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‘I ended up becoming a hamster on a wheel, and I self-medicated with cocaine.’
These were the words that Michelin-starred chef Heston Blumenthal used to describe his rapid rise to fame in the year 2006 after he was awarded an OBE in the New Year’s Honours List.
‘My name became a brand. I had a range of foods in Waitrose, I had a range of barbecues, I had a range of kitchen equipment. Everything was going at full throttle,’ he explained.
But despite the staggering success that he had become, eating away at him from the inside was a then unknown bipolar diagnosis, which is the subject of a new BBC documentary that has been released today.
Speaking from inside his home in Provence, France, the 59-year-old culinary genius sheds light on his experience being sectioned by police in November 2023 after he suffered a mental breakdown.
On top of this, he tries to understand the social and medical stigma around being bipolar. But in a truly heartbreaking conversation with his son Jack, Heston learns the true extent of his disorder and how much of an impact it has had on his family.
After meeting with bipolar experts and other people who suffer from the disorder, Heston decides to visit his eldest son, Jack, who now runs the award-winning Ginger Wings restaurant in Marlow.
During a brutal and honest conversation, his son explains how difficult it was to speak with Heston during his childhood.
Speaking about his disorder, he says: ‘We found it difficult as a family… It’s nice now to have… not a label on it, but something we can refer back to, to say he wasn’t just being a d**k.
What is bipolar disorder?
Bipolar disorder is a mental health condition where you have extreme mood changes.
These shifts can range from periods of intense energy and euphoria (mania or hypomania) to periods of profound sadness and hopelessness (depression).
Formerly known as manic depression, medicines and talking therapy can help manage it.
‘We just wanted a relaxing conversation with our dad, and we weren’t allowed.
‘You didn’t want to know anyone’s thoughts, I don’t think you gave a s**t.
‘You would just talk over us and say I’m going to do this, that and that, and I’m going to change the world.
‘It would always start quite well for a few minutes, but then I had to walk away from you sometimes.’
Jack went on to say: ‘Every time we had to psyche ourselves up to come and see you. We’d plan it three weeks in advance just to see you for half an hour. It was horrible and it was constant and there was nothing I could do to help you.’
As Heston begins to wipe away tears, he replies by saying: ‘Me being bipolar is damaging the people I love.’
After saying he is ‘so sorry’, Jack forgives his father before saying ‘I love you’ and the two share an emotional embrace.
Elsewhere in the feature-length documentary, Heston explains how one day he woke up to find himself in a French mental hospital.
Following this, he now has to take numerous different pills to balance his serotonin levels.
However, according to Heston, he is fearful that the medication could affect his creativity, like in the past when he curated dishes such as sardine sorbet, snail porridge and bacon and egg ice cream at his award-winning restaurant The Fat Duck.
Discussing his cocaine abuse, which he claims was a way of self-medicating his bipolar disorder, Heston explained how on one of his cooking shows his mind ‘was hollow’ and he would lie on the floor listening to meditation videos in between gaps in filming.
‘I wondered if there was a gun here, would I use it, but there wasn’t,’ he revealed.
‘Then I thought, are there other ways of ending it. Then I decided I wasn’t ready for that. But it all went through my head.’
On top of his depression, Heston also explained how he would have bizarre thoughts, such as that he could provide clean drinking water to the entire world.
Earlier this year, he opened up about some of the symptoms he experienced from having bipolar disorder, including thinking that the TV was ‘talking to him’.
Appearing on BBC Breakfast, he told presenters Charlie Stayt and Naga Munchetty about his experiences.
‘One of the classic symptoms of bipolar is you can start hallucinating things, so I hallucinated a gun on the table. I was talking about suicide. So you have suicidal thoughts,’ he said while sitting on the sofa in the BBC studio.
Heston: My Life With Bipolar is available to watch on BBC iPlayer on June 19.
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