Special Guest Michael Wellington

Bipolar Disorder can be devastating if not effectively managed. Michael Wellington is one of the most recognizable individuals promoting effective treatment in this country. Michael came to terms with his acceptance of his disease while trying to reach his dream of earning a spot on the PGA Tour. Now his life is devoted to helping others. His work on Bipolar Disorder can be accessed at www.birdiesforbipolar.org    Transcript: you're listening to psych with mike for more episodes or to connect with the show with comments ideas or to be a 0:06 guest go to www.cyclicmike.com follow the show on twitter at psych with 0:13 mike or like the facebook page at psych with mike now here's psych with mike 0:19 [Music] welcome into the site with mike library this is dr michael mahan and i am here 0:24 as always with my friend and colleague mr brett newcombe how are you today i'm doing fantastic great 0:30 and we also have with us today a very special guest this is actually our 200th 0:37 episode and so i'm so excited that for episode 200 we are talking to a guy that 0:44 i've actually known for a long time i met you mystery caller when i was working at the 0:52 radio station 971 and interviewed you a couple of times there 0:57 and have been just such a fan of yours but i am super super excited to 1:03 introduce former professional golfer mr mike wellington mike uh how are you doing 1:10 gentlemen thank you so much for having me i'm doing great uh looking forward to uh chopping it up with you guys a little 1:15 bit here so the reason that a former professional golfer is on psych 1:21 with mike is because you have some challenges michael that 1:27 you've had deal with over the course of your career and really your entire life so why don't you 1:33 just give us a little bit of background about that and then we'll talk more about what you're doing today 1:39 of course yeah i was diagnosed in 1:44 january of 2001 with bipolar disorder and at that time i didn't really know 1:51 much about bipolar disorder at all and i had to kind of learn on the fly so 1:57 uh 21 years i guess now it's been that i've been kind of doing my own personal case 2:03 study on bipolar disorder and i've learned a lot of things a lot of what not to do's over the years and 2:09 certainly learned finally some of the things that you need to do in order to have success against bipolar and 2:16 you know i think my my background and competitive sports you know played 2:21 you know soccer basketball and golf in high school then played golf in college played golf professionally 2:27 um you know caddied at the highest level and um on the tours and 2:33 uh things like that i think the mentality that you learn playing sports and competing that's the 2:40 ideal mentality that you need to have when you're taking on something like bipolar disorder and a mental illness 2:46 that is capable of really doing things to you that um 2:51 you know are really you know they're not some of them aren't very fun but at the same time you know 2:57 bipolar is certainly manageable but it's taken me a lot of lessons to learn how 3:02 to manage it properly so back in 2001 when you were initially diagnosed 3:09 how old were you at that time i was 23 23 so were you on the 3:14 professional tour then no so at that point i hadn't turned pro when i uh when i first got diagnosed i 3:21 was still an amateur and i was getting my plan was uh was to turn pro 3:27 you know shortly thereafter but i had kind of my first encounter with bipolar disorder in 3:33 january and february of 2001 and 3:38 i had to learn or kind of realize okay well this this bipolar thing has set me back a 3:45 little bit and i wasn't going to be able to turn pro as quickly as i would have liked i ended up not turning pro until 3:50 the fall of 2001. at least i entered the pga tour q school at that point 3:56 i guess technically i didn't turn pro until 2003 when i made my first paycheck out in arizona but uh the plan had been 4:03 to turn pro you know at the end of 01 or sometime in o2 but i really wasn't able to get there 4:08 for a couple years because bipolar it set me back i didn't um i wasn't really 4:15 uh taking my medication as consistently as i needed to certainly for the first five years after my diagnosis and um but 4:23 yeah at the first part of 2001 i was uh i was definitely struggling with 4:28 something that i wasn't even really aware that i had until the diagnosis and then you know 4:34 had a manic episode of one up in a hospital in sarasota florida uh so all these kind of things 4:40 um were certainly kind of shaking me to let me know hey there's something going on here that's a 4:46 lot more important than golf so when that happened when you got diagnosed and 4:52 you're 23 years old and i'm assuming that at that point you you didn't even know what bipolar was 4:58 did you believe that you were bipolar did did it sink in did it make an impression on you or did you 5:04 kind of just out of hand kind of say no that's not me i'm just gonna keep living my life 5:11 great question yes i did know that i had it okay now i've done a lot of work in the 5:17 mental health community a lot of people will not admit that they have it a lot of people have denial for 5:23 having bipolar or many other mental illnesses but my specific situation 5:29 uh was that i was in florida my parents noticed that my behavior was becoming odd becoming erratic becoming grandiose 5:36 with different thoughts so they brought me to a doctor in south florida excuse me in naples florida and 5:44 um when we went into the see the doctor you know the doc gets me in the room one-on-one and he says michael they're 5:50 talking your parents and it sounds like based on your behavior that you may have bipolar disorder he put down in front of 5:56 me a uh piece of paper a nine and a half by 11 piece of paper and it just it had all 6:01 the traits of someone who lives with bipolar and i had every single one on that list 6:07 it was like you know go going on odd spending sprees i had been doing that very recently around that time i had 6:14 gone into for example i had gone into a sports memorabilia shop and i had 6:19 purchased a bunch of framed pictures and you know autographed memorabilia that 6:25 you know i was putting it in an apartment that i was only going to be living in for like four months and you know i certainly paid more than 6:31 i should have for it and i wasn't sleeping at that time and they had talked about insomnia being a side 6:37 effect and my speech was very very accelerated and very jumbled 6:43 at times and i knew when i saw this piece of paper that the doctor laid out in front of me that hey i've got this 6:49 one i've got this one i've got this one so i guess i was a little bit lucky to understand that i knew i had bipolar i 6:56 wasn't i never went into that denial stage but like i said a minute ago my biggest struggle in the first five 7:02 years was taking the medication consistently every day i would 7:07 i would uh you know at times i wouldn't take the full dosage at times i would just flat out skip it 7:14 all basically because i had a bunch of success as a college golfer i was an all-american at spring hill college in 7:21 mobile alabama and in my mind i thought well i had all this success on the golf course in college and i didn't take 7:27 medication why would i want to take medication now because i thought well it might it might mess up the touch of my short game or it 7:34 might mess up my putting or it might maybe i'll hit the ball shorter or maybe i'll react going down 7:40 the stretch of a round in a poor way um i just didn't know so i wasn't really 7:46 you know committed to taking the meds right away did the medicine make you feel bad at all do you remember any uh 7:51 reactions to i don't want to take that because it makes me not hungry or i don't want to take that because it makes 7:57 me jittery or no i mean good question i i 8:03 i really never felt anything bad for at that time i was 8:09 prescribed lithium which i actually still take today i've tested a bunch of different ones 8:14 but at that time it was lithium and i you know to be honest i didn't 8:20 take it consistently enough to really find out um what the side effects would be 8:27 you know like i was just asking because a number of people who who challenge the need to take the medicine will defend that uh challenge 8:34 by saying well you know it makes me feel this or makes me jittery or makes me go to the bathroom all the time so i can't 8:40 yeah i mean i would i would tell those people to take a three-week experimentation 8:47 period with each of those types of drugs you keep trying one until you find one you like and you know you may think the 8:55 one you take the first experimental week is bad but then you may take a couple others and they're even worse so maybe the one 9:02 you took in the first week is the one you need to use but i think that's really an important point people that 9:07 are looking for the right medication you've got to give it at least two and a half to three weeks in my opinion to 9:13 find out how you feel if there are side effects because you know everybody's different you never know like 9:19 what side effects are going to hit someone's body uh precisely or you know a lot of times 9:24 people tell me that because i do a lot of bipolar coaching uh with individuals and a lot of people will tell me well i read 9:31 on the internet that this is going to do this to me like well you don't really know that it's going to 9:36 do that to you you just know because it's on the internet it's not necessarily consistent to every human being i mean 9:42 you know you've got to be willing to try different medications to get to the point where you find the right one well 9:47 most people don't come to a bipolar designation first they're often diagnosed with other 9:54 labels and medicated for other conditions before they get enough history and 10:00 enough data to say what you're really dealing with here is being bipolar especially with depression or with manic 10:07 or hypermanic episodes so did you was that it seems that your experience was right 10:12 on at the beginning wham just knocked in the face with it yeah i guess i was kind of lucky in that regard because i was diagnosed correctly 10:20 right away yeah but and accepted it you could see it yeah i mean i could have accepted it 10:26 certainly a little better but i i also uh but i've worked with people 10:31 in my coaching my bipolar coaching that had been misdiagnosed as add or 10:36 adhd and then once they figured that out then they were able to get on the bipolar 10:42 meds which were more helpful for them so yeah it's difficult when you're talking about bipolar and schizophrenia because 10:49 those two are only um diagnosable by behavior you know you 10:54 can't like it's not like you could have a blood test or find something out that you know do something specific to find 11:00 out what you have if you have it your your behavior has to almost become erratic enough 11:05 where people notice it and then you can kind of start looking into the details of that behavior to get the proper diagnosis 11:11 but you were not taken or you were inconsistent with your medication regime 11:18 for reasons that felt very important to you you thought that it might change your golf game so what 11:25 for whatever reason that somebody is inconsistent the 11:31 what what finally convinced you that it was important to be consistent with that 11:37 medication protocol well i can tell you precisely when that was that was in 11:43 late may of 2006 when i was at barnes hospital in the 11:49 middle of a 33-day stay and on back-to-back days i had four 11:55 different groups of friends or four different friends of mine in two different groups come and visit me in the hospital the first group 12:02 sat me down in the way in the you know the i don't know not a waiting room but like just in a room we were in and said 12:09 michael we love you we want you in our lives but if you don't take your medication you cannot be in our lives and i said 12:16 okay and then the next day four different friends of mine came and saw me and they had the exact same 12:22 message we love you we want you in our lives but if you don't take your medication we don't want to be around 12:27 you and so was this an orchestrated intervention that all these groups got together and chose to present it this 12:32 way to try to make an impact on you i believe so yeah i think uh you know 12:37 these are guys that i grew up in the same neighborhood with guys that i played sports with in high 12:44 school guys that i was roommates with at certain points in my life they they all 12:49 got together and they came in two different groups and and they knew because they knew me so well 12:55 that particular time i was having real struggles with my parents and my family 13:00 and i think we see this a lot with bipolar and other mental illnesses is for some reason sometimes the family can't get through 13:07 to the person who's struggling and my friend group knew they could get through to me or at least they wanted to try and 13:14 ever since that day that they came in to see me my approach changed 100 i mean certainly 13:21 i was still in the hospital there for maybe a couple more weeks after those guys came and saw me but 13:26 as soon as i got out of the hospital uh from from and i guess that was probably middle of june 13:32 uh 2006 up until now i've been extremely consistent with my medication that's a 13:38 really an awesome story and an awesome story about friendship yeah i'm a very i'm blessed to have 13:45 these guys and they still god love them i mean not only do they come in and and tell me to take my 13:51 medication but some of them you know one of them had to tackle me one time just to get me into a hospital situation 13:57 other ones have you know had to give me kind of a tongue lashing at times and yeah i mean i i'm blessed i wouldn't be 14:04 where i am now without the friends that i have around me just kind of keeping an eye on me for sure 14:10 so we need to go to our break and when we come back michael i got a question 14:15 for you okay you bet hey brett yes what's your favorite thing 14:21 about psych with mike the opportunity to engage in mental 14:26 gymnastics with you wow that is really powerful so it's fun do you think that that's uh 14:34 beneficial for other people i have no clue i would hope so but i have no clue so people should should write us and let 14:40 us know yeah that'd be nice that would be great especially if they agree with me [Music] 14:45 as always if it's friday it's psych with mike [Music] 14:50 okay we're back and the question is is more of a request 14:56 i am very aware that you have a story about tiger woods that i would love for 15:03 you to share with us if you would feel comfortable doing that absolutely you know i uh i just gave a 15:08 talk in pinehurst north carolina and uh talked about that it's actually the tiger story is a uh 15:15 a major part of my speaking career i mean i always mention this story because um certainly when people mention tiger 15:22 woods it gets their attention and uh but basically what happened was this was around the time that i was diagnosed 15:28 in fact it was right before i was diagnosed obviously when you hear it you'll understand why i was diagnosed so 15:34 quickly thereafter but i'd say like probably mid-january of 2001 15:40 i had moved to fort myers florida naples florida area to start my golf career and 15:45 you know i'm literally like two or three weeks out of college and my mania was so intense 15:53 i mean i wasn't sleeping i i i had this paranoia feelings that 15:58 people were looking at me through the windows in my apartment um my i was moving very very quickly and 16:05 i got it in my mind that and i i'm not afraid to say it i'm a hyper competitive 16:11 person i mean i you know playing sports in high school playing college golf and uh some of my 16:17 friends are very hyper competitive i mean one of my best friends in the world is the head baseball coach at university of 16:24 tennessee his name is tony vitello and he's a hyper competitive guy so my competitive juices have always 16:31 been flowing and at this particular time in 2001 in um 16:37 in florida in january i got it in my mind my manic mine my mind was clearly exploding with mania 16:44 that i was going to drive from fort myers florida across the state of 16:49 florida over to orlando i was going to knock on tiger woods front door and i 16:54 was going to challenge him to play a golf match because i i knew he was clearly the best player in 17:00 the world at that particular time he had just won three major championships in a 17:05 row he was about to win his fourth one which was in the masters in 2001 and he was definitely the best player 17:12 and i wanted to find out how my game stacked up to his now when you're manic 17:19 you know you don't really think things through you know things think things through clearly what the the proper way to do that would 17:25 have been to go to the tour qualifying and work your way up the ladder and then take tiger on in a you know regular 17:31 tournament but um my mind was such that you know 17:37 i wanted to find out that day in january you know how good i was or how how could my game stack up against his and frankly 17:44 to be honest you know sometimes i take questions and answers in my speeches and somebody said well what was the what was 17:50 the obsession with tiger woods and it really wasn't about tiger woods it was because he at that particular time was 17:55 the best player in other words if ernie ells was the best player he lived in orlando at that time i would 18:01 have driven to his house if or i would have tried to drive in his house if if vj singh was the best player in the 18:06 world i would have driven to jacksonville you know so it was just about whoever the best player in the world was because i that was my thinking 18:14 when i was you know young in my early 20s like i want to play golf and i want to be the best player in the world like that's 18:20 that's the ego you know part of it but to be honest with you to have success i 18:25 mean there's not a pga tour player in the world who doesn't want to take on tiger so the thought process on one hand was 18:32 kind of okay but then on the other hand it was like well you can't be driving to somebody's house and try to play golf 18:38 with somebody now the funny part is i had met tiger before this happened i met him the 18:43 summer before out in colorado because um 18:48 i'm sorry i met him two summers before that my bad and i met him at a charity golf event because i had a summer job in 18:55 aspen colorado at a golf course called maroon creek and tiger had been there to play in a 19:02 um charity event and my good friend a guy named pj mcdaniel is a st louis and 19:08 pj had caddied for tiger that day and then after the round was over you know pj introduced me to him and we talked 19:13 briefly we got a picture and you know we i kind of wished him well on you know good luck in the ryder cup that was coming up 19:20 so there was when i when i was doing this manic drive across the state of florida 19:26 i think part of me was like well he'll remember me from aspen but the fact is he wouldn't have remembered me and you 19:32 know um i just i wanted to play so i drove all the way up to orlando i got to uh 19:40 his uh he you know it's kind of a famous everybody knows he lives in windermere he lived at that time in windermere and 19:45 i went to the guard gate and of course they didn't let me in i tried to you know see if i could go in they wouldn't let me so then i i leave the uh the 19:52 guard gate and now i've got you know another three and a half hour drive back to fort myers 19:57 um and i pulled over uh right next door to disney world 20:03 or disneyland whichever one it is down there and i i had a crying jig now i 20:09 wasn't i wasn't sad because i didn't wasn't able to meet with tiger i mean my mind was going so fast i wasn't sad at 20:16 all but like i just burst into into tears and then it's so funny because 20:21 about 10 days later that's when my parents came down and i had the diagnosis from the doctor and on that 20:26 list of the piece of paper i mentioned to you guys one of the things on there was crying jigs yeah so 20:32 so then i mean obviously at the time when i when it happened i didn't know what was going on with me but then 20:37 when the doctor put that piece of paper in front of me that was just another sign it's like okay well i definitely have this there's 20:44 no doubting it i mean i was an i'm an educated person you know went to a good high school went to a good college and i 20:50 knew that um this is what i was going to have now i didn't know what was ahead of me and how it would 20:56 how intense it would be and all the things that went along with it but you know i kind of had to learn on the fly 21:02 so one of the things that i've always heard from people with bipolar disorder 21:08 is that a big reason why they find it hard to be compliant with their medication protocol is because mania 21:16 just feels so good that's exactly right is is that what you 21:22 felt that's what yeah that's that is that is a hundred percent right hundred 21:28 thousand percent right so yeah so it's very interesting because certainly before you get to mania 21:34 there's a hypomania infection right and that feels really good too you feel 21:39 like you can accomplish a lot you don't need a lot of sleep all your ideas are brilliant your ego is getting ready to 21:46 go on the loose and then when you tip over the hypomania end zone line into the full-blown mania 21:52 then all bets are off because your brain is going at a rate that's just 21:58 unconceivable and you think that you feel your body feels good you know i 22:03 used to play really good golf when i was manic like i could my body could do things that maybe i 22:08 couldn't do if i wasn't manic and it it feels it's an invincibility 22:14 feeling you you feel like you're untouchable and and all your ideas are golden and you're the smartest person in 22:20 the room and nobody else knows what the hell they're talking about you're you know you're the 22:26 um you just are the aficionado on everything and the the feeling you get when that's why 22:33 it's so dangerous because that's why people don't want to you know get back to kind of the middle ground you know come back down 22:39 come back down from the hypomania stay above depression but stay in the middle ground because the mania it does it 22:44 really feels good mike that's a great point so michael before we put you on the air you were telling us a story about some 22:51 work that you're doing with veterans and i'd like for you to have an opportunity to talk about that while you're on the air as well if if you're in a place 22:58 where we can change focus for a minute absolutely no i always love to talk about my veterans they're the best 23:04 so basically when we started birdies for bipolar back in the summer of 2013. 23:10 we had our first event out of gateway national over in illinois and i just my both my 23:15 grandfathers were in the navy and i called the va hospital and i said hey do you guys have any of your veterans that 23:22 play golf we'd love to invite you out you know you can have two or three foursomes you don't have to pay you know just come and play and just 23:28 enjoy the day have some food and enjoy the tournament and sure enough um they sent us two 23:35 groups and they had uh the director of recreational therapy at the va hospital at the time 23:41 was a gentleman who's now become a very close friend of mine named herman luge uh herman was he held that position 23:49 of recreational therapy director for 36 years at the hospital i mean this guy is a living walking saint he's unbelievable 23:56 and i'm very i'm very proud to know him and he brought out he didn't even play himself he just brought out eight guys 24:02 and they all played i mean one of the gentlemen a friend of mine gary your gary does not have either one of his 24:07 legs he's a double amputee but he still has a custom-made golf cart where he could play awesome and you know there's 24:14 a couple other guys that were amputees that were there and so i just got to know them you know that day and herman 24:20 said something to me at the end of the day he said mike we're going to play golf 24:27 on thursdays at arlington greens you know would you like to join us and i said yes absolutely i'd love to come 24:32 over and play with you guys and maybe give some lessons to some of the guys and just kind of just play golf and so 24:38 you know for the first couple years in the summer times and in the early fall you know i'd go over there and 24:44 you know we had you know two threesomes or we'd have two foursomes and you know never more ever 24:50 more than 10 or 12 guys you know sometimes just six guys sometimes just nine guys whatever 24:55 well i'm proud to tell you that now we have a full-blown league it's called 25:01 the arlington greens veterans golf association because we have the league at arlington greens golf course in 25:06 granite city and it's every thursday and for the last two summers we have averaged 80 golfers everything 25:15 awesome and yeah it really i mean it really took on a life it's owned mostly because of two 25:20 people number one being hermit lugi who he retired from the va hospital but 25:27 he became the commissioner of our league so he resides over the league and i mean this league not only do we have that amount of 25:33 players but we have a little bit of small gambling like a five dollar gambling thing each week they have a 25:38 point system at the end of the year they have a champions breakfast they've got a couple of team events in there like it's 25:45 it's really well organized and it's it's very popular amongst the veterans and the other guy that this league would 25:51 not be possible without is is mark marcus so mark is the head golf professional arlington greens and he 25:56 just he welcomed these guys with open arms from the very beginning and as we grew 26:02 he continued to say keep coming out keep coming out and without those two guys that league would 26:08 not be what it is today but um one of the things we're doing and we literally just started this 26:14 initiative this week is we are going to fundraise and we're going to create an indoor golf 26:21 simulator space for these veterans that they will be able to use during the winter months because as you gentlemen 26:28 probably know there's a horrible number out there right now that number is 22 22 veterans are taking their own lives 26:34 every day in this country and i believe from my own experience that the winter months exacerbate that 26:42 seasonal depression yes and we've had all this positive momentum with our leagues 26:48 and certainly this last fall we had you know all these guys coming every week and i thought to myself man 26:55 this is unfortunate that we have to now stop for basically november 1st until you know the beginning of may because 27:01 you know the weather just won't be conducive so i thought to myself and herman and i had a discussion you know 27:07 what can we do to like help these guys in the wintertime and we came up with the idea to build this space 27:12 and um you know we're going to go full bore with it and we the goal is to have it finished by 27:18 halloween and we've got a simulator company on board we've got 27:23 um the home loan expert which is a mortgage company here in st louis that's behind us 27:29 we've got uh the morning after which is tim mckernan's radio show that's behind us we've got some other you know 27:34 individual donors that are going to be helpful and um you know i think this is going to be 27:39 something that's going to be able to help these guys uh in the wintertime because when they didn't have anywhere to go in 27:45 the winter you know it's cold nobody's getting together you know they need that social interaction with each other to 27:51 fight off that seasonal depression we think that this building we're going to create will do that for them and you know you mentioned the home loan expert 27:58 so that's ryan kelly people louis may know him may you know if you're not in st louis you may not recognize the name 28:04 but you know he's a huge sports guy and when he gets behind a cause that he 28:10 believes in he's a force man he's a force let me tell you i can't say enough good 28:15 things about ryan kelly i i had the pleasure to spend some time with him at spring training a few years back and we 28:20 hit it off a little bit and he's been helpful with us to this point with our veterans but when he found out uh that we were going 28:27 to do this i got a phone call from his marketing team and this is back in like november 28:34 and his marketing team calls me and says hey we want to get involved we want to contribute financially we also want to 28:41 help you raise other funds you're going to have a couple people at our disposal to help with these kind of marketing and 28:47 advertising ideas and they've been outstanding so yeah ryan kelly is certainly one of those people that 28:52 is helpful for veterans and i'm assuming that veterans it is not a requirement that they have 28:59 bipolar to be a part of this league so this is this is separate from what you 29:04 do with uh birdies for bipolar so what is birdies for bipolar tell us 29:11 about that how that started and what you guys do to try and give back to the 29:16 community uh just you know in better mental health awareness 29:21 well i wouldn't say that they're separate i would say that they're i would say birdies for bipolar and the 29:26 arlington greens veterans golf association are teammates that's the best way to explain it right so good 29:31 description um yeah i mean i think we're working together and to your point mike that was a good question about 29:38 you know does bipol do you have to have bipolar to play the league no i mean the reason 29:43 that i started getting involved with the veterans and one of them involved is because i knew what it's like to feel depression 29:49 and anxiety because of my own bipolar right and i also knew from my own research 29:55 that the ptsd that all these guys feel from their work you know overseas and helping 30:01 our country it's the same type of feelings the depression the anxiety uh they're all they're all very similar 30:07 so i just wanted to make sure that you know we were able to get everybody together 30:12 uh to play golf that's how it really just started was just trying to get everybody together to play golf because i knew 30:18 how powerful recreational therapy could be and then you know i i have to tip my cap to the 30:24 veterans because when they do something they do it full out and we this this league 30:30 it it it was a grassroots thing we never advertised for it it was word of mouth and you know we went from literally 30:37 eight guys to now we have 128 people of veterans of a list that is used every 30:44 week now like i said we only average not only but we average 80 a week but there's 128 that are on the list and 30:50 that list is growing yeah so that's amazing um you know birdies for bipolar is just 30:56 is there to be a support for these veterans and some of the things that british bipolar has done and continues 31:01 to do you know we've certainly done a lot of golf events we've done stand-up comedy events we've done trivia 31:07 nights basically just to raise funds and create awareness and we 31:13 would always try to funnel our funds into areas that we thought were going to have a direct impact on groups of people 31:20 and the the organic nature of the success of this league just kind of all made sense 31:28 because it's golf it's getting the veterans together and it's attacking that specific time of year that can be 31:35 more challenging for people you know when the weather is cold in those winter months so um you know i guess you could 31:41 say that bernie through bipolar and the arlington greens veterans golf association are brothers that aren't you know okay so but 31:47 uh bernie's for bipolar itself as an entity is the 31:53 uh i guess it's a 501c3 yes sir and so that's just a charitable 31:59 organization and you started that to really promote the 32:07 message of mental health and mental health awareness to the larger community so what are you 32:14 guys doing with that and if people obviously they can go to birdiesby for bipolar.com but how can people get more 32:22 information about that and get connected to that if they would like to yes certainly our website is a place 32:30 they can go that's birdies for bipolar dot org that's birdies and then the number four bipolar dot org 32:36 and yeah i mean our mission uh is to de-stigma destigmatize you know to let 32:41 people know that hey you know what i may have bipolar i may have schizophrenia i 32:47 mean even though by bipolar is in the name of our organization you know if you go if you go to the home page on our 32:52 site we talk about all the mental illnesses and one of the things that's on our home page is 24 32:58 of the population has been diagnosed with with some form of mental illness right 33:04 well that's only the 24 who are willing to go find out what's wrong with her 33:09 so it's probably closer to 45 or 50 percent yeah you know i mean and anybody 33:14 who's done therapy for any amount of time will tell you that probably 33:20 a hundred percent of the population has either been depressed enough or anxious 33:25 enough to be diagnosed as having a disorder so i would actually argue it's 33:32 just actually a part of the human condition and you're so right we need to destigmatize that so that when people go 33:39 through something that is a notch above what we would just 33:45 consider normal everyday slings and arrows of living life that they feel 33:50 comfortable being able to access the resources that are there because right now the stigma causes a lot of 33:56 people to be reluctant to do that yeah i mean you're exactly right and we wanted to 34:02 create the message that you know let's find out what's wrong and let's fix it let's not just ignore it 34:10 and hope it goes away you know we want to we want to address it we want to address it head on 34:15 and you know it's funny because i always say this to people you know my book came out in 2000 late 2015 34:23 and i would always tell people you know i couldn't do a book like that in 1985 or even a 19 you know but 34:30 i think the conversation and it's all over these days it's all over the television i mean you look at the 34:37 the ads they're talking about mental illness on commercials uh the conversation is much louder now 34:43 which is great you know because that's the way it needs to be the reason people would struggle before is because they 34:49 would sweep it under the rug and they would have think about it they wouldn't want to address it and talk about it and 34:54 you know i got to give my parents a lot of credit they said when i was diagnosed that we're going to talk about this 34:59 we're not going to you know turn our back on it we're not gonna you know ignore it we're gonna we're gonna 35:05 address it and i think that's the best way to make steps forward is to address it 35:10 well michael i just have to say from the depths of my heart thank you so 35:17 much for giving us the time we could talk to you for days if not weeks and 35:23 you know we we definitely want to get you on the show you actually said before 35:28 we started the turn the mics on that you know you'd be willing to come into the studio which is 35:35 great so the next time we do this we will definitely have you in the studio we will definitely get that set up but i 35:41 just really appreciate your time you know you have such a unique voice and to have 35:49 been in the the spheres of influence that you've been in 35:55 really helps to normalize the message and really helps people to be able to 36:02 say hey you know what if a guy like michael wellington can not acknowledge 36:07 this then i can acknowledge it and i just think that that's so powerful so again i really appreciate your time um 36:15 and uh the best way then for people to get more information is to go to british 36:20 for bipolar dot org we will put that on the show notes again michael thank you so much 36:26 for the time today as always the music that appears in psych with mike is 36:31 written and performed by mr benjamin the clue and if it's friday it's psych with mike 36:39 [Music]