#768 The Difficulties (And Gifts) Of Bipolar - Rick Cleveland

Mental Illness Happy Hour

Paul Gilmartin

Health & Fitness, Relationships, Society & Culture, Mental Health, Sexuality

4.8 • 6.1K Ratings

🗓️ 3 October 2025

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rick Cleveland is a playwright and television writer (The West Wing, Six Feet Under) who shares the difficulties--and the gifts--of living with Bipolar disorder.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to episode 768 with my guest Rick Cleveland. If you're new to the podcast, I hope you find this to be a place for honesty about all the battles in our heads from medically diagnosed conditions, past traumas, and sexual dysfunction to everyday compulsive negative thinking.
0:18.1	And a reminder, this show is not meant to be a substitute for professional
0:22.4	metal counseling. I am not a therapist. The website for this show is metalpod.com and
0:28.4	metalpod, the social media handles that you can follow us at.
0:34.5	Before we get into Rick's interview, uh, the day after we recorded, he shot me an email back
0:44.5	and he was in his head about, uh, the, the, in his mind, the quality of the conversation.
0:51.0	I loved it.
0:51.8	And, uh, Brooke, who helps me with the podcast, loved it.
0:56.7	But what Rick wrote me in the email, I said, I'd be happy to read before or after the interview, just so people could understand how he feels about it.
1:08.7	And so I'm going to read what Rick wrote me.
1:12.0	I could have been a bit more, and Rick was talking about himself, I could have been a bit more
1:16.2	articulate, especially when talking about what a manic phase is like. 20 years ago, it was a lot
1:22.5	different because I was in the thick of it. Now, I really do believe that any highly productive period in my life
1:29.4	is, in fact, being bipolar, but not, quote, ill in any diagnostic sense. That's the message
1:37.0	I want people to hear. This is my first, and this is Rick talking about his personal experience,
1:44.0	continuing. This is my first time discussing any of this in a podcast. And this is Rick talking about his personal experience.
1:44.8	Continuing.
1:50.7	This is my first time discussing any of this in a podcast, and I would like it to open doors to allow me to further destigmatize mood disorders and not just talk about how difficult
1:56.7	it is living with bipolar.
1:59.4	Instead, my message is it brings as many gifts as it does difficulties.
2:05.1	It's that, quote, superpower, unquote thing that DeVica talks about. DeVica, a previous guest.
2:12.5	I think her name is Bouchon. I have a terrible memory, but she was an amazing guest in the podcast.
	...

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