Today many remember Mel Gibson for his action films in the 1980s and 1990s, particularly the ‘Lethal Weapon’ saga. Fewer associate him with a franchise successfully revived in recent years such as ‘Mad Max’, and even fewer place him as a film director, with the stormy ‘The Passion of the Christ’ or the controversial ‘Apocalypto‘. But one thing is certain, the Australian actor and filmmaker remains relevant, perhaps because of his anti-mainstream stance.

And perhaps that is why Joe Rogan invited him to his famous podcast, Joe Rogan Experience, a show to which Gibson returned after six years, but only to make a revelation about his health that worries his fans.

Gibson claimed to have been born with scoliosis and shared with the audience that he suffers from some serious problems with his back. The problem for Gibson is that he shies away from an eventual surgical intervention that could solve the problem, as it is not an option for him. This was his argument: “They already treat scoliosis in other ways than surgery, because I don’t want to undergo that procedure. Once you start opening things up and playing with them, there’s no going back,” he said.

Mel Gibson spoke about RFK, Christ, cancer and even quoted Hippocrates

“I was born scoliotic… and then of course I got hit over the years,” Gibson told Rogan before getting more ‘philosophical’: “Hippocrates, the father of medicine, said, ‘In any ailment, look first to the spine,’ and it was like, ‘He’s got something right!’” said Gibson who after a career full of physical challenges and stunts, fast-paced action scenes and a lot of work in front of the cameras, today would be paying the price with the aggravation of his medical condition that makes his spine curve more and more, something that his interviewer understands well because he also suffered from back pain from his activity in jiu-jitsu.

Gibson also spoke about his covid-19 infection

Gibson is known to have contracted the SARS-CoV2 virus in early 2020 in the first wave of the covid-19 pandemic and although he did not fare too badly, he knew that something was not right in his body and so he shared it with Rogan and his audience: “You feel pretty bad for a while, but they didn’t have to use a respirator or anything and finally I thought, ‘Well, this is enough. I can go home now‘”, said the actor who is now 70 years old.

He hurls insults so vile, he makes Ari Gold’s tirades sound like sweet nothings. Could mental health issues be to blame?

In the 2008 documentary “Acting Class of 1977,” Gibson revealed he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. “I had really good highs but some very low lows,” Gibson said. “I found out recently I’m manic depressive.”

Gibson was interviewed for the documentary by one of his National Institude of Dramatic Art classmates in 2002, four years before his 2006 DUI arrest, in which he spat anti-semitic slurs that he later said were “blurted out in a moment of insanity.” He’s rarely brought up his bipolar diagnosis since.

Now, in the wake of Gibson’s leaked phone conversations with Grigorieva, and with the Los Angeles Police Department investigating possible domestic violence charges against him, his mental condition could be of mammoth importance.

Medical experts agreed that without examining Gibson firsthand, it’s impossible to verify whether or not he’s bipolar. But doctors say his recorded rants point to mental health issues as well as alcohol abuse, a demon Gibson has dealt with throughout his life.

“Based on what we’re seeing with these episodes of rage followed by apparently normal periods in between, that could be a classic symptom of bipolar disorder,” said Dr. Dale Archer, a psychiatrist who founded The Institute for Neuropsychiatry in Lake Charles, Louisiana. “Bipolar can lower your impulse control, and if you couple that with the fact that he has had this longstanding substance abuse problem, absolutely, that could lead someone to go off on a rant like this.”