Laughter’s Been His Best Medicine

David Granirer has a theory on life that he has come by honestly: “Life is really all about realizing that possibilities don’t always present themselves in the way you think they should. But if you’re listening, and you’re awake enough to the opportunities, you can find them in a lot of places.”

For the Vancouver resident, this isn’t just a theory, it’s what he has lived — and it’s how he became a professional counsellor and standup comic. As a child, he was the stereotypical extroverted class clown, always ready to make everyone laugh. Natural inclinations and talents are, of course, among the best of life’s opportunities to be seized. But the way that opportunity should have played out for him went awry by the time Mr. Granirer was 16.

“I attempted suicide and I was actually in a psychiatric ward for about six weeks,” he says. “I was so devastated. I changed and went into this place where I was shy and introverted.”

That experience, however, led him to volunteer at the Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention Centre of British Columbia, where he was eventually hired to train other volunteers. And through that experience, Mr. Granirer, who was finally diagnosed with depression in his early thirties, was awakened to the opportunity of becoming a counsellor. He received his training and in 1991 he began working as a counsellor in private practice.

At the same time, he revisited the class clown within. “I just thought, wow, I’d really like to do stand-up comedy,” he says. “So I went to a club, did amateur night and just bombed — like five minutes of dead silence. That was my first experience with stand-up comedy.”

Mr. Granirer points out that failure is also an opportunity. It can’t all be successes.

“So I took a course in standup comedy and when I got up the second time it was our class showcase, the place was packed with all our friends and family. It was a great experience and I thought, I have to do stand-up comedy,” says Mr. Granirer, who eventually went on to teach aspiring comics at Vancouver’s Langara College.

In 2004, he was awakened to yet another opportunity, one that combined both his passions of counselling and stand-up comedy. Through his own experience and that of his students at Langara College, he had come to realize how therapeutic and empowering stand-up comedy can be.

And with that realization, he developed an innovative program called Stand Up For Mental Health, which teaches people suffering from everything from depression to schizophrenia to drug addiction and brain injuries how to be stand-up comics. Each program ends with the students performing live in front of an audience.

“When you have a mental illness, one of the worst parts is the shame that goes along with it, and your life is full of incidents and stories and things that happen to you that were bad and you’re ashamed of,” he says.

“Normally, what happens is that people shut those down and suppress them and they turn into a sort of black toxic pool inside their soul. Instead, in comedy class you are telling people about the worst times in your life and they’re laughing and applauding, and they’re coming to you after the show and telling you how great you are and how funny it was and how they really appreciate talking about this stuff. All of a sudden, that black, toxic stuff dissipates and it changes from being bad stuff to being good materials.”

The program has spread from Vancouver to across the country in partnership with mental health organizations and is now moving into the United States — and some of its remarkable and very funny students have been profiled in a Global TV documentary Laughing through the Pain and in an award-winning documentary called Cracking Up.

“Stand Up for Mental Health is a two-pronged thing where, on the one hand, it’s helping the people in the class develop confidence and overcome some of their own internalized shame that often happens with mental illness, but it’s also changing public perception in that people come to our shows and afterwards say, ‘Oh man, I saw this guy on stage last night and he had schizophrenia and he was hilarious.’

“How many times do you hear schizophrenia and hilarious in the same conversation?” says Mr. Granirer, who also authored a book a few years ago called The Happy Neurotic.

He is clearly moved by the people he has helped and the resilience they’ve been able to achieve through the program. But also, he is having the time of his life — laughing, creating and helping others.

“It’s cool and fun to get together once a week and to write material and do shows. I just don’t think there are programs in the mental health system that are so much fun.”

REALIZING YOUR POTENTIAL

More Canadians are rethinking what life is all about. It is part of a global movement called Lateral Living that researchers have identified through a study funded by American Express. In this weekly series, we explore what Lateral Living is and highlight some of the people who are exploring it. These are the Canadians who have said, “there’s more to life than this.” They have decided to follow their own vision and pursue their passions. The Amex study suggests the number of people taking their lives in a different direction is growing, and that even more dream about it. We call these people “potentialists,” as they vow to realize life’s full potential. Its something American Express recognizes and supports. For more information on how American Express can help you realize the potential, visit: By Alexandra Lopez-Pacheco, National Post