Employees Of The Month

Photo by Tim Barber

This issue was written by people with mental illnesses from hospitals in London, Berlin, Stockholm and a day centre care program in Northfield, Illinois, USA. The place is called WilPower, and people spend their time there in groups doing things like dancing and discussing current events. It's such a mellow and encouraging place that it kind of made us wish we could lose our shit just to spend more time there. Then we remembered that the people at WilPower are also tormented by illnesses that we can only begin to fathom, because, no matter how terminally unique we think we are, we really are just sane and kind of boring in comparison. So we gave them the magazine and said, "Do whatever you want, dudes. We're taking the month off." And boy, did they. That's why we have stuff like: Rob Logan, who is kind of the star of the show, tells us about his early days in radio and TV, and where he stands now, sometimes talking to the TV. He also tells us about this little-known band that might end up being the next big thing. Rob has major depression and bipolar disorder. Brian Spencer, an aspiring young poet and writer who plays about 20 hours of Final Fantasy 10 per day and has severe bipolar disorder, tells us what it's like to swallow a bunch of pills that make your brain different. Amy Kogen is a bipolar woman and her kid Tim is autistic. She wrote out her tips for being a good mom for us. Larry Rotheiser went out with a woman with a serious crack addiction and learned some stuff about love that he wants to pass on to all of our readers. Jeff Saul has such severe manic depression that he'll go into an episode in Chicago and come out of the haze days later in Florida. Michelle Smith is a painter from Hackney who claims to have visits from demons. She’s also endured abuse at the hands of fellow patients while staying in hospital. Michelle also likes to dance so we got her to tell us what she thought of one of the bands in our music section. And then there's our friend Jeff Smith, who works as a bagger at the local supermarket and has hallucinated mowing down crowds of people during his homicidal visions. One more thing—we discovered this program through a gutting, funny, and brilliant documentary called Unbreakable Minds. Abby and Irene, who made it, turned us on to WilPower and got us in the door. And Sue Shimon, the executive director of WilPower, was kind enough to know that we didn't want to do a magazine that said, "Ha ha, look at the fucking loony tunes. Ha ha ha, they think the TV said that nobody likes them" or whatever. So thanks to all of you guys. But mostly thanks to the excellent mentally ill people who generously let us meet them and told us what they were thinking about.