Starting in April 2007, I began an investigation into the difference between the beneficial psychotic episode that I had 12 years ago, which I came to understand as a spiritual emergency, and this thing called bipolar disorder, or more specifically bipolar mania, which some people in my family had been diagnosed with a year ago. As many of you know, during this year of research, I've made many YouTube videos, and through YouTube, I've been in close contact with over 150 bipolar people who have been gracious enough to share their stories with me. I've received thousands of YouTube comments that I've also learned from. I've read about 50 new books in that time, and looked at hundreds of websites and videos, both for psychiatry and against psychiatry. And together with my wife, we've worked with four people this year through six manic episodes of acute psychosis, basically periods of insanity, like I went through 12 years earlier. And the big thing I've learned this year is that while there's no guarantees, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia can be healed. And if you don't believe me, I highly suggest that you take a look at the work of some pioneering psychiatrists from the 1970s who were healing skits of phrenics in a way completely different than the typical hospitalization environment that we all know today. The late Dr. John Weir Perry documents very high levels of success rates with skits of phrenics at his clinic, Diabases, in his book, Trials of Visionary Mind. Dr. Lauren Mosher also set up a similar project called Sataria in San Francisco while he was the chief of the Skits of Phrenia Center at the National Institute of Mental Health. The book Sataria is a great look at what happened in that house over a 12 year period. And I also have a film of Sataria in my YouTube favorites that's very interesting for you to take a look at. Dr. Stan Graf has made a career of healing people from various mental illnesses, many of the stories of which he shares in his new book When the Impossible Happens, which really challenges mainstream psychiatry. Perhaps the most interesting story is of Dr. David Lukov, who in 1972 thought he was Buddha and Christ and was here on a Messianic journey to save the world. Dr. David Lukov is the one that fought to get the term spiritual emergency recognized in the DSM 4. Now here's the shocker. The reason that these doctors can heal people in acute psychosis like bipolar mania schizophrenia of spiritual emergencies is that they recognize that acute psychosis in itself is intended to be a healing process. It's not a mental illness at all. It is a healing process. You see what happens in an acute psychosis is not that you've lost your mind, but rather that you've been plunged into the subconscious of your mind. Now the problem with our society today, be it the doctors or our parents, is that we don't give value to this experience and in fact we think that the non-ordinary states of consciousness that you go into during a psychotic period have no value whatsoever. In fact we're terrified of them as a society. And as a result we don't want you to go there. You are not allowed to have this experience. So what happens is the doctors and the family, they form a rescue mission to get you out of that water. And as we all know, part of that rescue mission now means hospitalizing you, medicating you, telling you that you're mentally ill and that you have a permanent condition like asthma or diabetes that you will need medication for your entire life. And unfortunately as things are today this is what's happening because once they tell you these things and they get you medicated and hospitalized in this way and tell you that this experience is to be feared and avoided, well it all becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and you never heal properly the way you're supposed to. And that's why bipolar people as soon as they go off their medications, it doesn't take them very long usually before they go into a relapse because this is a healing process much like if you were vomiting, you've got some sickness inside of you and it needs to come out. And as soon as those medications stop the vomiting starts again. It's a healing process, you're supposed to go into psychosis. And once you're there, once you're in that non-ordinary state of consciousness, instead of fighting against this process, what you really need to do is surrender and just let go. And during this acute psychosis, what I've especially learned working with people this year is that unlike my own situation where I was able to fight off negative forces and sort of respect my experience, most people, bipolar people, especially if you're younger, are absolutely going to need support and help to get through this process. And where people especially need to help and support isn't so much when they're in that sort of high state where everything sort of dreamy and sparkly and wonderful, but during periods where trauma is released, because the secret to this acute psychosis is it is releasing you from trauma that you've held in your body for your entire life. And the trauma that is released can come in a variety of forms. In my case, I had a scuba diving accident a few months before my manic episode and that experience really came back to me and started my episode. So physical problems and physical accidents can be part of the trauma that it's released. The most common one to psychology is like things like the relationship you have with your parents. And I would say almost everybody I talk to, maybe everybody had an issue with one of their parents where the parent tends to be kind of a hard person that insists that the child live according to their rules and according to their ways. Most of the bipolar people I know have had an issue with a particular hard parent. And in the case of especially with schizophrenia, this parenting trouble can be deeper. It can be related to physical abuse. And for many schizophrenia, sexual abuse is a huge part of the trauma they're dealing with in their daily life. And we're just covering it up and covering it over by telling them that they've got a chemical imbalance. So instead of dealing with bipolar mania like this, we've got to start dealing with it more like this. And I intentionally picked out this picture because it shows a compassionate love between two men which would normally be taken as a homosexual relationship. But I'm telling you that when you're dealing with a person in acute psychosis, you've got to be available to give them unconditional love regardless of their sex. You've got to be able to bond with them on a very intimate level. And the reason is that when people are in a manic state, they are so much more sensitive than you could ever imagine. And as soon as you're in front of them, they can tell whether you are coming to them with love or you're coming to them with fear. And as it's dealt with now, everybody is coming at them with fear. So again, these people need to be approached with a loving intention. Their inner experience needs to be respected and validated as a sacred thing, a sacred healing process that they need to go through. And with your support, the person can now engage this inner process and they really need that support because it can be scary for them like I said. It can really feel like a life and death situation. Now typically an acute psychosis is going to last maybe between two and six days. That's like when they're really out there and can be really insane and they really require two people with them 24 hours a day during this period. And depending on the depth of the trauma that we're dealing with, it could take a few psychosis for this to actually finish. So in the example of my niece, she needed three manic episodes before she finally finished her process and that took over a period of two months. So is this process long and difficult? Sometimes yes, it can be very difficult, especially to be a support person for these people. You need a lot of patience, you need a lot of compassion and you need a lot of courage. However, even though this process can be very difficult for people for a few months, the benefits you get on the other end can be a total rebirth of this person. Not only do they go back to normal, but they come back healed. They go on to live a much more vital, much more alive life and they can grow. And when you compare that to the long term life of medication, thinking of yourself as mentally ill forever, I mean there's just no comparison. So in conclusion, obviously this video is just the tip of the iceberg regarding what is a radically different approach to your bipolar disorder. And if you are bipolar out there, I highly recommend you subscribe because for the rest of 2008, I'm going to be putting up one video after another that's going to help you look at your bipolar disorder in a whole new way.