You don’t need to be crazy to have tattoos (but it helps)

There was an awkward moment at my last job when an executive took a look down at my forearm and noticed a new tattoo. I had a couple when I arrived in Scotland, but I wasn’t in the habit of wearing tank tops in the newsroom, so they were well hidden.

“You aren’t having a major breakdown of some sort, are you,” he asked in a joking-not-joking kind of way. “I really hope not.”

I write a mental health newsletter at stevenladurantaye.substack.com. Check it out and subscribe if you like it, hey?

The universe has a way of foreshadowing these things, although the giant beard I had grown probably added to a general aura of someone on edge.

I’ve been thinking back to that conversation lately as I’ve felt the urge to get another tattoo. And I also started wondering if the exec knew something I didn’t and if there had been any research into mental health and tattoos.

Turns out he did, and there is.

So it goes.

“Research has established an association between having a tattoo and engaging in risky behaviours,” University of Miami professor Karoline Mortensen wrote in a review of a 2016 study in the impressive-sounding International Journal of Dermatology.

The study suggested people with tattoos were more likely to be diagnosed with mental health problems and report sleep difficulties than the sensible people who remain tattoo-free. Researchers also suggested the tattooed were more likely to be smokers and to have spent some time in jail.

Now I used to smoke and did a night in an American lockup, but that’s an entirely different story that involves overzealous border agents and a bad fake ID. But I am indeed bipolar, so I find the research compelling because anytime I’ve gotten a tattoo, it was an impulsive decision pushed on by a driving need that is difficult to explain (more on each tattoo below).

As always, there’s someone on the Internet who explains these sorts of things better than I can. In this case, it’s Hattie Gladwell, who wrote a piece in the Independent about how she spent $4,500 on tattoos while her brain ramped up toward mania.

“I was experiencing something called hypomania,” she wrote. “I’d already had three tattoos, but of the course of two months, I was covered in 26. I covered my legs, my stomach, my back, my neck, and my arms. It was almost like an addiction, an addiction to the high and adrenaline I was feeling when the needle hit my skin.”

Good thing she didn’t work at my last job or the executive may have had her committed on the spot. Then again, I don’t think she’d have minded.

“Manic episodes can be dangerous, and I would never, ever recommend doing what I did,” she wrote. “But I love the body confidence my new ink has given me.”

That speaks to the other side of mental health and tattoos — the empowerment that comes with stamping yourself with images and phrases that help validate your challenges and victories. I have no idea if that’s bullshit or not. Still, there are dozens of Pinterest boards and websites with hundreds of (often terrible) designs meant to help you reclaim your brain.

Anyway, here’s a breakdown of how I ended up with each of my tattoos.

• I got my first when I was 16 or 17. A friend knew a guy named Mike who recently left prison and was able to do tattoos with a homemade setup that involved a walkman motor and a Bic pen shaft. I had to bring my own guitar string (I think it was a G) to use as a needle. He heated it up in the oven for 20 minutes to “make it safe.” As you can see, if you look closely, it is an eagle. There’s no significance here — Mike could do panthers and eagles. That’s it. And my friend already picked the panther. The story sounds made up, but I swear it’s true.
• Another tattoo without significance beyond the subtle reassurance of a rising (or setting) sun, I guess. Another crime of opportunity — someone told me that the tattoo shop at Rock Junction never asked for ID. I went over that afternoon with my pal and picked this one out of a binder. It is faded because it bled so much (I was supposed to go back for a second inking but chickened out because it hurt too much).
• The Moby Dick tattoo was my first in Scotland. I read the book after going through some nonsense at a former job, and the woodcut image that was in my edition struck me as a fantastic metaphor. When I was reading, I associated with the sailors on the boat who were swept to their doom by the white whale. I later realized that you get to be the whale sometimes, too, and the tattoo is a reminder of that shifting perspective.
• Doctor Manhattan came next. The Watchmen is a fantastic piece of art. I originally wanted to get the image of Jon Osterman exploding inside the radioactive particle generator, but then decided the idea of him transforming into the all-powerful but conflicted Doctor Manhattan was a better idea(he’d eventually lose faith in humanity and move to Mars). There are a bunch of reasons this worked for me — but the main ones are Osterman’s reconstitution into a stronger being following a trauma and his detachment and isolation following the renewal. The same image from the graphic novel has a penis, and my tattoo… does not.

If you’ve made it this far, you deserve to follow this link to see some of the world’s worst tattoos. And feel free to share your tattoo stories in the comments or via email — I love reading that sort of thing.