Paul Huljich (author)

Paul Huljich (born October 1952) is the author of Betrayal of Love and Freedom and the co-founder of Best Corporation, a pioneer in organic foods. He is also the founder of MWellA the Mind Wellness Awareness Community, a Group for the mind, body and spirit.

Early life
Paul Huljich was born in Auckland, New Zealand, as one of the Huljich brothers. At a very early age, he did everything from caddying at the local golf club, collecting bottles, mowing lawns, and laboring at construction sites to earn his own money. He attended St. Ignatius Convent, St Peter's College, Auckland and began a degree in Commerce at the University of Auckland. During his first year at the university, he started his own business distributing fruit juices to restaurants and establishments throughout Auckland. As the demands of his first formal business grew, he dropped out of the university to give its growth his full focus. He soon developed distribution to include cookies and other food products. During this time, he also began to buy run-down apartments and houses, renovating them to add value for resale.

Career
Paul became one of the early advocates of organic and natural foods. In 1985, Paul, along with his brothers, founded Best Corporation. Paul, serving as Chairman and Joint-CEO, sought to establish a reputation for excellence and superior quality. Best Corporation targeted the bacon, ham, and pork products industry in New Zealand, an industry that exhibited over-capacity, falling sales, negative growth, poor profit margins, fierce competition, and a reputation for unhealthy products. Best became a huge success and later developed a similar range of products in Australia, investing an enormous amount of resources into research and development for organic foods. The company specialized in a wide range of foods for export and found great success in developing organic foods for what they considered to be the most demanding market in the world, Japan.

After a successful period of growth, Best Corporation listed on the stock exchange in December 1991, with an initial market capitalization of $36 million. Two and a half years later, when a multinational food company acquired the corporation, Best de-listed with a market capitalization of $137 million. In 1998, Paul was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, also known as manic depression, and experienced a full mental breakdown that year, losing his rights as a New Zealand citizen and being made a ward of the state. Informed that there was no cure, that he would eventually relapse, and that he would be dependent on medication for the rest of his life, he traveled to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and then admitted himself to the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas, to more fully understand and move through his condition.

For the past 15 years, Paul has been investing in a diverse range of commercial interests in a number of countries. He founded MWellA (Mind Wellness Awareness) in 2009. The Mind Wellness Awareness community seeks to build awareness of 'mind conditions' and work with other mind condition organizations with the understanding that prevention is the key, as it is far better than recovery and gives people hope. Paul frequently shares his career and life experiences on talk news radio and TV across the nation.

Writing career
Paul’s first novel Betrayal of Love and Freedom, a psychological thriller that spreads awareness of different mind conditions about obsessions, addictions, love and hate, and the challenges they bring, was published in May 2010. Through Betrayal of Love and Freedom, the voice of experience gives voice to the experience of mental breakdown and recovery. Although Betrayal of Love and Freedom is not an account of Paul’s life story, it gives expression to many of the discoveries he made during his struggle with conditions of the mind, a psychological breakdown, and finally how he cured himself of Bipolar disorder. Paul is now working on a new novel Litigation in Hollywood - Sport of Kings, which takes a closer look at how stigmas, blackmail, extortion, and branding all play a role in a star’s life once they are diagnosed with mind conditions. Paul is also completing a self-help book on how he cured himself titled Bipolar Man Cures Himself, as well as a set of four pocket size books, to be published in the summer of 2011, that share practical steps for rebuilding and maintaining health and peace of mind.

Personal life
Paul married Susan Crawford in 1976; they divorced 23 years later. Paul has three sons: Mark Richard Huljich, Simon Paul Huljich, and Richard Paul Huljich.

Since the year 2000, Paul has not taken any psychotropic or psychiatric medication, or any medication related to mental illness, including medications such as sleeping tablets. Nor has he suffered any relapse of depression, or manic depression, or had a consultation with any psychiatrist, therapist, or doctor regarding mental illness. He enjoys many forms of sports and exercise from hiking to boating and water sports, to walking barefoot on Santa Monica Beach, Bondi Beach, or Auckland’s waterfront. Paul participates in meditation, yoga, stress reduction techniques, a natural diet, juicing, positive thinking, and restful sleep.

Paul recently addressed a World Health Organization report on depression. A World Health Organization report predicts that by the year 2020, depression will be the greatest burden of ill health to people in the developing world, and severe depression will be the second largest cause of death and disability in the world.