Anti Depressants make me high.

I have experienced a strange thing, and I am told it is possible. I have been in the midst of a chronic depression and yet been manic. That seems impossible but it happened to me.

I have been on about six anti-depressants and all of them have after a few weeks made me manic. So in the midst of a medicated depression I went through the roof in a state of mania and was very close to being admitted to hospital. On that occasion I stayed up three days, I had two full nights without sleep before my house-mate reported me to my case worker and the medical guys came around and questioned me.

Let me add here a notice for people who suffer depression or people who know people who suffer. The ONLY medication that didn’t make me high but treated my depression and took the ill feelings away was St Johns Wort. I took it in tablet form and it was very effective for me and whenever I fall into serious depression, for me about once a year, I take St Johns Wort and it takes about three weeks to build up and be effective in my system.

You can lose your creativity on medication.

As a writer I lost my ability to write when I became medicated. I have written two four-hundred page novels and two one-hundred and twenty page film scripts and I went about three years on medication without being able to write and that was very sad for me. I have in the past few years retrieved the gift and I am most happy about it. I have to warn you if you are someone who looks after someone with Bipolar or any other mental illness that the compulsion to give up the medication so you can get back to creativity is very strong. Medication stealing a talent off you is very sad. I imagine for many artists the choice between creativity and staying sane is a hard choice indeed.

Being up for days gives me a buzz and gets me creative.