Carrie Fisher at the
14th Annual Puzzle of Mental Illness

The public at large knows Carrie Fisher as the iconic image of Princess Leia from George Lucas’ mega hit Star Wars Trilogy and as Meg Ryan’s best friend Marie in that famous quoted “I’ll Have What She’s Having” battle of the sexes romance flick When Harry Met Sally (1989). Of course, fans of Fisher know her skills as a celebrated author and screen writer with her roman a clef novels Surrender the Pink (1990), Delusions of Grandma (1994), The Best Awful (2004) and her most memorable, her first release, Postcards From the Edge (1987), also penned by Fisher as the hilarious acclaimed 1990 screenplay starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacClaine.

As the daughter of that infamous Hollywood royalty couple Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, Carrie grew up as a princess of privilege in a family fit for the tabloids of public consumption. Her charming wit, intelligently smoky-sounding voice and large life persona made her a shoe-in for battling galactic war villains and consoling embittered ingénues. She’s both compassionate and razor sharp funny, a modern day Dorothy Parker with a penchant for travel. But this diminutive 5´1 life of the party host harbored a double-troubled secret; she was both chemically addicted and had an undiagnosed bi-polar condition.

Carrie’s just the right fit to speak for The 14th Annual Puzzle of Mental Illness presented by The Guild of Catholic Women and The O’Shaughnessy’s Women of Substance Series Thursday evening Oct. 5th held at The O’Shaughnessy Auditorium. The Guild just celebrated its Century anniversary with 400 members whom for them service brings joy. In 1985, they started a program to help people with mental illness. Kathy Jansen, Chair of Education for the Guild, recalled that the Puzzle of Mental Illness blossomed in 1992 as a public venue to reduce the stigma of mental illness particularly with job discrimination. With so many pieces to this disease, kind of like a puzzle, the title of this speaking event was born.

Fisher first opened up about her mental illness with an interview with Diane Sawyer in 2000. She won the Erasing the Stigma Leadership Award for publicly speaking out to help people with mental illness in 2002. Jansen introduced Fisher by reading a crushing excerpt from Fisher’s latest work The Best Awful where her four year old daughter is riding with her in their vehicle, sitting in the back seat and ever so worried about the incoherent behavior of her mother. Carrie, fighting tears, stoically tried to assure her daughter that it wasn’t her fault, by way with a metaphor of an excuse: “Remember how when the faucet in my head goes too fast?” Her bright daughter, with gifted foresight beyond her years, as if in a stunning wakeup call, replied back, “Mommy, when are you going to fix the faucet?”

Dressed in her trademark black jacket and skirt with brightly patterned blouse, “outfits ready for any given funeral,” she has said, Fisher took to the stage and remarked about her poignant water faucet book passage intro. “I sound like a plumber or went to a plumber.” Fisher’s other widely known trademark is her random way of speaking in non sequiturs, but brilliantly managing to get her point across. Just call her Mom Sequitur. The mania is quite evident, but oh, so charming. “I was driven to Stillwater [today] and my driver turned out to be bi-polar. We got their very fast,” she said.

Fisher’s quite candid about her past drug taking experiences. “I had no sense of danger,” she recalled. She tended to take drugs that mimic their symptoms. “So schizophrenics take acid. So that gives me a lot of options,” she wryly commented. America’s favorite crooner of the 50s, Eddie Fisher—her dad, took speed for 15 years. Looking back, she coyly said of him, “We sang together and took cocaine. It was Father’s Day.” Actually cocaine was usually eschewed by Carrie in favor of opiates, acid, marijuana and Percodan, basically, drugs that calm you down because reality was just too much for this manic driven artist. She clarified, “I had no insulation. I felt everything too much, rampant empathy. I just had no skin.”

Her drug taking began in her teens and was told she might be bi-polar by her long standing psychologist at the age of 24. Fisher didn’t believe him. “You can’t properly diagnose someone who is totally loaded,” she countered. Back in 1980 she was considered hypomanic, a moderate type of manic depression condition. “Commonly called bi-polar 1, the smaller one, like Ted Turner,” she mused. She blithely carried on from movie to movie but Star Wars and The Blues Brothers take you only so far. Before long she found herself reduced to forgettable B-movie clunkers like Hollywood Vice Squad, Amazon Women on the Moon and The Time Guardian. The manic depression really took over. You know it’s bad when, she confessed, “I went off lithium and went to China from Australia because it was near.”

Fisher likes to define her bi-polar condition by naming her two polar opposite mood swings. One mood, Roy is the manic driver in the seat. The other mood, Pam is the disparaging risk taker. Roy makes the travel plans but Pam takes the trip. Roy is the meal but Pam is the check.

In 1985 overdosing on Percodan and acid, she entered rehab and chronicled her stay in her Los Angeles Pen Award winning debut novel Postcards from the Edge. Unearthing her gifted talent for her acerbic turn of a phrase, writing roman a clef novels about her past jaded experiences gave her a renewed sense of accomplishment and a penchant for releasing a prolific amount of work—books, screenplays, sharply acted featured parts in great films and something new for Hollywood, the distinction of being the most hired script doctor around. All this output from 1987 through 1994.

After delivering an unplanned baby from her boyfriend, Bryan Lourd, a Hollywood uber agent (she says, “From the man who forgot to tell her he was gay. He forgot to tell her and she forgot to notice”), she decided she would commit to becoming a mother and raise her daughter, successfully co-parenting Billie Catherine with Lourd. But Fisher felt her bi-polar medication was making her lose her creative edge. She simply wasn’t delivering as much work, nor did she feel her wit was funny anymore. So in the summer of 1997, she chose to go completely off her medications and went completely manic. Slipping off of sobriety, she veered into fatal Tijuana territory by taking too much OxyContin. Now, pretty much a mess, she was given an unsupervised dose of nearly fatal bad bi-polar medication. She overdosed and went into a coma. Now enter her psychotic break. Nearly one year of recovery followed including a stay in a psych ward.

Michael Reinbold with Carrie Fisher

Two years later, she returned to work and finally workable meds. It took until she was over 40 to get her medication right. “I didn’t get to a good doctor. Instead, I did my own medicating,” she said. Looking back on this low period with abrasive candor, in Vanity Fair she was asked the Proust question, what do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? She responded, “My psychotic episode or dinner with a conservative.” Rationalizing this harrowing experience, she admitted, “One is medication, one is dope. I didn’t know the difference. I know now.”

Carrie Fisher has since completed a two year stint hosting a talk show right out of her gorgeous stained-glassed windowed living room on the Oxygen Cable Network titled “Conversations on the Edge with Carrie Fisher.” She makes occasional but quite memorable guest appearances playing acerbic bosses or tyrant type editors on shows like “Family Guy” and “Smallville,” writes an infrequent travelogue for the New York Times and devotes time to making public speaking engagements championing gay rights and erasing the stigma of mental illness. Her number one priority, however, is raising her daughter Billie, who is now 14 years old.

For the final portion of the evening Fisher answered a series of questions from the audience.

Question: “What is the worst thing about mental illness?”

Carrie: “Depression.”

Question: “What is the grief of mental illness?”

Carrie: “Disappointing your child. [It’s like] a blunted effect. You don’t want to commit suicide but you want to check out a bit. You feel it’s your fault. For example, [People say to me] Carrie, it’s a pain in the ass. If I could localize this to just my ass, that would be fantastic.”

Question: “What medications are you on?”

Carrie: “Why, is it not working?” [Carrie listed at least seven medications of at least more than a dozen that she takes twice daily. Chief among them is Trazodone and Prozac.]

Question: “How does your mother accept your illness?” Carrie: “She loves it! She always says ‘don’t tell them you’re mentally ill. You’re manic depressive.’ She’s been great with this.”

Question: “How does mental illness interfere with your writing?”

Carrie: “Unless you write about the depression, it doesn’t mind being talked about behind its back. With the stigma of society’s acceptance of mental illness, I’m sure I get less work because of it. Can they handle her?”

Question: “How would you advise people with bi-polar disorder?”

Carrie: “So they are not shamed into it. Find an individual who can share their experience. Same as AA.”

Question: “Do you have a specific message for people who are manic depressive?”

Carrie: “Don’t suffer from it. Enjoy it. You really have to make a working relationship with your illness. Proust gave an example. Illness shaped his life. Take the lesson from it. Have the illness. Don’t let it have you.”

Question: “What are the show business challenges in Hollywood with mental illness?”

Carrie: “Finding people to date.”

Question: “How can we in the Twin Cities eradicate the stigma of mental illness?”

Carrie: “The best thing is to deal with it by humor. Not make it a guilty thing. Mental illness people are like war heroes. They’ve really got fantastic stories to tell. Ask about it. Talk about it.”

Michael Reinbold, a continuing web reporter, freelances as a writer and banquet caterer. A passionate believer in SJA's mission of social justice and collaborative ministry, Michael is an SJA Choir member, mass reader, Team Oz AIDS rider and Grace House volunteer cook. With an extensive background in theater, photography and fundraising, he relishes all aspects of the arts, staying fit and inspiring and working with people.

Mark Hardy is a friend of our reporter who agreed to take the picture of Michael and Carrie at the event.