Bruce
Bruce
It feels great knowing that there are others like me
After a period of extreme mood swings, ranging from crazy highs to debilitating lows, from heart-pounding anxiety attacks to terrifying hallucinations, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
No matter how much lithium, psychotherapy, and antidepressant warfare was waged, my demons just wouldn’t surrender. I walked out on doctors and threw my pills down into the incinerator.
Bruce first realized he had a mental health issue about 25 years ago, when he was 25 years old. Like many individuals with a mental health disorder, Bruce struggled to find an effective treatment approach.
Despite his frustrations, Bruce kept advocating for himself and continued searching for the right treatment for his diagnosis.
I knew I couldn’t give up because I had too many people caring about me. I needed mental health management—the right type of doctor for me, someone who wouldn’t give up on me. It wasn’t easy to find, but I did.
The right doctor turned out to be a psychologist on the Upper West Side of Manhattan who made an unusual suggestion. She recommended that Bruce get a dog. A dog for bipolar disorder?
It wasn’t until the day God answered my prayers and prescribed me Ozzy—the most effective mood stabilizer known to manic depression-kind—that I began to heal. Ozzy was a nine-and-a-half-pound, seven-week-old, black Labrador retriever puppy.
Fortunately, my furry antidepressant only came with one side effect: a lifetime of slobbery, unconditional love, the love that helped me escape the chemically imbalanced concentration camps of my mind, the love that saved my life.
“I want to help other people get the love and guidance they need.”
Ozzy’s unconditional love, combined with therapy and medication, enabled Bruce to get his mental health under control. Bruce chronicled his mental health journey and his relationship with Ozzy in a book.
Unlike traditional ways of treating mental health disorders, I learned that medicine could only get you so far.
Antidepressants can level off your chemicals. They can stabilize you. But they do not give a person a purpose to live. They will not get you out of bed. But loving a dog will. By taking care of Ozzy, Ozzy took care of me. By taking Ozzy out, he helped take me out of myself.
To put it simply, if it wasn’t for my dog, I wouldn’t be here today, healthy and smiling with a beautiful family.
Since 2009, Bruce and Ozzy’s tale has been inspiring thousands with mental health challenges. Bruce encourages people to not give up, to find the right doctor, and to consider a “furry” antidepressant.
When I was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder, I felt alone, I felt embarrassed, and I felt like there was something wrong with me.
But today it feels great knowing that there are others like me, others who had the courage to come out of the mental health closet.
I want to help other people get the love and guidance they need so they can live a balanced life, lacking limits, doing whatever they please.
