Lessons from Losing My Mind | Andy Dunn | TED

Lessons from Losing My Mind | Andy Dunn | TED

When I was 20, I was the Messiah. For about a week. And for those of you who haven’t had
the privilege of being the Messiah, I have to tell you something. It is awesome. (Laughter) Imagine, you are the person
that’s going to save the world, bring peace on Earth, and no one knows it yet but you. I arrived as the second coming
my senior year of college. New Year’s Eve, 1999. After a night of partying,
I came to a stunning conclusion. I was Jesus 2.0. For the next 100 hours, I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, but I did spend a fair amount of time
preaching my gospel at the Burger King in Evanston. Turns out, though — and this may be
a disappointment to my supporters — that I was in fact not the Messiah. I was just a 20-year-old Midwestern kid having a manic episode later diagnosed as a symptom
of bipolar disorder type I. And it was very much not awesome
for my family and my friends. And so what exactly is a manic episode? Typical symptoms include a lack of sleep, grandiosity, relentless optimism, high-risk behaviors, racing speech and ideas that are seen as delusional. Does that remind you of anyone? (Laughter) Because it sounds to me
like an entrepreneur having a good day. (Laughter) And in fact, it is estimated that three percent
of all of us have bipolar. A staggering number in its own right. For entrepreneurs,
that number is 11 percent. And at the intersection … Hi, mom, that’s me. The best of both worlds. And it’s not just bipolar. According to a study from the University
of California at San Francisco, entrepreneurs also over-index in ADHD, in depression and in substance use. And maybe this correlation
between neurodiversity and innovation shouldn’t surprise us. After all, to be an entrepreneur
is to conjure things that aren’t real yet. That sort of invention,
that sort of vision requires more than a little bit
of magical thinking. A vision that might seem
fantastical to others at first is later deemed to be obvious, like, say, flying through the air
in a huge metallic capsule at 30,000 feet and 575 miles an hour. For me, that vision —
get ready for it — was pants. (Laughter) It’s always been pants. OK, well, not exactly. My vision was one for a world where brands would be
built internet-first. And so in 2007, I cofounded a menswear
e-commerce company called Bonobos. Now I know what you might be thinking. Selling pants online is not
that remarkable of a vision. But in 2007, it was improbable. Think about it. Amazon was barely focused on fashion, Apple had only just launched the iPhone. Mobile commerce and the App Store
were just a twinkle in the eye. Facebook didn’t have an ad platform. That’s, by the way, where you acquire
customers for a digital brand. And essential tools
for digital storytelling, like Instagram and TikTok,
didn’t even exist. Instagram was three years
away from being created, and TikTok was nine years away. Maybe that was a good thing at the time. Every venture capitalist we pitched
said the same thing: “You guys are crazy.” Which is an interesting word choice,
if you think about it in this context. Against these odds, over the next decade we went on to raise 100 million
in venture capital, to sell over a million pairs of pants, to invent an inventory-free retail store
and open 60 of those, creating ultimately over 500 jobs. The company was acquired
a decade after founding by the world’s largest
retailer by revenues, itself in its own process
of digital transformation, for over 300 million. Building any brand now
in internet-first is commonplace. It’s table stakes. It’s obvious. Maybe it wasn’t so crazy after all. But there was a dark side to this success. Friends and mentors
and other business leaders warned me that the entrepreneurial journey
was filled with dramatic mood swings, highs and lows. They even call startups what? A roller coaster. And so my bipolar disorder was cloaked, not as symptoms
of an illness or a condition, but symptoms of a job. I cycled through a couple of mood states. Dizzyingly productive
periods of hypomania, a misunderstood [mood] state
that is a diluted form of mania without the telltale psychosis
that leads to a diagnosis of bipolar I, but all of the increased
energy and creativity and ideation and joie de vivre and burning the candle at both ends. You can get a lot done
when you’re hypomanic. Alternating with devastating
periods of depression. For me, both mild and severe, often 50 or 100 days at a time, catatonic, can’t get out of bed,
disappearing on the team, unable to go to work. Sometimes undesiraous of living. And all of it was amplified
by what was happening at work. A gutting co-founder divorce, a rotating door of executive turnover, maddening and expensive flights into shiny new objects
and distracting ideas, often driven by hypomania, and a whopping cash flow burn rate
that at times reached five million dollars a month. It’s hard to do, actually,
but but we did it. (Laughter) And all of it boiled over in 2016. I was leading a team of 400 people when the mania that I hadn’t experienced since I was preaching the gospel
at Burger King when I was 20 came raging back. In a manic episode
at my New York apartment, I rose from my bed,
literally howling at the moon, convinced I was the president and Batman, which is actually a high-potential
combination, if you think about it. (Laughter) And then the darkness really set in. I smashed my fist
into a glass window pane. And worst of all, I struck
my now-wife, Manuela, and pushed and kicked her mother, Leni, to the ground as they tried to protect me, to prevent me from running naked
into the streets of Greenwich Village. When I saw … When I saw Leni two weeks later, I thought it would be for the last time. And instead, she put her hand on my hand and she said something I’ll never forget, and something I hope
all of you never forget. She said, “Andy, this is just
like any chronic physical illness. All you have to do is see your doctor
and take your medication. And if you do, and if Manuela wants to stay with you,
then you have my blessing.” And I started crying,
as you might imagine. And Manuela did stay with me. But her love and commitment
came with conditions. It was our rabbi who told us
on our wedding day that the only unconditional
love on the planet is that between parent and child, which was a disappointing thing
to hear on my wedding day. (Laughter) I thought, you know, I was headed
for the unconditional love thing. He said all other forms
of love are conditioned. They are conditioned upon each of us
treating each other well, which requires accountability
and boundaries, conditioned upon an honest and transparent
exchange of information and feelings, which requires disclosure and feedback, and conditioned upon
each of us, individually, doing all in our power to be well, which requires initiative and self care. And this is not just
in our personal lives. It’s also at work. Now, Manuela and I are married
with a two-year-old. (Applause) He’s not two in that photo. That would be a very small two-year-old. (Laughter) And look, some days
that feels like a miracle. From where I was to now,
it feels like a miracle. And while Manuela’s love is a miracle and Isaiah’s existence,
his very existence, is a miracle, my getting well was not a miracle. It was very hard work and it still is. So I have got, and I’m proud to say, an Olympic regimen
of mental hygiene and mental fitness. Let me play it to you. I see a psychiatrist
two to three times a week for a 45-minute therapy session. Now, you would think therapy
once a week is enough. But for me, I want my doctor
to lay eyes on me every 72 hours so he can assess my mood. I’ve got five different
medications that I take. One every day and the other four
we titrate up and down depending on where I am. And then I’ve got
a relentless focus on sleep, because sleep is for me,
certainly, with bipolar, a leading or a lagging indicator of mood. And by the way, that might be all of us. And so every morning, the first thing I do is I send a Fitbit sleep report
to a WhatsApp group that includes my doctor, my wife and the three people who have
endured this with me the longest: My mom, Usha, my dad, Charlie,
and my sister Monica. Here it is. Every morning,
this is my statement of life. And what is it? It is a daily reminder
to never forget what’s possible. For all of our strengths
have shadows, don’t they? It doesn’t take a lot of brainpower
to bring to mind other entrepreneurs, leaders and visionaries who have caused great harm
to themselves and others. Even society at large. And so what do we do? We admire their strengths. We even lionize them as individuals. But their shadows we ignore. And we do so at our individual
and collective peril. I would know because for 16 years I ignored mine at great cost to myself and others. Why did I do that? Because I didn’t want to “be bipolar.” That’s what we say
of people who have bipolar. We don’t say someone “is cancer.” We say they have it. That’s a first step to helping our friends and our loved ones and our colleagues, not by conflating their illness
or condition with their identity, but by acknowledging it
as just a part of their life story and then helping them confront it. At work, I think therapy
should be more or less mandatory for people who lead teams. Second chances for unethical leaders
should require great consideration. Assholes should just straight up
no longer be accommodated. (Applause) Boards need to step up. And all of us, we need to raise our hands
when we’re not well and then seek and secure the help we need. I have been unbelievably lucky. My family, old and new, stuck by me. My board stuck by me, my executive team stuck by me. And I have access
to wildly good health care. I love my psychiatrist. I call him my most expensive friend. (Laughter) And I have — and how many people
have you heard this from — I have medication that actually works. Because of all that, all that support and all that scaffolding, I am able to live and love
and work with bipolar I. This shouldn’t be a matter of luck. (Applause) And so I’ve got one more crazy idea. Maybe my craziest idea of all. We need to make mental health care
fundamentally acceptable. Actually — (Applause) Hang on, this whole thing
is going to land great. Actually affordable
and universally accessible. Look, I want us
to be delusional sometimes. I want to be delusional sometimes. I want people whose brains
work differently, like mine does and like yours might, to be able to dream crazy dreams, to share crazy thoughts, and God willing or universe willing, bring those dreams to life. But we have to keep
ourselves in check, don’t we? After all, only messiahs are all-knowing. And entrepreneurs are not gods. Even when we think we are. We will be better humans, building a better future together, when we take stock
not just of how we change the world, but how we treated each other
and ourselves along the way. And the president
and Batman both agree. (Laughter) Thank you. (Applause)

Neurodiversity and innovation often go hand in hand, but does that mean visionary entrepreneurs get a free pass to say and do anything they want? Bonobos founder and mental health advocate Andy Dunn shares his experience navigating bipolar I in the midst of running a successful startup, offering lessons learned on his journey to wellness and steps to create a future where everyone is able to “dream crazy dreams” — while being held accountable.

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