The Question I get asked a lot
The question I get asked a lot is: Does medication affect your creativity? The answer I give is: It did before I became an advocate for myself. Many people with mental conditions like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia don’t want to take medications because the drugs dampen their creativity. They tell me medication makes them feel lethargic and not themselves. It’s as if a gigantic hand has come down and squashed them. I know the feelings. I used to have them. I spoke of it somewhat differently. I said I felt like a round rock, as if I were a rock no different from all the other round rocks one finds at the edge of a river or a stream. Fields of round eroded rocks can be found along most waterways lying there peacefully unmoving. If the rocks are under water, the flow polishes their slick surfaces a little more each day. They look nice wet; dry them off; and they are dull and indistinguishable one from the other. Just another old rock you toss back.
I didn’t want to be tossed back. I didn’t want to feel comfortable nestled in with my fellow round rocks. I wanted my jagged edges back-the points and fragmented surfaces that made my rock interesting, that made my rock tumble in the currents of the stream. That action made me feel alive. I wanted my cracks, my crevices, my broken planes back. I wanted to look as interesting dry as wet. I wanted my colored veins in my surface not to fade into a uniform grey with the rest of my granite. I wanted to be anything but ordinary. Medication made you ordinary- even less than ordinary. It made you round and flat.
I told my psychiatrist the situation was intolerable. I could not live this way, and she agreed. We worked with each other to find a solution. We tested different drugs and different dosages until we found a cocktail that worked – a cocktail that provides me the creativity I need to be me and yet the control over my manic-depression that keeps me safe. This prescription of many drugs we have to visit monthly to monitor if it is working properly. It generally is, but we have had to adjust the medication here and there to keep me steady.
Steady and creative is what I want. What I don’t want is what I had before — wild creativity (bouts of mania) that always ended in the deepest of depression, where I was in constant danger of suicide. What I have now is OK. It’s not perfect. I don’t get as high as I used to. I miss that, but I no longer get as depressed as I used to, either. I accept the trade-off. The top of the high is sliced off. The bottom of the low is cut-off. I will survive now. No more jumping or think about jumping off bridges. Fewer antics. Fewer confrontations. The jagged edges are a little less jagged. I still get to tumble in the stream, and I like that.
Comment by Havah on 7 September 2009:
You may find that so many variables effect your med requirements: age, climate and a host of others. As a visual artist/teacher I’ve experienced all this and more. What I need as an artist is so different from teaching….can the one balance the other out?
Comment by Carlton Davis on 7 September 2009:
Hello Havah: Thank you for your comment. I am curious how climate would effect one’s medication. Are you speaking of seasonal effective disorder? Yes teaching does require a different kind of creativity than acting as an artist, such as the ability to relate, communicate, and open a student’s mind, but both being an artist and teaching art demand similar insights such as the ability to see relationships in form, space, and light where ones may not appear to exist at all.
Comment by HB on 7 February 2010:
I’m not sure if this is what Havah is referring to, but some medications have an effect on the body’s ability to regulate temperature, which makes them more dangerous in hotter climates. Seroquel seems to have this side effect.
I’ve also found a medication that works for me too. The key is just limiting how high the highs go and how low the lows go. I like the rock metaphor. It’s a good one! I’m glad I found your site. I’ve been doing some writing about bipolar disorder too.
Comment by Carlton Davis on 7 February 2010:
HI Hot Brain: I love your name. It fits a bipolar person. We have hot brains in both a positive and negative sense This effect of seroquel in hot climates is new to me? Are you speaking of any hot climate, the desert, the tropics, or just a very hot summer day. It would be interesting to know. Is it just the heat or the humitity? Good luck on your writing. The more people who write about this condition the better.
Comment by Lisa on 20 March 2010:
Hi Carlton,
Just found your blog and am loving it – I also wrote a book about my struggles called “I am Lisa; I am not Bipolar” – you know, there’s more to me than my “disease”, yeah?
Don’t you hate how sometimes every strong feeling you get once you’ve been diagnosed is labelled as “bipolar” – I find it quite dismissive and just a tad invalidating when other non-bipolars around me get away with expressing in a lot bigger ways than I do sometimes and it’s seen as perfectly justified.
Anyway, life’s alot better for me since the book came out – med free, supplemented to the eyeballs mind you and on a very strict regime of sleep, halthy eating and exerceise, no stress and a “Virtuous loneliness” – ha! ha! No drugs or alcohol, caffeine or cigarettes, limited sugar and other “stimulants”, moved to the ocuntry and cut out absolutely all sources of stress which has done wonders for me.
Maybe not realistic for many people, but it CAN be done and I AM worth it!
Thanks for the great blog – I realy enjoy it.
Comment by Carlton Davis on 21 March 2010:
Lisa, Thank you for your comments. You are right there is so much more to us than our disease. How I dislike that word “disease” to describe our condition, which provides strengths as well as weaknesses. Our circumstance I believe allows us to be more sensitive to other people’s problems- maybe sensitive is not the right word for all situations, since if I get manic I am anything but sensitive to others. At the very least I am aware and always prepared to help others. I do intensely dislike people thinking my reactions are “bipolar” as if to have strong opinions and gusto sometimes is a wrong thing. WE must fight the stigmatization of mental illness however it raises it hoary head.