\u201cI knew something was going wrong inside my body,\u201d says Horatio Clare. \u201cI felt like I was running too fast, really.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Clare is a BBC radio producer and writer, whose work often explores his own life and experience. Behind the public identity, he was living with cyclothymia, a mild form of bipolar disorder, alongside alcohol and drug problems, and a relationship falling apart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the time, he was trying to expand his life in every direction: launch two new books, a new course, a new job, a decent father and partner. It looks successful and productive from the outside, but from inside, it is accelerating without control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI must crack on, I must take all the responsibilities,” he recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sleep shrank to four hours everyday, sometimes none at all, and his thoughts kept leaping, never stopping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI can\u2019t stop,even though I\u2019m already aware it\u2019s too much. There are sounds constantly talking in my head,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This was the manic phase of bipolar disorder\u2014a condition often defined by two extremes: periods of intense energy and activity, and periods of deep depression. At first, the energy can feel almost functional, even productive, but it comes at a cost: sleepless nights, racing thoughts, and delusions that blur reality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy delusion involved spies and aliens and secret services,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He later entered a period of intense psychological distress, during which he developed delusional beliefs and began to act on them in increasingly extreme ways, including attempts to reimagine his surroundings as a space for \u201cpeace and international understanding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI guess it was the illusion of planetary significance which was exciting and demanding and a feeling that you really must not stop,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou\u2019re on a kind of mission,\u201d he says. \u201cTo do good.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eventually, the momentum reached a point where intervention became unavoidable. It is easy to imagine that moment as forceful: police, restraint, a loss of control. Clare denied it with his own sense of humour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t dragged in,\u201d he says. \u201cI walked in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By then, he knew something was wrong. But that knowledge existed alongside a belief that he could still manage it alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI thought I could deal with it by myself,\u201d he says. \u201cI didn\u2019t think I needed treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Under the Mental Health Act, being sectioned depends not only on risk, but on what <\/p>\n\n\n\n
clinicians call \u201cinsight\u201d, the ability to understand one\u2019s own condition. Clare did not believe he posed a danger to others. But, as he now recognises, he was at risk to himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the third morning in hospital, he looked out of the window. There were people in the car park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI assumed they were watching and listening to me,\u201d he says. \u201cBut then I realised they were just builders fixing windows.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He describes that period as being \u201cdrenched in delusion\u201d, building up a \u201cbank of evidence\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
that reinforced a reality that felt entirely true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t feel like I was mad,\u201d he says. \u201cIt felt like something huge was still happening.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Recovery began, unexpectedly, with a single grounding thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHow do you gain firm ground?\u201d he remembers asking himself. \u201cAnd I said out loud: \u2018You\u2019re in a mental hospital.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From that point, something shifted. Within days, the intensity of delusions began to recede.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou get a great draining feeling in the middle of you,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen you look back over the last months and think ,Christ, I\u2019ve been mad as a fish.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And then, slowly, a way forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy initial reaction was to start writing a diary,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a place where reality had fractured, writing became a way to hold on to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m in a mental hospital. My job here is to write down what that is like,\u201d he says. \u201cMost people don\u2019t know. And there are thousands of people in mental hospitals who need us to know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The diary later became his first book about mental health: Heavy light:A Journey Through Madness, Mania and Healing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere was a window seat on the ward,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI could see across the fields and watch the sunrise. I spent most of my time there writing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI could feel myself going back together, because you\u2019re doing your job.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When asked whether he ever felt reduced from writer to patient, he is careful with the language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI think the term they use is \u2018service user\u2019,\u201d he says, avoiding the label of \u201cpatient\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The delusions once told him he was working towards world peace. Now, the purpose is smaller, but real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou are right to help people and tell the truth,\u201d he says. \u201cThat\u2019s my purpose. I\u2019m a reporter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Writing, for him, remains both craft and structure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a way of ordering experience,\u201d he says. \u201cA place to be honest, which is intensely therapeutic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For a writer whose mind had once constructed entire worlds, real creativity, he says, begins with looking out of the window in the real world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA beautiful, rainy spring afternoon and look out of the window\u2026 that\u2019s where you find it.Creativity comes from my engagement with the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After leaving the hospital, Horatio Clare turned his words into action. He published Heavy Light<\/em>, recounting psychosis from the inside, and created two radio series for BBC Sounds asking, Is psychiatry working?<\/em> He wrote widely for newspapers and worked directly with NHS teams, social workers, and section doctors, giving workshops and talks that distilled lessons from his lived experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnybody who lived my life for those three months would have been as crazy as me,\u201d he reflects. Heavy Light<\/em> was never meant to label him forever. \u201cWill I always be the mad guy? But the answer is no. Quite the opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Horatio, depression is a message from the psyche: a signal that change and help are needed. \u201cGo deep down into your thoughts. Without them, we wouldn’t perhaps understand the richness and the beauty of ordinary days. You need to believe it will end one day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n His second book, Your Journey Your Way<\/em>, is a recovery guide, full of advice on how mental health is best treated. \u201cThrough this book, I want to tell them there is nothing wrong with mental illness\u2026 a journey is an exciting one. Sometimes the wheels fall off the Land Cruiser or the hippo bikes, the canoe in half. Things go wrong, but it is still a journey.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Writing Heavy Light<\/em> allowed him to witness what happens inside a mind as it loses its grip and regains it. Most readers are sufferers themselves, or their relatives. \u201cIt\u2019s quite positive to be able to share experiences and to give comfort and reassurance. When I heard them saying it really helped, it made me feel wonderful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He emphasizes that his journey into madness was never wanted. \u201cAll those things happened are just one journey\u2026 Given that I did, it is a huge blessing to have been able to turn it to some benefit to others. Readers\u2019 gain is a real gift for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI wrote it in praise of the people who have been affected, and to try to help them. From my family to my carers, doctors and psychologists. I wrote it to expose psychiatric ignorance and damage, and to praise and thank the people who work so hard on behalf of sufferers themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the interview, he returned to his window seat, watching the rain, the light on the clouds, and the wind dancing with the sun. In that simple moment, creativity felt real again: alive in the present. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe’re in constant flux, building, falling apart, and remaking ourselves all the time. I\u2019m still learning. I\u2019m still an internal student.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sidebar: Understanding Bipolar Disorders and Cyclothymia Q: What are the features of mania? Q: And the features of depression? Q: What about cyclothymia? Q: How do these symptoms impact daily life, work, or writing? Q: What kinds of support are important? What happens when the one thing you trust most,your own mind,starts to betray you? Writer Horatio Clare takes us inside the experience of bipolar mania, where delusions feel purposeful rather than chaotic. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, Clare recounts how he slowly confronted reality, rebuilt his life, and ultimately found recovery. His story highlights not just the challenges of the condition, but the resilience and hope that come with overcoming it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":239,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"yoast_head":"\n
Professor Oluwafemi (Femi) Oyebode is an Honorary Professor of Psychiatry and Consultant Psychiatrist, specialising in clinical psychopathology. This sidebar explains bipolar and related symptoms from a clinical perspective using his expert insights.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
A: “You can have a very high mood, sometimes euphoric. In some people, it can be irritability, attention, hostility. They may have difficult sleeping, excessive energy, disturbed concentration, and restlessness. In severe cases, they may also have delusions or hallucinations, like believing they are God or the Prime Minister.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A: “Mood is disturbed, sleep is affected \u2014 often early morning waking. Poor appetite, reduced energy, concentration affected, loss of interest in usual hobbies. Severe cases may include delusions, such as believing they are ill or that others wish them harm.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A: “Some people would argue cyclothymia is a personality trait. It implies periods when a person is slightly more energetic or more low-spirited than usual, but these fluctuations are short and relatively mild compared to bipolar episodes.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A: “The disruption is to do with episodes of illness, not the illness per se. If a person is manic \u2014 restless, unable to concentrate, believing things that aren’t true \u2014 or depressed, with low energy and concentration \u2014 their ability to function, work, or write is impaired.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A: “Early recognition and early intervention are very important. Psychological support, social support, and psychotherapy are key. Psychoeducation helps people recognize symptoms and early signs to prevent recurrence. These are treatable conditions, and between episodes, people can fully recover.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"