Zach Sandler, a Broadway musical theater actor and composer known for playing piano in Wicked, delivers a deeply personal spoken-word narrative chronicling three psychiatric hospitalizations related to his bipolar disorder diagnosis, spanning from a manic episode at Yale in 2006 through a third severe episode in DC in 2019, and culminating in the triumphant 2025 premiere of his autobiographical musical ‘Inside My Head’ at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.
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Transcript
[03:00:36] and follow them on social media.
[03:00:38] All right, our final show, before we hit the raffle,
[03:00:46] we have Zach Sandler.
[03:00:50] Hey. Oh, hold on.
[03:00:53] Special shout out.
[03:00:55] To who?
[03:00:57] Okay, so I’ll give the special shout out.
[03:01:03] So, you know, Zach, he brings some star power here.
[03:01:08] And we were able to get him here thanks to a donation from Jessica Unger.
[03:01:13] She’s a therapist based in Crofton.
[03:01:15] She does some online work as well.
[03:01:17] And she’s taking new clients.
[03:01:19] And big thanks to her.
[03:01:22] Opening it up for other sponsorship opportunities in the future.
[03:01:26] So I’m going to pass the mic to Zach here.
[03:01:31] Thank you.
[03:01:32] Is this a good mic to use?
[03:01:36] Hi, everybody.
[03:01:37] I’m Zach Sandler.
[03:01:38] Tyler, thanks so much for having me here.
[03:01:40] Thank you all for coming out tonight.
[03:01:42] You guys make the event happen.
[03:01:45] I got a little extra time, thanks to Tyler,
[03:01:47] so please take that clock away from me.
[03:01:52] Thank you.
[03:01:54] Yeah.
[03:01:54] So oh, right, the advertisement first.
[03:01:57] Yes, I am a musical theater actor, composer, lyricist,
[03:02:03] pianist as well.
[03:02:04] I played for Wicked on Broadway.
[03:02:06] You may have heard of the show.
[03:02:08] And yeah, and then some more stuff
[03:02:10] you’ll hear about in a second.
[03:02:11] And also, I am launching a podcast
[03:02:14] called Insanely Talented about neurodivergence
[03:02:18] and creativity among others.
[03:02:21] Thank you.
[03:02:22] I actually have business cards out on the front table
[03:02:24] and at the NAMI booth and my new website.
[03:02:27] My website just went up a few days ago, so check it out.
[03:02:32] All right.
[03:02:34] So let’s start at the beginning of my story.
[03:02:36] This is 2006.
[03:02:39] I am a junior at Yale College, 20 years old.
[03:02:44] I’ve just given up my biggest passion, musical theater,
[03:02:48] to be pitch pipe or music director of my a cappella
[03:02:51] group, the prestigious Yale Spitzwinks.
[03:02:54] Now, that’s right.
[03:02:55] It wasn’t the Whiff and Poofs.
[03:02:56] It was the Spitzwinks, which is the weird underclassmen version
[03:02:59] of the Whiff and Poofs.
[03:03:01] You really needed to know that.
[03:03:04] So I gave up musical theater because it took so much time
[03:03:07] to be pitch pipe.
[03:03:09] But within a month, I missed it so much
[03:03:11] that I auditioned for the big musical anyway.
[03:03:14] But I had to turn it down because of my time commitment.
[03:03:18] One night, I heard the cast of the musical rehearsing
[03:03:21] through a door, and I stayed there for what felt like hours,
[03:03:24] listening.
[03:03:24] Wishing I were on the other side.
[03:03:30] I started to feel heavy, hopeless.
[03:03:33] And despite being surrounded by friends, alone,
[03:03:38] my sadness became deeper and deeper.
[03:03:41] And it’s not like I was having tears in my eyes.
[03:03:44] I was feeling waterfalls behind them.
[03:03:48] A character appears in my head, like a person
[03:03:51] who I can’t actually see or hear audibly, but.
[03:03:54] And I can feel what he’s saying.
[03:03:57] Just give up.
[03:04:01] No one likes you.
[03:04:04] You’re alone.
[03:04:08] I’m sick, so I can hit that low night today.
[03:04:13] This continues day after day after day until seven days
[03:04:18] later.
[03:04:19] I start to feel a pep in my step, the sensation
[03:04:22] of my whole body rising.
[03:04:24] It’s like another character has appeared who’s saying,
[03:04:26] well, that sucked.
[03:04:27] Let’s try something new.
[03:04:30] And this voice tells me to go to an a cappella party
[03:04:33] and go up to every single girl and flirt.
[03:04:36] What could go wrong?
[03:04:37] Hey, Samantha, nice to meet you.
[03:04:39] You are looking cute tonight.
[03:04:41] Your rendition of Tradition was sublime.
[03:04:44] La-fime!
[03:04:44] Would you like to come back to my room and have a sing-along?
[03:04:48] You could play my keyboard.
[03:04:49] It is sensitive and very long.
[03:04:54] No?
[03:04:57] OK.
[03:04:59] And instead of going home with any of the girls,
[03:05:02] I go home with myself, where the voice tells me
[03:05:05] to sit down on my computer and start typing.
[03:05:07] And over the next three nights, I
[03:05:08] stay up all night writing a 39-page manifesto
[03:05:11] called My Religion, in which I solve the universe,
[03:05:15] I solve humanity, I solve everything.
[03:05:18] In the middle of the third night,
[03:05:19] I pick up an apple from my desk, admiring how beautiful
[03:05:22] and profound its shape is.
[03:05:24] And like any good college student who wants to share his excitement
[03:05:26] at four in the morning, I call my parents.
[03:05:31] Now, my parents being mental health professionals,
[03:05:32] they know that something is up.
[03:05:34] And they drive through the night from DC to New Haven,
[03:05:36] where they take me to a school psychiatrist.
[03:05:39] The psychiatrist asks me a few questions and then says,
[03:05:43] Mr. Sandler, we’re sending you to the hospital.
[03:05:47] I’m completely confused.
[03:05:48] This is the most creative and productive I’ve ever felt.
[03:05:51] In fact, I just finished my manifesto in the waiting room.
[03:05:53] But he insists that I must go.
[03:05:57] Either I sign myself in, or they sign me in.
[03:06:01] So I sign myself in.
[03:06:04] At the hospital, I become paranoid
[03:06:06] that the doctors are trying to kill me with their sleeping pills,
[03:06:09] and that if I fall asleep before sunrise, I will die.
[03:06:12] In the middle of the night, I become
[03:06:14] convinced that I am Jesus Christ, another patient is God,
[03:06:18] and another is Mother Mary.
[03:06:20] And there’s God in every one of us.
[03:06:22] And I am Jesus Christ.
[03:06:23] And I am Jesus Christ.
[03:06:23] And I am Jesus Christ.
[03:06:23] And I am the Messiah.
[03:06:25] And I am the Messiah.
[03:06:29] At 6 AM, the doctors come in, and they have to subdue me,
[03:06:32] hold me into a chair, and inject me.
[03:06:40] 24 hours later, I wake up.
[03:06:42] The sound of a doctor’s voice.
[03:06:45] She gives me a diagnosis.
[03:06:46] She says that I’m, I can’t be right.
[03:06:52] That’s not me.
[03:06:53] I’m a stem cell.
[03:06:53] I’m steady, stable, reliable.
[03:06:54] I’m not crazy.
[03:06:55] I go nine years without telling anybody, just a few close friends, family members.
[03:07:06] I’m ashamed of what happened, and afraid that if people know,
[03:07:09] it could cost me social opportunities, and worst of all, my pride.
[03:07:14] And then, I have a shaking fit.
[03:07:18] And I wonder if it might be one of my medications.
[03:07:20] The doctor tells me to stop one of them completely, and reduce
[03:07:23] the other one significantly.
[03:07:26] Within three days, I go to a writer’s salon, where I become convinced that one
[03:07:31] of the other writers is the devil incarnate.
[03:07:33] Another night, I become convinced that somebody is going to blow up the movie
[03:07:37] theater, where I’m planning to go for Valentine’s Day, so we don’t go.
[03:07:40] And yet another one, my doctor calls in some Klonopin, but I force my partner
[03:07:43] to take it first, to show that they’re not trying to kill me.
[03:07:46] She panics, and calls the EMS, who sends seven people to put me in an ambulance.
[03:07:53] This time, I know the drill, so I follow without resistance.
[03:07:59] At the hospital, I am injected, peacefully this time.
[03:08:03] I wake up 12 hours later, to the sound of a doctor’s voice.
[03:08:06] He says, Mr. Sandler, we can confirm that your diagnosis is…
[03:08:15] I’m not ready to hear it.
[03:08:19] But this has now happened twice, so I decide, you know what, this is just a part
[03:08:23] of my experience, I’m going to own it, I’m going to share it, and I’m going to start
[03:08:28] to write about it.
[03:08:29] So in 2015, the very first version of Inside My Head, my musical about my bipolar, I said
[03:08:35] the word, I wasn’t supposed to, began around a table in my Staten Island apartment.
[03:08:42] Over the next 10 years, it goes through many different versions, including one where it’s
[03:08:47] not about me at all, another where I’m at the piano narrating my story, and another
[03:08:51] actor plays me.
[03:08:52] And finally…
[03:08:53] The one-person version that exists today.
[03:08:55] The opening number, fully grown, goes through 36 versions.
[03:09:00] In 2019, I’m doing really well, but I run out of money.
[03:09:07] So I move from New York City back to DC.
[03:09:10] The move is very destabilizing.
[03:09:12] It takes two trips back and forth, and a family vacation in between the two.
[03:09:17] By the time I get settled in DC, I’m exhausted, totally strung out.
[03:09:22] And then two weeks later, at 1 am, I get my parents to do a ritual clothing ceremony
[03:09:30] where I pull out my clothes, bless them, and put them into different piles.
[03:09:35] I become terrified that my partner has been kidnapped by some of my friends because she
[03:09:39] stopped responding to my texts at 12.30 in the morning.
[03:09:43] And one day, I think that my old boss has created a game, and that if I solve all the
[03:09:48] clues to this game, I will get a check for a million dollars.
[03:09:52] Till the clues lead me into the hallway of the apartment building, where I gaze into
[03:09:57] the lights and shout, WIDE OUT!
[03:10:00] Till I’m surrounded by five policemen and joke about how silly it is that they’re handcuffing
[03:10:04] me.
[03:10:05] Till I arrive on a stretcher and go to the emergency room, still flailing, yelling,
[03:10:09] WHAT THE FUCK KIND OF GAME IS THIS?!
[03:10:18] I start to become more lucid.
[03:10:20] …
[03:10:21] But by the time the psychiatrist arrives, three hours later, I am so far gone that all
[03:10:27] I can say is, I want to go home, but he can’t send me home like that.
[03:10:34] So he sends me somewhere else.
[03:10:38] …
[03:10:39] Now, I’m still processing this third episode, so I’m going to skip over it for right now.
[03:10:45] But suffice it to say that this was by far the worst hospitalization of the three.
[03:10:52] …
[03:10:53] Now, fast forward to January 2025, instantly my head has become a solo version, and I’m
[03:11:00] standing on stage at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center.
[03:11:01] …
[03:11:02] …
[03:11:03] …
[03:11:04] As the show ends, one person stands up over there, then three over there, then ten over there,
[03:11:14] until finally all 300 people have risen from their seats to applaud my sharing of my story.
[03:11:22] And at that moment, I look back to 20-year-old Zach, 28-year-old Zach, and 33-year-old Zach,
[03:11:31] and I say, hang in there, buddy.
[03:11:34] One day, it’ll all be worth it.
[03:11:40] Thank you.
[03:11:53] Thank you guys so much. Thank you.
[03:11:58] Hey, give it up for him. Good job.
[03:12:04] So, you guys, that is our last artist.