Heston Blumenthal described the ‘prison’-like atmosphere after he was sectioned by his wife Melanie Ceysson earlier this year following a bipolar disorder diagnosis.
The celebrity chef, 58, has been candid about his three-week-long hospital stay in November 2023, after his wife, 38, admitted him to the hospital under the Mental Health Act due to his increasingly ‘extreme’ behaviour.
The three-Michelin-star restaurant owner has previously recounted what occurred that evening, as he recalled being sedated and taken away by ‘a policeman, five firemen and a doctor with an assistant.’
Melanie made the call and watched the scene unfold from her father’s house a few miles down the road in Provence through security camera footage.
‘Our world was falling apart,’ Melanie told the Daily Mail about the measures that pushed her to take drastic action to save her husband whom she had married just eight months earlier in March 2023.
‘The way he was acting, the way he was talking, it wasn’t him. His eyes were turning dark.
‘His voice became metallic. His movements were reptilian. He was speaking faster and faster, following me everywhere and asking questions, “Why? Why? Why?”,’ she said of his behavior during those days.
She added there was a ‘dark energy’ and his hallucinations involved ‘guns and death’, the entire situation was ‘horrible’ as Heston was prone to unprovoked explosions.
After Heston awoke in hospital he was confused about what was going on but as the situation dawned upon him he soon had to adjust to life at the hospital in the short-term.
He shared: ‘It was basically a prison. Some of the people in there got very angry. The team would take them to the room next to mine and lock them in.
‘They would scream and bang the bed against the door. I remember the noise: the building vibrating with the screaming.’
Although the time also gave him the chance to reflect.
‘My bedroom in hospital became a little haven. I had time to think, time to digest – although I’d never choose to go somewhere like that ever again,’ he added.
The couple both became emotional as they explained just how close to death Heston had been, with the TV chef admitting he had lost as much as 28 kilos in weight.
‘I was so close to death. The doctor said if I’d been sectioned two or three days later…’ he said. ‘My endocrine system had collapsed.’
Meanwhile, Melanie added that when she visited him in the hospital, the reality hit her. ‘You looked like a young kid, totally lost, but it was a first step, and again, he was alive. Especially after what the doctor said to me three days later: that he would have died.’
In an earlier interview with The One Show, Heston explained why it was so important to him to discuss his bipolar and the impact it has had on his life.
‘Since my diagnosis I’ve learned a lot more about myself, and I’ve realised that a lot of my creativity is thanks to bipolar – in both positive and negative ways.
‘I’m hoping that talking about it can change the way we see the condition and put it in the spotlight for all the right reasons.’
He has also described his neurodivergence as his ‘superpower’.
Heston moved to France in 2018 to get away from his hectic restaurant life and it was in the Alps that he met and his now-wife who apparently didn’t even recognise him.
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