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david leet
is a world renowned food writer food
critic and author
he also lives with bipolar 2 disorder
his memoir
notes on a banana is a coming-of-age
story of self-acceptance that details
his life living with undiagnosed bipolar
2 disorder
david describes growing up with
unaddressed mental health issues as
being like
looking at life through the wrong end of
a telescope
when is the first memory
where you remember having anxiety oh
gosh
i can tell you it really is tied to
the house of wax the real big kind of
chest exploding anxiety i was 11 years
old
going on 12 it was april uh 1971 i went
to go see house of wax now
you're far too young to know what house
of wax is but it was a 3d movie
you wore the glasses one red one green
and vincent price was in it
and there's a scene where the house of
wax which is the name of his wax museum
was set on fire so all of the dummies
they started to melt and their faces
started to melt and the glass eyeballs
popped out and
this thing happened where it felt as if
there was a heat bomb exploding in my
chest and it went down my legs and out
to my arms
and my throat constricted and i felt
like there were ants crawling around in
all of my joints and
i didn't know what to do and i just
jumped up and i fell over the two guys
that i was with and ran out into the
lobby
i had no idea what had happened to me i
just i was in the lobby and i was
walking around i was trying to calm
myself down
the first andy was calling my mother and
she was like i thought you were in the
movie i said oh i just wanted to call
and say hi
she says hi get in the movie and so i
thought oh my god i can't talk to her
i got an orange soda and i walked down
getting anxious just thinking about it
i was walking in the lobby back and
forth trying to calm myself
and i had no idea what this thing was it
it was such a physical
thing people think of anxiety of anxiety
you know nervousness
this was a physical physical reaction my
body just
just shorted out and then i
realized i was gone too long and i would
raise kind of questions i went back in
and about 20 minutes later there's a
scene of a guy
with a noose around his neck being
thrown down an elevator shaft he's
killed
that was it i was again out there and uh
for the rest of the movie i just kept my
eyes closed
and i thought it would go away and it
didn't go away for months and months and
months
this anxiety and this panic that that
level
and severity didn't go away no no
no i couldn't eat i couldn't sleep my
my grades in school plummeted
i remember it's still very hard
to think of this but i remember lying in
bed in the mornings my mom and dad would
get up very early
and it would be at 4 30 in the morning i
would hear them get up and i would lie
there until
7 30 so they wouldn't think anything was
wrong with me
and the panic and the anxiety and the
almost like a restless leg syndrome
having to move having to move
and trying to make it all seem normal
and then getting up really not eating
that much going to school and
walking through school as if i were
looking at the wrong end
life through the wrong end of a
telescope i couldn't touch any but i
couldn't feel anything i couldn't really
hear anything
and everyone saw that something was
wrong with me but i couldn't tell you
what it was my parents everybody saw
that something was wrong with you
they knew that i wasn't me anymore i was
not me i was just i was a facsimile of
me i was
you know i was i was at this automaton
of myself
and why didn't they do anything this is
the thing that i think a lot of people
don't understand
back then this is now 1971 where i grew
up
you don't know how to fix something like
this now my parents talked to me
endlessly
we did talk to the priest which of
course the priest is like you go to the
priest for everything
nothing happened we went to the family
doctor and his answer was i'll give you
valium
and i remember was i was 11 years old i
said that's judy garland drugs
i'm not taking that you know it's
obviously queer back then i was like
an 11 year old judy garland drugs and
but most gay liberals will be like give
them over
judy garland takes it i'm in okay and my
father was like no we're not going to do
this
and um they talked to me and talked to
me and talked to me and they tried
so hard to help and then i remember that
the moment where i felt as if
the cord let go and i was falling
through this pit
this bottomless pit when my father sat
me down he said something we've tried
very hard and he had tried for months
he says everybody has to cope with
something and you have to cope with this
and i just felt like i was like and
remember how
when he cut the cord in 2001 and the
astronauts just going through
space that's what i felt like i was just
completely
nobody could help nobody could help they
didn't know what was going on
it's like asking someone to cope with
something that you can't cope with
yeah and you don't know what it is in
order to cope right
you know you just there you have no
tools
and eventually it did go away almost
magically went away and what i realized
now looking back i was suffering from
anxiety and a lot of depression
yeah um and it just magically went away
like over the course of several days and
many months later and i was perfectly
fine again
now when you say perfectly fine was it
back to normal or was that a manic
episode
back to normal that's normal i was able
to have a great summer
that summer because that happened in
april this was like by june by june or
july it was fine
had a great time that summer enjoyed
myself enjoyed being with my
grandparents who were one town over
uh being enjoying with being friends
went on scavenger hunts and and did all
kinds of stuff it was wonderful and then
it happened again
at a movie uh beside an adventure um
about
uh in january of 1990 uh sorry
uh 1973 i think
it's amazing how you can remember
certain dates and it happened all over
again instead of visiting me for just
two months or so this stayed for two
years two full years
was it the movie that did this no no not
at all the movie was just a trigger it
could be anything for
everyone's trigger's different for me i
think that there was a lot of
psychological aspects when you're seeing
the house of wax you're seeing a woman
you're seeing a man being killed and the
fear of your parents being killed the
desire to want to kill your parents that
you can't really deal with you know with
that young
that young age and all the hostility you
may have and rage i think that kind of
clicked it off but it
ripped it was like ripping a scab off
but what was underneath was so infected
that it just didn't stop so it just it
ripped off the
the layer of everything that was kind of
tamping it down and
i just exposed everything so you were
having feelings of wanting to kill your
parents well you know just at that
general rage
you have your parents or your brother or
something like that i i'm not saying
that i
i have moments that i remember wanting
to anything like that but just
the idea of like this this unbidden rage
that you have
yes uh as and that's the reason why i
say this is because the first
psychiatrist that we did see
uh when i threatened my parents that i
would kill myself
if i didn't see one which was a hollow
threat but i needed to get out of the
house to see
see when the in the report which i got
as an adult
said that it was basically the
manifestation of just his adolescent
rage
is what that movie represented and um
you know but i mean he can't tell an
adolescent that
well i've done a lot of these interviews
with both doctors and patients and
there's a recurring theme
that i have found with people who are
successful and that is the ability
the insight to be a an advocate for
yourself
and even at this very young age you
advocated for yourself by this hollow
threat to your parents saying if you
don't take me to see a psychiatrist
i'm going to kill myself yes they took
you and after that psychiatry
appointment that first one uh or it was
a psychology appointment
that was a psychologist the first one
yeah the psychology point you said this
in your book although neither of us
was aware of it at the time that
afternoon a divide
that had been slowly you write so
beautifully and use so many
beautiful words that i have problem
pronouncing slowly cleaving our world
and two uh was complete i had turned
from the closed humid
huddle of our family and instead chosen
the white fluorescent-lit environment of
the hospital
a place filled with strangers who were
not portuguese
for relief that day proved i was
different
and perhaps even wiser than them all
because only
i understood that my chances lay outside
of the home my father built
of the embrace of my parents i could
have
never left my parents like that
it wasn't easy it was um
the idea of what you are barbara walters
making me cry
um they didn't understand
they were they come from very simple
backgrounds and stocks they just didn't
know
and uh if i were to survive i knew that
i had to do it and i i
uh it wasn't turning my back on my
parents but it's basically saying you
can't help me and that is probably the
worst thing you can say to a parent when
you're a child you cannot
help me and they couldn't they just
didn't know what to do and i
i've spent years learning how to forgive
them for their
not even their shortcomings just for who
they are yeah
it wasn't perpetrator if they didn't do
this purposely no but if i didn't
turn to the doctors i um i wouldn't be
here
yeah there was
too much pain for one child to bear
yeah it's just it's you know it's a
truckload size of pain that you're
putting into a tonka toy
it's just it's too much yeah it's too
much pain
the metaphors you use really describe
what it's like to suffer in depression
or a bipolar state or anxiety and our
producer bridget said it was the best
explanation she's
ever had on what depression and anxiety
is like
she's it was so clear so as we continue
this discussion it might have been the
moment
that david actually got in to see a
psychologist but it would be
decades before he received the right
diagnosis there is a lot
to cover and we'll keep doing that in
our next session
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