A Humorous Look at Bi Polar and Substance Abuse with Actress Carrie Fisher

April 22, 2009

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Carrie Fisher

"If my life wasn’t funny, it would just be true," sets the tone for "Wishful Drinking," a hilariously witty session of on-stage self-analysis with actress Carrie Fisher (Star Wars, Austin Powers, Blues Brothers), who takes the audience through her personal journey of alcoholism, manic depression, and life behind stardom.

If sharing a story is part of recovery from mental illness, Fischer embraces it in this production.

Now in her 50s, Fisher pokes fun on-stage at her childhood and the tangled web of blended families and the multiple marriages of her famous parents, actress Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher. With a giant school bulletin board lowered onto center stage, she leads the audience through "Hollywood Inbreeding 101," a complicated family tree that uncovers an adolescence muddied by eccentricities and infidelities, including her father's tryst with the maid of honor, Elizabeth Taylor, at her mother's wedding. Sarcastically she quips that her childhood trauma has nothing to do with her failed 12-year relationship with former husband, folk-singer icon Paul Simon.

Fisher admits to an early phase of denial. "I was first 'invited' to a hospital for the treatment of substance abuse at the age of 29," about the time she starred as Princess Leia in Star Wars. She was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which is characterized by severe mood swings with periods of high energy followed by depression.

Naming her manic episodes "Rollicking Roy" and her depression "Pam, the sentimental whom stands in the sand and sobs," Fisher describes bipolar disorder as "living with a mood system that operates independently from what is going on in life." She says she has learned that she’ll get explosive at times, but by acknowledging her illness and with treatment, her emotional explosions are smaller and recovery periods shorter as time goes by. She shouts robustly, "BUT I know for sure that I will explode!"

Her dialogue in this one-woman show is filled with powerful and poignant observations about her illness:

"It's not what you're given, it's how you take it."
"Many of us can only find heaven by backing away from hell."
"Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die."
"You’re only as sick as your secrets."

She makes fun of public misperception that people with mental illness are violent. Taking a toy pop gun filled with confetti, she points it at the audience and fires off a puff of glittering paper. Indeed, most people with mental illness are likely to be victims of crime than perpetrators.

Quizzing the audience, she runs through a list of symptoms and asks for a raise of hands if, "in the last week have you…."

Been irritable?
Not taken pleasure in the things you enjoy?
Felt fatigued?

The audience response is enthusiastic. Most hands go up, creating a common bond in the room.

When she asks who has been hospitalized for mental illness, one woman comes forward. Fisher wraps her arms around her for a long embrace of camaraderie, and praises her for her bravery.

"Losing your mind is like glowing in your own dark," laughs Fisher, describing how a combination of medications created a six-day period of sleeplessness which brought on psychotic episodes where she felt she was truly living the stories she watched on CNN news.

A mature Fisher pokes fun at her own weight and drolly confesses that she's never won an award for acting. "But I'm a shoo-in all around town for mental illness awards because there is no swimsuit competition".

Her life story as she portrays it in Wishful Drinking leaves the audience laughing and, at the same time touched by her candor. By sharing her journey of coping simultaneously with addiction to alcohol and living with bipolar disorder, Fisher is a real testament to the power of resiliency. As she stands on center-stage, taking a final bow with a packed-house roused for a standing ovation, Fisher personifies the notion that recovery does happen.

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