MARGOT KIDDER'S SEARCH FOR SANITY
by Karen Dale Dustman
Margot Kidder made headlines as Lois Lane in the 1979 movie "Superman." In 1996, she hit the news again -- when she was discovered ragged and hungry in the backyard of a stranger's Glendale, Calif., home.
Convinced her former husband, writer Thomas McGuane, and the CIA were out to kill her, Kidder roamed the streets of Los Angeles for 1-1/2 weeks, eventually sharing food and a cardboard shack with a homeless man named Charlie. By the end of her delusional episode, the actress was almost unrecognizable. She had lost the caps on her front teeth, chopped off her long auburn hair, and swapped her Armani suit for a homeless man's dirty T-shirt and pants.
Kidder has bipolar disorder, a condition marked by alternating episodes of depression and mania. (The manic phase can produce psychotic symptoms as it did for Kidder.) Born in 1948 in Yellowknife, a mining town in Canada's Northwest Territory, she spent almost 20 years of her adult life seeking treatment. After her 1996 incident, Kidder realized the conventional therapies she was receiving weren't working.
Currently in her fourth year of good mental health, Kidder has a role in the new TV series "Amazon." She often speaks for mental health organizations to spread the word of how she found natural ways to treat her disorder. Here Kidder tells Natural Health her story.
Natural Health: When did the first signs of your illness emerge?
MARGOT KIDDER: In my teens, I started having mood swings and suicidal thoughts. I also had periods of mania, though I didn't realize then that mania could escalate and lead to delusional behavior. I just thought it was great fun -- I could clean the house in about five seconds.
I saw my first shrink in Los Angeles when I was about 20. He told me I had schizophrenia . . . and gave me downers. He insisted I take Valium; for years doctors in the medical establishment insisted it wasn't addictive. It took me more than 10 years to get off of it.
Then what happened?
Over the years, I got just about every diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) . What I've learned now is, all those labels are absolute garbage; they just name a collection of symptoms.
For example, one page of the DSM might list about nine different symptoms. If you have four or five of those symptoms, you get the label on the top of the page. But the symptoms can change, depending on what kind of day you're having and which doctor is diagnosing you.
In the '80s, I was diagnosed with manic-depression and my doctor gave me lithium. (In those days, doctors were giving higher doses than the 900 to 1,200 mg a day they prescribe now.) My hands shook, my jaw shook, I couldn't think, and I sort of drooled -- all of which is really great for an actor. The best way I can put it is, my brain kind of trembled. And the second time I took it, it was as if I was slightly dead. I said to myself, if I'm going to feel dead, let me just be a little crazy.
You didn't publicly acknowledge your illness until 1992. How did you keep it quiet for so long?
I was sort of clever about hiding my problem. A friend may have heard about one episode, certain members of my family may have heard about another -- but nobody knew the whole story.
My daughter, who is 24, was the only person who really knew what I was going through. She was living at home with me during some of my depressive episodes, which usually lasted two or three months, though one lasted for almost a year. I thought about suicide all the time. But because of my daughter I felt I wasn't allowed to kill myself -- so I would just hang on by my fingernails, out of love. I still have a lot of guilt about that.
But you managed to keep acting.
My career went up and down. In the early-to-mid-'80s, I was working a lot, but I was sometimes a bit of a pain in the ass on the set. I thought I knew everything, that I was always right and everyone else was wrong -- that they just didn't recognize my genius.
I went through millions of dollars -- I have no idea how much. I'd buy things for friends, take people to Paris.
Once I stayed up for three weeks in a row because I felt like I was called upon to write a new religion for women. I was reading all these books, including the Bible -- and I'm an athiest.
What brought these episodes on?
Stress was a big factor. In 1996, the trigger was getting a virus in my computer and losing three years of work on my autobiography.
And hormones definitely had an effect. When I started tracing my really bad episodes, I think every one of them started the week before my period.
But the problem was also not eating properly, chain-smoking cigarettes, and living on caffeine and occasional bouts of tequila. Sometimes I would try to come down from my mania by drinking alcohol -- which ultimately made it worse. (Drinking makes you lose B vitamins, which are essential for the proper functioning of neurotransmitters.)
For some reason, I was more ashamed of the prescription drugs than the alcohol. The pills made me feel like hell -- so I would throw them in the garbage and then I would flip out. No one told me that you can't just stop taking those drugs.
When did you finally decide you'd had enough of conventional medicine?
After my very public flip-out in 1996, some friends sprang me from the bin (University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center). I went home to Canada with my brother John. He took me to Elena Crippen, a five-element acupuncturist based in Victoria, who treated me four times a week. That brought me down to a solid state in about three weeks. Since then, psychiatrists have told me that acupuncture can't do that, but it did for me.
Then I started doing a lot of homework. I read conventional books that would say, "A deficiency of niacin and protein can cause mental disturbances." And I knew that a lot of people who suffer from manic-depression have trouble absorbing B vitamins. But then the book would say, "Take a synthetic drug to deal with the symtoms." I'm reading this and thinking, "Why not take B vitamins another way, such as intramuscularly or in liquid form, that will make them easier to absorb?"
In another book, I read that people who have manic-depression appear to be deficient in GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid, an amino acid that controls levels of dopamine in the brain), and that if you don't have enough GABA you're going to be nervous, agitated. So instead of taking Depakote, an anti-seizure medication that produces GABA, why not just take GABA? Depakote can damage your liver and causes depression in some people.
But by then you knew you couldn't just throw away your pills.
Yes. I started by taking megadoses of B vitamins and amino acides such as GABA and taurine. I didn't know it then, but on my own I was using orthomolecular medicine, which helps correct your chemical imbalances through diet and megadoses of vitamins and other nutrients such as amino acids.
A year later, I had cut down on my medication and was feeling much better, and I saw Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D., who was one of the founders of the orthomolecular movement in Canada and in the United States. He told me I basically had figured it out on my own. [For more information on usuing orthomolecular medicine to treat bipolar disorder, see "A Question of Balance," page 92.]
Even though the word "orthomolecular" sounds complicated, its practice is very logical. I learned that it's about making my body work the way nature intended. It's about focusing on health vs. seeing something as pathological and diseased.
People with bipolar disorder, I've heard, often have food sensitivities. Was that true for you?
I had read about that earlier and I'd thought the idea was nuts. For years, my favorite breakfast was a cheese omelet and whole wheat toast. I had that every day, and I loved it! But then my doctor here in Montana tested me and told me I have the classic food allergies -- to wheat, eggs, and dairy -- for schizophrenia and manic-depression. It's been difficult to give up my favorite foods, but besides feeling better, I've lost a lot of weight.
My doctor here also confirmed that I have extremely low blood sugar, and if I'm not careful it can fluctuate and I'll have corresponding mood swings. So I eat regular meals -- which I never did before. I'm also supposed to eat a lot of high protein foods, like steak, and stay away from sugar and caffeine. But I want to point out, I'm not a saint. I've cut the cigarettes way down, but I haven't eliminated them. And I still have my big mug of coffee every day.
I do use stress-reduction techniques, which I believe are as important as the orthomolecular regimen. Stress pumps enormous amounts of cortisol, adrenaline, and their byproducts -- all of which are damaging -- into your nervous system. So I exercise a lot and I get five-element acupuncture, deep-tissue massage, and craniosacral manipulation about twice a week. . . . All these factors helped me to greatly reduce my medication.
I know you had some relapses early in your recovery. Have you had any recently?
Last fall, I had just moved into a new house, and all these men were in there painting. It was hot, and pretty soon there were these big crates of Coca-Cola coming in. And I thought, I'll just have one, and pretty soon I was downing more of them. And boy, did I feel it in a couple of days! And recently, I went to the "Saturday Night Live" 25th anniversary celebration in New York and then from there I flew to Toronto and went straight to the set of "Amazon". The day after that, I knew I was up there -- getting hyper. So I took extra doses of B-vitamins, GABA, and taurine.
When I screw up, I recognize it. Previously, I didn't understand that diet could affect my mental health, or that I would feel crazy if I went for two nights without sleep or food. I had done what most of society has done -- I had cut off my mind from my body.
Do you have a theory to explain why you have this disorder?
A lot of it has to do with certain traumas in my childhood, which I prefer not to talk about, but really it was a combination of everything: not eating properly, not sleeping, certain genetic things. There were others in my family who had perhaps some mild symptoms of it.
What advice do you give other people who have bipolar disorder?
I tell them, whatever you do, don't just stop taking your medicine -- you'll end up in the bin. Find an orthomolecular doctor; get a hair analysis and find out what minerals you're lacking. Get blood tests for food and environmental allergies. Get a sugar-glucose test and find out if you're hypoglycemic. Find ways to relieve your stress. Start to work on those problems that you have, and talk to your doctor about gradually reducing your medication.
Did you have a lot of support from friends and family?
My friends have been so terrific. For years and years they wondered, where's she going to go now? Now I've had 3-1/2 years of being solid. I've had ups and downs, but I've still had a life. I called my mom a few days ago and said to her, "You know, half of it is just regular sleeping and eating." And she said, "Dear, I've been trying to tell you that for years." And my brother John, the one who brought me to the acupuncturist in 1996, has been fabulous.
Do you still have a house in L.A.?
God, no! You couldn't get me back there. It's the most stressful environment in the world; it's anti-nature. I grew up in nature, I need it to ground me and take away my stress. Now, my big thrill is walking my dogs in the mountains. I have a wonderful community of friends here in Montana. I have a good relationship with my daughter, and I want to be a good grandmother to my 1-year-old granddaughter. My life now has taken priority over my career.
I'm so happy with my life now. I realize that my service lies in becoming a spokesperson for natural ways of treating bipolar disorder. And that feels great.
Coming forward about your illness was brave.
I didn't have any choice. Thanks to CNN, it was all over the TV -- even in China! I was like a gay person being outed worldwide.
Afterward, I got so many letters that began, "I've never told anyone in my life what I'm about to tell you . . . " And I realized there are millions of us. Before this happened, I had thought there was something deeply wrong with me, and only me, and that if anyone found out -- it would be awful.
Now, my body feels well, my mind feels clear, and I get up every morning knowing who I am. I don't wonder, "Who's going to come out today?" It's always me.