Canadian bestselling children’s author Robert Munsch admits to a history of cocaine abuse to dull the effects of his bipolar disorder in a Global television interview scheduled to air tonight. Mr. Munsch makes the potentially career-damaging public revelation in an exclusive interview with the Global News program 16:9 The Bigger Picture, explaining that he is a former drug addict and alcoholic, but is now in recovery thanks to Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous. He says he has been clean for about four months.
“When I was drinking, I would sometimes drink too much and do stupid things. And one of the stupid things I did was use cocaine,” says the Guelph-based writer, who survived a stroke in 2008 and now sometimes searches for words and has an occasional stutter.
Mr. Munsch, 64, discovered cocaine relatively late inlife– about five years ago, he says.
He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder around 1990. In the past he has spoken publicly about coping with mental illness.
Dubbed “Canada’s King of Kidlit” by Quill and Quire magazine, Mr. Munsch was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 1999 and was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame last fall.
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In contrast to the lifelong struggles with pain and despair he discusses in the 16:9 interview, most of Mr. Munsch’s nearly 50 books–bedtime story fodder including The Paper Bag Princess, Angela’s Airplane and David’s Father — are characterized by humour, madcap situations and a sense of irony absent from much children’s lit.
The author’s persona at public readings matches the material: He has unleashed his signature manic energy in front of thousands upon thousands of giggling children across Canada over the past three decades.
“My public person was so crazy and my private person was so depressed and unhappy,” Mr. Munsch says in the television interview.
The author was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pa., and says he spent his childhood mostly unhappy. He suffered a brutal attack by a mugger in Boston in the 1970s and tells Global about walking through the city in a manic state, carrying a knife in his pocket and searching for his attacker. He later trained to be a priest.
In 1979 and again in 1980, Mr. Munsch’s wife, Ann, gave birth to stillborn babies.
He recalls turning to alcohol to numb the existential pain with which he lived. “I found that drinking would break my depression in a minute. I could take a drink and wait and, ‘Ahh, I feel OK.’ “
Mr. Munsch’s friends and associates were often unaware of his drinking.
“I was a French-style drunk, who is quietly immersed in alcohol all the time,” he explained. “I didn’t have binges. I was just having a morning drink.” He told Global he never drank when he was writing or performing, or looking after his children.
The author developed his storytelling ability during the 1970s while he was working at daycare centres in Massachusetts and later Ontario. At the urging of boss, he finally got his first book published in 1979. Mud Puddle tells the story of a school dogged by a heap of mud that hides in trees waiting to drop on unsuspecting children. The book sold modestly at first, but grew in popularity as Mr. Munsch supported his lengthening list of titles in the 1980s with thousands of school and library readings.
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