Honesty HourKanye West Admits He Once Had to Be Handcuffed During a Bipolar ‘Episode’
He’s getting real. On an upcoming episode of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman, Kanye West got candid about his bipolar disorder and treatment.
“They have this moment where they put you — they handcuff you, they drug you, they put you on the bed and they separate you from everyone you know,” the 41-year-old said. “That’s something that I am so happy that I experienced myself, so I can start by changing that moment. When you are in that state, you have to have someone you trust. It is cruel and primitive to do that.”
The “I Love It” rapper continued to talk about what it’s like to have an episode. “When you’re in this state, you’re hyper-paranoid about everything,” he confessed. “Everyone — this is my experience, other people have different experiences — everyone is now an actor. Everything’s a conspiracy. You feel the government is putting chips in your head. You feel you’re being recorded. You feel all these things. You have this moment [where] you feel everyone wants to kill you. You pretty much don’t trust anyone.”
The father of four also made it clear that in order to help his depression, he needs prescription drugs. “If you don’t take medication every day to keep you at a certain state, you have a potential to ramp up, and it can take you to a point where you can even end up in the hospital,” he revealed. “And you start acting erratic, as TMZ would say it,” he said, referring to his May 2018 interview, in which he suggested that slavery is “a choice.”
He added, “When you ramp it up, it expresses your personality more. You can become almost more adolescent in your expression. This is my specific experience that I’ve had over the past two years because I’ve only been diagnosed for two years now.”
At the end of the day, the Chicago transplant wants people to understand what he’s going through. “It’s a health issue that has a strong stigma on it, and people are allowed to say anything about it and discriminate in any way,” he said. “This is like a sprained brain, like having a sprained ankle, and if someone has a sprained ankle, you’re not going to push on him more.”
In November 2016, Kanye was hospitalized for a “psychiatric emergency” and shortly afterward, he seemingly confirmed what was going on. After he dropped his album Ye last summer, “I Hate Being Bipolar. It’s Awesome” was written on the cover.
Luckily, the Grammy winner has his wife, Kim Kardashian, by his side. “It is an emotional process, for sure,” the 38-year-old KUWTK starlet told Vogue in April. “Right now, everything is calm. But we can definitely feel episodes coming, and we know how to handle them.”
My Next Guests Needs No Introduction With David Letterman premieres on Netflix on Friday.
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