Thriving with Bipolar - A Conversation with Writer/Director Paul Dalio

Paul Dalio wrote and directed "Touched with Fire," a film exploring the passionate romance of two poets living with bipolar, based on his own experience living with the condition.
At a David Lynch Foundation-hosted screening of the film, Paul opened up about his own struggles with bipolar and how pivotal the practice of Transcendental Meditation has proved to be in living a happy, healthy, and creatively-rich life. He says, "TM is the difference between surviving with bipolar and thriving with bipolar."
"I never stopped meditating, without fail," he says. "That's when my doctor, Norman Rosenthal, witnessed the power of TM and was so blown away he decided to do a study on the effects of TM."
Paul spoke about his inspiration behind creating the film. "I wanted for people sitting in the hospital chair to hear how Van Gogh conceived the most beloved image of the sky that humanity holds dear because of what he experienced when he was looking outside his sanitarium window," he says. "If he gave humanity its most beloved sky, this cannot simply be defined as a human defect, human illness, human disorder."
Paul also shed light into the struggles of people living with bipolar to stay on medication. "If you could imagine feeling nothing - feeling numb - imagine missing feeling sad. It's the only thing worst than pain. Imagine a relative of your's dies who you love so much, and you can't even feel it - which is what happened to me - because of the medication," he says. "And this is why people can't fathom why so many people go off the medication and fall into the one in four suicide statistic. Or, they can't fathom that these people who are by nature meant to feel life deeply are meant to give up life and wait for death."