Bipolar General: A Combat Leader’s Journey from Undiagnosed Disorder to Sustained Wellness with Maj. Gen. Gregg Martin

Transcript

Absolutely. I I've been really looking forward to this this episode. It's a for for multiple reasons. We've got the the mill the army, background in in, that we share, you you did a couple more years in the army than I did. That that's a joke. Maybe a couple more two or three more decades. But, so I know you have a very storied career in the army, which I'm excited to chat a little bit about, And, obviously, you you you, since we already mentioned, a little bit, we're we're gonna focus someone a lot on your, on the your background as far as your mental health and which is something I've really been wanting to talk about a lot more on this on this show. Just mental health in general, mental health, for entrepreneurs, specifically. It is such a such an important topic and, unfortunately, in in our own home, we've had had some some real serious issues recently. And so won't go into too much detail on that. At least not on this episode, but it's like I said, unfortunately, has kinda come front and center for our family. And, this year specifically. So, selfishly, unselfishly, whatever you wanna say, it it's something that I'm very much interested in more so than I was a year ago. And it's amazing how how little we actually know about about the whole topic, but, I imagine you're compared to me, quite an expert on it. So I can't wait to dive in. So I appreciate you being vulnerable and willing to to put your your story out out there like you are. I know you have the book coming out, which we're gonna talk about. So Greg, I'll stop rambling. Who are who are you and what are you up to today?

Speaker 2

So I am, Greg Martin, PhD retired two star general from the army. I have a bipolar brain. I've lived on the bipolar spectrum pretty much my whole life, even though the real official onset wasn't until two thousand and three in Iraq. I had decades of, you know, terrifically successful service I then went through a mental health bipolar crisis. I I began my recovery journey seven years ago. And, basically rebuilt my life and my new life mission, over this past seven years, has become sharing my bipolar story to help stop the stigma, promote recovery, and save lives. And so that's what I do. I do it through, writing. Jamie just mentioned I've got a a new book that's coming out. So I do it through writing. I've published about twenty five articles I've given probably close to a hundred talks and presentations and interviews and podcasts, and I confer with lots of different people on the subject of mental health, resiliency, bipolar disorder. So that's what I do. And that's who I am.

Speaker 0

No. I appreciate that. And and the book is called bipolar general, my forever war with mental illness. And I guess it's in collaboration with the association of the the US army. We'll get into the book a little bit more later for sure. And before we jump into your your backstory with regard to, you know, primarily the adversity that you've faced on the mental health side, Can you share from a, you know, military background standpoint a couple of the highlights from your military career for us?

Speaker 2

Yeah. Well, first off, I I started my career going to West Point and was graduated near the top of my class. Once I got out, I went I graduated from Army Ranger School, and then I went to Germany as a platoon leader in charge of about thirty soldiers And my branch was engineers. So I had we did combat engineer missions. And then I loved it. I loved leading soldiers, taking care of them, working with them. Loved the mission, exciting, dangerous, important, and then I went on to become a company commander. And then along the way, I ran seven marathons in under three hours. And then the army sent me to grad school where I got two masters in a PhD which, you know, that work level and creativity level was reflective of a bipolar brain. You know, I had a low level of mania which they call hyperthymia, which gave me, an a near continuous level of lobania resulting in excess energy, drive, enthusiasm, problem solving skills. From there, I just kept serving in the army. They, you know, each time I had a chance to get out and go do something else, the army would give me a great assignment schooling, something I really wanted to do. So before you know it, I had over thirty years in the army. And, the highlight of that time. You know, I got all top ratings. Also got married, three kids. But, the highlight was the Iraq war where I was a brigade commander in charge of thousands of combat engineer troops. We deployed from Germany to Kuwait attacked on to Baghdad, and then spent a year fighting, fighting, really a guerilla warfare inside of Iraq. So that was really the highlight of my career. I did seven different jobs as a general officer culminating in being the president of National Defense University.

Speaker 0

Wow. It's a there's a lot. That's that's thank, you know, thank you for your service. Of course, then that that is quite a bit of, impressive service for sure. So you were in Iraq in two thousand three to two thousand four. Is that what

Speaker 2

Yes.

Speaker 0

And it was. Gotcha. Got it. Yeah. I I was there from two thousand five to two thousand six. And, you know, not that any of it is really funny per se, but I joke that things started to get worse when our team left in mid two thousand six. And that's, you know, You do the math on why things got worse. No. I'm I'm kidding. But, yeah, absolutely. Certainly, agreello warfare, very asymmetrical and didn't necessarily go with the way we'd hoped, you know, it certainly wasn't an easy easy undertaking for sure, very complicated. But, thank you for your service. So, let's jump back into your back story even more, and and on more on the personal and mental health side, where do you wanna start? I know you said the last seven years of kind of have been a different almost a different phase of your life in a new mission. So imagine we wanna start before that. Where would you like to start?

Speaker 2

How about just start as a teenager? And I'll I'll kinda go quickly through the early years.

Speaker 0

Yeah.

Speaker 2

So like I said earlier, I have had a bipolar brain, meaning that the genetic position for bipolar disorder resided in my the wiring of my brain, probably since teenage years on. Looking back with expert psychiatrists, we believe now that I had this condition called hyperthermia. Which is a mood type, which is very enthusiastic, very energetic, and so forth. And that gave me an added boost and enhanced my natural talents and performance all the way from teenage years you know, through high school, West Point, through the army, and it was a benefit. It helped me until it went too high. And the point at which it went too high was during the Iraq war, the, you know, the intense, thrilled euphoria stress trauma of that experience triggered unknowingly my bipolar disorder, which, again, I had a genetic predisposition for. So in two thousand three, I went into mania, but it was a high functioning, not extremely high level, Romania. And I felt like Superman, my performance went up I was I felt better than I had ever felt in my life, and that went on for the whole year in Iraq. But when I came home to Germany, I fell into depression. And was in depression for almost a year. And, and that was all in two thousand three, two thousand and four. All over the next from two thousand and three, which was onset of bipolar disorder through two thousand and fourteen where it went really acute. My bipolar disorder was unknown, undetected, unrecognized, undiagnosed. But I started going into higher highs of mania lower lows of depression. And the the cycle start get kept getting higher and lower, higher and lower until By two thousand fourteen, I went into full blown mania where I essentially lost my mind and went into a state of madness. At that point, my boss, who was the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, when I was the president of National Defense University, made the decision He needed to pull me out of the presidency of the school, both for the good of the school and my own personal health. So he he did. I actually got a, a call on a Friday afternoon, and it said report to the chairman's office on Monday morning at ten o'clock. And I didn't know because I was so manic. I didn't know if I was gonna get promoted or fired. I did know there had been a lot of, you know, sort of anonymous complaints against me saying that my behavior and my judgment were over the top, out of control, reckless in beginning to hurt the university, and a lot of people had lost confidence in me. So when I went in to see the chairman, first person I saw was the lawyer. I said, whoa, no promotion today because now the lawyers in his office, that's a bad sign. And, and the chairman, came washed the room, gave me a big hug said, Greg. I love you like a brother. I give you an a plus for your work at Ndu, but your time is over. You have until five PM today to resign or I'll fire you. And so I resigned that day because it's much better resign on your own than to actually get relieved or fired, which can have all kinds of negative implications. And then he said, and oh, by the way, I'm ordering you to go get a mental health exam, at Walter Reed. And so I did I got the I got the medical exam that week, and the doctor said you're fit for duty. There's nothing wrong with you. You're you're in great health, but they were completely wrong. And there's a number of reasons they they got it so wrong. Number one, they didn't cross check with between the medical people and my chain of command they didn't communicate and share information. Because if they had a diagnosis of bipolar disorder would have been fairly easy. The the second reason is that success in any job masks the underlying condition of bipolar disorder. So because I was a two star general, because I had been so successful, that masked the fact that I was mentally ill. And so that was, so they got it wrong. And then when they gave that clean bill of health, my chain of command said, we don't believe it. Let's do a redo. So I did two more redos And, all of them came back saying you're perfectly healthy. And by the way, during the previous, ten years.

Speaker 0

Mhmm.

Speaker 2

I had gone in three different times for depression, which is much easier to detect and spot and diagnosed. Three times I went in for depression, and they said you're fine. There's nothing wrong with you, but they were wrong on those three times as well because the impression was the low end of my bipolar cycle.

Speaker 0

Mhmm. So So and these were all I'm sorry. These were all military doctors. I I'm not trying to put the military doctors down, but that that's what you were seeing.

Speaker 2

All military, one was uniformed, two were civilians.

Speaker 0

Gotcha. Yeah. I just, and again, this we won't make this episode about me or my family, but I on some level, we all know that the the so that certainly, the civilian, medical health, men medical community, I should say, is very much disjointed and and and there's just a really poor communication among different departments, even in one hospital, let alone multiple hospitals or or, like you said, your your, professional occupation and that that organization talking to the doctors and vice versa, such a lack of communication and and, I I can just say from firsthand experience recently, it's it's just been very obvious that the unfortunately, the patient is the one more times than not who's kinda left with that responsibility of kind of connecting the dots, if you will. And if you're going through a mental mental health if if you have that underlying condition and you're going through a major mental health crisis, how are you supposed to be able to to make those connections? But, okay. So So twenty fourteen so basically three times, essentially at least six times you'd been told that you're you were fine. Mentally, there was no issue. Is that right?

Speaker 2

Yes.

Speaker 0

Gotcha. And then so you do you go back what what do you do then? You can't you were already resigned. So professionally, what are your next steps?

Speaker 2

So I was forced to resign earlier than I had planned. Mhmm. And they put me back from the joint staff into the army And I was given a kind of a soft landing job with the army corps of engineers, which is pretty typical for when when general officers get fired, they are either they're they retire immediately within thirty days where they're often given a choice of taking a kind of a landing job that they can then get ready to retire, do all their medical stuff get all the logistics squared away, you know, try to plan for their housing and so forth. So I got a job like that with the corps of engineers, and it was good. I did some pretty good work there. But what happened was from July of twenty fourteen, when I got removed from command, I spiraled downward. And by November, I had fallen and crashed into hopeless, dark, deep crippling depression with terrifying psychosis. And so I went back into the doctors and said, Hey, there's really something wrong with me. And at that point, they were able to diagnose me with bipolar disorder. And from that point on, I was incapable of working or doing pretty much anything They tried a bunch of different medications. None of them worked. They just made me sleepy. I I retired a few months later, moved up to New Hampshire where we had a home. And went from bad to worse. By the way, there was no continuity of care. So the the military medical system just basically dumped me into the civilian world And I was in such a bad mental state. I had no ability to navigate the medical system, and my wife was trying to move. So it was it was pretty bad. And, I got I would say I got worse over the next year, year and a half. And I spent about two years in bipolar hell where I could barely function terrifying psychosis, which I can talk about, which led to suicidal ideations, and then the depression so crippling that could, you know, barely do anything. Ultimately got hospitalized in the VA and spent, two weeks in the inpatient psych ward and then four more weeks living in the VA hospital in a dorm room. And, and the the VA did, I think, did a very good job, but they They still didn't really get me on the path of recovery. That didn't happen until, about six months later, when I was prescribed lithium, which was the miracle cure for me. I basically and it was, seven years ago, I went from terrible depression. The depression vanished in about three days. Terrible psychosis, it vanished, and I never went back into mania. So the lithium was really my saving grace. And we moved to Florida for the bright, warm sunshine. And then that really began my journey of recovery, which I've now been on for seven years.

Speaker 0

That's fantastic. I well, the recovery in sunshine is fantastic. It's not fantastic that you've had to go through all of this, but, Yes. Am I we I I can relate, with with a good bit of that. Not not saying I've personally been through what you've been through, but you know, close family members, spent a lot of two different iterations in in the two different, psych facilities in inpatient this year. And you're you're dealing with the emergency, you know, department for a week until a bed opens up and inpatient bed opens up. And then you're absolutely right that you think well, you know, we're thinking, okay, the goal is to get this person healthy again. Really, it's just the beginning, and and and really the goal in the inpatient facility, at least from my experience, is just to get things kinda stabilized. Right? And so less of an emergency slash, you know, make make sure everybody's safe. Right? But there's not a whole lot of recovery going on there. And it's interesting. You you mentioned the sunshine though because we had two different experiences. One, in a hospital that was, very little sunshine, very few windows. And it was just depressing to even be in there. Right? And so how is this person going to recover in this facility that's depressing to be in. The second iteration we were actually in in more of a sun filled environment. And, There was a lot more progress made. So that's the and that's, you know, I've I've been learning a lot more about this stuff this year. Personally, and I'd love for you to correct me where I'm wrong or chime in. Personally, I'm I'm coming to understand that everything is connected and and meaning physical health, mental health, even spiritual health, It's all connected. There's a book I read. It's called Brain Energy. It's from a HarvardMD. His thesis he didn't come up with us, but the the thesis that he's presenting or or putting out there is that it's all all comes down to mitochondria. And On some level, it's a mitochondrial dysfunction, whether we're talking about bipolar disorder or diabetes, it all comes down to the mitochondrion. So somewhere in there, it's all it's all connected. So we've been taking a very I guess holistic approach. Like, it sounds like you have been with regard to medication and all of the things that Everyone needs sunshine, good diet, exercise, like, whether you have a diagnosed mental condition or not, we all need that. And so, but that's that's fantastic. What what else, I mean, through the seven years, I mean, first off, the ten years prior just sound sounds I mean, it just sounds awful, and I'm I'm very sorry you had to go through that. Ten years is is no joke. But, from the seven years during your recovery, I guess, what what are some of the main lessons that you've learned?

Speaker 2

Yeah. That's a great question. First off, you have to get your brain chemistry balanced and in the correct, formula. And the way that worked for me is through medication. I know some people use you know, natural, herbal supplements and that kind of thing. If it works for you, great. It, you know, it didn't work for me. But these medications work. So lithium was the key supplemental by supplemented by the moto gene in lorazidone. So that has worked to stabilize my brain chemistry. So that's number one. Number two, I think therapy is critical because a trained therapist can help you think through these vexing problems and complexities you're dealing with in your life and help you to find new ways of thinking about how to deal with issues and challenges and problems. Third, which you mentioned, is healthy living, you know, which we all know. We all need that. So it's a good diet, exercise, plenty of sleep, low stress, plenty of water, all those tenets of healthy living. And those items that I just mentioned are necessary, but they're not sufficient for recovering. So to really recover, you have to take those attributes I just spoke of and anchor them into what I call the five ps. The foundation of the five ps, which are first people, you know, surround yourself with us Mhmm. A network in a circle of fun, happy, energetic friends.

Speaker 0

Yeah.

Speaker 2

Second, you have to have a purpose for your life. You have to have a mission that you wanna get up every day and pursue and and work on. And, you know, I already talked about my which is sharing my bipolar story. Thirdly, you wanna live in a place that's healthy for you. So if you love the mountains and you love to be in in the snow and ski, move somewhere where you'll be you'll have that. If you love the big city life where you can, you know, walk to the, you know, all those little stores, you know, live there. For me, we figured it out through research that and also our background that we really like, the sunshine, the warmth, palm trees, brightness. And so we moved to Florida. And it was a great decision. It's very healthy for me. And my wife loves it too. Number four on the piece is perseverance. You have to persevere. You cannot give up. And, you know, as you recover from mental health challenges or other challenges, you're gonna hit bumps in the road where your plan doesn't go as you expected. So you have to keep fighting. You have to pick yourself up. If you get knocked back one step, then get up and go two steps forward. And then fourth is what I call presence. And what presence means is the ability to think about your own thinking. A fancy name for that is metacognition. So all it means is we all think certain ways, and we have certain thoughts that are oftentimes wrong. They're often not correct. So how do you get out of your own head, examine your thinking objectively, and then move forward in a in a more positive healthy way. Just a quick example. You know, when I was really sick, I had terrible paranoid delusions that people were out to get me. They wanted to get me fired, put in jail, murdered, all this really bad stuff. And so sometimes I'll get little seedlings of those paranoid delusions, even today. But I'm able to step outside my own mind and say, wait a minute. It's not true. Those people are not plotting against me. In fact, they're not even thinking about me at all. Right. Something totally else.

Speaker 0

Yeah.

Speaker 2

And so that's how presence can help you. So those are the main main lessons learned.

Speaker 0

Yeah. That's those are fantastic. I wrote those down. People, purpose, place, perseverance, and presence. And the meta cognition is is a fancy word for presence or or for awareness of our own thinking. Right?

Speaker 2

It sounds

Speaker 0

like. So and and do you develop that presence through? I I know it's all related. Again, they're they're not all entirely compartmented. Five ps, if you will. But is it through people? Is it is it through therapy? How do you develop that that meta cognition or that awareness of your own thinking?

Speaker 2

Well, I actually wrote an article, about a year ago called the the four ps of mental recovery. It's in the psychiatric times. And it was a pretty good article. And one of my sons read it, and he said, Hey, you're missing a p. It should be present. So he kinda taught it to me. And so from then on, I included the fifth p presence. And I've talked about it to, my psychiatrist and my therapist and my wife who is, like, you know, really like a battle buddy. So we've talked about it in-depth. And then I talked to my friends. So all my friends know that I live with bipolar disorder, and I've told them Here are the basic symptoms of bipolar disorder. If you see me displaying these symptoms, let me know, let Maggie know, because I probably need to take some action. And so I've talked to a lot of them about presence too, and, they all agree. And so Yeah. You know, we have conversations about this stuff.

Speaker 0

Gotcha. That's great. I'm just so glad that, you know, the military I'm glad you're getting your story out there and and and, you know, I worked for the Department of Defense for fourteen years after I was, in the military. There was some overlap there as well, but you know, early on in my own career, which I know was later than the beginnings of your career. Department of Defense was not willing to talk about these issues. It was really it was just frowned upon to even discuss, and you'd probably just be kind of tossed to the the wayside. So I I I think it's fantastic that not only you're getting your story out there, but just that There's a larger conversation happening now. And I think it's more important than ever that we have these conversations, especially with frankly, what the the shutdown of the pandemic, the impact that had on a lot of people and especially, you know, social media with teenagers and So a lot of a lot of factors, I think, that have played into what I think is an increase in mental health health, issues that we're facing as a as a society. What have you noticed over? I I guess changes on a, I guess, macro scale over the last, say, thirty years with regard to the the discussion around mental health.

Speaker 2

I would say that it's come a long way, and it's become more normalized. And I'll I'll give you some examples. I think the Vietnam generation taught us all about PTSD. Which is a huge challenge and a and a huge issue. But prior to the Vietnam generation, I don't think people were aware of what PTSD was. And then when we hit the nine eleven wars, you know, Iraq, Afghanistan, I think the military and the civilian society already were pretty, pretty good about understanding PTSD. And I think we knew how to deal with it, and people were allowed to continue to serve. And there was a pretty open discussion about it. But it took a little while before you have the same results with depression, which is the most common mental illness. I mean, it's so many people are afflicted with depression.

Speaker 0

Mhmm.

Speaker 2

That took a little while. That took a number of years before the military. And I think civilian society, really came to grips with depression and and started, allowing people to continue in their jobs and continue in the military. And then in rapid succession, you went from PTSD in depression. To then, you had, traumatic brain injuries, which are not a mental illness, but they result in symptoms that are like mental illness. She had traumatic brain injuries. That took a while to kinda get get grips on. Then you had, moral injury, then you had survivors, guilt. And I I would say that bipolar disorder, is lagging behind. It's it's, you know, for years and years that if you had bipolar disorder, you would be medically boarded out of the military. What's interesting is now, just in the last several months, I've talked to half a dozen military people, both uniformed and civilian, who they, when they were coming up for, security clearance, they had to fill everything out. They put bipolar disorder type two, and they they were cleared for security clearances. So there's an understanding that, bipolar disorder type two should not be a crippling, service prohibiting condition.

Speaker 0

Sure.

Speaker 2

Bipolar disorder type one, which is what I have, which is, you know, more mania, which is the really dangerous condition with depression. That one is pretty much still your your medically boarded out of out of military. But I think we've come a pretty good way. We have a way to go. We've pushed a lot of the services for mental health down to lower and lower levels to where you now have mental health professionals in down at the battalion level. And and that's a battalion's about five hundred troops. So it's a pretty low tactical level. I mean, you never had that before. You didn't have mental health. It was way up at a big hospital. You know, above the division level.

Speaker 0

Right.

Speaker 2

So so that's a that's a good thing. They're the the service members are getting more and more training in what the basic symptoms of the most common mental illnesses, what they look like so they can spot it. And, you know, we have a a battle buddy system or peer support system. And so they're supposed to talk to each other if they notice problems. And then if they if there is a problem, they should go in and see a mental health professional, and it doesn't necessarily go in their official record. So you can you can get help and treatment at a low level, and it stays private without going up the chain of command. So I think there's some good things happening.

Speaker 0

Absolutely. No. That's a lot of progress. You just detailed. That's yeah. Because that was always a fear for a lot of if this gets documented, it's gonna ruin ruin my career. And that what does that do for my family's well-being? And you know, the the the so I can't talk about it or I can't actually share that. So, yeah, that's that's very good. Progress for sure. So what would you say are the biggest? I mean, there's a ton, like I mentioned earlier, there's I know we've come a long way with our understanding of how to diagnose these things. And I say our our, like, I'm a doctor, but just as a community, we've certainly made a lot of progress in understanding what we're actually let let's just talk about bipolar disorder specifically. What are the gaping holes with, you know, what what progress needs to be made? What do we not understand on what needs to be changed or, you know, where should we focus as a as a society with regard to resources and learning more?

Speaker 2

Well, the scientific and medical community are working day and night to try to find ways to detect bipolar disorder before it manifests itself and and and the person suffers severe symptoms oftentimes at the cost of their family, their marriage, their career, their finances, the, you know, addictions, incarceration, and death. So I I feel like the medical community and the scientists are really working hard at this. They could always use more funding. And so that's something that I think we could we could work on. Sure. But the biggest problem in my mind is the stigma. Which is based on ignorance. I mean, people still believe that mental illness is not real. That it's just a character flaw or a lack of willpower. They they are unaware that it is physiologically real inside the wiring of the brain. Mhmm. And and so they deny that based on ignorance, that perpetuates the stigma which leads people who need help, leads them to shame, embarrassment, reluctance to go get help, to go get to go get diagnosed. And so what people have to realize is mental illness is just as physiologically real as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and there's no stigma against people that have those conditions. In fact, you recognize there's a problem you go get diagnosed and then you get undergo the treatment. In general, you get better. I mean, the thing about mental the thing about mental illness is The bad news is what I just said. It can ruin your life. The good news is that if diagnosed and treated properly,

Bipolar General: A Combat Leader’s Journey from Undiagnosed Disorder to Sustained Wellness with Maj. Gen. Gregg Martin

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