'Stranger Things' star David Harbour was sent to 'mental asylum' and diagnosed with bipolar disorder
David Harbour, American actor is currently in the Netflix series Stranger Things as Police Chief Jim Hopper, for which he has received nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award in 2017, and a Golden Globe Award in 2018.
David Harbour, 42, revealed on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast Monday that he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder when he was 25 after his parents committed him to what he described as a “mental asylum.”
"I really had like a bit of a break where I thought I was in connection with God," he told Maron.
Harbour linked his hallucination to his Christianity, which he discovered during the 12 Step program he joined after admitting his alcoholism. There were no drugs involved, he insisted.
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“The interesting thing about it was that I realized I don't really need them," he said, “that I have a capacity to see 'the elves' in the corners of the room if I really allow myself to go there.”
Currently, he is managing his bipolar disease with medication, but it gets a little difficult because of the work regime.
“You think that you're not the artist that you could be," he said. "You think you're not digging as deep as you could be."
He still remembers the experience of the “mental asylum” that he said was “sad and smells like s--t.”
"The funny thing about my brain is every time I've had an episode like that, it's coupled with spirituality. Generally, people are like 'I need to meditate more' or 'I need to get into yoga,’” he told Maron.
"And I need to, like, eat a cheeseburger and just like smoke cigarettes and hang out. Because, like, the minute I get close to that, what I consider a flame of like 'the answers' and the mysticism and I'm like 'completely present,' it's like I'm out of my mind. So if I write the self-help book, it's going to be like 'sit on the couch and play some video games."
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First published: 6 June 2018, 11:42 IST