So, my therapist and I were also talking about bipolar writers who did get published and were rather famous, but also unfortunately killed themselves. I mentioned Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf. I said, That’s because they didn’t take Lithium! If they had taken the meds maybe they’d have lived longer.
In the chapter “Missing Saturn” in her book An Unquiet Mind, Kay Redfield Jamison writes about her struggle with taking Lithium and staying on it because she would miss “Saturn.”
I missed my highs; and, once I felt normal again, it was very easy for me to deny that I had an illness that would come back.
From my experience, if I stop taking Lithium, I get manic. And when I’m manic, I get agitated and the racing thoughts are unbearable. The euphoria and giddiness are not worth the eventual pain.
I am relatively stable on a relatively moderate dose of Lithium 600 mg in combination with Lamictal 75 mg. I also take Wellbutrin SR 100 mg, and Ativan 1-3 mg PRN.
I haven’t been hospitalized in almost 5 years. My meds have bern adjusted over the years, and this is the most stable I’ve been since my first psych hospitalization in 2005.
But I also don’t work and I’m on disability. I’m pretty sure if I tried to work again, I’d get really stressed out and freak out and end up quitting on the spot.
So, I am actually kinda grateful I was put on Lithium. I started writing again, and even if I don’t have the most perfect or normal life, I am doing what I’ve always really wanted, which is to write, and be a writer. I guess everything comes with a price, as they say. And this, this bipolar, this Lithium, is mine.
I am more scared of taking Ativan long-term and being dependent on it than taking Lithium. I heard Ativan withdrawal can be life-threatening, but I have been taking Ativan for 6 years or so. I’m thankful my Medicare insurance plan pays for it.
the other side though is how much of their “genius” works would they have created if they had been on a full dosage of mood disorders every day. Would we have Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” if he had taking his lithium that morning and that night. I think Kay Jamison’s comments hint at that. Be that as it may I am pro medication as well.
I think bipolars forget that the real reason we take mood stabilizers is because the mania doesn’t last forever. We take mood stabilizers because the crash is far far worse than the high, and every time we are manic, we risk an even worse depression. To treat the depression we have to treat the mania. I’d rather have a normal life than an artistic painful short one, but at this rate, I don’t think I’ll have either, because my writing sucks atm. Even the great bipolar writers suffered from depression, and ended up writing some crap and finally not producing or writing anything at all because they were dead. It’s not the meds that messed up our lives but the illness. And I don’t think anyone would want the pain that accompanies great art. That’s why in the end those artists killed themselves, because they couldn’t take the pain anymore. I am pretty sure at the time, they didn’t say, I want more of this pain so I can produce more great art.