Roseanne Barr: I've Got More Mental Illness Than Your Average Bear

Also, sometimes people are inflamed and irritated and that changes their personality. Right. And to have a healthy body or a healthy microbiome and all that, just a healthy system, it affects your personality in pretty profound ways. Well, they say like if you're really healthy, you're in a good mood all the time. That's a good way of looking at it. Isn't that weird? Yeah, it's true though. I'm always striving for that because, you know, I'm in, sometimes I'm in a good mood. I'd say most of the time I'm in a good mood. These days, but I don't ever want to fuck with the bad mood. But you know, when you got bipolar, I'm bipolar amongst a million other fucking things. What does that mean? I got more mental illness than your average bear. Remember Yogi the bear? I do remember you. I got more mental illness than you can shake a stick at. It's hard to live with it. But like, what does bipolar exactly mean? Well, we used to call it moody. Moody? Yeah. Swinging. Manic states, right? Yeah, one minute you're this and the next minute you're that. But even more protracted is like, well, you're in a good mood for months. And then it's that, you know, when they say that straw that broke the camel's back? That's kind of clue one that you might be bipolar. I guess when the camel breaks and you just let it all rip, you can't control it anymore. And things you didn't even think you were holding back come out. You don't have the right way of processing emotion. And it's such extremes. And then you follow the extremes through with action, like going someplace and then having to go some other place. It's terrifying. Mental illness is really terrifying. I think maybe this whole thing is going to move me to start talking more honestly about it. Because I think of all the conversations in America, that's the most needed. It's a very important conversation. It's also very important that we have empathy towards people with mental health. Because we have empathy towards people with other ailments. If someone has liver cancer, we don't go, oh, fix your liver, you fucking idiot. Why are you out here getting sick? But if you have mental issues, it affects the way you communicate with people. And we think it's your fault. If you have a bad knee, no one says, why can't you run up the hill, you fucking moron. But if you have something wrong with your brain, we just assume it's your fault. It's a real bad thing. It's a bad habit that people have, particularly people that don't have mental illness. I know. They're such bullies. Well, they don't understand that it could happen to you. It could happen to anybody. But bullying the mentally ill is so much a part of what's going on in our culture right now, abandoning them and just in the streets. Well, that's a giant problem that we have here in America. I just hate that. I know. Cher actually brought it up. She was talking about them. Yeah, good for Cher. She was talking about them talking about immigration and discussing immigration. She goes, that's fine and good. But we have 60,000 mentally ill homeless people wandering through the streets of Los Angeles alone. 60,000. I mean, that's a good size small town. And it's filled with drug addicts and people with psychotic breaks and all sorts of other mental illness. Well, they have mental illness, yeah. I met a kid the other day. I always talk to the mentally ill because it's partly that they're so, oh, I forget the word Louie uses it. Well, they're so disenfranchised and ignored and they become invisible. And then they retreat totally into their psychosis. And so they can't be reached. So you always do them a favor just to make eye contact and say, have a nice day or a while. You're doing them a big healing favor. But I met this kid. He was about 20 and his eyes all black that light up his eye. And I'm like, what happened? And he goes, I got it tattooed. I go, how did you possibly sit and let them put tattoo needle in the white of your eye 950,000 times? And he goes, because I have a deep fear of anything going in my eye, I've always had that fear. And so this was my way to overcome it. I go, dude, you know. That's a rough one. People, when do they start tattooing their eyeballs? When you're really obsessed with compulsive. And you're trying to get over one fear by running through the fear and making it happen to you. And a lot of us do that. I guess maybe in my psychosis, I might have had a fear of being a symbol of so much to so many. I think it crumbled me. They like self-sabotage. They kept saying that. They kept trying to make me be a symbol of something. And I guess I am. I have anything. I just want to be a symbol for good jokes. There shouldn't be no censorship on good jokes. Do you think that the pressure of fame and of stardom of stuff contributes to this feeling that you worry about the role that you have? You worry about people being upset at you. You worry about it. And it almost like it comes out from that. Uh-oh. Can I? Fuck yeah. Maribona. I'm celebrating sober October, Roseanne. So I can't partake. Can I have yours? Sure. OK. Want some weed? I got a lot. Do you want a drag? Plenty of weed here. It's good. Jamie's not celebrating sober October. Three years in a row. I know. He always had me on in October. Fuck that. He says fuck that. I like it. I think it's good. It's good to cleanse out the old pipes every now and again. I was sober for almost a year off pot. Yeah? Until recently, one drag is good. One drag is good. That's the right amount. It just elevates you a little bit. It gives you a little lift. But I tied one on the day before sober October with Sturgill Simpson. And I don't remember even what we were talking about, why we were talking.