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Daily Mail
By Helen Collis
PUBLISHED: 08:51 GMT, 6 July 2013
Boxing champion Frank Bruno has revealed he is desperate to come off anti-psychotic medication that makes him feel like a ‘zombie’.
The former world heavyweight star opens up in a series of emotional interviews with his 26-year-old daughter Rachel Bruno, for a new documentary.
Frank, 51, has has been taking medication for depression for years and also suffers from bi-polar disorder, meaning his mood can swing from episodes of extreme elation and disillusionment to extreme depression.
He has been sectioned three times after episodes of acting ‘crazy’, but despite this he still wants to come off the drugs.
In one moving interview with his daughter, Frank says, quoted in The Sun: ‘I am trying to get off the medication, Rach. I don’t want to be alike a zombie for the rest of my life.’
The documentary is a journey of discovery for Rachel who sets out to learn more about her father’s destructive illness.
She first witnessed the extent to which her father’s disease takes control of him in 2003, when he was first sectioned.
It took police and ambulance staff nine hours to get Frank into an ambulance after he had a manic episode at their Essex home.
She tells the camera eventually the police tripped him up to give him an injection to calm him down, after he got so aggressive.
She said her father, who retired from boxing in 1996 after being beaten by Mike Tyson, was ‘like a child, begging us not to do it’.
She also recalls her champion father sleeping in a boxing ring in the garden and walking down the local high street without wearing any shoes.
When Frank is feeling ‘manic’ he tells her: ‘The chemicals in your body make you react differently. Sometimes I don’t sleep. Sometimes you’re rushing, tripping yourself.’
Rachel Bruno: My Dad and Me, airs on BBC Three on July 23.