Towards Sanity

By Joseph Pirrello

Joseph Pirrello was on his way to becoming a classical virtuoso on the piano when he experienced his first psychotic episode at the age of eighteen. Over the next decade and a half, he found himself struggling to maintain a façade of normalcy, while inside he slowly unravelled.

From his stint in an all-Italian wedding band to a year spent in Tuscany, where he lived a bohemian life surrounded by artists and musicians, to a jazz-soaked semester as a music student in Montreal, Joseph takes the reader along on his sometimes humorous, heart-rending journey to find success as a musician while dealing with his yet-undiagnosed bipolar disorder.

With unflinching honesty and insight, Joseph’s memoir recounts what it’s like to live with a mental illness. Once officially diagnosed, Joseph finds support in the Toronto-based mental health rehabilitation centre, Reconnect, where he sets out to put back the pieces of his life—and makes a surprising self-discovery that takes his life in a new direction.

Filled with hope, this book attempts to find a silver lining in what is a devastating diagnosis, without diminishing the seemingly insurmountable challenges that mental illness brings. It is also a testament to the importance of friendship and acceptance without judgement.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Pirrello
• Release date: Dec 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781773024639

Book preview

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Table of Contents

Dedication

Part I

Part II: The Reconnect Years (1995-2008)

Epilogue

Copyright

Dedication

Dedicated to my parents.

For most people the age of eighteen ushers in excitement, new adventures, and the opening up of interesting pathways. Instead for me eighteen is when I had my first hallucination. It was to be the beginning of a thirty-five year struggle with an illness known as bipolar disorder. The hallucination was so intense that I felt as though I was having an out- of- body experience. Indeed, my life was changing for the worse.

Part I

There’s really no such thing as conquering a psychiatric illness. Through trial and error, by working with various doctors, social workers and rehabilitation centres, you can, at some point, after years of struggle, achieve a semblance of a normal and productive life; unfortunately, a malaise almost invariably persists. There are days when you feel uneasy, low in spirits, or just plain sick. The stigmatization associated with mental illness is another hardship—the labelling, social distancing, and diminished feelings of self-esteem. It is certainly difficult to live with a mental disorder.

Despite the fact that most people with bipolar disorder experience depression as a part of their illness, a manic, hypomanic, or mixed manic episode is required to make the diagnosis of bipolar disorder. A manic episode consists of elevated or irritable moods with disturbances of behaviour including:

rapid and uninterruptible speech

racing thoughts

restlessness

distractibility

decreased need for sleep

elevated self-esteem and unrealistic assessment of one’s capacities

increased goal-directed behaviours (e.g. new projects

excessive engagement in pleasurable activities that are likely to have negative consequences (e.g. spending, gambling, substance abuse, sexual promiscuity)

Some manic episodes can be so severe that the person experiencing any combination of these symptoms may need to be hospitalized for his or her own protection, sometimes because of an impaired sense of reality. A person experiencing a manic episode may engage in impulsive, risky behaviours that put his or her own safety, and the safety of others, at risk. Hypomanic episodes, which I have frequently experienced, involve higher mood and energy levels and increased goal-directed activities. In this state, I am often able to function at a high level, although my relationships tend to suffer.

In my experience, my depressive states have been fairly typical. A typical depressive is characterized by:

sleep disturbances

changes in appetite

diminished energy

difficulty focusing

agitation

loss of interest

feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness

suicidal thoughts

My first psychotic episode occurred at the age of eighteen—right about the time mental illness usually rears its ugly head. I had just been thrown out of high school for demonstrating a lack of interest in my classes and, in some cases, not attending them at all. On that particular day, I had found myself in a pool hall with a friend and acquaintance trying for the first time to get high on marijuana. The friend, Tony, was a high school buddy, who had much to do with influencing me to take the wrong route on my journey into adulthood. Eventually, I began to resent him because of