I just watched this insightful documentary about Churchill, Roosevelt & Stalin and had to hop on here to give my own two cents about the subject.
As we all know, life is a tumultuous game and in this weird game of 20th Century politics I will say that Churchill always fascinated me the most. Mostly because his character and discipline: Roosevelt was astounded by Churchill’s sudden bursts of energy and jolliness accompanied by long periods of focused work. These fluctuations are a total reminder of what it means to have some form of mental illness in the current century.
DISCLAMER: This is an opinion essay and I don’t condone Churchill’s imperialist actions, I am merely sharing my sentiment about his mental disorders or lack thereof.
However, there’s this black dog myth that everyone keeps talking about
A lot of online articles like to make Winston Churchill a representative manic-depressive/bipolar human being. There is no exact proof of this and I found this great source that dives a bit deeper into it. Basically, the writer states that Churchill didn’t meet the required minimum of 5 criteria classified in the DSM in order to be diagnosed as bipolar.
Besides, considering the amount of pressure and loss he had to deal with on a daily basis, there’s no wonder he was being followed by at least one mythological black dog.
I think he was followed by more chickens than dogs tbh
Regardless of my opinion on his politics, I think he was a astute strategic thinker as well as a forceful risk taker. One hast to be considering he had opponents like Stalin and Roosevelt and outlived both of them.
I have this pretty old book and sometimes I open it randomly to see what I can use to write about next. Today I opened it with Churchill in mind and this came up:
I think he was being followed by more chickens than dogs to be very honest. He just had the charisma of a leader combined with enormous wealth and opportunities to play with. What better cards can you have in life, huh?
As a diagnosed bipolar person I wanna say this historic figure sometimes reminds me of my times of mania in the sense of him being a big lover of meetups, smoking and funny hats.
I really love meetups, smoking and funny hats!
