An award-winning novelist with bipolar disorder explains how medication protects his creativity by stabilizing the chaos of untreated mania.
It almost never fails to happen. When I talk about my experiences with bipolar disorder at one of my book events, someone, usually the mother of a budding artist, will come up afterward, wait until no one is in sight, and proceed to tell me that her son is refusing to take his medication for fear that it will dull his creativity.
What I would like to say to that mother is that if her son truly has bipolar disorder, then whatever he thinks he’s doing while in its grip is not art. That’s what I would like to say.
But, usually, I tell people that since I began treatment for bipolar almost two decades ago, I’ve written and published four well-received novels. There were times when I was stuck, unable to write, and times when what I wrote was worthy only of the trash can. But my medication was not responsible for either my lack of creativity or the bad results of my efforts.
Why People Fear Losing Creativity on Medication
As someone who has experienced full-blown mania, I can’t conceive of creating anything other than gibberish during this state. Mania is a chaotic torrent of disconnected thoughts, accompanied by an inflated sense of self-arrogance. To others, the expression of this inner whirlwind is seen as an unrestrained, egocentric babble.
I suppose that a young person with a milder form of mania could confuse its electric, undirected energy with the un-self-conscious flow of words, ideas, and images that we call inspiration. But even this hypomania, in my experience, will not lead to the kind of artistic work that others will recognize as lasting art.
Does Bipolar Medication Reduce Creativity?
What I want to tell young artists who have bipolar disorder is that medication does not prevent that wonderful, sometimes rare, absorption that seems to take us out of the grips of time. Medication does not prevent the reception of those gift-like intuitions, images, and insights that we all depend upon as artists or creative persons.
Does medication affect my work? Yes. But not nearly as much as the unfettered symptoms of bipolar disorder do.
I am fortunate enough to have found the right person to help me find the right dosage — a dosage that is monitored constantly and adjusted periodically so that I can function with a minimum of disruption.
Lithium and Creativity: What to Know
It’s understandable to worry that lithium or other mood stabilizers could make you feel emotionally flat or less creative. The goal of finding the right dose is to reduce extreme mood swings — not to take away your personality or creativity. If you feel slowed down, emotionally numb, or less able to create, let your prescriber know so you can explore what may help.
Stability vs. Creativity in Bipolar Disorder
It saddens me to hear young people talk about their bipolar disorder as if it were a burden they must bear for the sake of their art. Sometimes, it seems we carry our mental health conditions like a badge of specialness that, thankfully, separates us from all those ordinary accountants, lawyers, IT people, and common folk too insensitive to be unhappy.
I’m grateful for the lessons of self and life that bipolar has brought me.
But bipolar disorder is still a mental health condition that hurts me and the people I love. I need to control it so that I can create with intelligence, which includes all my mental faculties, including imagination and intuition.
If you have bipolar and use your creativity, the power to generate something new with your mind in any form, here’s what you need to know: Your creativity comes from a place deep inside you that is not affected by medication, but which is affected by the bipolar.
It comes from deep in your soul, the same place where you find meaning and purpose in your life.
You will continue to be special and gifted when your bipolar is controlled. You will be special and gifted and unique, like every other human being. You won’t be better than them, it is true. You will have to settle for being useful to them.
UPDATED: Printed as “On My Mind: Medication and Inspiration,” Winter 2017