From Lost Years to Laughs: Dave Mowry on Healing with Humor and Mental Health

Dr. Brad Miller 0:00

Hey, good people! Welcome back to Cancer and Comedy, the podcast where we talk to people who've faced life's toughest adversities-physical, mental, emotional-and they found humor and the hope to get to the other side. I'm Dr. Brad Beller. Today's guest lives with bipolar disorder and severe anxiety, and he survived homelessness in what he calls his 14 lost years, and he rebuilt his life through stand-up comedy. He's an author, a comedian, a mental health advocate, and his name is Dave Mowry. Dave, welcome to our conversation, my friend. Thanks. Glad to be here. How are you today? I'm awesome, my friend. I'm awesome, and it sounds like you're doing pretty good after some little rough patches in your life. But why don't you take us back a little bit to 1996? We and I talked a couple of weeks ago, and that seemed to be a pivotal moment for you. You had some relatively good success in your life, then something happened here. Just set the context for me a little bit.

Dave Mowry 1:02

That's right, 1996, and before I was successful. A successful businessman seemingly had it all. We had a nice house. We had a good income. We had a great family, good friends, and then I had businesses. And one day, I was driving down the freeway between businesses, under a lot of stress. My mind was racing with a bunch of stress, and my mind just snapped. Literally, I could feel that it was like a small electric shock in my head, and the muscles in my face went slack. My voice went monotone. My vision got blurry. It was everything I could do to get home and just go lie in bed and just breathe and just hold it together. And that started my 14 lost years, my 14 dark days where I couldn't interact socially with other people; I couldn't work. I was just, I was, I was broken. I was just broken. We were 14 years in,

Dr. Brad Miller 2:11

14 lost years, dark years, you call it. Kind of give me what, what? First of all, what an incredible pivot point in an unfortunate way for you, but give me some idea. You were 14 years old. What was day-to-day life like for you? Give me kind of a snapshot of what that meant to get by day to day.

Dave Mowry 2:35

Yeah, many days I couldn't get out of bed. I just- the depression was so deep, and the anxiety was so overwhelming that I couldn't get out of bed. If I did get out of bed, it was everything I could do to get downstairs and just sit on the couch and, again, just to breathe and just hold it together. If somebody came to the door and knocked on the door, I'd have a panic attack. If somebody, if somebody, if somebody, if the phone rang, I'd have a panic attack, and it would be overwhelming. I

Dr. Brad Miller 3:20

Can you say a word before we go too far? What that? How did that panic attack manifest itself? What did you actually do, or say, or not do, or what was your physical manifestation of that?

Dave Mowry 3:31

Okay, when I had a panic attack, as you know, the stress was, you know, I was deep in depression, but I was also completely stressed and anxious, and the anxiety was overwhelming. So there'd be a knock at the door, and that would be enough. Just the fear of me having to open the door and face somebody would be enough to tip me into a panic attack. And I'd go, I'd start to sweat. Beads of sweat would form on my forehead, and then I would sweat more, and sweat would start running down my face. It soaked my collar; it would soak my back; it would soak my underarms. It was everything I could do not to just. I just needed to escape. I just, you know, my vision was blurry again. It was everything I could do. I, you know, I'd hide in the bathroom. I'd hide in the closet just so I wouldn't hear anything, and I'd stay there and breathe and breathe and breathe until I could manage to come out, and then I'd end up back on the bed.

Dr. Brad Miller 4:43

I just think it's important for our audience. We like to call them lifter-uppers, just to have an idea that when you have a panic attack or anxiety, there are. It's not just kind of being nervous. It is some physical health manifestations of this that make it hard to function. You know, make it almost impossible to function, and I think it's important for people to have a little bit of clarity about that. So, but yeah,

Dave Mowry 5:07

exactly. It's, it's it's you know, the chemicals in your brain are released- the fight or flight, and and when you can't escape, it's, you know, it's pure panic.

Dr. Brad Miller 5:24

Sure, but then something switched; you had to pivot in a different direction. You saw a flyer regarding what I don't want to unpack too much myself, but in 2010, something happened for you. So tell us about kind of this beginning to switch the other way for you. So, what do you see on this flyer? What happened there?

Dave Mowry 5:47

Yeah, I was, you know, through the 14 last years, I I swore I wouldn't get stuck. So you know, when I did go downstairs and sit on the couch, and when that's all I could do, I'd sit in a different place. I'd sit in a different chair. I'd do anything just to be unstuck, and I just kept trying. I just kept trying. I didn't. I didn't give up. I didn't resign myself to the bottom. Was that that was all it was ever going to be, and that helped. I was asked to write a blog post for BPHope.com, and I wrote about my experiences, and that was cathartic, and that helped. And then I saw the flyer. Actually, my wife saw the flyer for the stand-up comedy class that was put on by NAMI National Alliance on Mental Illness and our county behavioral health department. And she suggested I go, and so I went. And it was a group of people living with mental health challenges, and we went around the table and talked about our experiences, and it was a place where I could be myself. I didn't have to pretend to be okay. Being broken was kind of the point of things, you know.

Dr. Brad Miller 7:17

So, what was it that kind of said to you after dealing with anxiety and depression, all that, that I can do this? You know, you know, there's something that had to click with you as well, that I can do this, because that's a big step. If you're asking me to go from kind of, you know, literally hiding out in the closet to go out in front of people to take a comedy class,

Dave Mowry 7:37

Yeah, it was huge. When I was hospitalized with my mental illness, and when I was in the hospital, I was safe. You know, nobody could see me. There wasn't a knock at the door. There wasn't a phone call. There wasn't. I was safe. You know, and when I was in there, I came up with a joke. And do you want to hear the joke?

Dr. Brad Miller 8:07

Yeah, lay it on me.

Dave Mowry 8:08

Okay. Why do they keep the doors locked to the psychiatric unit?

Dr. Brad Miller 8:13

Okay. Well, I'll buy why.

Dave Mowry 8:17

There are so many people trying to get in.

Dr. Brad Miller 8:19

Oh gosh. So I came up

Dave Mowry 8:23

with a joke, you know, and then I saw the comedian. They had him perform, and you know, he wasn't great. And I thought my joke was as funny as his joke. So that I could do that. I

Dr. Brad Miller 8:39

Could be at least I can be at least that bad, right, or that good, right? Something that's kind

Dave Mowry 8:43

of that was kind of it. So I was able to go to the class, having had those thoughts, not knowing what else to expect, but thinking, you know, I can do that. So that's even after all the pain and all the suffering, all the darkness and all the depression and all the self-loathing and everything. I was able to go to the class and sit, tell my story, and then through the class we look for the humor in our darkness, in our challenges. They say the more challenges you have, the more material you have for humor. And I have lots of material for humor.

Dr. Brad Miller 9:30

Well, let me go dig down there deeper with you a little bit on that topic because that's such a kind of important area. We talk about, you know, the name of our podcast is Cancer and Comedy. Cancer that would eat you alive- the physical health part, but also mental health and, you know, relationships that can eat you alive. And then the comedy is not always just a giggle, giggle, laugh, laugh, thought, but it's your kind of attitude in life and kind of looking for something to brighten your day. So tell me what some techniques or strategies that you used or maybe learned in your classes are to help you kind of dig down and find the humor, dark or otherwise, in these bad experiences.

Yeah, I think you know what we did. We told our story, and there were places that we, with the help of the teacher, and then on my own, we were able to identify as potential places for humor, and so we were looking at my experiences, and we were turning them around and turning them inside out, rolling them over, and then looking for the humor, and just the fact, just the experience of looking for the humor in the darkness changed everything.

Wow, that's

awesome! Yeah, it's instead of, you know, I'd get I'd hear a song on the radio, and I'd get triggered, and I'd go into a panic attack and relive the trauma from whatever memory that brought up. But then, after taking the comedy class or during the comedy class, when I heard that song on the radio that triggered me and went back to that trauma, I'd say, "Okay, where can I find the humor in that?

Yeah,

and it rewired my brain.

Well, and that's now where you're at. You now, among other things, teach people, particularly people with mental illness, to cope with it through comedy, and that's an amazing thing. And then I, we, I think it's also worth saying that, you know, it's relatively common that a lot of comedians, whether they be kind of local level or internationally known people, often dig for their comedy material out of their own adversities, their own depression, that kind of thing. And then we know there's plenty of comics who have, you know, acted out in some pretty severe ways. When Robin Williams comes to mind in that way. But what kind of I'm interested in then is how you've shifted from being the student and how this helped you in your mental health journey, and now you're the teacher, helping other people in their mental health journey to get a new perspective. What shifts there? What shift happened for you to go from the student to the teacher, and what are you seeing in some of your students?

Yeah, during the class, it turned out who knew. I mean, no way to know. But I had a talent for identifying places for humor in the stories. I had a talent for coming up with jokes, and I helped other people in the class write jokes, you know, from their experiences also. And then after the class was over, the group wanted to continue, and they asked me to facilitate it. So I facilitated continuing that group, and that led to me starting to teach classes, stand-up comedy classes, to folks with a mental illness. And what happened was, when we were able to find the humor in the stories of the people that came to the class, look for the humor in their experiences, and then come up with jokes about them. And I've got to emphasize: we don't we don't make fun of anybody with our jokes. We don't make light of things. I guess make light of things in a sense, but you know we tell our stories one joke at a time, and and it's always it's always true. I mean, the jokes are in a coming setup and punchline format at the most basic level. So the setup is the truth, and the punchline is a twist. I've got another joke that emphasizes that or shows that.

Lay it on me, man.

Let's, yeah, little comedy. You know, when you're depressed, you can't do anything; when you're manic, you're grandiose, you risk taker. There's a lot of sexual obsession. There's lots of there's just lots of different stuff. So, when I was really down, I didn't know which me was going to wake up in the morning. So, but I finally figured out which me is going to wake up in the morning because when I'm depressed, I spend all day trying to get out of bed, and when I'm manic, I spend all day trying to get my wife into bed.

Okay, all right. So,

So that takes the truth. That takes the truth of the. Impression that I've lived and the truth of the mania that I've

lived. I'll be telling I'll be telling that joke to my wife later on. I know I will be a gigantic, gigantic groan in no way out of that. So

Yeah, yeah. There we go.

Well, it sounds like you. Here's what. Here's another aspect of this. I'm really interested in. Do you see people, once you've kind of given some instruction and so on, and they get up on stage, even if it's in front of the class for the first time? Do you ever see something like a switch flip for them, or something go on there within their a light up in their life, or anything, or maybe the other way as well? Tell me, does that type of thing happen?

Yeah, it definitely happens in the class, finding the humor in their experiences and getting a laugh out loud; funny jokes are transformative in themselves. There, there's a switch that flips there, but then when people perform, you know, people are nervous. They get up and perform, and we say we're telling our story one joke at a time, but they get up, and they tell a joke, and the audience laughs. And they tell another, and the audience laughs. And by the third joke, they've got the audience with them, and there is this switch of a flip. You can see it in their eyes.

Yeah,

They get energized, they get confident, they get comfortable, and they just rock and roll up there. They really enjoy

it. Well, it seemed like that. I'm sorry. Go ahead. It seemed like that affirmation for people who are going through some mental anguish could be just huge. It could be just huge, couldn't it, for people to have an affirmation?

Oh, yeah, it is. And through the classes, one of the things about the jokes, we like our jokes, yeah. The comics, you know, I like all my jokes. I think they're funny, and the comics like their jokes and think they're funny. And then when they get up on stage and and tell their jokes that they believe are funny and that they enjoy telling and get that affirmation, yeah, it's it's it fills them up, you know. It fills them up. I have people come to the class and say, "I want to take the class. I want to do this, but I'm never going to perform.

Yeah.

And I say, "Yeah, that's okay. That's great. You know, just coming to the class is success. You don't have a

huge thing just to get to that point. That's great.

Yeah, but then after the weeks of the class, we come up with their jokes. They like their jokes. They think their jokes are funny, which they are, and so then they decide they do want to perform because they do want to tell their friends. Okay, awesome.

So that you see a transition in the class from when they start initially just for their own their own self improvement or edification, whatever, and eventually a part of the process is to take the big leap to go in front of others who are not kind of in the class or, you know, an actual public performance or something like that. Public

performance, yeah, and after they get done with their set and they come off stage, first thing they say is, "When can I do it again?

Oh, wonderful! What a transition point then.

Yeah, it fills them up. And what happens? Molly's an example. She was in the class, and Molly was a doctor. She everything she she always wanted to be a doctor. She wanted to practice medicine in her hometown. She went through college and med school and residency, and had her MD. And she was sidetracked due to her mental illness, her bipolar disorder.

Okay,

and she'd lost everything. Her mom brought her to class, and Molly was suicidal and just lost. She'd lost all her purpose, and through the class, we found humor in her story, and wrote jokes, and they were laugh-out-loud funny, and Molly performed at the end of the class, and now she performs around town, and her identity is no longer that of a failed doctor, but now she's a comic.

Good for Molly, a

successful comic. One of her jokes. One of her jokes is, "Little did I know, going through med school, that the MD after my name was going to stand for manic depressive.

Okay. Well, good for Amali, and good for you, and

Oh yeah,

Good, good for everybody who's taking that risk to go through it. What a great step! And I want to go back to something you said a little bit earlier, here, here, Dave. You mentioned a blog post that you wrote on bphope.com. I assume BP stands for bipolar, yeah, and so it's bphope.com, and whatever you shared with me earlier that people sometimes have a response to that article of oh my of O M G, that's me, so unpack that for me just a little bit. Why do you think whatever you wrote there resonated so much with people?

I think so many blog posts, and BP Hope is, I think, the biggest. It's huge. It's very big. Most of the posts that were on there were like three steps to beating depression, or three things to do when you're manic, or, you know, this type of thing. And the posts I wrote, I went back to my hardest challenges and my darkest days, and I wrote what it was truly like, how I felt, what it felt like, what it was to live with a mental illness and have those experiences. So that's that's you know, I would tell it essentially, tell a story, you know, about, say, constant conversations in my head, my mind going and having conversations in my head and not being able to get out of it. So I wrote about that and what it was like, and people related to it and said, you know, OMG, that's me. You're telling my story because those are things that they live with and that they go through, and so it's OMG. That's me. You're telling my story. I don't feel so alone now.

Yeah.

And you know, I did that. One of the most popular posts was too depressed to shower because when we're depressed, when we're truly depressed, it's, I don't know why. It's just a thing. It's almost impossible to shower. Almost impossible to take your clothes off and to get in the shower. And sometimes you go weeks and longer than that. You know, you go months without being able to shower. And so I wrote "Too Depressed to Shower, and I made it kind of humorous, but the response to that was amazing because it's not something you tell people, you know. You know, you don't advertise the fact that you haven't showered for six weeks. But people live with that, and they understand that, and they you know know how hard it is and how long it's been, and it just lifted a load off their shoulders, knowing that they weren't alone. That it's something that other people are going through. Well, the empathy of lots of other people go through the

Empathy of that-that you're telling your story was their story. Storytelling is huge, rather than the kind of bullet-point tips for this and that. And I love the way, and I just want to kind of transition to that telling that story, and that went into writing through your blog post. And now you've written a book called "Healing with Humor, and it's storytelling again.

Yep,

About this comedy class transformation. Say a word about your what you about your book. What's the moment in your book-writing process here, or the people you interviewed, are part of the process that stood out for you, surprised you, maybe lit you up out of that?

I think seeing the transformation that happened to folks who had taken the class was amazing, and the story- their stories- the story of the power of comedy and finding humor in our experiences. I thought it needed to be told. Yeah, I don't think it had been told, and it needed to be told. And we had the people. Lorraine's an example. Lorraine was 70 years old when she came to class. She'd been in the state hospital six times. She'd been sexually abused when she was young. She'd had amazing challenges, and yet here she was, still trying, having a positive attitude, and so Lorraine's chapter two in the book, and you find yourself rooting for Lorraine and reading about her story, the sadness, the loss, the hardship, and then we include jokes in the in the book, so you can read Lorraine's jokes, and you find yourself really rooting for Lorraine and cheering for Lorraine as you read through her hard times, and then read about her comedy, and then read her jokes, and read about the transformation that happened to her. So it is a story. It's Lorraine's story, and we tell Lorraine's story.

And you kind of multiply that a few times with some other people's stories as well. I understand his part.

Yeah, and so there are six chapters, six stories, and they're, you know, Molly's in there. She's chapter six. It's inspirational. It's funny. It's, you know, you have compassion, and it's moving. So that's

awesome. I understand even the audiobook version of this, and I'm an audio guy, of course. That you kind you you edited into the audio performance, or the audiobook, actual performances of some folks in there. So, why did you feel important in? Audiobook for people to kind of hear what was going on in the actual rooms where people were talking. You're not just the words on a page. Yeah.

Well, you can hear the you can hear Lorraine's voice. You can hear Molly's voice, and you can hear them telling their story one joke at a time, and you can hear them on stage, and you can, you know the pacing of the joke. Reading a joke is one thing, but hearing a joke and the pacing and the timing and the emphasis on the different words of the joke, and then and it's it's just funny. You know, there's funny. So you find yourself laughing.

That's awesome.

And then you hear the audience response, and you hear the audience laughing and clapping, and it just it it just it it brings us it brings it alive, and it makes it very special. And the audiobook's going to be out, probably. I'm not sure when this will be released, but the audiobook's going to be released. It'll it'll be out by probably the 21st, 22nd of August, and I swear if you can get the audio book, it's it's been described as brilliant, and I think it's I think it's brilliant. We're going to put

We're going to put links to your website and everything you're about in our show notes@cancerandcomedy.com. Well, just a couple of other things here, Dave. You mentioned in one of our prior conversations that you're you mentioned that you're not whole the way you were before. You're different, with different strengths. So, what strengths that you do you have now that, prior to 1996, Dave didn't have what strengths. Do you have now that you've come to realize?

Yeah, I think you know. Before 1996, I was a successful businessman. Blah blah blah. You know, I was good at what I was doing, and you know, it helped people because I employed a lot of people, so the good things. But then, going through this, you know, the experiences. I think being able to write about the experiences, to share the experiences, so people can realize that they're not alone. But I've developed compassion for people, and understanding for people, an appreciation for people, an appreciation for people that have challenges, and it's brought me to a place where, through my writing and comedy, I can make a difference in people's lives. So I'm making more of a difference in people's lives now than I was before or would have before. So I've got this. Do I wish? I mean, where we were was we were in a great place. So where everybody, where most people would really like to be, as far as you know, we finally made it, and to lose that is hard. And to look back, I look back on it with a sense of loss and grieving. But then I look at where I'm at now and what I'm able to do, and the people I'm being able to help, and I don't think I'd trade now for back then.

Yeah, awesome. Well, let me just kind of ask you one more thing, basically, and we'll wrap things up. And that is basically, you went through just this whole gamut, this arc of incredible story of being successful, having a pivotal crash, being in these 14 years of dark years, and now in recent years coming back and being a successful comedian and being able to teach and write a book and doing other things as well, and having some success in that, and that's all well and good. But let's go to that person who may be in their kind of dark period right now, their 14-year period, their own worst version there. Because one of the things we like to do here on this podcast is offer practical help to people going through their own adversity, their own cancerous point in life. So, for someone who's kind of in their own version of their lost years, and they can't really picture what you're doing right now. They can't picture being on stage, they can't picture writing a book, they can't picture some sort of a comeback of any kind right now because the weather is stuck. What would you say, Dave? Is kind of like maybe one step, one baby step, as it were, that they can take to start the comeback, whatever that means for them.

I think first to realize, you know, you're not alone. So other people are going through the challenges, and second, not to get stuck. Um, a big thing for me was not to get stuck, so I kept trying. I just kept trying to do something, whether it was sitting in a different spot on the couch when I was able to make it downstairs, or going out to the mailbox. I'd go out to the mailbox at night because I'd be afraid to see any of the neighbors, and to go to the mailbox during the day was a huge step. So, you know, baby steps, just baby steps. And then there is help, there is hope, and you come out. We come out the other side.

Yeah. As

long as we don't resign ourselves to this is how it's always going to be. We come out the other side, and when we come out the other side, we come out stronger and braver and more courageous and more compassionate. And so I think that some people get into a spot where they think suicide is an option, and suicide's a permanent solution to a temporary problem because things do evolve.

Indeed,

things do evolve, and things do get better.

And for other people, some people, their baby steps may not be a comedy class. It may be sometimes it could be, I don't know, just music or writing or grandchildren or any number of things it can be, but find something, and there are people out there who can be helpful to you. Yeah,

and it's it's the the smallest thing, just the smallest thing,

right?

And one of the things that really helped me was a commitment after I was coming through this, of doing something nice for somebody every day, and it wasn't big things, you know. It was sometimes just the smallest thing, but looking to do something nice for somebody every day got me out of my head.

Give me one example of one of the nice things you did for somebody else that was helpful to you.

Some of the things were just as simple as folding my laundry. Yeah, you know, so my wife didn't have to, and I didn't make a big deal out of it. I didn't say anything about it. I just, I just did it, like rinsing the dishes and putting them in the dishwasher, or just, just the simplest, you know, just simplest little things. And then as things have gone along, I was in an ice cream shop about a month ago, and there was a lady with some kids, and she was looking for coupons. She couldn't find her coupons to pay for the ice cream, and so I, I, you know, gave the cashier a $20 bill to pay for their ice cream, and then I left, and you know, it's just something nice I could do for somebody else, and it got me out of my head, and you know, makes us feel good about ourselves. So, I think that was very helpful.

Simple acts of kindness make all the difference in the in the in the world, and I appreciate you, yeah,

I appreciate your kindness for sharing some time with us here today. Tell the folks here in the cancer and comedy audience how they can get to be part of your world, about your book and your website. Anything else that we people need to know to be in contact with you?

Yeah, for the books, OMG, that's me tells the story of what it's truly like to live with a mental illness. So read that to know you're not alone, or read that if you're living with cancer or other loss to know that you're not alone, and it's a book that you can share with other people, and they can truly understand what's happening. And then Healing with Humor, of course, is the six stories, and it's great. And the audio book's amazing. They can find them at DaveMowry.com, Dave M O W R y.com. There are links to Amazon there. So yeah, Dave mowry.com.

Awesome, awesome. Well, we'll put links to all that on our website cancerandcomedy.com. Well, that's good, people. That's Dave Mowry, as he mentioned. He's the author of the book Healing with Humor, and O M G, that's me. And he really is proof that you can go through something really traumatic and come out the other side. Not the same person, but a stronger person. And that's what we love to hear. davemowry.com link from the show notes. If today's conversation gave you a little more hope, or made you laugh when you needed it. We just hope that you'll share it with somebody else in your life who needs to hear this too. This has been Cancer and Comedy, where we like to help people to heal with hope and humor. I'm Dr. Brad Miller, and we'll see you next time, good people.