Larry Flynt - Publisher - Activist

Publisher, pornographer, free-speech activist - Larry Flynt's bipolar disorder is not well-documented on the internet, but some aspects of his life and career certainly seem to reflect some characteristics of bipolar mania. Born into abject poverty and a family that disintegrated when he was ten, Flynt showed signs of being a risk-taker early when he enlisted in the Army at 15 by lying about his age. Though this lasted only a year, he was still a teenager when he enlisted again, this time in the Navy.

Flynt was 23 when he left the Navy and opened a strip club in Dayton, Ohio. Four years and three wives later, he owned eight strip bars in Ohio. By 1974, the year the magazine Hustler was first published, Larry Flynt had four children by four different women. He was then 32.

Since then he has survived several landmark court cases that further defined First Amendment rights, an assassin's bullet that left him in a wheelchair, and the death of his much-loved fourth wife, Althea. In 1998 he was married for the fifth time.

One writer characterized Larry Flynt as having a "pathological need to give offense". In the same interview, Flynt said he has believed all along that sexual repression is at the root of a lot of the world's trouble. "Most people don't ever act out their fantasies. I do. I've acted out every one I ever had." This sexual behavior also fits the profile of manic depression.