, nine years ago. It’s 17 now. So 2008. Yeah, that’s about right. I had had about two years of wellness under my belt, but there were just trailing after effects. I give Jody credit for keeping up. She’d sorta interrupt me here and there.

And I think it was to try to… there’s no way she didn’t realize what was going on. I think she was trying to moderate me and that would trip me up a little when I’d answer. Or I was just, my brain was firing fast and I was answering her faster than she could finish making questions. I do remember that back in the day. Cripes! My mind worked fast.

This wasn’t always a bad thing. I got a lot done. It’s partly how I came up with my wellness system. I was able to sift through and consider and make connections out of a ton of different pieces of information and perspectives. My mind was like a high-speed computer back then. Sometimes I miss it.

You could get to answers faster cause you could screw up faster, come to conclusions quicker, make sense of it, reset and go all over again. And in record time. I literally just got the answers quicker. But I don’t really miss those days. I don’t really miss that experience. It was just handy.

So the interview’s almost an hour. So I’m going to cut it off here. I’ll just reiterate that was hard to listen to it.

It almost made me a little sad in that it brought a little bit to the surface, how much pain I used to be in being that way. Now, again, I wasn’t sick or all messed up when that interview happened. This is just a little bit of mania, a little bit of anxiety. That’s just two things out have a huge stack of potential problems that make up the entirety of bipolar.

Yeah, it’s just rough. I wish I could have done a little better. But I do remember that was out of my hands. I remember being concerned about it before I went into the interview. I knew I was humming and there was nothing I could do about it. But I was in a good mood while I talked. You’ll hear I was laughing a lot and I was very passionate about what I was sharing.

I remember that too. I remember. What I talk about, I still bring them up in conversation with people, but I’ve learned to just whittle it down to one item or I’ve shaved down the associated stories to the points I make to where I don’t carry on, like I did in that interview.

But again, you’re seeing where my head was at two years into the wellness game.

10:00 Min Mark

And one of the points I make is that people, after fighting for years with mental illness, with bipolar disorder… if they do find a way to become well… many people revert back and get back on meds because even if it didn’t work for them and they didn’t like it, it’s a known. Being well is scary.

And I guess that’s part of what was happening to me this day. I know in general, I was in a pretty much, pretty much a good mood all the time back then. Not manically so. Just shit was going right after years of not going right. Things were going right.

And I was doing a lot interesting things. If you go over to outsiders journey.com to the outsiders journey podcast, one of the first episodes I made -I’ll link to it in the show notes for this episode- one of the first shows I talked about was something to do with madmen.

And there’s an exploding volcano image on that episode. It was during, the time of this interview that I was connected to the people I mentioned; the experiences and the people in general, that I mentioned in that episode. Interesting time. I had a lot of fun back then. Landed in a lot of situations you could not possibly foresee.

It was just too widespread, too many things not connected. Didn’t make sense how I ended up in a lot of these things. And they were all good with a lot of good people for the most part. And I found a few other people that were just as loosely wired as I was, and thing was, I knew it, they didn’t. And I had to get back out of those situations as fast as I got in them.

All right. On to the WKNY Interview.

Interview Starts Here

Bud: And we welcome you back to speak out with Jodie McTeague and friends, the program. You get a chance to call us and speak out what’s on your mind. And now once again, here’s the host to Speak Out Jody McTague.

Jody: Thank you very much, bud Fredericks. Our next guest is sitting here before me and Ken Jensen.

But with us this morning is Ken Jensen. Ken, you look absolutely gorgeous. The beard is gone, the cigars not there. And, and you look wonderful. Come on talk. I don’t have to ask you any questions.

Tell me how life has been for you, since this book went out. You know what you can do, and every time I read parts of it, I can’t help, but you know, weep, because of knowing you. So go ahead and tell us what is bipolar and how do you recognize it?

Ken: Well, bipolar. That’s interesting that you bring up, how do you recognize it? Because I did not recognize it for the first few years I had it. And also in retrospect, I realized it was probably plaguing me most of my life before it went into like full blown activity levels,

Jody: Why are you saying that? Because…

Ken: It has degrees of intensity. And it’s also only single parts of it might show up. It’s not as bad as what you might think a mental illness would be. So you, you mislabel it as other things.

Jody: Misbehavior.

Ken: That yeah. You chalk it up to youth. You chalk it up to the crowd you hang out with. Stress. Stress was a big one for me.

I thought all I was was stressed until my stress became virtually insurmountable. And then right about when that time of realization happened for me, the stress morphed into all the other fantastic symptoms that come with bipolar. And then I was on the ride. Then it was quite clear. It was not just stress messing with me.

It a mood disorder. It’s characterized by highs and lows, extreme highs and lows, you feel like you’re king of the world one moment, all your ideas are perfect, fantastic, and cannot possibly fail. You take a lot of unnecessary risks. A gambling kind of mindset can kick in. You just have no fear and you don’t question your logic. You’re dead right perfect and you’re sure of it.

On the other side is depression where you’re in the fetal position on the floor, not knowing how the next five seconds of your life could possibly work out, let alone the rest of your life and all your other responsibilities. That’s the mood swings. And there’s different severities of those.

Jody: When you say the severity of the mood swings, how deep, how high, how low?

Ken: Well, with the severity, you can be low-level bipolar, which is cyclothymic. You would be viewed in other people’s eyes like a character, an eccentric person. You’d just be interesting. Little crazy. You’d be the interesting one in the crowd, but wouldn’t really create much harm in anybody’s life, even your own.

And then it can go up to where your people are not sure what you might do next. Or they don’t know if they can depend on you because… For work say, because of depression might kick in and you can’t be talked to and they can go even further.

The high can go right on into complete psychosis and you have…

Jody: What is psychosis, in case somebody is wondering?

Ken: You don’t know what’s real anymore. You completely do not know what’s real and whatever your senses are telling you, it’s pretty far out. A movie is playing out in front of you instead of your real life. I’ve had that happen a few times.

Jody: What happens when reality is over there some place, but you know, it’s in front of you. How do you handle that?

Ken: All right. Now that’s actually more like dissociation, which played a big part in this illness for me as well. Psychosis is just a break. I mean, you’re Napoleon on your horse, riding into a candy cane land, do battle with the gremlins. I mean that that’s a complete break. And that can take whatever form.

Dissociation’s when you’re looking at reality, but you don’t feel a part of it. Your energy is not a part of the energy around you. You want desperately in with the rest of the world, but you don’t feel warmth from people, even though you can see it on their face. You are not sure what everything around you is, as far as a detailed definition within your own mind.

And then besides the mood swings and the dissociation, comes the panic. You get roaring panic. It reaches levels… mount Everest Heights of fear. When it hit me? When my first really good thick panic attack hit me? I had no idea a brain could conjure up that much fear. I didn’t know fear could get that big.

Jody: Where were you when this happened?

Ken: I was out west living in Denver when my first panic attack hit.

Jody: Now, how did you recognize this as a panic attack?

Ken: Oh, I didn’t. That makes it even worse. At this point I had not been diagnosed. I just knew my life was starting to get worse.

My marriage at that time was crumbling. I couldn’t hold any jobs. I was in the twenties on how many jobs I’d had, since I’d moved out west three years prior. And all I knew was I was just… life wasn’t working.

20:00 Min Mark

And when that first panic attack hit It felt like a black hole opened up into my chest that was impossibly deep. Infinitely deep. But it was in me somehow.

And I was falling into myself at a very rapid rate and I couldn’t make that sensation stop. Then I started losing connection with my body. Couldn’t feel my body. Hands and feet were tingling. And then I couldn’t feel them. I sank to the floor and I didn’t really feel the floor. And I didn’t know what was going wrong with me. I had no idea what was going wrong with me.

Jody: So you’re telling me that your particular attack was physical, as well as emotional and mental.

Ken: Yeah. Panic involves the whole body and much of the other symptoms do too. That’s the other, if you want to call it interesting part of bipolar, it’s not just ups and downs and those couple of critical things. I just shared.

I made a list once. I went to a bipolar forum online for curiosity’s sake, a long time ago. I spent eight hours and I developed a list from what people were writing. I came up with 100 distinct symptoms, all separate from one another. They were all terrible. And I had experienced almost every single one of them.

There was a few that were specific to women. So I got spared those, but that was about it. And, and,

Jody: I beg your pardon?

Ken: It’s… you don’t want more. I mean, in anyone that’s bipolar and depression, all of these things, it doesn’t matter how bad anyone might get with it. Your case is plenty bad enough for you. And you cannot imagine it getting any worse.

That was one thing I tried on two different occasions to get committed at the VA. Once in Denver, cause I’m a Marine vet, and I tried to get committed in New York. They wouldn’t take me in either place, which in retrospect’s, probably a godsend.

But they told me, “as bad as you feel, and we know you feel bad, it’s worse inside there.”

And that blew my mind cause I could not fathom feeling worse than I did. Because it’s just an all out assault of yourself on yourself. It’s inside your head. You can’t turn it off. You can’t get away from it.

Jody: Now you’re talking reasonably about all of these things that happened to you. At that time, what did you consider reason?

Ken: I had no reason. I had no ability to make rational decisions. I had no sense of logic. I had no sense of time flow. I could not remember, literally, I could not remember if something happened five minutes ago or if I was 15.

Jody: Could you have people like your parents? Would they believe you, if you said that to them

Ken: Oh that they would believe me, but then that brings in another interesting symptom. You lie over things that don’t require a lie. You’d lie over if someone asked you what time it was. You’d tell them a lie.

You’re totally cognizant in your head and you can’t make yourself stop. You’re even asking yourself inside, “why am I lying?” And you don’t have an answer. It’s insanely bad. I used to get frequently upset.

I’d reach for a pen to write something. My hand would get halfway to the pen and I have no idea why my hand is where it’s at. I forgot all about the pen. Forgot all about the task. My hand is just out in front of me.

I know I was reaching for something. I don’t know what. And then I get mad about that, that I couldn’t remember what. And then I wouldn’t remember why I was mad. And I’d remember I had a reason for being mad. It just keeps backing up on itself with no answer. And it is so frustrating.

Jody: And this is why I was looking at the 14th annual Mid-Hudson Mental Health Conference, Faces Of Recovery.

Ken: That went very well.

Jody: And it snowed that day like crazy. Didn’t it?

Ken: I was worried.

Jody: It was awful.

Ken: And I was thinking on the ride over, I’m like, “Oh, come on. This is just a cliche. And 19 feet of snow on my big day!”

Jody: And well, a lot of people were praying that it would come off good with you in mind because I had them all up and I was going to get over there, but I figured I’d never get home. But we’re talking about the Annual Mental Health Conference And The Faces Of Recovery, and one of your faces was there. And talk about that, that it was a success and how it helped you.

Ken: Okay. There was a number of speakers.

Jody: And we’re talking about the Poughkeepsie right now.

Ken: Yes. At the Poughkeepsie Grand Hotel. There were a number of speakers covering different aspects of mental health and advocacy work, people that help people with mental health issues.

And the whole point of the conference was to let people know. I should even make that clear. I’m in the minority. A guy like me, that gets as violent as I did, and as out of hand as I did, we’re in the very tiny minority. But we make such amount of noise. When a guy like me loses it, multiple cop units get involved. I mean, families are involved. Everyone in the world’s involved.

Jody: A whole Marine battalion got involved.

Ken: This is what the world remembers. So they mistakenly think everyone out there with bipolar was like I was. That’s not the case. But because I was like I was, I write to that for the people that need that because they need to know somebody understands just how bad and severe that kind of pain can get.

But the mental health conference that went really well. I had a lot of people showed up to hear me speak. And I made some friends out of it that worked into all business and advocacy connections to where we can pull resources and combine.

Make one plus one equal three, and spread our reach to help even more people. Using what I know, using what other people know.

And the whole conference was to let people know that mentally ill people are not… we’re not all just bonkers and completely inept and unable to lead a good life. It’s not like that. And there’s more and more stuff coming out, like my system, TORQUE BACK, and all kinds of other tools that I’m sure are fantastic. I just never got around to using.

There’s many sources of help out there to get people like me back on track and living life well and managing well. And we’re not all out of control, like I just simply happened to be.

Jody: Well, you were in the Marines,

Ken: Not everybody’s got that to pull from when they have a psychotic break. I had professional training in how to go crazy just right.

Jody: And you managed, how many years were you in the Marines

Ken: 5 years.

Jody: And you managed to get in, stay and get out.

Ken: Just barely. Kept my rank and kept out of the brig by the skin of my teeth.

Jody: While you were very close to the brig many times.

Ken: Bumped up against it. A number of times. Yes.

Jody: And now you’re in business. And what is your business?

Ken: I’m the Bipolar Eradicator LLC, and I, of course, sell my book and I’m designing other products.

Jody: The name of the book is “It Takes Guts To Be Me”.

And let me tell you a little story about that. I was talking about you last week to a young lady. Uncontrollable fears and tears. Afraid to go to work. Afraid and you know, you talk her into it and you go in and you can do it. And just give me a call when you, arrive.

Okay. Then I said, you know, I have to get you that book. You just signed it for her. And I said, It Takes Guts To Be Me. She said, let me write that down. And I’ll just put it in front of me all day.

I have to tell you that that night she had one of the best days she had in a long time.

Ken: I live for that. This is why, what I’m doing. I’ve tried to do build many businesses, cause I’m not an employee person. I’m very good at anything I ever put my mind to, but it has to be my gig. And then I tried a lot of gigs and none of them ever worked. Or if they work not very well.

Jody: Well, no, you didn’t stick to them.

Ken: What? No, it wasn’t that.

Jody: You weren’t able to.

Ken: No, it was more… when I dealt with the fact that that I had to find a way to help people, that’s when everything took off. There was other factors in earlier businesses. But when I applied the factor “I knew I should be helping people”, and I wanted to in a principled sort of a way, but really I just wanted to earn over the years.

When I figured out, I got to actually put my heart and soul into straightening people’s lives out, and caring that they get there, that’s when all my dreams started getting answered. My life just started knitting itself back together.

My first business out of many, finally it started experiencing positive growth. And the better I get at everything I do, the more of what I do, I’m able to give away for free. I’m constantly looking to better my situation, so that stuff I normally would have charged for… because I counsel people privately. I give seminars, I do all kinds of things. I have a membership on online.

And better I’m able to become as a business, the more of what I used to charge, I just give away because I can. And that is such a, I love it.

Jody: Well after many tears, who helped you the most? We have to give her and your dad credit.

Ken: Yeah, I burned all my bridges right down to my folks and they almost threw in the towel at the end. My parents didn’t… nobody knows what to make it as disease if you haven’t had it yourself. There is no way to make sense of it if you’re healthy or just hadn’t had this particular disease.

Jody: Ken, when did it start to show and where did you go to school? Because some people said, I didn’t ask you last time. And I thought I did.

Ken: I went to school in Tillson. And actually I was just speaking about this the other night. And I don’t like to go in a lot of detail about this, but my home life, in particular with my mom was not the best situation.

And now we know, years later, she was up against something as well, and didn’t have half the help than I had. However, she took out a lot of her frustrations on me. I then acted out in school. And I just remembered, I used to get taken a psychiatrist for different things, I’d say and whatnot. And I never knew why.

I always found the psychiatrist very interesting. And I liked the tests, but I didn’t know what… And nothing ever came of it.

Jody: You probably analyzed him while he was there!

Ken: I just thought they were interesting. I didn’t know, till decades later I’m like, why did nobody ever look into what it was like at my house? Why was I always, “W hat’s wrong with this kid?” Nobody took it another step farther.

30:00 Min Mark

So now that I have a family… and I didn’t do so hot because I gained my new family when I was becoming my sickest. My whole thing is to make sure that that string gets broken.

Jody: And you went to high school where?

Ken: I went to Kingston High.

Jody: And you graduated.

Ken: I graduated. Yup.

Jody: And then?

Ken: Well, I went right into the Marines. By the time I got to Kingston, I had already learned from most of my family tree, that drinking is the sport of men and champions. And I got quite good at it. I was known as a pretty decent alcoholic already in high school.

And then I needed to go to the service because I had no options. I didn’t really pick for love of country or patriotism. A lot of guys in don’t. We just had to do something. So I ended up going to the Marines, sort of as a fluke.

I went with a friend and actually, when I went in, honestly, I was limited in vision. I didn’t know much anything about life. I wanted to see if I was tough enough to clear bootcamp. And I was, I graduated top 10%.

Jody: And where’d you go to bootcamp? Lejeune?

Ken: Well, bootcamp is Parris Island. if you’re in this side of the Mississippi. And it’s San Diego, if you’re on the other side of the Mississippi. There’s only two places. They train Marines. So, I aced bootcamp, basically. I graduated in the top 10%.

And the physical portions and everything about bootcamp. It’s a lot of work and it was hard, but I was up for it. And I rather enjoyed bootcamp. Very happy to get off the island! They always hang that threat over your head. You’re not getting off my island til I let you off my island.

I wanted off, but I had made it through bootcamp and I had done well. And it wasn’t that hard for me to do. It was painful and everything, but I did it. So not until my next base, which was in Memphis Tennessee, did I realize I had four and three quarter more years to serve on my contract.

And the reality of that hit me. This is where the part of me that does not like to be an employee hit. Hit big time.

Jody: You don’t like to be told what to do.

Ken: I don’t like to be told what to do. And being in the Marine Corps is a very bad place to have that kind of attitude. And then some really big adventures began from there.

Cause I fought. I fought their system tooth and nail, while becoming excellent at what it was I did for them. So I was a dichotomy that frustrated commanding officers to no end.

Jody: That’s why you didn’t get thrown out.

Ken: Yeah. I can remember just them looking at me and they just, they don’t know what to do cause they needed me for what I did and I did it so well. And they were like, but why, why can’t you just behave a little bit better? I just, I couldn’t

Jody: Now, when did you get what I’ll call diagnosed so that we understand.

Ken: I was about 30. From 28 to 30, as far as I could tell my stress levels just kept climbing and climbing and climbing. And I started job hopping.

Jody: Why?

Ken: I was very unhappy with life. I did not like any of the jobs I had. I was not making enough money for the kind of dreams I want. One thing the Marine Corps put into me was a love for travel. That takes a lot of money, or as I would learn later in life, you have to find a way to let someone else help you travel.

But anyway, I wanted to travel and no job paid me enough to have the kind of money I wanted to travel and see the world. I wanted to get back out there desperately. And there was a number of other…

Jody: Did you think that might emancipate you? Do you know, actually, what you were really looking for at that time outside of…

Ken: No, no. I just, I simply wanted to see the world in all its wonders and other cultures. Cause, in the five years I was in the Marines, I changed bases 19 times. I went overseas three times. And I moved around a lot more than even a lot of guys do, especially inside of one enlistment. It just kind of worked out that way.

So I knew the world has so much to offer. And I had a very adventuresome spirit. That ties into a lot of bipolar people, too. It later becomes massive risk taking. But for there I was just adventuresome. And I was very physical. I was always in the woods, testing my limits, testing myself against the weather.

I wanted to go see the world. And none of these jobs were ever going to pay me. I was starting to realize I should have gone to college. Couldn’t do college. Same thing. I’m an OJT kind of guy. I can’t learn from a book. I can, but I’d rather just put me in it and I’ll learn it as I go. That’s how I learned.

So I couldn’t do college either. So here I am in a pickle, I started realizing I’m never going to have what I want, not at this rate. So my answer was to start trying new jobs.

I also became an expert resume rebuilder. That was a complete fabrication based on whatever I thought each place wanted to hear. And I thought I might become a professional resume writer cause I was so good. And I’d always got hired. And it was turning out none of these jobs are keeping me happy.

Jody: My jaw dropped that you could get through and they took your resume. As it, as it was.

Ken: It’s a dance. If you know how to do it, it’s not hard. And I was forced to learn how to do it.

I also was forced to learn what level my Jack of all Tradesman was, buried in my DNA. Because I lied my way into so many jobs, many of them technical. I fixed a lot of factory equipment. I worked at a concrete plant where like we had machinery that would roll over this building and I’d have to climb up on scaffolding and repair repaired all kinds of hydraulics and mechanical problems.

And I repaired gas stations for awhile, which are ridiculously packed with technology. It’s unbelievable how much technology is required to get a tank of gas into your car.

Jody: Can you elaborate on that? Because like now, with the other day, the machine said, turn the card the other way you turn…

Ken: The machines are so smart, they almost revert back to stupid. They’ve got so much technology in them to tell you when something’s going wrong and why. And if that piece of the equipment gets a headache or gets confused? Now, you’re not only trying to find the problem with the machine. You’re trying to see if the computer’s telling you the truth.

Jody: Or if you’re wrong, if I’m wrong, you know.

Ken: So yeah, I did a lot of stuff like that. And I worked in factories. A number of different factories where… in a factory the machinery is usually specialized. A lot of cases, it only exists right there in a factory. And I learned, I was able to just go in and I could troubleshoot my way and figure out just about anything.

And I had a very gregarious nature. I would make friends easy. I’d get the senior guys, or whoever, to teach me and they’d be happy to do it. They had to anyway, unless they wanted to work harder. But it wasn’t that. I enjoyed working with people. It was one of the things that led to what I do now. I did have a love for talking and hanging out with people. Just couldn’t figure out a job that would pay me to do that.

So all these jobs are failing and my life’s not panning out. And my first marriage is tanking because we fought like oil and water. We were very two strong-willed individuals

Jody: Did your wife recognize though, your first wife, that you had a problem? Or that you would just a nasty SOB.

Ken: Exactly. We just were too sporting folks and we didn’t realize how bad I was becoming. Because she just enjoyed the fight and neither one of us would give. And it never got physical or anything.

Jody: No, no. But I know what you’re saying.

Ken: We just would argue things out to death. And it didn’t get noticeable until I started drinking again. After seven years of sobriety, I fell off the wagon because my depressions were getting very strong. And what I was terming stress was becoming… it’s this huge energy inside your head and your body, and it’s driving to get out.

It’s eating at you and I needed that to stop. And at that point, I thought it was only stress. And I started secretly drinking again. And then not so secretly. And I do not belong with my lips to alcohol ever. And my world started crumbling rapidly from that point. And in that area is when my first panic attack hit.

They shot me up with a bunch of tranquilizers on the ambulance ride, twice. By the time I hit the hospital, my heart rate was 200 plus over 200 plus and climbing rapidly on both numbers. I was witnessing my heart about to explode and I was begging God to let me pass out and I could not pass out.

I did not want to be conscious of my… clearly my death was about five seconds out. I didn’t want to witness it. I have no idea what my heart rate was when it got me into the E.R. They injected me as soon as we got into the ER and then injected me on the table, I don’t even know what they were putting into me, but it did nothing to slow my heart down.

Nobody knows what’s wrong with me. And then I told the doc, I said, “Doc I’m freaking out!” I threw in some other colorful language. But I was totally cognizant. I said, “Make this stop!” And he said, “I can’t, if I put one more ounce of anything in you, you’re going to die.” I’m like, “I’m dying anyway!” And I remember a text saying, “Doc, his heart’s going to explode. What’s the difference? ”

And the doc said, “Screw it. I’ll give him this.” And whatever they stuck in me last finally knocked me out. And we never learned what had happened to me. Never knew. It took months later before we realized about bipolar.

Jody: Hold that thought. You’re listening to WKNY 1490 on your dial here in Kingston, New York.

40:00 Min Mark

And with us this morning is Ken Jensen. And I don’t know what thought we left there, but what business are you in besides writing your book? You have medication, not medications, but vitamins too. As part of what… Finish up your first story as being in the hospital and doc helped me and he shot you up with, okay. You don’t know what it

Ken: Knocked me out. I woke up four hours later. And nobody could tell me what happened to me and I left the hospital.

And it happened again.

So I had been smoking weed that day because I smoked weed for a number of years to fight the stress and insane boredom I felt. I just seem to be more bored than most people with life. And that was my answer for too many years.

Jody: And they just called you a spoiled brat or, you know…

Ken: Well, no. They just figured I was like a drug addict, kind of a thing, even though I didn’t really look the part just, they knew I had smoked weed. Cause I thought maybe somebody had dosed my weed with something. I I just assumed maybe that might be the thing. Cause what had happened with me is so fantastically, bizarre and bad.

I thought maybe… I had been slipped, unbeknownst to me once in the past, PCP, when I thought I was getting something else. So I knew what that was like. And I that’s why there was only one time that that happened. And I thought maybe this had happened again. Cause there were some similarities, PCP. I have no clue why anybody goes out of the way to put that in them.

Jody: Ken, why do, and when did drugs become something of an issue with you? Not because of the bipolar, but as a youngster. You know, because the schools at one time they were nightmare between alcohol and. drugs

Ken: And it’s amazing because when it comes to drugs and drinking, everybody always assumes it’s not their kid or whatever.

Even if you’re doing it, you don’t think you’re that bad. And then one day you are it’s unbelievable. But no, I drank like a fish starting from about 15. But I didn’t get into drugs until I was in the Marines. I was always anti-drug. To me, men drank. I came from some kind of lumberjack background and men drank. Drugs were for losers. That’s how I looked at it.

Jody: And alcohol was legal.

Ken: Right. When I got into the Marines, I met guys from all over the country from all kinds of backgrounds. I got introduced to drugs eventually. And at that point it was just fun. I didn’t get too deep into drugs right away. But about my second to last year left, I started looking into a lot of different things hard.

And then I was in California. I was right near LA. Anywhere you went, drugs just were like, it was like right there next to the bowl of potato chips. It just really was no big deal.

Jody: Well they called it the drug capital of the world.

Ken: Yeah. I mean, it was everywhere and I just fell into it. And the angrier I got about not wanting my enlistment date to finally come, so I could get on with my life… And with the kind of person I was, and a lot of bipolar people are like this, though, we’re creative.

We have to be in charge of our day and we have to be making something whenever you give us a task to do every day, which is most jobs, it’s crushing us. And I started doing drugs as an escape because the Marine Corps really bored me to tears.

I did my job fine and everything, but it didn’t hold my interest. Not really. I just enjoyed it. And I took a pride in it, but in that respect, it was no different than any other job. And I didn’t want to be in charge of anybody. I just wanted to do my own thing.

Jody: Well, self-will is, is a big part of bipolar. But there was a lady that has to leave the house in a few minutes and would like to know if you could announce some contact information, a telephone number or a web.

Ken: Yes. Please go to my website, www dot. It takes guts to be me all one word.com. It takes guts to be me.com. There’s a process that starts there. That’ll lead you to all my information. And for now, this is only going to be for a few more days. Right now you can get my entire system laid out if a PDF format for free. That’s not going to last.

Jody: There’s no telephone number to call.

Ken: It’s all on there. I don’t have it handy. The process will take everybody to absolutely everything there is to know about me.

What’d you do it again, please? www.ittakesgutstobeme.com.

Jody: Okay. All right. I hope the lady got it. And I’m going to write it down here. So that if anybody should call, Bud they can give it to…

Ken: Everything about me starts there.

Jody: Now what about some of the other things besides the book that you have, which is an incredible story.

I mean, you go back to certain chapters time and time again. And some people it’s a revelation to the Gentiles when they read the book. Because they begin to understand who they are and they start liking themselves.

Because someone with bipolar gets very angry with themselves and they don’t know what to do. They become self accusatory, but of course the other guy’s to blame anyhow, and it’s really a mind situation.

Ken: Yeah. You have a whole universe of badness, right between your ears. And that’s your day to day life.

Jody: I wish people could see you now.

Ken: I’m much happier to be this way. And I think we should get back to the before we run out of time, the nutrition. I found nutrition was the number one thing to address.

And when I started that look into my situation. My mind almost did not function. I had been given basically my death sentence by my psychiatrist. I have a file that thick at home of all the medication they pushed through me in six years, did nothing to the illness, but my health failed.

And then when the doctor was like, “You know what? It’s really pointless to give you any more meds. They just don’t do anything to you, except the side effects are adding to your problems.” So I started thinking about it. When I went home, I knew I was going to die in a jail, in a lockdown ward somewhere, or I was going to meet the bigger meaner version of me, upset him, and he was going to take me out. And that’s how these things go.

Jody: Well, also, you had a probation officer that loved you and tried to make you better.

Ken: That came a little bit later. But I had already been doing my plan before she met me. But when they met me, it had just begun. And it took me about a year to turn around from the mess I was, the train load of pain and woe and chaos, into any kind of normal.

It took about a year for that transformation

Jody: You’re even laughing at yourself now.

Ken: I laugh and it’s not out of disrespect.

Jody: No.

Ken: And I have a dark sense of humor that even applies to my own self. I can appreciate it, but I laugh because it’s relief.

I’m out, I’m out. And I want people to know, I don’t promise a cure. I don’t consider myself cured. But I manage this beast to where it just doesn’t exist. But I have to maintain that management and I’ll be all right. If I let up on anything, I do. I know it’ll come back probably in a couple of days or so, but it’s not hard to maintain what I do.

And I’m just glad, not only do I have my life back, I gained direction in life, which is what I had been looking for all the time.

Jody: And you have love for people. You would’ve never, never have sat down and written that book about yourself, if you didn’t love people.

Ken: No, I always got along with people. Right. But I didn’t, I didn’t care about all y’all that much. I just enjoyed interacting with you. But yeah, when it come down to this, I poured it all out.

But that’s a big part of the illness too. Why medicine can’t touch much of this illness. There’s parts of you spiritually, and I don’t mean based on whatever religion you are, I mean, you being in touch with the flow of life. That kind of spiritually. You have to get right with what you’re supposed to be doing.

I don’t care if you’re an atheist or what religion you have to get right with what your plan is to be here and what your job is. Until you find it? One of the ways it’ll go wrong is you get a Kenny. You’ll get a mad man on bipolar or not even a mad man. You get someone who’s just at home, just a recluse and just deeply distressed and has no life.

And a big, big chunk of that is simply because you’re going about your life all wrong.

50:00 Min Mark

And then stepping back before that, which is what I had to do. I looked at my body like a mechanic, like I had been for so many years. I troubleshot myself.

I had learned from an old German man that was one of my first big time mechanic mentors. He was like, “it’s simple.” I was looking at, where my eyes boggled, at some kind of factory equipment. I’m like, “I got to fix that? I don’t even know what it is!”

And he said, “It’s very simple. What’s happening that shouldn’t be. And what ain’t happening that should.”

So that’s how I looked at it. And when I came across an article about this one nutritional company, I knew the company could not risk its reputation on snake oil. And then as I read it, from my years of weightlifting, and I was always good at biology and chemistry, made sense.

I’m like, “Yeah, that is how the body works. I think I got some holes in me, nutritionally.” When I first took the supplement, there was no miraculous improvement but there was relief. And there had been no relief for six years.

Jody: And what do you mean by relief?

Ken: The symptoms got weaker. They were still there. They were still very strong and I was a mess, but I detected them losing a little of their strength. Some of the steam was coming out of them.

Jody: So, the devil, became an imp.

Ken: Yeah. I still had a big problem on my hands, but he was losing his breath. The hill was getting steeper for him and I was just hanging in there and I started getting better. My family started telling me like, “You’re starting to look a little better.”

People that knew me out in the neighborhood, but didn’t know me know me. They were like, “Geez, you kind of look good these days.”

Jody: “You have rosy cheeks. You have a smile in your eyes. And your laugh is easy.”

Ken: Well, I feel good cause so much of my life is working out so well. And I have such a joy to bring my information to people. And it’s bringing other people like me into my sphere of influence, which, like I said, I don’t have all the answers. These are just the answers I’ve found and they worked, but I know there’s other answers, more answers and for different people, better answers that I just didn’t use.

And I can lead people to my new friends as well. And the biggest thing for me is if I can just do a personal thing here for 10 seconds, I think the thing that drives me now, more than anything… I got my health back. I got my finances fixed. I got the law off my back. I mean, if there was a problem to have in life, I had it and it had to be fixed beyond my mental illness.

Now everything I do is aimed at improving the quality of life for my wife Setaki and my kids Elijah, Bebe, Dyquan and Christian. And they are it. And when I got to a position where I realized I can do for them, things that nobody else can.

Jody: Or should.

Ken: It doubled up on the mission I was already on. Or “should.” Exactly.

And it gave me a sense of purpose and power and strength to get me through my fatigue and the frustration that… I’ve never felt anything like this before. Cause every day is new, which is what I want for the kind of person I am. But every day I’m faced with something I have never seen before.

And I’m working with other people who are in the same boat with me as we try to move forward. And we have to figure out answers and stuff. It’s draining. It’s a huge energy drain and it’s a lot of stress to do what I do and still maintain my good health. And I’m doing it. And every time anything gets kinda like, “Geez, I don’t feel good. I’m tired. I can’t take much more of this, as far as…” I’m not breaking down, but I’m like I got to stop.

But if there’s something that really has to be done, I think of them. And I’m like, all right, if nothing else, let me just put in five or 10 more minutes just for them. And you find the strength.They deserve it.

Jody: Now you talked about supplements a minute ago. Can you tell us what they are? Should they call you on…

Ken: Yeah, go to go to my website. There’s so many details and it’s all there. And as I said right now, if you go to my website, you’ll get a highly detailed… my program, my whole program… on a 48- page document with pictures, details on what to do, how to do it with action sheets, all the possible links I can lead you to.

And that’s not going to last, that’s going to be up there maybe another week or two, depending on how fast my webmaster gets done with what he’s doing. I give away the whole ball of wax right now for just a short more time

Jody: All right now. And that number is…

Ken: website www dot. It takes guts to be me.com

Jody: And his picture is on the front cover, but he’s not the same man I’m talking to right now.

Ken: No. And that was the point. I didn’t want to be that guy anymore. I view bipolar as a blessing. And if you’re in it, I totally understand how that’s a bunch of hogwash..

Jody: Oh yeah. I’m glad you used that word.

Ken: I’m looking right at you as I said it, my friend. It took bipolar in all its awful glory to burn the old Kenny straight down to the ground to where there was nothing left but ashes because he was not getting it done right.

The new me that exists now grew up out out of those ashes, like a Phoenix. And I would never have been capable of doing anything I do now, if I was still that old guy. He had it all wrong. And he had to go. And he didn’t go easy. Cause there was parts about me that I dug. I liked being me. There was some rough edges to me that I really got off on.

And I just, I loved a lot of different pieces of my life, not taking me to my goal or I should have been going, that I deeply wanted inside me. And at one point I had to give him up but I couldn’t.

So it took bipolar to beat him out of me. And I view it as a gift. But it’s a gift nobody should linger or dawdle about it. You should get it out of your life as quick as you possibly can.

Jody: Right. Well, I mean, as, so anything that they need in the line of a supplement, especially… When you say also, you know, your diet. Would you eliminate things from your diet that might make things worse?

Ken: Definitely. What I’m fond of sharing is: all the things that most people know they should be doing for good health? If you’re bipolar or depressed or have ADD, or schizophrenia, any of these things… you’re no longer at should. You’re at half to.

You’re no longer at “should take care of myself.” It’s “I have to take care of myself.” Anyone with a mental illness, you now have a defective machine. Anything you do to the machine to hurt its quality of operation is going to add to your mental illness.

People make the mistake… this is another problem I have with medication and that whole approach. They deal with just the mind. The mind is just a component inside a larger machine. Your body. Your body and your mind are not two separate pieces. They’re deeply intertwined.

So if you just try to deal with what’s going on in the mind without taking care of the body? A very important point.: The dopamine, I’m pretty sure it’s dopamine. I don’t always remember all these details but they can be looked up. I’m pretty sure it’s dopamine, if not serotonin The bulk of it that makes you happy, this is your happy juice that makes you naturally happy, the bulk of it is produced in your intestines.

If you’re a person that’s eaten Tums or Rolaids all the time, drinking a lot of soda, eating a lot of bad food, taking in artificial sweeteners. All those energy drinks? If you’re bipolar, depressed and drinking an energy drink, when you’re feeling depressed, you are pouring kerosene on our already large fire.

Now all of these things go in and they damage the lining of the intestines and cause the intestines to start not functioning right. Your dopamine levels go down from that. What happens? You get depressed. What happens? They give you an antidepressant. That wasn’t the problem. You have to fix the lining in your intestines. You will naturally become happy again.

But you’re never going to find that out with the traditional approach. You have to look at the whole body and you have to look at your views on life. Cause I also deal with a meditation. And I found a way to meditate for a guy like me. Think of what you’ve heard of me up to this point.

I don’t want to give a tree a hug. I don’t want to stare into a candle and experienced a great nothingness. I want some kind of scientific something, something tactical, to address my mind and meditate. I found it. And since then I do kind of dig into what’s the big nothingness, I think some pretty heavy stuff. I’m all into this stuff I first hated and avoided. It comes full circle, but it was not an effort that’s part of it.

Jody: So in other words, the only part about food that you’re mentioning is that sugars, fake sugars, and some of the other things that we fill ourselves up with, they’re not the right things to do. If we do have any notion that we might have…

Ken: Right. If your life’s not going good, for any reason, anything, start improving the parts of it you have control over.

Jody: But people don’t always know and they’re not in control, Ken. You know that right?

Ken: I mean, I’m just saying, if somebody does know that there’s a problem and… like sometimes people get this information put in front of them and they won’t act on it and they get hung up in their ways.

And they’re still waiting for that one magical pill that’s going write all the wrongs. And it’s natural. I’m not even berating people. I did it for years. As I did my system, as I got better steadily across a year, I still lived in fear that maybe what I was doing isn’t going to work. And my first thought for a whole year was, “I’ll have to go back to the doctor and get a pill.”

And then right after that is, “No pill works on you. We’ve proven that extensively, there is no pill for you.” So it put me in a very scary position to have to have faith in what I was doing. And thankfully it worked.

Jody: So basically what you were saying, a solid meal of vegetables, whatever, without an overdose on anything and especially your dessert, right? Can you have a dessert?

Ken: Yeah. Just for sanity purposes. There is the fact that once in a while, if you want a cupcake have the cupcake. Because the pain from missing it is eventually going to become so large, you’re gonna throw the whole program out the window with eating.

But one of my secrets is the meditation. It’s a service that I use. The tools? They allow you to put these things in place in your life and they make it effortless. The things you want to accomplish, you don’t have to strive to make them happen. If you’re trying to get rid of a bad habit, you don’t have to strive to make it happen.

If you stick to the meditation and read what the gentleman writes that comes with it, which is extensive, these things you want to do, and these things you want to stop, they just kind of magically come into play.

You’ll realize one day, you haven’t done something that you needed to quit a long time ago. And you won’t remember when you stopped doing it. Or some part of your life got better.

This gentleman, Bill Harris he also speaks about how to look at life. And reality is what you make of it. It’s why two people can witness an accident and have a completely different accident report report.

It is what we see, what we think we see. When you learn to look at life differently, and this has happened for me, you start to see connections. And you start to see options and you start to see resources that have always been right smack in front of you.

You just weren’t in the right frame of mind to see them. It’s like a magical door opened. And in reality, nothing changed, except how you see life. And it is fascinating when you realize it’s happening to you.

Jody: You know, who I think was bipolar. And this of course is St. Francis of Assisi. Because his prayer of serenity is just really what could be applied to being bipolar.

And he was the one that finally went out in the woods in the animals, and he became the beginning of the Franciscan order. And he, you know, he had a very strange, his father and mother could never understand him. And this was when he was growing up. And this is back, I think 16, 1700.

Ken: A lot of your bipolar folks… Or over the years, a lot of your people that were successful at something and usually creative: inventors, painters… we get all the artist types. That’s who falls into my crowd.

And then the disease has so many different faces to it and it can be mislabeled and you know, you just don’t know,

Jody: But, and you love yourself again.

Ken: I’m fantastic, Jody! A little joke for you. But yeah, I’m happy. I’m happy in my skin.

Jody: Yes! And you know, many people, quote, unquote, who are normal are not happy in their skin because whatever they have is never enough.

Ken: No. And I should also add there’s there’s still a lot of things about me I want to change. And I keep working on it. I still have problems in life. Don’t think everything… I’m talking to the audience… I didn’t magically repair. Absolutely not!

I got things that still cause me a lot of pain. And there’s things I wanna repair. But, once you got the bipolar out of the way, you can start addressing these other things from a healthy perspective, a healthy viewpoint, stable mind.

Your problems don’t all magically go away, but I’ll help you knock your bipolar right down to just about nothing. Or get it quieted down to where you can think straight. And maybe you got to take a slightly different turn than I took in a couple areas.

Maybe you got to go, you know, acupuncture or massage. You maybe have to throw in things like that. Or some other spiritual person/teacher has to help you find… But if you try some of my key components at the very least, it should knock the illness down enough to where you can get your head about you to think out…

Maybe you go from a completely different direction than I did. But I’ll give you the foundation. Or you might do my program and you’ll rock right up to where I am, because it fits you perfectly. Either way I just want to help.

Jody: All right, we have about three and a half minutes and give that again where it gets you, where to get information.

Ken: Go to www.ittakesgutstobeme.com and everything about me starts from that point.

Jody: Good morning. You’re on with Ken Jensen. Good morning.

Fitzy: Hi. I’m a long time family friend. I know the old Kenny. I think what he’s done with himself is just magnificent, magnificent. And GodSpeed to him. And Kenny, keep up the good work.

Jody: Kenny, did you hear what the person said?

Ken: Like a bad boy. I didn’t have my headphones on. I think that was a friend of my fathers.

Jody: Are you still there?

Fitzy: Yes.

Jody: Would you please tell him again?

Fitzy: I said that I’m a long time family friend. His father was actually in the military with me for a long time. He was my boss. He was my first Sergeant. I know the old Kenny. I think what he’s done with his life is magnificent. Kenny, keep up the good work. I think you’re going to be an inspiration to a lot of people that need the help. And GodSpeed to you.

Ken: Thanks a million Fitzy. I appreciate that.

Fitzy: All right, buddy.

Ken: Fitzy knows the whole story.

Jody: Well, he obviously was. Where? You know..

Ken: He was in the army reserves with my dad. My dad was absolutely adored and revered by his men. And rightly so. My dad was a fantastic leader. And Fitzy, and all my dad’s friends that worked under him… I call them friends now, but they were under him then.. nothing but just the best batch of guys.

And they, a lot of them, they were tight family. So they know my story. That makes me very happy when someone knew me from then and can say something like that. It’s a nice validation.

Jody: Well I like to say, because I recognize certain things .The change in you. When were you here last time?

Ken: Oh, it’s been a few months.

Jody: Four or five months. And you are the same person, the same body. But your mind and who you are, are very different. And I know this relapses that do happen no matter what or how, but that happens to anybody, with without what you have. The bipolar. And, you know, you have managed to overcome. And every time I see that picture of you on the front page of your book, It Takes Guts To Be Me.

I had a person to ask me last week, “What do you mean? It takes guts?”

Ken: Yeah. I need to clarify about that somewhere. But yeah, it’s It Took Guts because I cannot believe I survived being who I was. Because…

Jody: He says that because someone was giving him the guts. And I said, I think it was his spirit.

Ken: Yeah. I, I wouldn’t quit. I wouldn’t quit. I felt lost endlessly.

Jody: Okay. All right, Kenny. Lots of love and everything gets a lot better.

Ken: I love you to pieces, Jody. Thanks for having me.

Jody: Oh, I know you spoiled me with all the wonderful stories. Be safe, be happy.

Post Interview

So. See what I’m saying? I was wired for sound in that interview. It is what it is. That’s where I was at then. But again, two problems from, from a list of almost a hundred and got it down to two. And other than being, you know, too amped up for certain settings, there were no more bipolar problems in my life.

Somebody might just have to tell me once in a while to calm down. That’s that’s it. No handcuffs, no drunken tirades, no fights, no psychosis, no depressions, no dissociation, no endless lists of symptoms. Just,”Hey Ken. Cool it!” Way more acceptable set of problems. So I hope you found that interesting. I hope you found it useful and I hope if you are in the fight or taking care of someone who’s in the fight, you’ll see…

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:00:10 — 82.6MB)

Podcast player photo by Kotaro-Studio from Pixabay

Show Notes:

Welcome to the Bipolar Excellence Podcast Episode Two, the WKNY Interview Part One.

I got interviewed on a radio station years ago. That made it to a different podcast I used to run. Some years had gone by, many years since I had made the radio interview. And I explained what had changed in the years since, on that old podcast.

So just for clarification, I’m just leaving all that as is. And now we’re on this new podcast. So you got this brief little intro, just so you’re not baffled all to hell. You’ll hear the sound quality change. You’ll know that’s when you’re on the old episode. And I’ll let that thing speak for itself.

Original Review Starts Here

My WKNY Interview, the first one. So a little over nine years ago, I had my first interview on radio. I get interviewed in this little station by an older lady, probably World War II era lady. She’d interviewed a million people.

She was fantastic! Jodie McTaggart. She had read my book. I don’t remember how I got the interview, but she had read the book, apparently exhaustively, because when I met her, she had her copy of my book in her hand.

And it was actually jam packed with post-it notes and pieces of paper on all three sides. Stuff was sticking out of it everywhere.

The thing looked like it had been sent through a washer. It was all beat up. I never saw anybody do that to my book. So I knew she was going to have a lot of questions and she did.

It was interesting because it sort of felt like she was mothering me here or there, because, I believe, there’s what got said in the interview and then even beforehand, and after. And it just was upsetting to her to read about the painful parts of the book.

And she just felt like, I don’t know, a sense of caring towards me because of that. She was also shocked to hear about how my life was in the Marine Corps, because it was not the poster.

People that aren’t in the military or not associated to it, particularly to Marines, all they know is the commercials. And maybe some movies. They have an assumption of what life is like, how Marines act .And, largely, it’s a correct picture.

And then not so largely are guys like myself and my friends, everybody who’s as nuts as we were in the Marines to a certain degree, but we took it to an art form.

And she was trying to come to grips with that but not really in a negative way. She was just really interested and curious and trying to settle some questions in her mind that my book brought up. So it was an interesting interview.

The reason I’m putting these interviews up is because I want people to hear where my head was at just a couple of years after the point from which I felt I had fully walked away from bipolar. I had my mind, not only under control but actually doing well.

I wanted you guys to hear what a person sounds like not that much longer after that point has been reached. Because while I was sick, it was madness.

What the medications, the doctors were giving to me created nothing but more madness and a whole bunch of other physical health problems as well. All of which went away when I stopped taking all these meds, they were giving me.

So for now, let’s get you into the interview and make of it what you will.

Interview Starts Here

Bud: Good morning, everyone. It’s nine minutes after nine o’clock on your Saturday morning. And welcome to speak out with Jody McTaggart and friends, the program you get a chance to call us and speak out what’s on your mind. And now on this Saturday morning, here’s the host to speak out Jodi McNeil.

Jody: Thank you very much, Bud Fredericks.

And as I said, make sure you have your finger on the bleep buttons, because I have a very wonderful gentleman sitting here this morning. Very courageous young man. He could be my son if you know, with your age, it’d be fine for me. I’d know how to knock your block off.

With us this morning, we have a gentleman he’s a, I never say an ex Marine, a former Marine.

Ken: I’m a former Marine. It just seems to confuse many people that are familiar with what being a Marine is all about. I kind of did that to simplify it for them.

Jody: And your name is Ken Jensen. You live in Tillson. You went to high school in Kingston high and you have beat the bipolar disorder. What a statement! Did you make that statement with the permission of your psychiatrist? Or did you know that you beat bipolar?

Ken: No, my psychiatrist couldn’t be happier that I’ve achieved what I did, but being that I did everything against his wishes to pull it off, he can’t vouch for it.

He’s just simply happy for me in the background and we’re good friends. And he helped me learn a lot about what led me to a lot of the forms of help that I found. He helped shaped a lot of my thinking.

Jody: Your book is spellbinding. Now, were you a good boy in high school?

Ken: No.

Jody: Before you became a man where you were a good boy.

Ken: No. I was not, I was a, one of the kids that hung out on the wall that kind of puts you in a category all by itself.

Jody: Oh yes, you were. We hated to pass there because you always had something nasty to say.

Ken: Or I would be drinking and skipping class, drinking and sitting in the little valley behind Kingston hospital (there’s now a parking lot.) Stuff like that. I had no interest in school. I was smart enough that I could just show up and pass tests and didn’t have to work really hard. It just upset me to be there.

Jody: But you did graduate.

Ken: Yes, I did.

Jody: And what happened after that when you were on your own? What was life like after that? Because when I was reading this book, It Takes Guts To Be Me. You attempted to get rid of yourself a couple of times. And you didn’t know you were doing it all the time with the life you were leading and what helped you bring it all into perspective?

Ken: Well, when I got out of high school you know, I grew up in Tillson. This was back in the mid eighties. There was nothing going on. I had no money. I had no car. I had no future. And you’re kind of stuck halfway between New Paltz and Kingston. You can’t even go hang out with anybody or doing much of anything.

Jody: Tell me, did you ever have any kind of after-school job or were you limited because of no car and stuff like that?

Ken: I worked for a little while at Pizza Hut in Kingston. And then I worked for maybe about a year at Iron Mountain, the facility in Rosendale, where I basically was a warehouse worker. I just carried about a million boxes a year and put them on trucks or stock them on shelves.

10:00 Min Mark

And then after that, I was about 16 or 17. I was coming up towards the end of high school. And I was already a severe alcoholic. I’d already been in one coma.

Jody: Now, how did you get the alcohol? I said, “I have to ask him that question because alcohol costs five, six bucks and I knew you weren’t working.” So where did the alcohol come from?

Ken: Good question. Hard to say. If I could swipe money in some fashion, I would. Sometimes I’d beg it from friends and I did make a little bit of money from work and it didn’t cost all that much back then.

Or there were a lot of parties. There was always the older kids hanging out in the woods, having parties. You just chip in your five bucks and there was a keg party with a tire burning on a stack of wood, somewhere kind of a thing. It wasn’t hard really to get the alcohol.

Jody: Oh boy. That’s, that’s tough to hear because you know, this, the problem still exists today, alcohol and drugs.

Ken: Yeah, it was hard because I grew up with it. It was throughout pretty much my family tree on both sides of the family. It was like a normal progression. I was raised in it. There were always big parties, big family cookouts, tons and tons of beer.

It just was part of my life. I didn’t realize probably until after I quit, how I had been trained right into it. Not directly but it just seemed like a normal progression to me.

Jody: “I was miserable for months. I had no joy in me. I could laugh at comedies, but it wasn’t a lasting effect. It was a double whammy because although I was happy to be a free man, again, it felt as if I’d lost my protector status and been thrown back into the herd. Stripped of my honor. And that’s just how it was.”

This is a very powerful statement and when you think of that, it makes you want to choke inside.

Ken: I had a hard time being in the Marines, being the kind of person I was. I figured out years later that I was an artist, a creative type. It took a whole different kind of world to keep me happy and productive. And the Marines didn’t fit that bill for me.

But to be a Marine is an extreme honor. I’ll make that very clear right now. I only get prouder the older I get. And my Marine friends I’m still in touch with, and the Marines I meet in town… it all means more to me, the older and older I get. But when you first get out…

Jody: That’s what you wish for your son. Semper Fi.

Ken: Yeah I would like my son to do whatever he wants to do in his life that makes him happy. I don’t really care. I don’t care at all. But if he becomes a Marine, my eyeballs will probably pop right out of my head with pride. I half live for that moment. I just don’t want to push him into anything he doesn’t want to do.

Jody: So. All right, let’s go back to, we get out of high school.

Ken: Okay. Yeah. When I got out of high school, I was already a pretty well-practiced alcoholic. My parents saw the writing on the wall. There was no future to be had in town or even in this area. So my dad said pick a new hobby or pick a new home. He used those words.

He said he was in the Army and he didn’t want me going in the Army for a number of reasons. He didn’t like the Navy, so I wasn’t allowed to go in the Navy.

So, he said, pick easy or hard, the Air Force or the Marines.

So I picked easy. I tried to get in the Air Force but we could never seem to meet with a recruiter. And then I ended up joining the Marines, more or less out of spite and to see if I could hack it.

Jody: And because I’ve read the book I know you hacked it. And the things that you write in here, I found unbelievable.

Ken: It’s unbelievable to me. There’s a lot of times I look back and if it hadn’t been me doing it, I wouldn’t believe you telling it to me. And the book is a very light dusting. It’s a tiny fraction of all the adventures or misadventures that took place for me in the Marines. I couldn’t write everything in there cause that wasn’t…

Jody: Ken! Every time I see a Marine or used to see a Marine, because I remember the young people going to the Second World War when I was a child, and if you went into the Marines… I remember to this day, Bobby Griffin, what a wonderful young man he was. And all the girls who were that age, when he would come home, he was the man of the hour. And I always thought that they were par excellence.

Ken: Well, the Marines are par excellence. That’s our whole thing. We do more with less and we look better doing it. And it’s a requirement whenever we get told to do something.

There’s no question of whether or not we’re going to do it. We’re going to do it. We might not have what we need. We frequently didn’t have what we need. A lot of times our bare hands took the place of what should have been power equipment. Cause we just got the job done.

My job in particular, I had pretty much a construction worker sort of job. And I did heavy duty industrial electrical work and we just worked very, very hard. My job in the Marines was a.. We were a place people got put, due to a technicality. We did not exist in the big book. There’s an actual book. We, our job was not in it. We didn’t exist.

Jody: Explain that to the public because I found some of the things I said, “I hope he can clarify these things.” And you’re doing it quite well. Go ahead.

Ken: Thank you. Well, there’s a big book and it literally lists all the jobs there are in the Marine Corps. I wasn’t a grunt. I was in the air wing. But we weren’t listed in that book. So by default, nobody ever got slotted to go to my job, but my job was highly important.

We worked with the avionics people. We took care of their houses. They worked inside these containers. Our job was very manual labor and mixed with a lot of heavy duty technical work mixed with a lot of logistical work.

A lot of my projects are spread out over many acres and many miles involving planes, ships, trucks, cranes, all kinds of weird, heavy equipment we used to move these containers. You name it.

To get the amount of bodies we needed to move the thousands and thousands of pieces equipment we had, we needed people on loan from other shops. No shop would ever send their good guys to us. They’re not going to, they want to keep them for themselves.

So we got all the champions. Everyone in my shop was there because they got caught doing drugs. They drank too much. They fought all the time or they just wouldn’t listen to orders. That could be anywhere from four to 25 guys with that kind of an attitude. We were like a biker gang inside the Marine Corps.

Jody: Were you in charge of these fellows when they were sent to you or were you one of them? And we all get this done together,

Ken: Both. There were two parts to how my existence in the Marine was, especially in this shop. This shop, I got to say, we were unique unto most of the Marine Corps.

I doubt you would find much anything like what we were. Everyone in my shop for the most part was highly intelligent and, and we worked very hard and we were very proud of what we did.

Our job covered so many areas. It couldn’t be taught. You how to follow behind us to see how to do it all. And if we didn’t do it, nobody was going to get it all done. Somebody could do any part of it, but not the whole thing together.

And we were very proud of what we did. And being in the air wing… the air wing is more of a cushier situation than the grunts.

And we were like right in the middle. We did construction work. We were in the air wing, but we got sunburn. We froze all winter long. We broke our backs. We got electrocuted, burned, cut and we were always in pain from our job.

Most of the rest of the air wing was not. So we, we viewed ourselves apart from them. And the grunts seemed to like us a little better than the rest of the air wing.

Jody: Tell me when you were electrocuted, as you say, you’ve got a good jolt. How did that affect you mentally?

Ken: Geez I don’t know. When I was younger and learning the job, the hard way, a lot of what we learned, like I said, nobody taught it to you. They got taught a little tiny bit maybe, but then you just figured the rest out. I took a number of 30 amp and 40 amp hits.

I got locked into a few circuits once or twice where I could not let go. The circuit grabbed me and I couldn’t let go until somebody knocked my arm free. And I had to knock friends free too.

We were young. In the Marines you’re of course indestructible. So you’re like doubly indestructible. And getting electrocuted? It was just part of the day. We’d be mad and everything and try to learn from it. But didn’t really think much of it.

Jody: When you became part of the Marines, where did you go first?

Ken: I went to Parris Island.

Jody: Okay.

Ken: Parris Island, in a lot of ways was the easiest part of the Marine Corps for me. Cause I was like a gazelle. I was 18. I weighed like 150 pounds soaking wet.

Jody: And how tall were you? That’s important.

Ken: About five 11.

Jody: I thought you were six foot when you got out of the car today.

Ken: Thick shoes!

So the, physical parts of bootcamp were a snap to me. Cause I grew up… regardless of anything else I did I used to love being in the woods, snowmobile, motorcycle and hiking, swimming. I could not use my body enough.

And I graduated in the top 10% of my platoon out about, I guess, 70 guys. And the head games they play on you, which are pretty unbelievable to the people that have not been through the Marines.

It’s hard to describe. You actually get used to it in about a month or so. And it’s quite bizarre stuff to relate.

Jody: It’s in the book. What you’re talking about?

Ken: Not too much about bootcamp, cause that’s like that that’s a whole world unto itself. I have about a hundred stories just from there alone that would blow people’s minds. But that wasn’t the point of the book either.

20:00 Min Mark

My problem began after bootcamp. When I graduated from bootcamp, there was a sense to me, like I made it, I’m done. I never gave any thought to the rest of my five-year contract. I really seriously didn’t.

When I got to my first base, which was Memphis, Millington outside of Memphis, I had an epiphany, my very first epiphany. I was walking to the E-Club, the enlisted man’s club. In Tennessee at the time you could be 18 and legally drink if you were a military personnel.

I was walking into the club and I had a sudden realization. It was like the sky cracked open and poured liquid lead on top of me and all my air got cut off. When it dawned on me, I had four and three-quarter more years of this Marine Corps stuff to go.

And in Memphis, we called it fourth phase bootcamp. They don’t treat you like a Marine yet. You’re still just a kid. You don’t really have any rights. You’re not treated like a man. You’re just told what to do when you get given a lot of things to do that are just useless.

They just keep you busy. And that frustrated me to no end. And I thought that was going to be my whole time in the Marines.

So I knew right then and there… I almost can remember the feeling. Something in me cracked. I say to people I’d have been better off if I could have been in a war the whole time.

And I don’t say that lightly. I was in the Gulf War and that’s not as severe of an experience as what the guys are going through now.

But you got to keep in mind, I was already not a normal person. I was not even a normal Marine. And if I’d had a war I’d at least been kept busy. And I’d have probably been happy being violent and destructive.

Because I got to that point later in life anyway, where I couldn’t be violent enough. Wouldn’t have been healthy, but I would have been, probably, even happier than just piddling about fixing stuff and doing what I actually did.

Jody: And how long did this go on, where you realized, you know, a choice had come up at that time and you were, what, 20 years old?

Ken: Oh, right then, I was still 18.

Jody: Still 18. And, you know, the sequence of how you went through these things, knowing that you needed the help and that you were determined to get it, you were not going to be a quitter. So many things were part of all the decisions that you were making at that time.

Ken: It’s pretty wild. I made a lot of wrong decisions and no matter who you are in this life, you draw like individuals to you, law of attraction. And I always found the craziest guys to hang out with. The guys that were always getting busted and getting in trouble.

Jody: Oh, some of the stories that you relayed here, which I don’t want to talk about, you may start using words I don’t want you to say on the air. You really were in the midst of the antithesis of paradise.

Ken: That’s a beautiful way of putting it. Yeah. Yeah. It was a prison sentence. I should say again, just because you pass through bootcamp, doesn’t mean you are now in love to death with the Marine Corps start to finish.

And I should also say I was a rare individual. There wasn’t a whole lot of guys like me, even though I had friends just like me.

Jody: You did some pretty good partying there with friends, just like you. Right?

Ken: Right. I pretty much tried to drink my way to a good time constantly. Nothing new there as far as drinking itself. But in the Marines, they provide situations. It’s just how it is. It’s easier to get in trouble if you’re someone who’s fractured like I was.

And they have a lot of programs in place now. And they were putting a lot more in place as I was getting out. I got put through a lot of programs. I have a feeling now it’s probably a lot better than it was, if a guy like me were to arrive on scene. I have a feeling, they have a better way of helping that guy get out of where he is than when I was there.

Now that I know everything about myself with bipolar, that was brewing in me and everything… nobody really could have saved me. I was going to crash and burn regardless.

Jody: Well, you know, you were in a period of time in our country, also in the late seventies and early eighties where everything went, everything goes. Nothing was over the hill.

It was, you know, you can do it. And I think I, because I have sons who are in their forties too, and some would, you know, and their friends and some would say, Hey, you know, I’m going to do everything that I can do. That’s wrong.

And other young men said, well, there are lines that we can’t, we have to draw. You know, and it was tough on the parents because there was no way of knowing what the young people were coming up with through the influence of some of the new music that was out. And the whole thing of you know Timothy O’Leary and well, the rest of the stuff at that time.

Ken: Yeah. And then well, you combine, like when I was in the Marines, like I said before, you’re indestructable, you’re full of energy and you can’t fail. Problem is you can apply this in areas the Marine Corps never intended you to. And so if we partied, we partied the best we could without fail.

When I went overseas a few times, I went to Japan and Korea, I was overseas for a year. And when I came back, I ended up in El Toro, California. That base no longer exists. And I met a different breed of friends.

It turned out most of them were highly intelligent. Some of them were geniuses. We didn’t even know until many years later. And to be that smart life’s too simple in the military, unless you’re actually, you know, really perfectly in a job.

But even then we were just such outgoing types and we had such a need to explore and everything, just, nothing was ever going to work for guys like us in the service, no matter where we were.

And we had no discipline. We had enough to get the job done. We always stood by our job, but we couldn’t be controlled hardly ever

Jody: Your commanding officer or whoever you were, your Corporal, your Sergeant, whatever… you would not do as you were commanded to do? Or you would make believe you heard, or you didn’t hear? How would you handle that situation?

Ken: If we did not agree with the orders put upon us and, and I should also say this applies to the job. This is kind of like any job where the worker knows the job better than the guy managing them. I’ve seen this in many jobs, since we had it in the Marines too.,

We would find a way to get it done the way we thought made most sense. Since a lot of our job was physical, we were going to pay with pain if we didn’t get this done in the most efficient way possible.

Or my job also had rotating bosses. A lot of the bosses had no idea what we did.

Jody: So did you weed some out?

Ken: We wore some out big time. We had some so afraid to ever come back to us. It went both ways. We were a blast to be with, if you were in with us.

We had one guy that wanted to be a drill instructor and go on to climb the ladder. And he apologized when he left our shop. He said, I love you guys. I’ve never witnessed anything in the whole Marine Corps, he was a Staff Sergeant, like you guys.

You are unique. You’re far out. But I got to leave you, or I’m never going to finish my career. You’re out of control. You’re insane. I’ll miss you. And I apologize, but I got to go.

Jody: Well that took courage for him to do that too.

Ken: Well it was a weird thing. He was apologizing to us cause he wanted to go on and rocket to stardom through the Marine Corps, but he loved us that much. He said you guys are special.

30:00 Min Mark

Jody: We are talking to Ken Jensen who lives in Tillson. And he wrote this incredible book, “It Takes Guts To Be Me”. But the only thing I have to warn you is there’s a lot of who he really is.

He’s not cleaning up his act in the book as he is for us here on the radio. And that’s who you are. You’ve graduated from high school. How long were you in the Marines? Five years. And you’re out now. How many years?

Ken: Oh, coming up on 20, I got out in 91.

Jody: And you are now you know, do you still go to some of the people that you have been going to in order to keep you on this track? And you’ve been through two marriages, you have a wonderful son and you wish the best for him. And if he went in the Marines, you’d be the most proud individual in the world.

Ken: I’d just about lose my mind, but in a good way, if I was down on those bleachers on Parris Island watching my son graduate, I can’t describe how proud I’d be.

Jody: Why is that? That the Marines do inspire us to think that way?

Ken: Well, you have to qualify to be a Marine. As I understand it, the other three branches when you sign up you’re enlisted. You’re in. And Marine bootcamp… you have to graduate.

A matter of fact, it was the big threat they used to hang over our head. “You’re never going to leave my island unless I LET you leave my island. That was the number one threat. We wanted off the island. I was there for three months. There’s no weekends off. You train every day. I think on Sunday they gave us a little bit of a break and then all the punishment is physical.

And I don’t know how long it is now, but now they got this thing called The Crucible. I think it’s 52 hours of straight, just physical endurance tests and mental tests put together. They didn’t even have that when I was in. And my hat’s off to the Marines that make us through that now. That’s unbelievable.

Jody: Is there a reason for this?

Ken: Well, the Marines are just, we’re expected to win without fail. It’s basically, they want you to have a mentality where you’ll go into a battle, even if it looks like you can’t win, you’re going to go in.

A part of you, the logical sense of you knows you’re not going to win, but another part of you is like, we’re winning any way. We’re going to win or we’ll die trying.

And then the brotherhood, there’s nothing like it. I don’t have friends that mean half as much to me as my Marine buddies I’m still in touch with now. And whenever I meet other Marines that I don’t even know, once you meet them it’s all right.

Jody: Ken Jensen, what started you on the way to make sure that you were going to recover, that you were not going to let this life be, make the best of it because your parents were hard put with you and your wives never knew where you were coming from?

Ken: No, I wore out a lot of people and when I got to my late twenties, I had moved out west. I was nearing the end of my job trail. I was in Denver during the boom times. I got out there I think, in 97, I was there for three years. I had about 20 jobs while I was in Denver.

Some of them were unbelievably high tech and all of them, I pretty much lied. And my resume was just a big fabrication. I, at one time thought I should be a professional resume writer because I couldn’t not get hired, until the illness may be enough of an odd ball over time. People could tell there was something off about me and they didn’t want me in the room.

But my stress levels kept climbing and climbing and climbing.

I kept going to a doctor to get Valium, only because I only knew with my limited knowledge Valium will calm you down. My doctor said, I’m seeing a pattern here. And he said, you’re my healthiest patient. You’re you’re as healthy as a bear.

There’s something wrong between your ears. And he sent me to a psychiatrist and I was diagnosed in about 20 minutes with classic bipolar.

I had highs and you know, where I couldn’t be beat. And I was very creative and everything was great. And I was full of love and excitement. And then I had depressions where I was in the fetal position on the floor. I couldn’t see how the next five seconds on my life was ever possibly going to work.

Jody: The first time that you found yourself in what we’ll call the fetal position, what realization came over you?

Ken: Well, in the early times, I didn’t know. I had no idea. The thing that really got me worried was my first major panic attack. And I didn’t know what that was either.

I had slipped out of the house for the night and stayed gone almost till dawn. I went drinking and I ended up in some after hours club and nothing happened that night, but the poisoning I did to my body it caught up to me the next night.

And I experienced my first major panic attack. It felt like a physical impossibility. It felt like a black hole had opened up in my chest and I was falling into myself at an impossibly accelerated rate. I was being consumed.

The outside of me was dumping into the inside of me and inside of me, it was an infinitely deep hole. And I felt like I was feeling. Into my own body.

It was the most terrifying, horrifying experience I’d ever felt in my life. And it kept getting stronger and it wasn’t just growing. It was getting exponentially stronger. And that was when I first got my first good taste of what insanity was probably going to feel like.

I mean, I faced war. I’ve lived through missile attacks where we pretty much, we just accepted we were going to be dead in the next five seconds. I’ve had Scuds blown out of the sky, over my head with Patriots.

That sounds like the universe splitting in two that’s so loud. And you just, you just assume you’re dead. You don’t not even afraid.

And I’ve just, I’ve been through a lot of very scary moments, nothing compared to this panic. It was hideous. I had to go to the hospital. They put so much tranquilizers in me on the way there and in the hospital and I was still conscious.

They were having no effect on me. And I was begging the doctor to give me more.

Nobody knew what was wrong with me. I had no idea. Doctor said, if I give you any more, you’re going to die. There’s enough in you now to sedate half the emergency room. And they gave me more anyway. Then I passed out with whatever the last thing was. And the next day, nothing, nobody knew what happened to me.

Jody: Ken, when they take the blood tests and everything else. And these things show up in a blood test. What conclusions do they come to? Because how closer are we dealing with bipolar?

Ken: There’s no blood test for bipolar. Bipolar is just, well, it’s a whole number of things. And because it’s a whole number of things is why taking a pill or a combination of pharmaceuticals is completely missing the point.

It’s putting a patch over the pothole, but your car isn’t going to be held up by that patch. If you drive over it.

Jody: When you first told one of your counselors that in different verbiage, what was her reaction?

Ken: Oh, well I never even got that chance. When I was going through the process, the pharmaceutical process, which is about it. That’s, that’s the plan when you go to a doctor and I went to a lot of them, they just keep trying different medications on you.

And you basically troubleshoot the person’s broken mind and everyone’s different, all different medications, everything’s all different and they just you’re just lab rat until they get the right mix. That’s even if they do ever get the right mix. And none of that ever worked for me.

Let me backtrack. They kept giving me meds for my head. And I’m at home researching on the internet, what might apply to me because I’m deathly afraid for my life. This illness has a high fatality rate.

It’s the most severe fatality rate for a mental illness. The chance for suicide is massive because it’s too much to take. I was failing mentally and they just kept adding more and more pills and no pill had any effect on me. I was, I was like immune to any medicine, but I could get the side effects from it.

Bipolar is untouched, but now I have a whole slew of medical created side effects. Then my physical health failed. This is over a six year period. I ballooned up to over 300 pounds. My thyroid shut off.

Jody: Wait a minute. You were that heavy? Right now, ladies and gentlemen, he’s just a gorgeous 40 whatever young man with a beautiful mustache. And what’s this here, goatee? And he’s walking as straight as an arrow.

Ken: And I’m a gym rat. I take very good care of myself. But when I reached a point, I didn’t even know I was 300 pounds. I was wearing size 44 pants. You know, I’m like a comfortable 38 now, 36, but I had no idea how heavy I was getting.

Then my legs started retaining fluid. My lower legs filled up with water. It looked like I had elephantiasis. I had to wear compression stockings. Then I was taking four or five different medications for my physical health, on top of the three to four to five I was taking for my mental health.

And I got real fed up one day.

40:00 Min Mark

Jody: When you say fed up you mean angry?

Ken: Yeah. I just refused to believe I was this sick. It did not make sense to me. And I’ve learned, you know, you meaning all of us, you know, inside your body, your body will tell you what’s up, what’s working, what’s not.

You might not understand it or know what the clear stuff to take is, but you know, when something’s wrong. And I knew all these medicines were wrong.

And then I reached a point with my doctor. He talked to me. I used to get very violent. I only could feel despair, confusion and rage. That was almost all I ever felt. I had no joy or anything else.

I was turned off as a human and the only emotional outpouring I could have was rage. And if I aimed it at you, you had a problem.

If I found the other guy like me out there, I had a problem. I didn’t always win! And there’s a lot of us out there and we find each other. Sometimes I did the thumping. Sometimes I got thumped. Sometimes the cops wore me out.

And I said this once on Kingston cable, I give a thank you to any cop listening who took care of me, who could have gone another way and didn’t because they knew there was a deeper problem with me. I appreciate it all you guys.

I have been arrested, detained or handcuffed by just about every police force that there is an in this area and a bunch out west and a bunch of the Marines. It’s handcuffs have been like personal jewelry for me over the years.

Jody: Yeah. ‘ cause the Marines were tough. That one time, when you were all caught in the barracks, messing around.

Ken: I had a rage attack, you know. I know now, in retrospect, I can see how the bipolar has been trying to push in to make itself known for decades. I had a rage attack and yeah, the MPs wore me out. They pretty much ripped me apart, ripped my arms out of their sockets and kicked my ribs in.

Because I wouldn’t stop, I wouldn’t stop fighting. I used to be mad about that. Now I’m just, I’m glad. I’m glad they never took me to jail. I don’t know why, but I’m like, you know what? I I’ll take a beatin’ better than going to a cell.

And now I know why. They just did what… I’ve been in that situation. I’ve done security in a hospital where, when I took the job, I was hired to fight. And I fought people that were in worse shape than me.

Jody: Explain that. When you say that you took the security job.

Ken: It was an emergency room in a hospital. It was out of control. People like how I would eventually become, were coming in off the streets.

Cops will bring people in who were clearly psychotic, deranged, or high or tripping, whatever. And they would just come in and just start taking it all out on the staff or each other, or trying to hurt themselves.

And when I got hired for that job, I was told you’re gonna fight. I’m paying you to fight. Are you up for it? I said yeah, I’m up for it. And I dealt with guys that were just like me. The irony was sickening.

Jody: So you saw yourself there.

Ken: I saw myself .

Jody: Was that an awakening right there?

Ken: It was part of it because I was getting worse. My life was falling apart, faster and faster. And it dawned on me. It’s only a matter of time before I’m on the receiving end of me. I’m going to, I’m going to be the guy getting chained down to the bed and getting thrown up against the wall.

Jody: When that light went on what happened after that?

Ken: Well, at that point I just kept getting worse. There was no rational thinking.

Jody: It stopped right there. So then you went right back.

Ken: Well, I just kept getting worse. The illness, if it really escalates, it takes reasonable thinking out of the picture. You don’t see life like anyone around you. You can’t make the decisions that would seem common sense and rational that everyone else can. You’re you’re not capable.

You reach a point where you’re not capable of making even the simplest decision. Like I can put a pencil down on the desk and then go to pick it back up. Have no idea why I’m reaching for the pencil and then fly into a rage, because I didn’t know why I was reaching for the pencil. Then I wouldn’t remember why I was in a rage.

It just goes round and around. And it’s just confusion and anger. If that’s where you’re at. And what turned me around was when my last doctor said, listen we’re reaching the end of the list for applicable medications for you.

And he said, I know that you don’t just take my word for anything. This was back when I was still pro medication.

And he said, I know you’re going home and researching this. I know that you know what the list is. We’re almost done. And I don’t have hope that the last couple on the list are you even going to make a dent in what’s wrong with you. He said, I don’t have a lot of hope for you here.

And I left with some other jar of pills. But on the ride home, I realized it was no different than a doctor saying you have cancer, you’ve got six weeks to get your affairs in order. It was the same impact.

I went home knowing, after everything I’d been through in life, cause we’ve glazed over a hideous amount of information here.

Jody: I would suggest they get the book. Where can they get the book?

Ken: You can get the book at the website, www dot. It takes guts to be me.com.

Jody: And he’s has a cigar. And do you still smoke?

Ken: No. No. That was a 10 years ago picture. No, I don’t do anything. If it doesn’t belong to them, if it’s not food air and water, it doesn’t go in.

Jody: Good for you because every other picture has the cigar, except the one on the back page and I thought the significance in that, the difference.

Ken: I want to people to see the before and after.

Jody: And it is How An Ex Marine Beat Bipolar Disorder. And the name is Ken Jensen, J E N S E N. How can they get it?

Ken: They can go to the website, www dot. It takes guts to be made.com.

Jody: And that sounds like you’re bragging, but it’s not. It’s the facts man.

Ken: It’s basically anybody that has bipolar and is still alive, I think can make that statement. The disease is a pounding, vicious, brutal disease.

It assaults you. You take it, you don’t just live with it. You endure it. And if you’re not getting better with it, it becomes clear to a lot of people it’s going to take you out.

I dunno in some way, you’d almost be lucky if you could just shut down and be mute, but even that gets to you over years, cause you just get dulled and you’re numb. And that gets old and nothing’s turning around.

And that’s, that’s where I was when the doctor gave me the good news that you’re all done basically. Cause we used to just talk straight.

Jody: Because this is the man in Albany.

Ken: Yeah. He was my friend and I trusted him. I still do.

Jody: And you could trust him and you’re saying nothing is working. We have to do something else or nothing at all.

Ken: I told him, I said, I don’t want a hug. I don’t want a pat on the back. I don’t want you to be my friend even. Give it to me straight. Cause I wanted to fight. That’s part of being a Marine too.

I said, I want to fight. But I had almost no fight left in me. And I had to realize medication wasn’t working. He told me it wasn’t working and my head did not work. I was not even human anymore. I don’t know what I was, but I basically was a recluse.

I reached a point where I was a reckless for two years. I didn’t hardly leave my basement. I had nothing to do with people. I did not know how to relate to people at all.

Jody: Who took care of you during that time?

Ken: My parents, at this point, I had lost my second wife and we’re separated now, but she’s still in my life. She’s a wonderful woman.

Jody: She sounds like a doll.

Ken: She is. But you wear wives out. Wives were husbands out. This illnesses, it involves a lot of negative energy. And you’re a scary person to be around. I did a lot of things I’m not happy with and I can’t take them back.

But if the illness just powers you along and you’re not even you. You’re not even there half the time with the psychosis it can bring about. You literally don’t know what’s real.

So with a head like that, I started doing more research. My brain did not even work. And I had to fight just to figure out what to do.

When I got home from that first, that last doctor’s visit. I heard a healthy little voice in my head that said, this is not the way a Marine goes out, do something, do something. And I heard that loud and clear.

I’m like, this is it. I’m going to fight this, or I’m going to die. I’m going to die in jail. Or I’m going to die in a lockdown mental ward, because I’m not going to live through this. There is no way.

So I started doing my research and I started finding help. And I stepped out on faith. I got burned a lot. I got ripped off a lot. I found some good things that were not good until I put my very first step into play.

I found that out through trial and error. I went back to the things that I intuited were good and found I was right. I just had to stabilize basically my nutrition first.

My thinking is I’ve been a mechanic, a number of times on any amount of equipment over my life. I thought of this like a mechanic. It’s what’s what’s going on that shouldn’t be, and what’s not going on that should. I took it from there and started figuring out how to fill those holes in my body, fix the machine.

Jody: Now, what year was this?

Ken: When I started that fight back to health, that was probably. I’m not sure now, four or five years ago, when I started figuring it out. Maybe six years ago, when I started putting the system together.

Jody: It’d be beginning of the new century.

Ken: Right. It took me about two years to piece together this whole thing that I still have in place now that keeps me fine.

Jody: Who helped you to learn during that time, during that two years. Because that was really the turning point in your life. And it was long turning point.

Ken: Just my parents really. They were it. And I found out later, once I was healthy enough that we could have these talks, they almost gave up too. They were afraid of me. They never knew who was going to come up those stairs. I never knew.

And my mom said, you just looked sinister the look on your face, and this is my mom. You don’t want your mom thinking that way about you! And they said between the mania, when I couldn’t shut up and the depressions when I just upset everyone… Cause you bring everyone down with you.

And there’s a lot of weird. Bipolar is up and downs. You feel great. You feel terrible. And then there’s a whole slew of very odd, weird symptoms. I call it a low level LSD trip.

50:00 Min Mark

You experience dozens and dozens of very weird symptoms that in themselves are not horrible, but you usually got a fistful of them going on all at once. And it’s just, it’s just wearing you down.

Jody: To write this book, not only as Marine would say guts, but it took a lot of courage and it took a lot of integrity and honesty. You handled most things pretty good.

Maybe some of the the people that helped you figured you might have been hard on them because you were a tough person to deal with. But it’s an incredible book. And many people who are borderline on some of these things, I think they would get a great deal of help out of reading this.

Ken: That was my aim. I had to be convinced to even write this book.

Jody: Oh, who did the convincing?

Ken: My family told me for a while. It started out, for years, I wanted to write about the Marine Corps. Because my time in the Marines was very similar to anything out of Hunter S Thompson’s life. That was how I became in the Marines and we strove to find the weird .

I wanted to write about that. And then along the way, as I got better, I didn’t realize the change that was taking place on me. I simply was happy that I was feeling better. It wasn’t an over joyous thing.

It was such a gradual progression back to good health that I was just satisfied that I was no longer battling this illness on a daily basis.

And my family said, you don’t know how severe the before and after is. You got to tell people about what you figured out. And I wrote, I wrote one book and it was about mostly the Marines. And I hired a company.

And my writing coach was a college professor in Missouri who argued with me mightily on the phone for three weeks telling me…

She said, listen the book’s great. Sit on it. We’re going to make a movie out of that. But she said, you know something that can help other people. We have to figure out what it is. I said, no, I don’t know anything. And we argued.

I meant it. Totally. I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. I didn’t realize what I’d built. And by the time we got done arguing after three weeks, I finally saw what’s now in my book and my system. And I knocked out the book in about three weeks and then refined it over probably the next year or so.

Jody: This book or another book this in three weeks?

Ken: I wrote two books, probably in three weeks each. Another book, the same size at about 50,000 words. The material has been in my head. It’s just been there. It just fell out on me.

Jody: And you just went to the computer and put it down. And that was it.

Ken: I had a company that helped me develop the book, but to be honest, and I still work with them now for everything that I do. They’re my mentors.

But I never even really followed their system. The book just poured out on me. I could hardly keep up with the pen, what was coming out of my mind.

Jody: And the book is a very honest, very plain book. You don’t hold back on anything.

Ken: Well, it’s like I found a lot cause I worked with the mentally ill in two different areas and I knew how I liked to talk with my doctor. And I just wanted to be told straight.

I didn’t want a hug. I didn’t want to be told it’s going to be all right. I didn’t want niceties.

Jody: You didn’t want BS, is what you’re saying.

Ken: Let’s get on down to this and fight this thing. And so I realized what I saw as an employee working in the mental health care system: people are hurting and they’re scared.

And I dealt with a lot of families that that were with these people. And I realize people just want to be told straight, and they’re never going to listen to me if I don’t tell the truth.

Jody: Well, the truth is here. And just to let the parents know, some of the language is pretty blunt. It’s not that the young people today and I mean, by that teenagers, haven’t heard most of the language, but just to be aware.

Ken: Well, my system will work on anyone, on any age group. There’s a meditation part to what I do and that is not applicable to kids under 16. But the whole rest of my system, anybody can use it.

And it’s not just for bipolar. It will work if you’re simply straight. If you only have depression. Cause depression is one little building block in a 1000 block-unit disease. That’s the horrific thing about bipolar.

Depression is a nightmare all in its own right. Bipolar is a whole other pile of problems on top of that.

Jody: Well, it’s a battle within yourself that you don’t know that’s fighting all the time.

Ken: Right. And my system deals with that. It’s why a pill … it’s like putting out the fire in the kitchen, while the rest of the house goes up in flames behind you. You’re missing the point.

Jody: The pill goes up and the pill goes down and does not reach the point that is helpful to both sides.

Ken: I had over a hundred medications put through me in six years. I just got worse. I steadily got worse every single year. I realized some people take medication and they stabilize. They reach a point they’re happy with.

And I say that’s fine, more power to you. I’m not looking for converts to my way of thinking. I’m saying, if you hit the bottom, like I did, and you think you’re all out of options, you’re not

Jody: Alright. Wrap this up, sir.

Ken: Well, if people would like to get a better idea of what I’m about and also get access to a free course, please go to this website is www.tinyurl.com forward slash Ken’s quiz. K E N S Q U I Z two.

Jody: And if he sounds abrupt, he’s really not. It’s just, he’s glad to be alive.

Ken: Thank you, Jodi.

Jody: Thank you.

Bud: WKNY Kingston. A Cumulus media station.

Post Interview

So that was my interview with Jody McTaggart. Another one will follow. I think they were about a year apart. I can’t really remember anymore because it was nine years ago. And I look forward to sharing that one. That’ll be the podcast episode three after bipolar podcast, episode three or after this one.

So for now you’ve been sitting in your chair long enough or in your car or what have you. Right now. I want you to go to outsiders journey.com and click on the green field for the free wellness system. You’ll see it on the site.

If you are bipolar, or even if you’re supporting somebody who’s bipolar, that system’s for you.

It’s really for anybody that wants their life to be better. But if you’re fighting bipolar in particular, all I can say is, I don’t know if my system will work for you. It would be wrong of me to, you know, besides illegal, but just wrong, just human to human to say, yeah, do this and you’ll be fine.

I actually find most people that try to use my system for one reason or another, don’t get where they want with it. Don’t get anywhere at all. There are a lot of variables as for why that is, but some people do get somewhere with it.

And there’s one step in the system, the very first step of the system has a massive positive impact on the bipolar mind. That’s its own thing. If the rest of the system didn’t even exist, I’d want you to know about Step. One.

I have a lot to say about those people. We’ve had a really nice time working together over the years. I don’t anymore, but in the be beginning of my efforts to share with the world what it was I learned to beat bipolar without drugs, those guys were key.

So let that give you a little ray of hope. And if you’re a supporter of someone who’s bipolar, you might have your sanity and composure and ability to think rationally, but you’re under a lot of stress.

I know this from talking to all the people that had to work with me and help me while I was in the wars, so to speak. You’re in a pretty hard spot yourself.

My wellness system is for you too. It’ll help you deal with the stress. It’ll help you do you better so that you can be of more use to your bipolar person.

Little secret about my system. It’s good for anybody for any reason. All right. Thanks for checking in…