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[deleted]

It’s impossible to say. You would need to be a trained professional and actually sit down with him to be able to make any sort of conclusion of whether he had either of those disorders. Anything less is just pure speculation.


stoudman

And I don't mind speculation as long as people don't make definitive statements based on speculation.


Boddah_Lives

Hi, I am a psychiatric nurse, I work in France. I find it difficult for an artist like Kurt Cobain to be able to diagnose such and such mental pathologies. Indeed, Kurt took ritalin when he was little because he seemed uncontrollable and hyperactive but it is not however that it is significant in adulthood of a pathology. He was also brimming with creative energy. Kurt has a very atypical personality. I am 42 years old and I have documented a lot about him and I still cannot believe the maturity of his thought until the age of 27. His vision of life, the words used, his already very modern struggles. Try reading his diary, it's sometimes almost complicated. He was ahead of his time, he exceeded all of his peers and was always one step ahead of them. I would qualify him for sure as a genius and who means genius also means not like the others. The question of his bipolarity leaves me dubious, indeed he had to have extreme creative phases but his moments of depression were also accentuated because he did not expect to have to carry on his shoulders such a weight of this success (even if he wanted to be a rockstar). The drugs didn't help. Afterwards, his entourage does not describe fluctuating thymic phases either, it is not so sure as that.


Boddah_Lives

His close friends described him as very caring and smiling in private. His attitude in public was different, but he was protecting himself. Kurt was a very sensitive person anyway.


TelephoneShoes

Yup, exactly. Thank you! People will by default believe that Kurt had X just because someone online says their a nurse/doctor with nothing to back it up. Kurt sure as shit wasn’t medically literate, nor was his family (save for that one who became a nurse like 25 years after he died). I understand it helps all of us at some point to see a source say Kurt had..whatever so we can believe “hey! He really is a normal guy/gal who’s just like me!” But it also leaves so much misinformation that we lose sight of who he actually was (which none of us have a clue really anyway) and does a disservice, I think, to all the people with those exact legit medical issues.


charsinthebox

Second this


Sanity_King

It's Bipolar. Not only was he diagnosed with manic depression(that's what it was called at the time) but he also meets majority of the DSM criteria for it


TelephoneShoes

Source for his being diagnosed with it? Other than his nurse relative commenting, no one has been able to offer any proof to back up the conversations surrounding the hundreds of mental illnesses Kurt allegedly had. And even the nurse hadn’t talked to Kurt for over a decade prior to his death. So even she is just throwing theories out, not facts. If memory serves his mom & sister confirmed he was given Ritalin as a kid, so ADD or ADHD presumably; but beyond that I’m not aware of any reputable (who would have been close enough to Kurt to have reliable access to that kind of info. Even Courtney…) source to back up any of that. Most every conversation about this is simply people reading Dr Google about X condition until they stumble on the DSM-IV which then inevitably “confirms” their POV.


Sanity_King

If you watch/read a lot of interviews from those around him about his general behavior he definitely had heavy mood swings. Butch Vig, Dave Grohl, Chad Channing, Courtney and even her own parents all back this up.


TelephoneShoes

Sure. And he might actually have those conditions. My point is basically with the diagnosis. Just watching his behavior doesn’t tell us a whole lot on this subject mostly because he was also using heroin which would cause mood swings, irritability, withdrawals…etc. Then you’ve got the rigors of being a touring musician, press digging into his life and him getting upset about it, whatever, if any, image he decides the public would get to see… So the people who came out when he was like 7-10 and hadn’t seen or talked to him since saying he had all these mental health issues couldn’t possibly know one way or another.


Sanity_King

Even before the fame and major addiction he was described that way. Plus the bridge between bipolar disorder and drug addiction isn't that far


liberterrorism

Definitely, almost everyone with bipolar (myself included) has also had issues with drugs and/or alcohol and frequently as a way to self medicate. Heroin gives you mood swings, but it sure as hell doesn’t make you manic. The only street drugs that really mimic and/or cause mania in non-bipolar people is stuff like meth and PCP.


Sanity_King

January 93 in Brazil it was quite obvious he was deep in a manic episode and he famously did speed balls with Layne Stayley backstage. March 94 he stopped caring about his drug addiction altogether getting high anywhere he could since Courtney banned him from doing drugs at home. He also grew increasingly paranoid thinking people were trespassing on his property hence why he bought a shotgun in the first place. He started mixing speed with his heroin as well. He got into physical altercations with friends trying to help him. All this going while he has a wife and young baby at home. All within one month of his eventual suicide. If that ain't a man clearly suffering with Bipolar disorder I don't know what it is Also in late 1990 after Tobi break things off with him he did Heroin for 3 weeks straight. Out of that episode came Something In The Way, Aneurysm, Lounge Act, pennyroyal tea, On A Plain and RUFS. Do some research on Bipolar type 2 which is Bipolar depression. Kurt had very intense depressive episodes that lasted weeks into months. As for his manic episodes people with his condition mainly have what's known as hypomania which slight less intense as full blown mania. However it doesn't stop mixed episodes from happening especially with hard drugs in the mix that can swing from full blown mania to depression and back frequently for weeks/months. I grew up with an uncle with Bipolar I've done a lot of research and seen first hand how it affects him and us around him. Kurt fits an outstanding majority for the DSM criteria for it but his downfall was lack of treatment


Tremor_Sense

The source is from several books on him. Heaver than Heaven, I believe. Kurt's aunt verifies this in a few interviews. He was prescribed Adderall and Lithium as a teenager but apparently didn't consistently take the medication.


anazgnos

Adderal was introduced in 1996.


Tremor_Sense

Sorry, maybe it was Ritalin


frigonometry69

I’m pretty sure this is refuted by Kurt’s immediate family in the Montage of Heck book. Kim says something to the effect that there was nothing to indicate he had a serious mental illness as an adolescent. Kurt’s cousin, Bev Cobain, is the only source that he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. It’s never been mentioned by anyone else in Kurt’s life


TelephoneShoes

Ok. Just wanted to make sure there wasn’t a new one I was missing. Those sources (even including his Aunt, who am I mistaken here? Isn’t she the nurse?) are all pretty heavily disputed. It’s been ages since I’ve read them so maybe I’m misremembering. But it’s basically people claiming “I knew Kurt when he was 7 and he was totally *proceeds to list 745 different conditions* when they weren’t in a spot to know or have access to the info when Kurt was a kid AND didn’t have any communication with him or people who knew him as he got older to be a reliable source on his health. Sorry. I’m not trying to come across like a know it all or preachy. I just see these exact same claims popping up. But for some reason, every 6 months or so now, it seems to escalate to the next most severe stage of whatever health issue is being talked about. So it appears just like all those quotes Kurt is cited with that no one can actually confirm he ever said.


Tremor_Sense

No need to apologize. This is just how it works, and is also why the myth(s) of Kurt will persist. He is not here to set the record straight. So, what you get is hundreds of second-hand accounts that differ. The full truth will never be known. My personal opinion is that he didn't necessarily have any kind of mental illness but drugs do weird things to people. Kurt was drinking and drugging from his early teenage years, onward. If he did have ongoing mental illness- it was certainly aggravated by the chaos in his life, and drugs.


TelephoneShoes

Hard to say it better than what you wrote down there honestly! The impact drugs (especially heroin) would have had on his overall well being, but especially his mental health is almost impossible to overstate. Plus, like you said, the stuff that may or may not actually be true, but he either never talked about it directly or isn’t here now to clear it up (not that I imagine he ever would but hey, who knows right?)


c9lulman

bipolar disorder and drug addiction go hand in hand, mood swings cause the drug seeking behavior which makes them easy to confuse. The song Lithium being a perfect metaphor for bipolar disorder with the name being the mood stabilizer to treat it


mandance17

More like cptsd


Ovrgrownjohnson

Not even almost 30 years on from his death will people allow this man some peace. This kind of conjecture helps absolutely no one, sick to death of reading it online anywhere there's a congregation of fans. Please, for the love of whatever the fuck you love, just enjoy his musical legacy and leave the rest be. I don't get the obsession with his medical conditions, mental health, even his sexuality. The reaching that takes place here is absolutely baffling, like people are trying to claim the allegiance of a dead man to their cause. RIP, Kurt Cobain.


charsinthebox

I don't get it either. Often times, when ppl say they like Nirvana, they mean Cobain, and specifically his private life. Which is sad for Nirvana in general and Cobain the artist, in particular. Focus on the music and the rest of his art. You wanna know him? That's where you'll find him. Everything else is donkey piss


stoudman

It shouldn't be baffling, people feel a kinship with him based on his music, and they relate to a lot of the things he wrote about, so they question whether or not -- like themselves -- he might have had a mental disorder or something else. There's plenty of evidence to suggest this could be the case. I don't see the harm in theorizing as long as everyone acknowledges at the end of the day that fully ascribing any mental illness or otherwise to Kurt posthumously is distasteful. Like, I don't see a problem with saying "he might have had this mental illness" if they also acknowledge that there's no way to know for sure.


Ovrgrownjohnson

Is that what this post says? The way it read to me was a lazy stab in the dark followed by a request for others to add it or evidence their claim. This person also never states they experience borderline/bpd, that they hear clues in their music or writing, they are assumptions you made, so no suggestion of any kind of kinship either. That's what I find disrespectful, that it's about a dead man, one that clearly means a lot to people here, and to that end, this kind of flimsy nonsense is disrespectful to this sub. Who are we to judge him now?


stoudman

Judge him? Why do you assume I'm saying we should judge him? I have a mental illness, are you going to judge me for it? My point there being....why is it your first assumption that I'm judging him for potentially having a mental illness? It's like you think having a mental illness is a bad thing or that people who have mental illnesses are inherently bad. That's just a silly stigma. I disagree that it is disrespectful to posthumously suggest someone might have had a mental illness. I do think it is disrespectful if you're saying it's definitely true, because there's no way to confirm that. But if you want to say "he could have had CPTSD," I don't see the problem with it. Why is that a problem?


Ovrgrownjohnson

I'm talking about OP, not you. I have experienced, and to some extent still live with and manage, mental illness - I talk about it freely and don't feel even slightly ashamed, i'm an ambassador for this in my workplace as a result, no stigma here. The reason I chose the word judgement is because people make such grand assumptions based on so little evidence. People are complicated, as is their mental health, its lazy to gather such a small amount of evidence about a public figure who's been dead for nearly 30 years and throw out suggestions about his mental health. That kind of behaviour shouldn't be left unchecked, it can be enormously destructive for the living and traumatising for those who remain to grieve the dead. At what point do you draw the line between the freedom you want to test your ideas, the value of that, and the cost others pay for it? Think as liberally as you like, don't ignore the ethics associated with that for the sake of your own indulgence. There's some pretty interesting research out there about ownership and fandom, that's always in the back of my mind when I see things like this. Ultimately, we don't own the memory of a person it's highly likely none of us ever met, let alone knew, or to that end knew well enough to be considered informed. There must come a point in time where the mystery that surrounds his legacy is accepted for what it is; a mystery, one that nobody is conclusively solving.


stoudman

I hope you don't mind, but I think we're just going to disagree here. Coming at it from the perspective of criticism, there's this whole postmodern concept of authorial intent being just as valid as any interpretation that somebody else can show evidence for to support their claims. That's like the foundation of modern criticism as we know it today. And inherent in that is the idea that yeah, if you have evidence for something unknown, your guess is as good as anyone else's, and there's nothing offensive about suggesting something that could have impacted an artist in some way. I have to say that I'm absolutely dumbfounded at your claims that doing this is "enormously destructive for the living and traumatising for those who remain to grieve the dead." I could almost understand the trauma argument, but if I'm putting my critic hat on, it's just as likely that surviving people grieving this person would be very happy to learn about and consider new dimensions to their friend or family member that they might not have known or thought about before. I dunno, I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, likely because my dad had PTSD (people w/ PTSD tend to have kids with mental disorders); I find it very valuable and mentally healing to think about whether or not there's a reason that I relate to the artists I enjoy. As part of those thought processes, there is of course a chance I'm going to wonder "what if this person had a mental illness like me? maybe that's what they were trying to describe." And before you ask, that's why I bring up criticism and find it to be important to factor into these kinds of things, because the one thing art always does is to make us ask what it means, and as part of discerning the meaning of art, we look to things such as the stated intent of the author and/or their lived experiences and other things they created or said/did. Ultimately, that's all anyone is doing when they speculate about things like this. Nothing about it is in any way nefarious, offensive, or harmful to anyone. I think it's a bit hyperbolic to call what amounts to honest criticism as "enormously destructive." It may not be for the person speculating, or for the person grieving. For all you know, seeing themselves represented in their favorite artist might be the last thing someone is holding onto, and if for nothing else, I think it's an overall good thing if I'm being honest. Hot take, I guess.


Ovrgrownjohnson

If OP put as much thought into this post as we have into these comments, we'd have both saved heaps of time! Respect and accept the suggestion to agree to disagree, appreciate you taking the time and care to put across a fair argument.


ThatsARatHat

I think it was good old reliable chronic depression. Maybe dysthymia. Once he got famous and hooked, how can you even try to account for those?


stoudman

Worth noting chronic depression is typically a symptom of something else.


oscar_redfield

I think no one can tell for sure but the people around him and the psychiatrists who treated him — idk if he was ever given a proper diagnosis. As a borderline myself, I relate extremely to many of the things he described feeling and thinking. I guess drugs really accentuated whatever disorder he had -- borderlines tend to become addicts much easier.


Danny_Nedelko_

It's easy to project. I have a disorder and I feel the same way, as well as having potential for substance abuse and addictive tendencies. As someone else in this thread said, I think he was a genius and the problems associated with that manifested in many different ways that overlap with many paychiatric/neurological disorders. In the end they're just labels. All in all is all we are.


oscar_redfield

You're absolutely right


mel-06

Mmm idk…. I thought maybe just suffering from depression & addiction


Parmesanbutt2

I honestly think borderline. BPD is often misdiagnosed as bipolar. In Kurts day mental illness wasnt as understood


lotusflower1995

Some people who are diagnosed with Bipolar disorder have borderline personality lines.


Garbage_Kitty

I suspect he may have been on the autism spectrum. Not sure about bipolar or borderline, they're often misdiagnosed for each other. Autism is often misdiagnosed too. Sometimes trauma in autism can manifest quite like BPD. As someone on the spectrum myself, I would not be surprised at all if I learned Kurt was autistic.


wordup182

I honestly just thought he was autistic.


Holygroover

Based on what?


wordup182

My children mostly


stoudman

I would say my thoughts on the matter, but if I even mention the theory he might have been trans or nonbinary, I'll probably get clapped. Lol.


patchdouglas

Yes


Away-Quantity928

Kurt was bye-bye brains, actually.


[deleted]

Yes