The Bipolar Rugby Star with Tyler Kania

Welcome to Overcome - a Mental Health Podcast

Tyler Kania is a rugby player, coach, cybersecurity salesman, cryptocurrency entrepreneur, stonemason, painter, and writer, from Columbia, Connecticut.

Tyler suffers from Bipolar I Disorder, and his rugby career has been marred by the very rare and traumatic ruptured patellar tendon, twice. He is an avid reader, and writer, and his first book, The Maniac with No Knees, is an exciting, and introspective memoir, that dives deep into the severity of his mental illness.

When healthy, Tyler plays rugby for the Hartford Wanderers Rugby Club, and hangs out with his Bernedoodle dog, Betsy.

@Tyler_Kania

https://www.tylerkania.com

Visit Tyler's website to learn more about his memoir, "The Maniac with No Knees" and order your copy today.

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Transcript

Travis White (00:01.588)
Hello everyone, welcome to Overcome, a mental health podcast. A place where you can tell your stories and be yourself and say for anyone that's trying to overcome any mental health issue. Today I'd to welcome on the show, Tyler, can correct me if I'm saying your last name wrong, Tyler Kanya. Kenya, Kenya, okay. I was thinking that the first time I should have said about my original gut.

Tyler Kania (00:24.632)
Kenya. Yep.

Travis White (00:31.486)
felt, but I just want to read a short introduction for Tyler. Tyler Kenya is a rugby player, coach, cybersecurity salesman, cryptocurrency entrepreneur, stone mason, painter and writer from Columbia, Connecticut. Tyler suffers from bipolar one disorder and his rugby career has been marred by the very rare and traumatic ruptured patellar tendon twice.

He is an avid reader and writer and his first book, Maniac with No Knees is an exciting and introspective memoir that dives deep into the severity of his mental illness. When healthy, Tyler plays rugby for the Hartford Wanderers Rugby Club and hangs out with his Bernadoodle dog, Betsy. And yeah, I have my dog here too, but can't really see him. He's laying down on the bed. He's too big to be like a lap dog or anything.

Tyler Kania (01:17.166)
Yeah, you can see her behind.

Tyler Kania (01:25.422)
You

Travis White (01:27.102)
But I want to turn the time over to Tyler and let him tell his story.

Tyler Kania (01:35.8)
Sure, yeah. You know, it's a long story, but you know, it starts with rugby. I grew up in a privileged family, but I went to a inner city high school where, you know, I kind of realized, you know, I had a lot of good fortune compared to some of my classmates. I was the captain of the football team. And then, you know, after high school, I decided to play rugby in college.

Instantly from the first time I touched the ball, I realized I was really quite good at it. My position was fly half is fly half, which is basically the quarterback. So you do most of the passing, the kicking. You're in charge of all the communication and orchestrating your teammates around the field. You know, and in college, you know, I won, we won several conference championships. I got recruited to play for.

you know, a premier rugby team which had, you know, Team USA guys, Fiji national team guys, people from all over the world. I was one of two Americans on the squad. And, you know, I had high ambitions for my career. I wanted to play at the professional level. I thought that I was capable of it. But when I was 24, I ruptured my patellar tendon for the first time. It's an injury that happens once for every 147,000 human years.

and it's actually happened to me twice now. It's basically, yeah, yeah. So it's basically when your knee snaps into your quad. So my knee was like halfway up my quad. And that triggered the onset of my first ever case of mania. I was an undiagnosed bipolar and that manic episode completely changed my life. It led me to quit rugby for.

Travis White (03:03.481)
I would say that was

Tyler Kania (03:30.102)
a long time, it led me to quit my six-figure job in cybersecurity sales. I got broken up with by my girlfriend and I moved to Idaho where I ended up kind of traveling around the country. I almost died in the Grand Canyon. And then I settled down back in Connecticut at a farmhouse where there was this cowboy from Oklahoma who kept robbing us and we were stuck in the middle of a domestic violence dispute between him and his girl.

And I kind of saw this guy and I saw a distorted face in the mirror. It was, you know, like how bad could this thing get because, you know, I didn't know that I had a mental illness at that point, but I knew that something was positively wrong with me, you know, and I tried my best to surround myself with people around the farm. You know, we had a lot of volleyball games. We had a lot of parties. But once that came to a head with, you know, the cowboy from Oklahoma,

I moved to Boston and I moved to the most expensive street in the city. I thought I was a big mover and shaker, cyber security guy, but inside I was reeling. I was really suffering from substance abuse problems and extreme paranoia. I would have to rip the Amazon Echo off because I thought it was listening to me and.

You know, when my car got stolen, I assumed it was the Boston mafia and I was afraid that they were going to get me. And so I realized that like, despite making a quarter million dollars a year at the age of 26, I had to move back in with my parents and figure out what was wrong with me. So I did that and over COVID, you know, something happened and I snapped. went manic again and I quit my job and I spent the next year.

just in my room, completely disassociated from society. And I was just reading 300 pages of literature a day. I was reading all types of genres. I read infinite jest in less than three weeks. And I was really doing all that stuff because I wanted to escape my world and go to someone else's world. And after that year ended and I had to try and find a job again, I realized that my network no longer wanted me. And so...

Tyler Kania (05:56.48)
I tried to commit suicide on the last day of April in 2021. I put a noose around my neck and tightened it a little. I looked outside and you know, the clouds parted and a late afternoon sun came out and you know, I realized in that moment that my, one of my best friends, David Cobb was getting married the next day. So I decided to stick around for a little longer. The following week,

I got invited to a rugby birthday party and these were all my old friends. I was their captain in college. I hadn't seen them in four years and I was ashamed of who I had become. I was ashamed that I had recently tried to commit suicide and that I couldn't find a job and I wanted so badly to skip that party but something made me go and when I went, you know, they passed me the rugby ball for the first time, I touched it.

first time I touched it in years and that passion came back, that pride, that confidence came back and they invited me to go watch their exhibition match the following week. They told me that our old college head coach was now their Hartford Wanderers men's club coach. And I went to the game in jeans. I didn't want to talk to anybody, but my coach's wife was there and she had given me lots of confidence back in college.

And you know, when an injury happened towards the end of the game, she encouraged me to go on the field. I asked the coach, he said, go ahead. And the first time I touched the ball, you know, in five years, I assisted the game winning try. And then all of a sudden rugby came back into my life. I got hurt a couple months later, but serendipitously, the coaching job at Eastern Connecticut State University opened up for their women's rugby team. And

You know, I hadn't had real human connection in half a decade, especially not female human connection. And all of sudden I was in charge of 25, 30 women. But I found that I was quite good at it. We had a lot of fun and the team really bought into what I was preaching to them. And, you our last game in the regular season, we lost to Tufts University, 31-0.

Tyler Kania (08:18.702)
They were undefeated. They had beaten all of their teams, but all of their opponents by a cumulative score of 131 to seven. And then we went back to Tufts in the championship game and we beat them 29 to 10. And, you know, at that point I felt like I had found my calling. I felt like all the suffering that I had done in the past was for a reason. But the off season came and I got lonely during the off season. I started a cryptocurrency company.

And I went to Denver to try and pitch it to venture capitalists and to chief technology officers. And I got a lot of good feedback. People really were interested in my platform and, you know, I go home and I'm still manic and I thought that I was going to change the world. I honestly did. And, you know, the next day after I got home,

I trusted the wrong guy on the internet with my secret key to my cryptocurrency wallet and he stole $450,000 from me. The very next day, I show up to coach the women's rugby team at an indoor practice and I was manic. I was totally out of my mind. I was crazy. I was disorganized. I was yelling at them for the first time ever. And, you know, it led to me having to leave the job.

They had lined up without my knowledge their old coach again. And it was kind of like a coup. A lot of the players loved me and a lot of the players supported me. But what mattered was the eboard and three out of the four wanted to go with their old coach. So this sent me down into a depression as deep as any that I've ever had. You know, I shut my phone off and stayed in bed for six weeks. I read the complete works of Mark.

of Mark Twain and Kurt Vonnegut, you know, and several more. And when that depression kind of subsided, I went manic again and I just realized that I needed to find another coaching opportunity so that my friends wouldn't think that like I got fired or anything, you know? So I got in my car and I drove south. I stopped in Nashville, Tennessee, where I played.

Tyler Kania (10:38.894)
a rugby match and a couple practices with my old college roommate. And then I continued on to Memphis at the time Memphis was the murder capital of America. And I got a coaching job to coach Memphis inner city youth rugby, which is the largest inner city rugby club in the country. And my role was U-19 boys in Orange Mound, which is.

The first neighborhood made for the black man by the black man. But on my fourth day there, I had a terrible panic attack and my psychiatrist had sorted me out with three months supply since I had to have time to find a new psychiatrist. And I just started gobbling up these pills left and right, dozens of them. And I decided in that moment that I needed to drive home to Connecticut, know, 2000 miles away almost.

I didn't make it. made it to Knoxville before something really was going wrong with me. They flew me home and I stayed in the hospital for three days and three nights with severe serotonin syndrome. And, at that point I was really lost. You know, on good days, I would work for my best friend Hunter who had a stone masonry company. And you know, when I would walk my dog,

I would look into the woods and would just see myself hanging every day for months. And eventually I got some coaching from my psychiatrist. I went to the Hartford Hospital ER and I said, all I wanna do is kill myself. I've tried several times, I'm going to try again. Can you help me? And at that point there was no room in the mental health hospital so I stayed in the purple wing which is

you know, just a hodgepodge of homeless people, drug addicts, schizophrenics, you name it. It was a really scary environment. And, you know, I had a sheet that went around my bed, a curtain, and I wasn't allowed to close the curtain because I was suicidal. Eventually a spot opened up for me at the Institute of Living, and it's a beautiful...

Tyler Kania (13:04.462)
campus. It looks like an old college. But when I was brought there as an inpatient, I didn't get to see the campus. We didn't get to go outside. We only got to go on the balcony once. You know, I was formally diagnosed there with bipolar one. They gave me lithium, which has saved my life and several other medications. And, you know, similar to my time in high school,

You know, I looked around myself and I saw all these people that were suffering so badly and, you know, I realized how many blessings I have, right? You know, I come from a wealthy family. I come from an educated family. I have athleticism and good looks. And, you know, I realized that these people, you know, my roommate, he had aphasia, which is when you have

Travis White (13:42.556)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Kania (13:58.678)
a trauma that stops you from really talking, from communicating. And I got him to talk for the first time in several weeks. And I found inspiration in other people, people who were getting electroshock therapy and people that had seen their wife commit suicide. I left that place completely impacted and...

You know, I got my life back together. I got a job at the largest cybersecurity company in the world. And I started to work really hard to get back on the rugby field. And then, you know, in the spring of 2024, this past spring, I ruptured my patellar tendon for the second time. And this led to my first manic episode since being hospitalized. You know, my parents, knowing that I'm a substance abuser,

withheld my painkillers and so I couldn't sleep for three nights. I was crapping myself and I went completely manic. this particular mania was a blessing to me because I opened up the notes app on my iPhone and I just started publishing my life story to Instagram. And then I went to the hospital. I was treated very, very poorly in the hospital.

locked in a room for several hours when all I wanted to do was sleep. I was pooping myself. The nurse didn't like the tone of my voice. She had never really worked with someone who had been bipolar before. It was hell. But when I got out, I had all this feedback from all of old friends and rugby teammates and people who had seen me share my life story. And they said, this is crazy. This is amazing, Tyler. you know, you got to keep going. And so that was how my book started.

You know, it's been a whirlwind ever since.

Travis White (15:59.41)
I have a question for you though about like the the manic episodes. So do you thinking back you said your first one was when you got injured but if you if you think back do you remember like anything like that before that?

Tyler Kania (16:04.59)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Kania (16:18.658)
Hey, you know, bipolar is so tough to realize, to diagnose because, you you typically don't show symptoms until your mid-20s, but there were signs much earlier on and I think people had trouble reconciling whether it was me or an illness, you know, I...

Travis White (16:36.519)
Okay.

Tyler Kania (16:47.084)
My first game ever as captain of the CCSE Rugby team, know, the Thursday before we have drink ups, which is just, you know, it's where the captain speak and everybody gets amped up for the game on Saturday. And, you know, I got wasted and I ended up breaking down a door at a sorority house and I got charged with felony burglary.

I got put in a jail for a night and that was definitely the first time that I acted out. But at that time everyone just thought, he's just a crazy college kid, nothing else. So yeah, there were signs early on, but it was really tough to figure that out.

Travis White (17:30.708)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (17:39.348)
crazy. Another question I have is so when you're

Like in these manic episodes, do you know that you're in them or are you kind of like dissociated?

Tyler Kania (17:54.03)
No, you do not know you're manic when you go manic. You do not know you're crazy when you go crazy. You feel righteousness, you feel powerful, you feel like your mind is working at 100 % capacity. And it feels, it's a great feeling to be manic. But eventually something bad happens, something really bad happens because you don't have a sense of risk at all. And that...

Travis White (18:01.108)
Yeah.

Travis White (18:19.379)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Kania (18:24.0)
lack of sensical understanding of your actions leads to something bad, inevitably.

Travis White (18:33.724)
Yeah, I've experienced myself dissociating with some of stuff that I've been through. I can, to a certain level, I understand where you're coming from, but I've never hit that like that. Obviously that manic state, but it's, and there's, I feel like with everything like this, there's such a stigma to it and I can't stand it. Like I think like coming from my side of things.

Tyler Kania (18:50.754)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (19:04.08)
I have family members that have no idea like how dark and depressed and anxious I still get to this day. And that's, I think that's kind of my fault for not being as open, but I feel like with my family, it's kind of like, we don't talk about it.

Tyler Kania (19:23.308)
Yeah, yeah, that's a tough, you know, it's taboo and it's stigmatized and the people that experience these things are ashamed of speaking the truth about it. But I realized that I'm not the brave one, you know, for sharing my story. My story has liberated me. It has made me feel like I have an important role in the world.

But the people that are brave are the ones who struggle every day with it. You know, the guys that and girls that are ashamed and you know, they can't be their authentic self with the world. And that's really sad. And I think that, you know, what I'm hoping to do with this book is, you know, open that conversation and make someone feel not so lonely, make them feel like someone else's

going through this too. And I think that's what it's all about.

Travis White (20:28.22)
I like that because the loneliness is real and it's like you can be in a crowded room, you still feel like you're the only person there.

Travis White (20:38.642)
but you only understand that if you've experienced that darkness.

Travis White (20:49.608)
What? I had it and then just totally lost what I was gonna say.

Tyler Kania (20:54.99)
Good man.

Travis White (21:01.69)
So when did you tell me tell me more about your book? When did your book come out? How long has it been released for?

Tyler Kania (21:08.962)
Yeah, one week ago today it came out. You know, it took the first two months was the first draft. You know, I wrote my first draft pretty quickly and I published it directly to Instagram and there was a million errors and a million just like, you know, unneeded information. It was all narrative and it was no introspection into like what I was going through.

so then it took about six months of editing. it was really, you know, crazy how, you know, I had that job at a large cybersecurity company and I was doing well. but when I'd gone manic, the second time I ruptured my patellar tendon, I sent an email to the wrong person and I got fired for it. I got fired the same week that I finished my first draft.

And it was a blessing in disguise because it allowed me to spend the next six months completely focused on editing my book. So my book would have never been able to get to the point where it is today without, you know, having the misfortune of being fired. You know, and now that it's out, you know, it's doing quite well. You know, it's ranked number one right now in several new release categories on Amazon.

including rugby, including psychology, including cryptocurrency. So, you know, I'm really thankful for all the support and I'm hopeful that, you know, we're gonna continue getting this momentum and, you know, my book will hopefully, you know, get out there to the masses.

Travis White (22:56.564)
I hope it does too. I think these types of stories are important. It just pretty much goes back to what you said about making people not feel so lonely.

Tyler Kania (23:03.074)
Definitely.

Tyler Kania (23:08.79)
Yeah, that's what it's all about. mean, like if you want to write something passionately, you know, the way to have others appreciate it is have them relate to it.

Travis White (23:19.869)
Mm-hmm.

Travis White (23:24.19)
for people going through stuff like this, what advice would you give them?

Tyler Kania (23:30.808)
Yeah, so my book is...

You know, it's an example of what not to do when faced with mental health issues before finally sharing what to do when faced with mental illness. You know, I ran away from all of my issues. I tried to find distractions and I went on crazy adventures and I did anything that could, you know, shield myself from my own mental prison. You know, I...

went across the country, I conquered villains, I became a star in my profession and in the sports arena, but it was all as a facade for a deeply troubled man. What finally helped was three things. And I think these three things are vital for anybody that's trying to live a healthy life. Number one is community. I had disassociated myself from the world.

And, you know, my community was rugby. And once I found that again, once I found a place where, you know, as soon as you join a team, you have 25 or 30 new friends. That helped, you know, along with that. You know, if you're struggling, you need a goal in life. You need to wake up every morning and you need to have something that pushes you forward, something that keeps you from from your own trauma.

And, you know, for me, it was rugby for a while. You know, right now it's writing, you know, with my book. Every single day I got up and I knew exactly what I wanted to write. You know, I went through one of the most horrific tragedies anyone can imagine this summer. It was awful. It's not in my book. It happened while I was writing the book. But,

Tyler Kania (25:34.828)
you know, having that outlet to focus on, you know, kept me from just wallowing in my misery all day long. And then the third thing is medication. And that's a tough one because, you know, psychiatric illness is really tough to medicate in the right way. It's almost like trial and error. I went through over a dozen prescriptions.

you know, when I was trying to find the right medication, I went through side effects that were, you'll find out in the book, but they were as bad and as traumatizing as you can imagine a side effect could be. But eventually I found that right medication. And I'm not lying when I say that lithium has saved my life. It truly has, you know.

having a Lanza peen, having an anti-psychotic keeps me from getting terrible depression. And I wouldn't be able to live with these things without these things. So you need community, you need a goal, and you need medication. And if you find those things, you get to that point where you're gonna accept help,

That's the first step because for me, I didn't accept help for a long time. And that's what we need to do if we want to get better because we can't do this on our own. It takes an army.

Travis White (27:11.208)
Yeah, I agree. And I think for me, the first part of accepting help was admitting that I suffered from bad depression and anxiety, taking a step back and kind of looking in the mirror and realizing, you know what, I have a problem.

Tyler Kania (27:28.174)
Yeah.

Travis White (27:31.022)
and I can, I think those are all good things for listeners to hear and I can relate to the medication when I have a seizure disorder and so back when I was, I'm not on any medication now but back when I had to be on some medication I went through that same thing of the side effects were just nasty like I was hallucinating, I went into a deep dark depression, I was suicidal and

I'm sure you experienced some of that type of stuff as well, like with side effects.

Tyler Kania (28:03.448)
Yeah.

Travis White (28:12.468)
What? Sorry, I wrote it down. Give me a second.

Tyler Kania (28:16.492)
No worries.

Travis White (28:21.17)
I know there was something else that...

Travis White (28:32.148)
So we're gonna go, I wanna go just a little bit deeper here on like the suicide side of things, if you're willing. When you are like suicidal, what's it like to be there?

Tyler Kania (28:38.177)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Tyler Kania (28:45.559)
You know, being suicidal, it's not at all what people think. It's a warm feeling. It was for me anyways. It was a feeling that, you know, made me think that all of my pain could just end in a moment. You know, it was a feeling that enveloped me and surrounded me completely. At all moments of the day, I had a rope.

In my room, had, you when I closed my eyes, I would see myself hanging or I would see myself with a gun in my lap and my head bent over. You know, it stuck with me for a long time. Like I said, I would walk the dog and I'd just be hanging from a tree. And, you know, you cling to that feeling. You know, it makes you feel something.

but.

Tyler Kania (29:53.154)
You know, it's not a healthy place to be. And, you know, I'm thankful that I'm not suicidal. You know, I don't want to say that because every single day I have suicidal thoughts. You know, maybe I get embarrassed, maybe something bad happens, and I get those thoughts. And it feels like I'm the only one in the world. It feels like I can see myself from above.

and you know it feels like your ears are ringing and you know but just because I have those thoughts now doesn't mean I'm suicidal you know being suicidal is when it's those thoughts don't stop you know it's when those thoughts those thoughts become a lifeline to you so I'm in a good place now you know I'm not going to say that

Travis White (30:36.658)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Kania (30:53.518)
It won't happen again. You know, for me, committing suicide is my Roman Empire. And it's always gonna be that way. But I'm managing it and I'm living a healthy life and I'm rising above it. And I've become a thought leader in this space. And so if I were to do something, I would let a lot of people down. So I'm.

Travis White (31:21.32)
and

Tyler Kania (31:22.04)
committed to not letting that happen.

Travis White (31:24.256)
And to me that's really important. I think we need more thought leaders in this space. And I've suffered from like suicidal ideation. And there's points where I've been, I've had a plan for going forward. Never really a real attempt. But it is like a feeling that you can't explain.

It's, it's, I don't wish that upon really anybody.

Then I did, I think one more.

Tyler Kania (32:07.904)
I could read a quick short essay to you about what that feeling is like. Yeah, hang on. You know, my next book, I've got about 60 or 70 short essays and I'm hoping to put them all in a little book. So this one's called Alone in MSG. Where is it?

Travis White (32:10.205)
Yeah.

Yeah, that'd be great.

Travis White (32:20.82)
I'll see.

Tyler Kania (32:34.882)
I was having an awesome night, so excited to be in New York City again, so happy to be around great friends, ready to watch the Yukon vs. Gonzaga basketball game at Madison Square Garden. I started to get anxious in the first half. I found it hard to sit still. I started to get angry in my head at the young child screaming his head off behind me. I went to get coffee at halftime. I thought that might help things. When I got back to my seat, I checked my phone, saw a small incidental thing on social media, and then boom.

My ears started to buzz. I closed my eyes and saw myself with a noose around my neck and a knocked over chair. I put my head in my hands. I shivered. I was in a room with 30,000 happy people and yet I was completely alone. The stadium was empty now and the noose turned into a gun in my lap with my head bent over in front of me. I tried to escape. I tried to focus on the game, but no one was playing, at least not in front of my deceiving eyes. It stayed with me until the end of the game.

I felt like fighting. I wanted to punch people for bumping into me. I wanted to tell the kid behind me to shut up. The game ended. I decided to get loaded.

Travis White (33:46.233)
and you already have so you already have a second book planned in that's that's awesome

Tyler Kania (33:49.89)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, mean, like, you know, my first book, like I said, it kind of happened by accident. Like I was just manic and I started writing, you know, and then everyone was like, wow, this is great. You know, similarly, like, you know, I've been trying to just basically test my writing out on Instagram. I have like 200 people that love my content. And so each day I try and write a different short essay.

Travis White (33:58.441)
Yeah.

Tyler Kania (34:21.55)
Usually they're one page long and they're about illness or suicide or substance abuse or something like that. Yeah.

Travis White (34:34.068)
And that short you just read is really good and detailed in what it really feels like to be alone.

Tyler Kania (34:40.78)
Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm trying for.

Travis White (34:43.462)
I appreciate you sharing that.

see there's one more that I wrote down you may have already answered it

Travis White (35:03.112)
Yeah, you've already answered all these.

Tyler Kania (35:05.88)
We can revisit it.

Travis White (35:10.384)
what?

Travis White (35:20.562)
Why don't you tell us a little bit more on what it's like inside. You went into a little bit of detail and like being in a mental health hospital.

Tyler Kania (35:34.252)
Yeah, no, I'd be glad to because I think that a lot needs to change in our mental health hospitals. You know, I will say that, you know, I was saved by the Institute of Living. Say that before anything else. you know, when you go to an inpatient treatment, they're not trying to heal you. They're trying to stabilize your condition so that you're not a threat to yourself or anybody else.

What I mean by they're not trying to heal you, there's no activities. You know, there's maybe one or two scheduled group activities per week and nobody really wants to share. Everybody is too traumatized to, you know, talk really. Like there's not much conversation at all. You know, I, we had a...

television, a small TV, about 30 people in the place. But there was one Spanish speaker and he was, you know, he's definitely alone because he's the only Spanish speaker. But we let him control the remote most of the time. And so you'd have a dozen or so, you know, English speakers huddled around a TV that only blasted Spanish. You know, the beds are uncomfortable.

The food is not great. You basically, after every meal, get three different options for the next meal. The books are really bad. There's a lot of unruly people. Usually they have narcissism and they might require to be restrained to a bed or something like that. There's people with schizophrenia.

who might be actively seeing different things and hearing different things.

Tyler Kania (37:44.054)
It's just a really dark place. think that there is one guy, an inpatient that really was inspiring to me. He had seen his wife kill herself and then he tried to turn the gun on himself before his son walked into the room. And he had been through so much, but when I decided to share, I was like, I was so pessimistic about life and I was...

certain that my life would never improve. And he combated that. He was like, you've got so much left to live for, you're so young, all this stuff. But there weren't other people like him while we were there. When I went to outpatient treatment, I did inpatient for a couple weeks and then outpatient for like eight weeks. That's where you heal.

That's where you get to see the beautiful campus. That's where you get a $20 food voucher to eat at the same place as the doctors. That's where you get to have sugar and coffee again for the first time. You have group therapy with people who have struggled like you, with people who are in a place where they can share and in a place where they can think of others. I was still...

distraught about losing my coaching job. And this one lady was really adamant that like, you know, no matter what happened, there were going to be girls on that team that really appreciated me and loved me for who I was and not for, you know, the one day when I showed up and I wasn't myself. And that friendship, those girls that truly cared.

You know, there's girls that never got around to liking me again, but the ones that did, they've become some of my best friends and I talk to them every week. You know, it's really helpful for me. It's helped me heal from that situation. You know, but back to the outpatient setting, you know, you go around the circle and you do, you know, how your last 24 hours go and

Tyler Kania (40:06.104)
You you hear how other people are doing and you practice things like dialectical behavioral therapy and you do things like draw. And, you know, eventually you move from full day outpatient to half day outpatient where you kind of cycle through three different therapists and you try, you know, different methods of healing. You know, you write things like a,

like a plan in case things get really bad, know, who you can call, what sort of things you can do, deep breathing, know, watch a funny TV show, you know, stuff that you can kind of reference when you're not doing so well. So it was really helpful, you know, overall my stay there, was, it changed my life. It made me realize how much

more fortunate I am than other people. And I definitely recommend it to people that haven't been able to find an answer for their suffering.

Travis White (41:19.624)
Yeah, it almost sounds to me like the inpatient part was almost like more isolating to a point.

Tyler Kania (41:28.502)
It was. But they have to do that to detest the medications on you.

Travis White (41:29.96)
That's, yeah, yeah, which I can understand. I, when I was a little bit younger, I worked at a boys home for boys with behavioral issues and mental health problems, ages 13 to 18. And I remember there were some of them that were experiencing like they were.

switching their meds up and you see a lot of like different things as you switch around meds to make sure that they're getting the right stuff.

Travis White (42:04.936)
What?

What things do you wish that like people knew about mental health that are maybe not like talked about or just, you know, in general that maybe it's a misconception or maybe, I mean, to also to remove the stigma.

Tyler Kania (42:25.464)
Yeah, well I've talked about some of the bad parts, some of the curses, but a lot of people don't know that people with bipolar and other illnesses have superpowers. I have superpowers, I know that for a fact. When you're bipolar, you're more likely to be creative.

Travis White (42:29.683)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Kania (42:53.806)
You're more likely to have empathy. You're more likely to have objectivity and be able to separate opinions from, you know, what matters from objectivity. You know, you're...

you're more likely to be curious, right? Like when I was so depressed, I didn't leave my room for a year. All I did was read, right? I just kept reading and that gave me the superpower of the ability to write. When you're manic, you really have superpowers. know, not caring what people think is a superpower. Having the energy to...

do things like start a crypto company or write a book. Not many people have the willpower to do that. And that comes from things like mania, being righteous, standing up for yourself, thinking a million miles an hour, talking a million miles an hour. When I was at that cryptocurrency conference, I was manic.

And Mania is such a good skill to have when you're pitching an idea to venture capitalists, right? You have an answer to every question they ask. You know what they want to hear. And it can be a really empowering feeling, you know, but of course that doesn't last for long. And, you know, it's going to come back to bite you in the end, but...

Travis White (44:33.513)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler Kania (44:39.726)
That doesn't mean that it's not a superpower.

Travis White (44:43.454)
Yeah. I wish I had the superpower of not caring what people think about me. I think I'd be a lot further in life. mean, unfortunately, like I sometimes care too much.

Tyler Kania (44:49.006)
Yeah, a lot of people do.

Tyler Kania (44:57.326)
We all do.

Travis White (45:00.75)
any, any last thing, like any last bit of advice or anything that you want to tell the listeners.

Tyler Kania (45:11.092)
no, mean, a couple of things, I guess, like,

Travis White (47:03.892)
Perfect. Well, Tyler, you're definitely an inspiration to me and I hope you keep being the thought leader in this space. I believe your story is needed. You're the reason why I want to continue. It's people like your story, stories like yours for making me want to do what I want to do with this podcast.

Travis White (47:33.092)
And anywhere else that people can find you, click on Instagram or anything.

Travis White (48:09.242)
Yeah, yeah, it's what

And what is that? Is that supposed to be Sunday or something? I think, yeah. And I just heard that the Supreme Court upheld the decision for it to be gone.

Well, I honestly appreciate your time and thank you so much for being on the show.