What happens when bipolar disorder goes unrecognized for years?
In April 2018, I spoke with Randall Scott White, an entrepreneur, musician, father, and first-time filmmaker. He was building a documentary called A Fine Wife about his late wife, Michelle, and his family’s long struggle with bipolar disorder, depression, mania, substance use, and suicide. Our conversation was his first interview about the film.
This is an archive episode, recorded when the show covered addiction and mental health broadly. Randall speaks very openly about losing his wife and several other people close to him to suicide. If you are struggling right now, the help line at the end of this description is for you.
At 02:11, I made a point that runs through the whole episode. Many people still do not see mental illness as a real illness, and they wonder why someone cannot simply snap out of it. Medical conditions require medical treatment, and that is just as true of the mind.
Why was the diagnosis missed for so long?
At 05:49, Randall explained that Michelle was not diagnosed with bipolar disorder until a few months before her death. For years, counselors had treated her for depression, because she asked for help during her depressive episodes. When she was manic, he believes she hid it, or the clues were simply missed.
Still, Randall could not believe that no one saw the swing in her moods. At 06:52, I described a pattern I had seen in someone I know with bipolar disorder: heavy spending during manic episodes, buying duplicates and triplicates of things. Randall said the same thing had happened in his family. On the day Michelle left for the last time, a large delivery of new furniture arrived at the house.
In the end, Randall recognized the pattern himself. From 20:20, he described reading about bipolar disorder online and realizing it fit her exactly. She agreed, and she told her employer the next day. In his account, she was fired and then offered accommodation, but by then something in her had already snapped.
Can intelligence make substance use harder to overcome?
Michelle graduated with high honors from a demanding nursing program and worked as a float pool nurse, covering many different hospital units. At 11:08, Randall said that the same skill that let her thrive in that role also let her work the system to obtain pills for her own opioid use.
At 12:37, I said that people who are highly intelligent and creative can have more difficulty getting help. Their own abilities get used against them. Addiction takes over a person’s best thinking, and a sharp mind can talk itself into almost anything.
Randall was candid about his own part in it. At 13:11, he described how Michelle’s neck injury after a car accident led to her prescriptions for painkillers, and how he used her pills too, to cope with the chaos. Fortunately, he recognized he had a problem, went to drug counseling, and stopped. Michelle never could.
How does a family history shape a person’s substance use?
Also at 13:11, Randall explained that Michelle grew up in a broken home, where both parents used drugs and her own mother introduced her to methamphetamine when she was thirteen. At 16:50, he said she never stood a chance from the start.
At 18:33, I said that one thing that keeps many young people in check is a parent who disapproves and points them toward help. It is hard to imagine finding that path when your own parents are using with you and supplying the drugs.
From 31:31, Randall described a family history of serious mental illness, with one of Michelle’s grandmothers living with bipolar disorder and the other with schizophrenia, and his belief that bipolar disorder is part nature and part nurture. The nature may only be manageable with the right medication, he said. Yet the nurture is something parents can change, and he hopes the film helps some of them do it.
Was substance use a way of self-medicating?
At 29:10, I asked whether her drug and alcohol use might have been an attempt to treat the bipolar condition herself. Randall said yes, absolutely. She told him she was self-medicating, and when her mania returned he assumed she was using methamphetamine again, until a drug test showed otherwise.
Interestingly, the warning signs of mania that Randall lists for families read almost like a description of someone on stimulants. At 30:00, I pointed out that a person with bipolar mania can show many of the signs of amphetamine use without taking any drug at all. So, when methamphetamine is added on top, as Randall put it, everything goes into hyperdrive.
Why do some families keep their distance?
At 03:43, I described something I see in my own practice. By the time some patients come in for help with opioid use disorder, their families keep a careful distance, sometimes from another state. We rarely see what happened at home to bring things to that point.
Of course, they still love their family member. In Randall’s view, shame and stigma are a large part of what keeps people apart, and he wondered how many people live for years with conditions that are never diagnosed but could have been addressed much sooner.
How can children be protected when a parent is ill?
At 37:01, I mentioned the first guest on the show, the author of a children’s book called Dad’s Addiction. Its main purpose is to help a child understand that they cannot control anyone’s behavior but their own. A child who believes a cleaner room might bring a parent back can carry that belief into codependency later in life.
From 38:01, Randall described how the birth of their daughter changed everything for him. He drew on the film Life Is Beautiful, in which a father shields his son from the horror around them, and tried to give his daughter as innocent a childhood as possible. At 39:54, I said that none of this meant Michelle did not love her daughter. She clearly did. Mental illness and addiction can simply take over everything.
What does suicide leave behind?
At 45:11, Randall shared that he has lost four people to suicide: his brother, a military crew chief, his wife’s mother, his band’s guitarist and close friend, and then his wife. In his words, it changes you, and you can never go back from it.
However, he has chosen to take those dark moments and try to turn them into light. He spoke about the craters left in the lives of the people who remain. One goal of his film, he said, is that someone who is thinking about suicide will see it and decide not to act on those thoughts. At 48:42, I added that trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), left unaddressed, can lead to severe depression and suicidal thoughts.
Who is Randall Scott White?
Randall Scott White is an entrepreneur, musician, father, and filmmaker who was based in Austin, Texas, at the time of recording. He was making A Fine Wife to help people living with bipolar disorder and their families understand mental illness, substance use, and suicide, and to start conversations about the stigma around them.
What can listeners take away from this conversation?
Bipolar disorder and substance use are often tangled together, and the illness underneath can go unrecognized for years. Randall’s hope is that families will recognize the signs earlier, talk openly about what is happening at home, and protect the next generation of children.
His other hope is simpler. He wants people to understand Michelle and forgive her rather than judge her, and he wants anyone who is in that much pain to ask for help.
How do I approach this today?
Today my practice focuses on helping people come off benzodiazepines and other medications gradually, and on medication for alcohol and opioid dependence. Physical dependence is not addiction, and the safest way off is usually slow.
Call 911 or go to an emergency department if there is a seizure, confusion or hallucinations, or thoughts of self-harm. For thoughts of suicide or any mental health crisis, you can also call or text the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
This page is educational. It is not medical advice, and listening to the episode or reading this page does not create a doctor-patient relationship. Decisions about starting, continuing, or tapering any medication should be made with your own physician.
Full transcript
A note from Dr. Leeds: my guests speak from their own experience and expertise, and the terminology they use is their own. Whatever the topic, this show holds to one distinction: physical dependence on a prescribed medication is not addiction. This transcript is educational content, not medical advice, and nothing here creates a doctor-patient relationship.
Read the full transcript (56 minutes)
Dr. Mark Leeds [00:09] Welcome to The Rehab on the Mental Health News Radio Network. I am Dr. Mark Leeds and I will be your host. Join me in exploring the world of addiction treatment. How can we improve the ways that we help individuals to overcome addiction? The goal of treatment is to save lives and help people to get back on track to a path towards success and happiness in life. Randall Scott White is an entrepreneur, musician, father, and budding filmmaker. He is currently working on a documentary called A Fine Wife, which tells the story of his family’s tragic struggle with mental illness, bipolar disorder, depression, mania, and suicide. Randall White, welcome to The Rehab. Thank you for joining me on the podcast today.
Randall Scott White [01:00] I am a happy guy because I’m in Texas now and the sun is shining and it’s pretty awesome to be in Austin, Texas.
Dr. Mark Leeds [01:11] That’s great. We’re going to talk about the movie that you’re working on, A Song for Michelle, and you’re aiming for release the summer of this year, right?
Randall Scott White [01:20] I am, and, you know, a song for Michelle was the working title that the film is actually, and we’re about to update the website with this information, the film is going to be called A Fine Wife.
Dr. Mark Leeds [01:32] The name is going to be A Fine Wife, and you’re aiming to have it shown at multiple film festivals, possibly. Is that correct?
Randall Scott White [01:39] I am, yes. That’s the goal is we’re in discussion with Netflix for distribution, but that didn’t happen yet. I mean, there’s still all sorts of possibilities. So, you know, the initial run will be to go to film festivals and see how this film can impact. And that’s the main goal here is to spark a whole lot of conversations that need to happen in this country and around the world.
Dr. Mark Leeds [02:11] And I know that there’s generally a misunderstanding of mental illness amongst the general population. You know, there’s a lot of people out there that they don’t consider mental illness to be the same as physical illness. And sometimes people think, why can’t you just snap out of it and just, you know, act normal? And they don’t realize that mental illness is just like any other kind of illness, and you can’t just snap out of it. Medical conditions require medical treatment.
Randall Scott White [02:38] It does, and even, you know, it does have a physical aspect with medications where one medication isn’t going to be right for the entire population that’s even suffering from one illness. You have to balance it and test out what works well with mixing. And it’s a real challenge even when you can medically try to deal with this. Anyway, my wife’s particular disease, bipolar disorder, I’ve done a lot of research on that particular mental illness since, you know, since everything that happened with our relationship. And I wish I would have known a lot more earlier in our relationship. So that’s part of the goal of my film is to not just talk about it from a clinical setting but to actually show what it’s like to be in the throes of the symptoms of the disease when it manifests.
Dr. Mark Leeds [03:43] That’s something I deal with in my clinical practice. Sometimes I see patients that come in for treatment for drug addiction and for example some people come in for this for the vivitrol shot which is a monthly shot to help prevent relapse with opioid use disorder or opioid addiction and it’s interesting how the families at the by the point of when by the time they come in for treatment in a lot of cases the families keep a distance from the patient you know the parents might be in another state they don’t seem to have any interest in coming to where we are to be with their child And we wonder, you know, why doesn’t the family want to be here? You know, why are they keeping their distance? Wouldn’t they want to be here involved in their care also? And we don’t see, you know, what’s happened, you know, between them. You know, what’s happened in the home and, you know, the episodes and what might have transpired to get to that point of where, of course, they still love their family member, but, you know, they just don’t especially want to even be in the same state with them at that point.
Randall Scott White [04:42] Yeah, it’s a real crutch. And the shame and the stigma that goes along with it. I’m curious what percentage of people are undiagnosed with these disorders, not to over-medicate the country, but that there are real chemical and biological aspects that can go without treatment for how many years that they could have tackled it sooner.
Dr. Mark Leeds [05:20] Now, you had discussed in the film as far as that there was some difficulty in getting the diagnosis correct at first. You’d been to multiple doctors or psychologists and maybe even in getting the medical treatment correct. Was that a problem as far as doctors and psychologists were not able to properly diagnose your wife? Or when they started medication, were they not able to get the medication correct at first try?
Randall Scott White [05:49] She was not diagnosed bipolar until a few months before her death. And she had been going to counselors for years, but they had diagnosed her with depression because her depressive episodes were where she was asking for help. When she was in mania, I think she must have been lying or hiding it or they just didn’t pick up on the clues that, you know, This woman who was absolutely depressed and lethargic and wanted to die by suicide was suddenly so boisterous and vibrant and speaking at a million miles an hour. I just can’t believe that they didn’t see the swing in the pendulum of moods from depression to mania and pick up on that. It just floors me.
Dr. Mark Leeds [06:52] And one thing that stood out to me I think in the beginning of one of the videos or trailers that I looked at there was a scene where you mentioned you had to move because of all the spending of trying to pay off the bills and I personally I know someone personally who’s diagnosed with bipolar and I wasn’t sure if that’s what you’re talking about but I noticed that was that’s that’s an issue with the person that I know is that they tend to go out and spend a huge amount of money in these manic episodes and buying double and duplicate and triplicates of things and you In case this one breaks down, I need a backup. They’re in Home Depot and Costco all the time. Was that something going on?
Randall Scott White [07:30] Yeah. The day that Michelle left, she would disappear multiple times throughout her relationship. But the last time that she left, the very same day, she had $6,000 worth of new furniture delivered. So, you know, they’re not in their right mind, no.
Dr. Mark Leeds [07:52] I mean, looking back, it must seem like, I mean, how did they not see the behavior is fitting that cyclical trend of depression and mania?
Randall Scott White [08:01] It’s too late for my family. And so if I can help people recognize their own situations where they can say, oh, my God, my husband’s bipolar. Holy cow, I think my wife must be bipolar. They may not even know what is causing their crazy relationship moments to happen, and that one of them may be mentally ill.
Dr. Mark Leeds [08:27] In the news now, it’s kind of a popular thing to talk about, narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, things that are maybe not only hard to diagnose, but maybe even hard to get the person to go to a specialist to get diagnosed.
Randall Scott White [08:45] Sure. Yeah, there’s a lot of technology considerations as well, where now we have our cameras in our pockets. And I think that’s even antiquated now because there’s new devices where you can wear a camera around your neck like a necklace, and it’s recording your moments 24-7 now. So, like, narcissistic tendencies are being pushed on us by technology where we’re supposed to not only record our moments but then share them with the world. And so I think that this kind of story is going to be more prevalent and a lot more of these kinds of things will be able to be shown now because they’ll be captured more. And so I think I’m on the beginnings of, you know, the whole movie revolution, if you will, where you can show and tell these stories. And I’m sure that narcissistic aspects of if somebody needs to be told that they’re a narcissist will be able to be shown to them a lot easier now because of that.
Dr. Mark Leeds [10:10] Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense, that you can kind of turn it around and say, look at how you’re behaving.
Randall Scott White [10:16] You know, I’ve been asked, why did you record your wife so much? Did she know you were recording her? And the answer is oftentimes yes, because I told her, I’m going to make a documentary about you are just out of hand. And I would show her back the recordings of herself after, and she would not want to watch them. She couldn’t face herself, her crazy self. And so she was well aware that I would record these moments so I could go back and try to reason with her when she was stable.
Dr. Mark Leeds [10:58] You describe her as being a musician, an artist, and that she’s also very intelligent. Was it a nursing school where she got the Dean’s Award?
Randall Scott White [11:08] Yes, she wasn’t a musician. I’m the musician, but she was highly intelligent. She graduated magna cum laude from Oregon Health Sciences University in their nursing program and was a float pool nurse. And she had to know how to do the jobs of 13 different floors in that hospital. And, you know, because you have nurses, they’re either in the NICU or emergency room or, you know, that’s their one thing they do. But she would have to take the place of these nurses and substitute for them. So she had to learn how to do all these different things. But that was her personality because she would get bored if she had to be pigeonholed in one particular rote position, if you will. So she thrived as a float pool nurse, and I believe that career was well-suited for her, but at the same time it also let her get away with manipulating the system because she knew how to work it and the ins and outs of the system and her own addictions were able to, she was just really good at manipulating it to be able to get pills for herself, her own opioid addiction with oxycontin and oxycodone and, but she was highly intelligent for sure.
Dr. Mark Leeds [12:37] And that’s something I’ve noticed is that people who are highly intelligent and creative tend to be at higher risk, in some cases, for addiction. And they definitely have more difficulty overcoming addiction and getting help. Basically, their own abilities are being used against them, you know, because addiction kind of takes over your own best thinking and you can talk yourself into anything. You know, you can find ways and means to get more drugs and that sort of thing. So it almost seems like the, you know, the highly creative and intelligent people have a lot more difficulty getting clean.
Randall Scott White [13:11] Well, and that’s what happened when we met was, you know, I’m a musician, and at the time, I had just moved to Portland, and she had just moved to Portland, so we were both new to the city, but I came from this squeaky clean military family where I had tried pot up in Alaska when I lived there, but I had never done a hard drug in my life. Michelle came from a family where it turns out her mother had Michelle doing meth with her when she was 13. And so she came from a broken family, and both of her parents were drug addicts. Her father was a heroin addict. And so when we met, I balanced her out and she balanced me out, and that she introduced me to drugs and the party atmosphere of rock and roll, and it was all exciting and new to me. And then I’m the one that would keep her from going overboard, and keep her from overdosing, if you will, because I would tell her, you need to cut that shit out right now. You’re going to die. And so she may have even died sooner if I had to rescue her so many times over the years. And her addictions weren’t limited to any particular drug. It was just drugs. You know, that was her addiction is she had to have something to introduce to her body to bring her to different levels, be it, you know, whatever it was that she was doing. I caught her doing meth. I caught her doing bath salts. You know, I got addicted to her OxyContin because at first, let me explain how that started, actually. So there were street drugs and then there’s prescription drugs, right? The street drugs were when she was a bartender and it was easy to access and we would party with that. But then we had a car accident and she had a neck injury and she went through several surgeries for that. They would do a lot of burning of her nerves, and there was a prescription component that started out with Vicodin, and then she would always need more or more powerful medicine, and started out with 5 milligrams of Oxy, and then it would be, you know, 30, and I would also, we would crush her pills and snort them, and I did it to cope with just the craziness of it all, but then I realized I had a problem, and I went to counseling for it, drug counseling, and kicked my addiction, but she never could, And she wouldn’t admit she had a problem. She would say, I’m not addicted, I’m dependent, and somehow rationalize as if they were different.
Dr. Mark Leeds [16:38] So addiction had been part of her life since at least since she was 13. But she never got involved in 12-step recovery, Narcotics Anonymous?
Randall Scott White [16:50] You know, after the summer of 2014, she had a major bipolar meltdown, and we went to California on this journey because the universe told her that she needed to go to Baja, right? And I had just caught her doing meth and needed to get her away from the drug dealer. And by the way, her father ended up moving to Oregon. She moved him to Oregon, and her father is the one that introduced her to this meth dealer, real father of the year, let me tell you. And so we, I mean, this story, Mark, is crazy. Michelle’s mother ended up killing herself at 50 years old, and Michelle called her father to tell him, and he said, well, if you don’t help me out of my situation, I’ll kill myself too the next day. So, like, that’s the quality that she was born from. She never stood a chance, you know, from the get-go. And anyway, when we were in California, and after I caught her doing meth, you know it just it blew me away that she could she could not ever get away from addiction because her parents had set her on this path from such an early age
Dr. Mark Leeds [18:33] Yeah I can’t even imagine like how someone could I mean one thing that keeps people in you know and check with addiction is when the parents are disapproving and saying you need to get help and you know maybe pointing them in the right direction it’s hard to imagine how to do that when your own parents are going along with it and not only enabling but actually basically using and giving you the drugs
Randall Scott White [18:55] Yeah it’s it was he’s still he’s still alive her father but you know, so the summer of 2014 is when Michelle went just absolutely insane. And I ended up taking our daughter back to Portland when things just fell apart in California. And, you know, when Michelle crashed from that mania and ended up coming back to Oregon, And, you know, she did go to some Narcotics Anonymous because I was divorcing her. I told her, no, we’re getting a divorce because at this point it was no longer about Michelle and I. It was about protecting my daughter so that she would not fall into that same pattern. And ultimately, that’s why Michelle took her own life. In her suicide letter, she told our daughter, you’re better you’re better off without me because I will only damage you and I love you too much for that so I’m I am leaving to protect you’re in your daddy’s care he’s awesome you’re gonna be fine kid and you know she did not want to happen to our daughter to what happened to her
Dr. Mark Leeds [20:18] Did she overdose on pills or I mean how did how did she
Randall Scott White [20:20] So Michelle Adele left our family again in the summer of 2015. What happened was we reconciled after the California incident and went to get her help, and she was finally willing to get help. Again, through all this, nobody diagnosed her bipolar, by the way. And she got a job nursing again at a place called the Oregon Clinic and then she started going into mania and she told her boss and when she was going crazy, and this is all in the film, I noticed I couldn’t, I was just telling her, you’re going nuts again. What is going on? And I finally, like, the, I would, I had done some research on the Internet, and it just clicked for me. Like, reading about it clicked for me. I was like, oh, my God, this, you are bipolar. Look, look at this. And it fit her to a T, the description on WebMD and other places. And I said, this is you. And she said, yeah, I guess I’m bipolar. And she went and told her boss at work the next day, I’m bipolar, and they fired her. And I think that triggered her because, you know, that was an illegal move. Then they tried to unfire her and told her, oh, okay, well, we’re not actually going to fire you. We’ll accommodate you. But by that time, she had already, like something snapped in her, and I think that triggered her. And she left our family and went off on some wild, abandoned hypersexuality drug trip with all sorts of different guys in the summer. And when she came down from that last mania and, of course, came back and said, I don’t remember doing these things that you’re telling me I did. I’m so sorry. I don’t know how I ended up where I’m at. And I told her, you know, you can’t come home this time. We are divorcing. I’ve got to protect our daughter. And I think that’s when she knew she was at the end of the road, and so she was staying with some guy, and he left to go to the store. And she locked herself in a room of his house, put a plastic bag over her head and butaned out.
Dr. Mark Leeds [23:03] She did go to the hospital, right? I guess there’s a scene in the movie where you get the phone call to go to the hospital and you want to know if it’s time for you to go and say goodbye to her.
Randall Scott White [23:13] Well, what happened was the guy came home and found her unconscious and they tried to revive her on the scene. And I didn’t get a phone call that phone call that you saw in the trailer of the film is the moment where I hit record because I thought this is it. She had already been in the hospital for three days. And the reason they were notifying me as her husband is because her father and this guy that she was staying with were there and they wanted her moved to a different hospital. And they said, well, you don’t have that authority to do it. That would be her husband. And so she was already on life support machines for three days by the time I got that phone call. And that scene of the film is the hospital lawyer calling me saying, hey, you need to come down here. Your wife’s pretty much dead. But, you know, her body’s still alive if you want to say goodbye. And so you know it was a surprise but it wasn’t a complete surprise because I saw the trajectory coming it just hurt like hell to actually get the call
Dr. Mark Leeds [24:26] There was a scene it looks like I think you’re in a carnival on swings and she says I’ll do whatever it takes I’ll go to a clinic I want to get help. I don’t want to feel manic or depressed anymore.
Randall Scott White [24:38] Yeah. So that was the summer of 2015 when she left, that was the day that she had $6,000 worth of furniture delivered, right? She just disappears. And three days later walks back through the door and I ask her, do you have a lover? And she says, yes, he’s 22 and I love him. Oh God. You know? And so then, you know, she wipes a tear away from her eye and this is around Father’s Day. And I had, she had got me, tickets to see Morrissey because I’m big Smiths and Morrissey And he had come to Oregon, and I had a Father’s Day suite at this place, this hotel, really nice hotel. So I had tickets to see Morrissey, and she said, so do you want to go see Morrissey now? You know, like, okay, so you should just accept that I have a 22-year-old lover. Let’s go to this concert. And I told her to get bent and went to the concert. And I’m just watching for the first time ever this musician who I’ve always loved his music and I just couldn’t, I couldn’t, four songs in, I’m still just like, what is going on in my life? My whole life just ended because I can’t believe this is happening to me. And I get a text on my phone and she says, room six. From Michelle’s phone. I said, oh, man, she’s here. So I go to the hotel room, room six, and, you know, the bed’s already tussled up, and she’s like, I’ve got your cologne and all your stuff, and we’ll have a great time. I was like, you’ve already had somebody in this room. You’re nuts. Like, get out of here. So I leave, and I go home. And, you know, at 3 in the morning, I’m just pacing back and forth, and I thought, I know who’s in that hotel room with her right now. So I drove back out and I walk up to the front desk gal and I say, excuse me, can I get a room for key six, please? And she goes, oh, well, we’ve been specifically instructed to not give you a key to that room. I said, well, my wife’s in there with another man. Excuse me. And I went and I banged on the door of the room and had a water in my hand and Michelle opens the door and there’s this guy, this like 22-year-old guy. And so I rush him and put him against the wall and I tell him, you know, I tell Michelle, I said, Michelle, it’s either him or me. And she says, him. And, you know, I just let the guy go. And I’m like, well, that’s that. And so I sit there all night long and I tell him you touch my wife and I put my fist through your fucking skull got it and so he didn’t do anything and then the next morning we drop drop doofus off and I bring home Michelle and that’s when I hit record and I said let’s talk and that scene what you’re referring to is when that recording happened is after this hotel room incident where she’s saying yeah I’m I am certifiably nuts I am mentally ill I want to get help this isn’t fun for me you think that you think that I just need to go out and be promiscuous and fuck all these guys. I thought, this is not fun for me, but, you know, I don’t want to kill myself and I don’t want to be manic, but if out of the two I’m going to, you know, I prefer mania, but I need help. I’m sick. And so, you know, I don’t think that it was just that she wanted to go out and cheat on me because she didn’t like me. That’s not what it was about. So as she aged, the disease got worse and worse and worse.
Dr. Mark Leeds [29:10] Do you feel like maybe the drug and alcohol use might have been self-medicating, you know, her trying to treat the bipolar condition?
Randall Scott White [29:20] Absolutely. She was smoking pot specifically saying, I’m self-medicating. Where when she started going into mania again, I didn’t even believe her. I was like, you’re back on meth. She’s like, no, I’m not. And I drug tested her, and it only came up from marijuana. So her mania kicked in where chemicals started firing off in the way they do in a bipolar brain that her mania just came back with a vengeance. And it’s an awful disease.
Dr. Mark Leeds [30:00] Now on your website you list, and this would be helpful to somebody who’s not sure if maybe they’re dealing with something similar with a loved one, a family member, you list some of the things to look for in the mania and in the depression. Feeling unusually happy, intense, like you’re on drugs, and that would be even without any drug use. The person might feel like they’re on drugs. You know, yeah, the first three here look, you know, looks like, actually all of them kind of look like, you know, someone on amphetamines or meth. You know, it looks like you might be describing that person. But a person who has bipolar with mania, they would have all these symptoms of being on speed without actually being on drugs at all.
Randall Scott White [30:46] Absolutely. And now when you enter meth into the mix, then it just goes into hyperdrive.
Dr. Mark Leeds [30:53] Yeah, and that, I mean, by itself, I mean, methamphetamine is by itself an extremely difficult addiction to overcome. I mean, just taking someone who has no other problem at all other than an addiction to methamphetamine, that by itself is extremely, I mean, especially introduced as a child at 13 years old. And that’s extremely difficult. I mean, you know, maybe, you know, you see some people in recovery that they got clean early on and stuck with it and had to dedicate their entire lives to a life of recovery. You know, but trying to get through life and just deal with that, I mean, that’s extremely difficult.
Randall Scott White [31:31] It was when I met michelle the first night that we met she told me I come from a crazy family and I didn’t appreciate just what that meant when she told me my grandmother one of them was bipolar the other had schizophrenia and so I think michelle might have had schizo affect a schizoaffective disorder which is you know a double whammy and so her her upbringing and what I want to talk about in this film and I hope people come away with is that it is both part nature and nurture and you may not be able to tackle the nature other than with the right medication mix, but Nurture, if I can help influence parents to not mess up their kids, then I hope that if I can help some parents straighten up their act now, that this film will help save future generations, future crop of new humans who could end up with bipolar symptoms because of the kinds of influence from their environment. I feel horrible for what kind of upbringing my wife had to go through. And she’s an amazing human and overcame so much from that, from having two awful parents, no family support, no siblings. And for her to rise to such heights as to be the basically valedictorian of one of the nation’s toughest nursing schools, she was an amazing person.
Dr. Mark Leeds [33:29] To have started out that way in childhood with the drug use and then go to nursing school and be a top student, she had the possibility, the potential to do anything in life, but it’s difficult. What would you recommend to someone? Say someone’s in your situation, a loved one, a husband or a wife, is acting, maybe has a lot of these symptoms of mania, alternating with depression. What would you recommend to them?
Randall Scott White [34:02] Well, there’s two parts to the recommendation. One is some part of all these support groups, social media now, you know, Facebook, and there’s these groups that are, you know, spouses of bipolar group, right? And they’ll go on there and tattle, you know, this is what my spouse did tonight. I can’t know. I don’t know if I could take it much longer. They’re aware that their spouse is bipolar. And so, you know, they’ll go get advice from other people who have a bipolar spouse, because there’s an understanding there. They’re part of a club of, oh, man, did we get screwed. Our partner’s bipolar. But they’re aware of it. Then there are the spouses who are unaware that their husband or wife is bipolar. And, you know, they just think that they’re an addict or that they’re a cheater or a variety of the symptoms of the disease. And I think that for people who are actually suffering from bipolar but that they don’t know it yet or that they don’t recognize it yet, any one of those situations, what I want people to get out of the film is to kick open the conversation on this disease because what that’s doing is it’s kicking open a conversation on sexual abuse as children being an influencer to this disease because that’s what happened to Michelle. Her mother was 17 when she had Michelle, and she ended up working as a cocktail waitress at bars and would bring home all these different guys and then leave her 5- or 6-year-old daughter with them after she had met these guys, and ultimately Michelle ended up getting sexually molested by her mother’s boyfriends. That impacted her. The aspect of drugs and the addiction that impacts families the medical side of this and getting medical help that so there’s so many conversations the sexuality aspect of this of there’s so many taboo things that don’t get discussed in this country or that I don’t think have been appropriately addressed in a manner where with this film, A Fine Wife, I plan to kick open the door on all sorts of conversations that I hope families will have and act on to really ultimately protect kids. Because if you can protect a generation of kids all at once through awareness and education, like I intend to help do with this film, then you have a real shot at breaking this epidemic.
Dr. Mark Leeds [37:01] It’s important to get the word out. In fact, the first podcast I did was with an author of a children’s book. Her book was called Dad’s Addiction, and it was, for example, a mother who could read this book to her child and help educate the child on what does it mean that her father is addicted and out there and not part of the family anymore and acting unusual. And the main purpose of the book is not only to explain what is addiction to the child, but mainly to help the child know that you can’t control anyone’s behavior other than your own. And in thinking that you can, that can lead to codependency later in life. You know, a child thinks that they’re causing the addiction, they’re causing their parent to be out there, you know, doing what they’re doing. And maybe if they clean up their room or they behave or they do something, that they might be able to get their parent back again and, you know, acting normal again. And the child needs to know that they have no control over what’s happening and you don’t want them to grow up thinking that they can control other people’s behavior by acting in a certain way.
Randall Scott White [38:01] Yeah, and that was my challenge is when Michelle and I met, I told her before we got married, I never want kids. I know myself, I want to be a rock and roll star. I’m going to be on tour in Japan. That was my thinking. And she said, yeah, totally. I don’t want kids either. And we ended up getting married. And then several years into our marriage, you know, as a woman is want to do when her biology kicks in, she said, I want a kid. Well, I don’t want a kid. And she said, well, I want a kid. You know, what’s a husband to do? So we had a child and she is the light of my life. And when Michelle’s behaviors got out of hand, it was my job to protect our daughter as best I could. And so part of the film is also that, you know, trying to show how I was trying to. There’s a there’s a film called Life is Beautiful about this dad and his kid. They end up getting sent to a concentration camp. And his dad, this little kid’s father, convinced this child that it’s a game and was always trying to keep his spirits lifted, even while awful things are happening around them. And I took that attitude of, like, I’ve got to let this kid live as innocent as a childhood as possible so that she doesn’t turn out like our mother. And so it was different after our child was born. And that’s when I had to get my act together. And it wasn’t about partying anymore. It wasn’t about me any longer. And Michelle was never able to realize it wasn’t about her any longer until the very end.
Dr. Mark Leeds [39:54] Mental illness and addiction, I mean, you can’t even say that was because she didn’t love her daughter. Obviously, she loved her daughter. But the power of addiction and mental illness is so strong that it just takes over everything.
Randall Scott White [40:08] You know, when I caught Michelle doing meth in the spring of 2014, she was looking awful, and even my parents told me she’s doing meth. I said, no way. I would know it. I would have caught her, and I felt like a fool. I caught her, and I said, how long have you been doing meth? And she was justifying it as if she was able to handle it. She’s like, you see people doing meth walking around on the street and they’re looking all like, well, and I get that. But that’s if meth is doing you. But meth isn’t doing me. I’m doing it. And she thought she was bigger than the drug. And in the end, she finally admitted, no, it is bigger than me. I have been defeated. I can’t control this. And that’s why I’m suiciding is because I can’t control this. And so you’re better off with me gone than, you know, impacting your life. And, you know, I’m still building this film. And, you know, I haven’t made the end of it yet. But it will include that letter so that Michelle’s words, her parting words, will be heard by everyone. And ultimately, my goal of the film is not to bastardize my wife or to point and say, look at how awful this person was. It’s for people to understand her and forgive her. Because I don’t believe that Michelle could help herself. She was not a bad person. She was a wonderful person.
Dr. Mark Leeds [41:58] And you even say on your website the objectives of the film are to help bipolar sufferers and families understand the devastating impacts of mental illness, addiction, and suicide, to show real-world examples of bipolar disorder, tackle social stigmas and taboos associated with such a life-altering mental disease, and to be educational and inspirational resource for those seeking understanding of mental diseases and the root causes. So you want her, I mean, what she went through to mean something and to be something that can help a lot of other people in the world. Now, you said you had been talking to Netflix, and it may still be a possibility that this could be a documentary on Netflix?
Randall Scott White [42:44] Well they want a finished product to license the discussions I have a producer friend who wanted to get involved with the film that has contacts there and you know they wanted a finished product well the whole point to going to Netflix was to ask for money to help develop the film so at this point I’m doing everything on my own and working on the film as I can. And it’s about, I want to say, 60% finished. And, you know, if I had funding, I would be able to dedicate much more time to it. But, you know, it’s when I have the opportunity now while working a job. And, you know, there’s no support for me with this film either, so I very much appreciate you taking interest in it, Mark. It’s an important film that, in the end, I hope, even on a low budget, no budget, when I launch it, I will put money into the ad campaigns, and it will cost money to fly to festivals. But right now, it’s all going to be out of pocket. But perhaps when I do have a completed project, maybe Netflix would license it at that point. But they want to see some awards. They want to see that people, you know, will this thing be worthy of putting on their valuable network? I get that.
Dr. Mark Leeds [44:18] It seems like something perfect to be on Netflix. I mean, you know, I’ve watched a lot of documentaries, and it seems like something that should be there.
Randall Scott White [44:27] Well, I would hope so. Thank you. I want it to be, you know, from like the sample clips that you’ve seen, that gives you the feel for what the whole thing will be like. And, you know, I have a lot of footage. And I was with this woman for 13 years. And, you know, I wasn’t rolling tape on a phone when we first met because the iPhone didn’t even exist then. You know, we’re still talking about handheld camcorders. Remember those things?
Dr. Mark Leeds [45:04] Oh, yeah. Well, just pre-iPhone, they had some pretty good quality digital recorders in that, like, early 2000s.
Randall Scott White [45:11] Yeah, I mean, we’re – but unfortunately, or fortunately, depending, like, we had a – we didn’t have a digital one. It was one of the ones using tapes. But, you know, the quality of the footage digitally transfers. And I build in the film, in the beginning, I talk about how we met. And, you know, I have to build up the story of us because we were absolutely in love and best friends. And this was a disease that manifested years into our marriage. And it really kicked in after Michelle’s mother committed suicide. And speaking of suicide, you know, the first one that happened was my brother Chris. Shortly after Michelle and I were married, we got married in 2004. And in 2005, my brother Chris, who was in the military, he was the crew chief for Tommy Franks. Tommy Franks was the highest-ranking military officer in America. He was the leader of CENTCOM, and he invaded Iraq. And my brother took care of his airplane. So, you know, you had Cheney and Bush and Rumsfeld and all of them on this guy’s airplane, this general. And Chris saw a whole lot of things and I asked him shortly before he killed himself, what are you doing over there in the Middle East? He was in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, every stand. And he said, you know, Randall, or Randy, call me Randy, said all I know is one week that we’re shooting at some guys, The week after, those same guys we were shooting at are the ones we’re building a runway with. I don’t ask questions anymore. And then Michelle’s mother committing suicide. And then my guitarist in my band and one of my best friends killed himself. And then my wife. So I’ve lost four people. Michelle’s mother and I weren’t close. But I’ve lost four people to suicide. And it messes with you can’t ever go back from that. And so my life is about taking these dark moments and trying to learn from them and turn them into light as best I can. And, you know, people who haven’t been impacted by suicide, it’s just a word to them or it’s something they can make jokes about. And I even have a dark sense of humor myself. You know, I try to laugh about things, and if I bit it, I’m sure I would be laughing right alongside somebody else the next day if they’re cracking jokes, but it’s not a funny thing. It’s serious. People need help. The impacts and the craters left behind when you take your own life on the people you’ve left behind, you may be out of pain, but you’ve actually caused a whole lot of pain to a lot of other people. So another goal of this film is if somebody is thinking about suicide, that they wouldn’t do it.
Dr. Mark Leeds [48:42] Now, when you talk about what happened with him in the Middle East, we talked about a few different mental and psychiatric conditions. PTSD sounds like another common one that Michelle had really suffered through a lot of traumatic events as a child. And, you know, it’s a similar thing, you know, going through that extreme trauma and the PTSD aspect of it is something that, you know, left untreated and unaddressed can, you know, I’m sure lead to severe depression and suicidal ideations.
Randall Scott White [49:17] Oh, yeah. I mean, her her schizophrenic grandmother tried to smother her with a pillow when she was five and she was nearly killed at a young age by one of her own family members. Because Michelle’s mother had left her with her grandmother, who was also mentally ill. So, yeah, she had PTSD in all sorts of forms, I’m sure.
Dr. Mark Leeds [49:42] Also, another thing is I’m hoping that some listeners who might complain about their childhood might have some gratitude and think back, well, it really wasn’t all that bad, considering what Michelle and other people have gone through.
Randall Scott White [49:56] Yeah, and her story is just one flavor of this disease. And, you know, we have our own unique happenings. But what everybody’s variables to their own story it comes down to is that this is a big problem. And it’s not openly discussed in this country enough. Like, you know, supposedly the opioid crisis and national emergency that was supposed to be tackled, well, that’s just PR. You know, there’s no opioid task force that’s well known. It’s not just about opioids. It’s about, I think, historical family illness where you can’t just look at the fact that somebody’s popping Oxy as that’s their – well, there’s so many factors involved with what led up to that point, that need addressing. So you can’t just tackle it by saying we’re going to increase incarceration or let the cops handle it. Like police officers are ill-equipped to deal with an entire generation of mental illness when they show up and they don’t know all of what they’re dealing with people. So there’s a lot of things I’m actively looking to tackle in about a two-hour film. Wish me luck.
Dr. Mark Leeds [51:36] Yeah, yeah, definitely. It looks great so far. I was going to ask you, if somebody listening right now or maybe reading the description of this show on the podcast site, how can they help financially? Do you have a funding campaign going on, or is there a place where people can go to donate?
Randall Scott White [51:52] Well, on the website, by the time this broadcast is going, it should be at afinewife.com. And I do have a donate button. You know, I don’t even know what I would do with that other than put it in a bank account for the film that would go towards promotion when it’s ready for release. I mean, that’s ultimately what the money costs are for the business plan side of this is there are festivals that I want to apply to that will require travel costs. There are promotional aspects to the film to be able to do targeted campaigns. Pains. So really the business costs of the film are an important part of the success that will need to take place. But as far as what I would do with the money right now, it doesn’t matter. It’s about me just having the time to build this thing out. And as you can see so far, The way I’m doing it is what you’ve seen, and it really would blow me away if people did want to help. And I would be happy to put a credit in the film for anybody that does. You know, at the end of it, you know, we’d like to thank the support of and show their name. But I don’t have like a Kickstarter where there’s t-shirts or anything like that where for different levels of donations.
Dr. Mark Leeds [53:39] Yeah, yeah, I was just about to ask you that because I’ve seen a few things come by, I guess, in my email and online about Kickstarter campaigns for films. It seems, you know, some of them, it looks like they’ve raised a lot of money for various films. I’m not sure how that whole process works.
Randall Scott White [53:56] You know what? If I were to do a campaign like that or an Indiegogo, if you will, I want the film to be finished so I can make a really powerful trailer. The trailer that you saw was just when I had the idea of putting a film together. I want to cut another trailer once the actual film is done. And then at that point put together a campaign. But it would just be to raise funds for not making the movie, but to release it appropriately and support it so that as many people as possible would be able to see this.
Dr. Mark Leeds [54:45] This film is a really powerful film. It was really incredible to see what I’ve seen of it so far. And I’m really looking forward to seeing it and I hope that everybody listening to this will go look at the trailer and this show will be up indefinitely long term. By the time you hear this show, the film may be out. You may be able to go out and see it in a theater or online, Netflix or somewhere. But I hope everybody goes out and looks at this film and learns more about it and spreads the word about mental illness, bipolar disorder, addiction, suicide. And I really want to thank you for coming on and talking about this, about all these different topics on the podcast. Thank you for joining me.
Randall Scott White [55:35] Mark, thank you for being my first interview about it. I very much appreciate you taking an interest in this, and I’m quite thankful that we were able to have this conversation.
Dr. Mark Leeds [55:50] Thank you for joining us today on the rehab on the mental health news radio network I hope that you have found this show to be interesting and useful if so please subscribe to the rehab podcast and share on social media I appreciate your taking the time to listen to the rehab Thank you.
