Joshua Walters: On being just crazy enough

My name is Joshua Walters.

I'm a performer.

(Beatboxing)

(Laughter)

(Applause)

But as far as being a performer,

I'm also diagnosed

bipolar.

I reframe that as a positive

because the crazier I get onstage,

the more entertaining I become.

When I was 16 in San Francisco,

I had my breakthrough manic episode

in which I thought I was Jesus Christ.

Maybe you thought that was scary,

but actually there's no amount of drugs you can take

that can get you as high

as if you think you're Jesus Christ.

(Laughter)

I was sent to a place,

a psych ward,

and in the psych ward,

everyone is doing their own one-man show.

(Laughter)

There's no audience like this

to justify their rehearsal time.

They're just practicing.

One day they'll get here.

Now when I got out,

I was diagnosed

and I was given medications

by a psychiatrist.

"Okay, Josh, why don't we give you some --

why don't we give you some Zyprexa.

Okay? Mmhmm?

At least that's what it says on my pen."

(Laughter)

Some of you are in the field, I can see.

I can feel your noise.

The first half of high school

was the struggle of the manic episode,

and the second half

was the overmedications of these drugs,

where I was sleeping through high school.

The second half was just one big nap, pretty much, in class.

When I got out

I had a choice.

I could either deny

my mental illness

or embrace

my mental skillness.

(Bugle sound)

There's a movement going on right now

to reframe mental illness as a positive --

at least the hypomanic edge part of it.

Now if you don't know what hypomania is,

it's like an engine that's out of control,

maybe a Ferrari engine, with no breaks.

Many of the speakers here, many of you in the audience,

have that creative edge,

if you know what I'm talking about.

You're driven to do something

that everyone has told you is impossible.

And there's a book -- John Gartner.

John Gartner wrote this book called "The Hypomanic Edge"

in which Christopher Columbus and Ted Turner and Steve Jobs

and all these business minds

have this edge to compete.

A different book was written not too long ago

in the mid-90s

called "Touched With Fire" by Kay Redfield Jamison

in which it was looked at in a creative sense

in which Mozart and Beethoven and Van Gogh

all have this manic depression that they were suffering with.

Some of them committed suicide.

So it wasn't all

the good side of the illness.

Now recently,

there's been development in this field.

And there was an article written in the New York Times,

September 2010,

that stated:

"Just Manic Enough."

Just be manic enough

in which investors who are looking for entrepreneurs

that have this kind of spectrum --

you know what I'm talking about --

not maybe full bipolar,

but they're in the bipolar spectrum --

where on one side,

maybe you think you're Jesus,

and on the other side

maybe they just make you a lot of money.

(Laughter)

Your call. Your call.

And everyone's somewhere in the middle.

Everyone's somewhere in the middle.

So maybe, you know,

there's no such thing

as crazy,

and being diagnosed with a mental illness

doesn't mean you're crazy.

But maybe it just means

you're more sensitive

to what most people can't see

or feel.

Maybe no one's really crazy.

Everyone is just a little bit mad.

How much

depends on where you fall in the spectrum.

How much

depends on how lucky you are.

Thank you.

(Applause)