Read Stories > Two Stars Masked Army Veteran’s Bipolar Disorder

When Gregg first raised concerns about his mental health with military doctors, they had trouble seeing past the stars on his Army general’s uniform to the condition underneath, Gregg believes. 

Gregg first sought mental health support while on active duty during the Iraq War. He had been feeling deeply depressed, so during his mental health screening, he told the doctors, “Hey, there’s something wrong with me.” The doctors who evaluated him disagreed. “They said, ‘You’re fine. There’s nothing wrong with you,’” Gregg says. “And they couldn’t see past my success.”  

Army General With Bipolar Disorder Shares: “I am not ashamed.”

It didn’t help that the symptoms of mania in bipolar disorder can masquerade as simply exceptional energy and—in Gregg’s case—high performance.  

In fact, Gregg says, before he experienced the depression that led him to seek help, he had been in a manic state for months. But in 2003, amid the heightened emotions and demands of the early Iraq War, this mania did not feel or look like a problem. “I performed better than I ever had in my life,” he says. “I felt like Superman: bulletproof, didn’t need sleep.” 

Crisis and diagnosis  

It was only later—11 years later, when the war had ended—that the full extent of Gregg’s condition became evident. “I went into full-blown mania,” Gregg says. “I had paranoid delusions that people were out to get me. They were spying on me. They wanted to see me arrested, put in jail, tortured, murdered, in prison.” After the period of mania, Gregg experienced severe depression, during which he just wanted to die. 

“I ended up getting removed from command, which is a nice way to say I was fired, forced to retire, and then later hospitalized,” Gregg says. He returned to the doctors he had seen before, this time accompanied by his wife. While Gregg again told the doctors that he felt something was wrong, it was Gregg’s wife who provided the additional clue the doctors needed to make the correct diagnosis. According to Gregg, she said, “You know, he was manic before, and now he’s depressed.”  

“They connected the dots,” Gregg says, “and they said, ‘Oh, mania, depression—bipolar disorder.’” From that point, Gregg began his treatment journey. With the help of his wife and a friend from the Army, he got into a residential treatment program at a VA hospital. There, they tried numerous therapies, including medication, talk therapy, and electroconvulsive therapy.  

Finding the treatments that clicked 

Even with the intensive treatment Gregg received, his condition did not improve at first. Instead, it took several months before VA doctors found and prescribed the treatment that really clicked for him. “Once I started taking lithium,” Gregg says, “within about three or four days, my symptoms vanished. They went away, and I came back to life with energy, enthusiasm, interest.” 

Along with taking lithium, Gregg has seen a therapist to help him identify what can trigger episodes of mania or depression. Drawing an analogy to his military experience, Gregg says: “In a military setting, you have minefields. And what the military does is, it tries to figure out, where are the minefields? And you put like a fence around them. So what I figured out how to do was to say, ‘This is a trigger—this subject, this event, this location,’ and I don’t go there.” 

In addition to formal treatment, Gregg focuses on getting exercise—like going to the gym and taking walks. He is also open about his condition. 

Getting by with a little help from his friends 

“I am not going to be stigmatized, embarrassed, ashamed,” Gregg says. In fact, he has come to see openness with family and friends as an important part of staying well.  

“I’ve got friends who are terrific,” he says. “I’ve told all of them that I have bipolar disorder, and here’s the symptoms of mania and depression.” He has encouraged them, he says: “Hey, when you see me going into either the mania or the depression, please come talk to me. Tell me that you’re seeing these symptoms.” 

Gregg also hopes his own experience will inspire others to begin their own treatment journeys. “If you have a mental health issue and you don’t get help, you’re looking at a path of destruction,” he says. “Anything I can do to take my near-death experience, where I wanted to die every day for two years, and transform it into a plus, an inspiration for others—then that’s what I do.”