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Recovery Diaries

🎙️ A Screenwriter with Bipolar Disorder Rewrites His Recovery

Published about 1 month ago • 1 min read

Hi Reader,

Someone once turned to our guest, Coli Sylla, and said to him, “Keep that mental health crap to yourself.” Thankfully, that bullshit didn't fly.
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Award-winning screenwriter and director Coli Sylla talks about what happens when creativity, bipolar disorder, trauma, and ambition collide. While the entertainment industry has changed significantly over the last few decades, as Coli can attest there are parts of that world that still punish vulnerability, and encourage people with mental health challenges to shrink themselves.

Coli opens up about bipolar II disorder, ADHD, generalized anxiety, and how he manages depression, especially when grief and life stress hit at the same time. Coli talks openly about how living with mental health challenges as a Black man is different, and how many of his peers simply lack the language to express themselves, or know what to do when one of their own opens up.
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Coli talks about the practical side of recovery: therapy, medication management, sleep, sleep, and sleep, and building a creative life that can survive mood shifts. Coli is working on a new film, f.31.9, the diagnostic code for bipolar disorder. We celebrate his creativity, his ambition, and his recovery in this compelling interview you won't want to miss.

All my best,
Gabe Nathan

PO Box 130, Drexel Hill, PA 19026
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