Kanye Gets Candid About Bipolar Disorder, Recalls Having To Be Handcuffed

In an upcoming episode of My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman, Kanye West opened up about his bipolar diagnosis, detailing what it's like when he has an "episode."

"When you’re in this state, you’re hyper-paranoid about everything," Ye said during the interview, per Entertainment Tonight. "Everyone — this is my experience, other people have different experiences — everyone now is an actor. Everything’s a conspiracy. You feel the government is putting chips in your head. You feel you’re being recorded. You feel all these things."

"You have this moment [where] you feel everyone wants to kill you. You pretty much don’t trust anyone," Kanye continued before describing how he was once hospitalized and subsequently handcuffed and separated from his family during one of his severe episodes. "They have this moment where they put you — they handcuff you, they drug you, they put you on the bed, and they separate you from everyone you know. That’s something that I am so happy that I experienced myself so I can start by changing that moment."

"When you are in that state, you have to have someone you trust. It is cruel and primitive to do that," he added.

Ye then explained how medication affects him, saying "If you don’t take medication every day to keep you at a certain state, you have a potential to ramp up and it can take you to a point where you can even end up in the hospital. And you start acting erratic, as TMZ would put it."

"When you ramp up, it expresses your personality more. You can become almost more adolescent in your expression," he continued. "This is my specific experience that I’ve had over the past two years, because I’ve only been diagnosed for two years now."

"It’s a health issue that has a strong stigma on it and people are allowed to say anything about it and discriminate in any way," Kanye shared of his bipolar diagnosis. "This is like a sprained brain, like having a sprained ankle. And if someone has a sprained ankle, you’re not going to push on him more."

"With us [those affected by bipolar disorder], once our brain gets to a point of spraining, people do everything to make it worse," he said. "They do everything possible. They got us to that point and they do everything to make it worse."

Kanye's episode of My Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman airs on Netflix May 31.

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