‘I became a leader’: Jenifer Lewis opens up about how bipolar disorder gave her the ‘delusion’ to pursue her career

The 68-year-old actress has been candid about her journey with bipolar disorder, which she was officially diagnosed with in 1990.

“The mania made me.”

Jenifer Lewis is sharing a different side of what it’s like to live with bipolar disorder, a mental health condition that causes elevated mood swings between manic highs and depressive lows. Despite the stigma around the condition, she has been open about how the good and bad of it are inseparable from her life and career journey.

Lewis has lived with a bipolar disorder diagnosis since 1990, and has talked how the mental health condition affected her life over the years, and wrote about it in her 2017 book, “The Mother of Black Hollywood.” She has been open about the struggles, candidly telling The Root that the mania, which is when the elevated mood swings of the disorder give the person an emotional “high,” can cause serious harm.

“It can ruin your entire life, and your family’s life, and those who love you,” Lewis said to The Root.

But Lewis also credits her bipolar disorder for giving her the “delusion” to do whatever she wanted. Whether it was when she was a teenager or later in her twenties, when she was living in New York and pursuing an acting career. She elaborated on former First Lady Michelle Obama’s and Craig Robinson’s podcast, “IMO.”

“I became a leader,” she said to Obama and Robinson. “Captain of the cheerleading squad, president of my class. When I got to college, I didn’t look at the callboard to see if I had been cast. I knew I had been cast.”

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According to Lewis, when she was experiencing a manic episode, she felt “bigger” than the city of New York itself. She said that she used to take visitors to her favorite spot at the World Trade Center to have them look up at the buildings (presumably at the Twin Towers), and she would compare herself to their stateliness.

“The arrogance, the omnipotence, the delusions of grandeur came with the mania,” she said. “You’re unstoppable.