Dave Mowry
Author
I live with bipolar disorder and severe anxiety and have all my adult life. I was a successful businessman until in 1994 I lost it all due to my mental illness and my family and I were homeless for 18 months. What followed were 14 lost years and dark days where I was unable to work or interact socially.
In 1994, at my wife's urging, I took a stand-up comedy class for folks with a mental illness. It changed everything. Looking for and finding the humor in my dark days and the greatest challenges of my mental illness, I went from my mental illness having control over me to finding the humor in my experiences, reframing everything, and regaining control of my life. Thus began my recovery.
Today I teach stand-up comedy to other folks with a mental illness and perform on stage. We find humor in our pain and tell our stories one joke at a time. We let people know that they are not alone, that it we can learn and grow from our hardships and come out the other side.
My comedy has been described as smart, inspirational, and laugh out loud funny.
My best-selling book, OMG That's Me! Bipolar Disorder, Depression, Anxiety, Panic Attacks, and more... tells the story of my experiences with mania, depression, anxiety, and panic attacks and shows what it is truly like to live with serious mental illness. It is a winner of the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, a bestseller on Amazon, and is one of the best bipolar disorder books of all time according to Bookauthority.com.
My new book, Healing with Humor: Mental Illness to Mental Health One Laugh, One Joke, One Inspiring Story at a Time tells the story of me and five people who have taken my standup classes and experienced the same transformation that happened to me. It came out a few weeks ago. It had over 2000 downloads of the ebook in the first four days. It too is a winner of the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. The audiobook will be out in a week. We were able to cut in parts of the live performances from the comics making it a unique and special book. You will find yourself rooting for Lorayne and cheering for Molly. The reviews have been great.
I blog for bphope.com where my posts have been read by over a million people with the most common comment being "OMG That's Me! you're telling my story, I don't feel so alone now."
I share my story with complete openness, honesty, and plenty of humor. I tell what it is really like to be a man suffering in silence, hiding in the shadows, pretending to be okay, being an imposter, experiencing recurring panic attacks, not being present for my wife and kids, being a failure as a man, and thinking suicide is the only option, and then the resilience to come out the other side. And I share the lessons I learned on this journey.
