Did you know the famous 1960s/1970s activist Abbie Hoffman had BPD?

[RonPrice]

Did you know the famous 1960s/1970s activist Abbie Hoffman had BPD?
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ABBIE HOFFMAN AND ME

Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman (1936-1989) was a political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party(YIP).  The YIP or Yippies were a radical youth-oriented and countercultural revolutionary offshoot of the free speech and anti-war movements of the 1960s.  I was a child of the sixties: 15 in 1960 and 25 in 1970.  The YIP was founded on 31/12/’67 while I was teaching primary school on Baffin Island.
Hoffman came into prominence in the 1960s while I was at university in the years 1963 to 1967.  He continued practicing his activism in the 1970s when I moved on to teaching high school and university.  He has remained, even now in the 21st century, as a symbol of the youth rebellion of those ‘60s, of that counter-culture.  Both Hoffman and I were involved with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), although his involvement was in a leadership role.  I was one of only a very small handful of on-campus SNCC members in 1964-5 at McMaster University in southern Ontario.  Hoffman’s most famous protests took place while I was teaching Inuit children in 1967/8. You can read about the details of his protesting,  his counter-culture activity at Wikipedia.  I leave this to you, if you have the interest.

Abbot Hoffman was diagnosed with bipolar disorder(BPD) at the age of 44 in 1980.  I was diagnosed with BPD the same year; I was then 35.  He committed suicide in 1989 by taking a drug overdose.  He was 53 at the time.  I took medications for my BPD, and am still going at the age of 68.  I could draw more parallels between his life and mine, but this is sufficient to start this quasi-eulogistic prose-poem.-Ron Price with thanks to Wikipedia.

You struggled against the system
while I found a new-one in which
to struggle…..They said you were
an imp-joker….…a Shakespearean
fool who sees & suffers and stares
at the void, a type of existentialist1
who understood reasons for despair.

The system-totality of the universe
is not a thing that you can drop out2
of…….…You must find a new system,
Abbie, & you didn’t…. you didn’t find
treatment for your bi-polar disorder
either and that was tragic very tragic.

1 There are many varieties of existentialism. See this link for a summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism
2   "The system is the totality of the universe," Hoffman’s friend Bobby Seale, a co-founder the Black Panther Party, said at Hoffman’s funeral, "You can't drop out of the universe." See this link for more: http://history.tomrue.net/abbie/

Ron Price
5 April 2012

[RonPrice]

Good point, Tegorsk. Misdiagnosis is a problem with BPD.-Ron

[Tegorsk]

Yes, I did know that. His life history makes it very clear.  Also, it takes one to know one.  There was a lot of misdiagnosis in those days.

[RonPrice]

Thanks, ILADVOCATE, I'll check that link out.-Ron

[ILADVOCATE]

  Yes thats very interesting. Also its true for other people who were known historically as well:
http://www.understandingbi-polar.info/Famous_People_With_Bipolar_Disorder.html