The Incredible Odyssey of Taylor Beck

It’s a compelling story of strength, courage, and resiliency, introspection and passion, survival and empowerment.  It’s intensely personal, but he’s happy for you to know it.

You might find it difficult to read. Hopefully, it will inspire you mightily.

So here goes.  Please join me, and him, for the ride.

Beck is a 2003 Collegiate alumnus.  He earned a BA in neuroscience from Princeton, an MS in science writing from MIT in Boston, and an MA in journalism from NYU.
    
After a circuitous journey – an odyssey, really – he’s found his calling as a journalist in New York whose emphasis is demystifying mental health issues.
    
For two years after he completed his undergraduate degree, Beck taught English on a fellowship from the Princeton in Asia program in four elementary schools in Yakage, a town of 15,000 in rural southern Japan.
    
“No one spoke English,” he said.  “You learn your Japanese from your 6-to-12-year-olds. I loved it.  I biked to work each day from my house backing up to rice paddies. It was the best experience.  I thought teaching might be something I’d want to do the rest of my life, honestly.”
    
Other interests became his focus, however.

He has always loved to write, and his inner voice was calling him.

He has always been enthralled by the mysteries of the brain, so after his PIA stint ended, he put his college major to work for a year performing dream studies in a neuroinformatics laboratory associated with Advanced Telecommunications Research International in Kyoto.
    
In 2010, he returned to the United States and landed a position studying memory and aging at the Dynamic Cognition Lab in St. Louis.
    
It was there that his life’s adventure began in earnest.
    
“Short version…I have bipolar disorder,” he said with his customary candor.  “I was diagnosed about three years ago after two solid years of pretty consistent unstable mood. That means six month periods where I didn’t feel like leaving the bed and wasn’t the animated spirit that you’re used to seeing.  I couldn’t concentrate because I was sort of perpetually anxious and couldn’t sleep.  That type of period was followed by one where, as my mom said, ‘It’s nice to have Taylor back, but I wish we could dial him down a little bit.’”

Let’s step back for a moment.
    
When Beck returned from Japan, he fell into a dark period and spent the next month at his parents’ home in Richmond.

“I was bottomlessly depressed, staying in bed late, barely talking,” he recalls. “I spent afternoons on the screened porch staring at the bird feeder, trying to read magazines or books. There was no hint that my condition had an ‘up’ side, other than how I'd acted the rest of my life.”

Still in this state, he moved to his new job in St. Louis.  Friends and family worried mightily, but he ignored their concern and resisted offers to help.
    
Then came a call from his sister True, who was in medical school at the time.  Seems she had just heard a lecture on depression, and symptoms that the professor described fit her brother precisely.

“She said, ‘It’s a clinical thing. You can get help.  Go see a doctor,’” Beck recalled.
    
He did, and medication seemed to work…until it worked too well.
    
After months on an antidepressant, he shifted from depressed to manic and his focus from science to writing: obsessive, voluminous writing.
    
He became fascinated by the world unfolding around (and within) him.  All the while, he was learning, thinking, and putting into the written word what he perceived to be his identity, not his affliction.
    
Each turn of events was testing his mettle, but they also provided invaluable insight, enlightenment, and grist for the mill.  He was truly becoming a character in his own epic narrative.

“I heard a psychiatrist at Harvard say that we’re starting to think of bipolar not really as a disorder of mood but a disorder of energy,” he said.  “The salient variable is do you have an excess of energy or a lack of energy?  Often when you have excess energy when manic, it’s not euphoric.  It’s agitated and anxious.  That’s how I was by the time I landed in the hospital.”

That pivotal moment occurred while he was studying at MIT.  

He was admitted to McLean Hospital, the psychiatric affiliate of the Harvard Medical School, and remained for a week followed by 10 days of outpatient care.
    
He then returned to his parents’ home.   Slowly, with much help and encouragement, he regrouped.
    
Six months later, in January 2012, he moved to New York.
    
Challenging though the experience was, his raison d’être had become abundantly clear: using his prodigious literary skills, he would do all within his power to humanize issues that for generations have been discussed mostly in hushed tones.

“A lot of my writing is mental health advocacy coupled with education,” he said.  “The mental health world has a PR problem.  Every book about depression has a black cover and somebody sad on it.  Every book about bipolar disorder opens with a scene of exotic madness because it’s catchy and dramatic.  I could have written it because I’ve lived it.
    
“Ironically, the very people who are trying to get the word out are couching their stories in dark terms.  My mission is to change that, to talk about that stuff in a way that’s more curious than shocking.  I’ve studied neuroscience.  I’ve always been obsessed with the brain.  I just happen to have one that’s a little haywire.  So come along with me on the journey and let’s find out what makes it haywire.”

For the past four years, Beck has been very busy…and very healthy. In addition to earning his second master’s, he’s written prolifically for a variety of publications including The Atlantic, The Washington Post, GQ, and Fast Company. His signature offering is an essay entitled “Love on Lithium” which appeared in The Post.  He’s also done extensive research for The New York Times Magazine and The New Yorker and has found joy, purpose, and fulfillment as a rapt student of several literary mentors.
    
This past week, Beck returned to Collegiate where he spent two days visiting old friends, reminiscing, and speaking to Upper School English classes about his writing and personal journey.
    
As our time together was ending, I asked him if he would change anything about his life if he had the choice.
    
He smiled, as he does quite often. He didn’t hesitate.
    
“No,” he replied, “I wouldn’t change anything. Bipolar is so core to who I think I am.  I didn’t have a name for it before, but anyone who described my personality when I was a kid would say I was exuberant or enthusiastic or talkative to a fault.  I loved people and connecting with people.  I was very drawn to the arts and expression and was very goal oriented, very driven. Those are traits that are classically bipolar.  
    
“The gift of bipolar or any type of mental illness is that you are forced to be aware of your mind in a way other people aren’t necessarily paying attention. I thank God I have lithium to control it, but I don’t wish I wasn’t bipolar. Discovering that I had bipolar disorder was weirdly the best thing that ever happened to me in the sense that a writer needs a calling, a subject. To be blessed with the subjective experience has helped me find my voice.”
            -- Weldon Bradshaw

A compendium of Taylor Beck's work appears on his website https://taylorbeck.contently.com/

EDITOR'S NOTE: Because of the sensitive and personal nature of this column, we assure readers that it was reviewed and approved by Taylor Beck.