The Stress Doc Letter
Cybernotes from the Online Psychohumorist (tm)
January 1999, No. 3
Dear Readers. By popular demand, here is your gumbo of the sublime, the spicy and the ridiculous: a tasty mix of my writings along with humor jokes, lists and other sparkling entities that have descended from cyberspace.
While sitting in Teaism, my tea and ginger scones haven, a young man one seat over began eyeing my hardcopy of "Van Gogh, Prozac and Creativity." (The main article below.) I asked if he'd like to take a look. Sheepishly, he passed: "I'm not an artist and I'm not on Prozac." Too bad.
Let me assure you this two-part essay -- a labor of love, obsession and redemption -- is for anyone grappling with emotional and existential vulnerability and performance pressure. Hopefully, the piece will both challenge and support a quest to be your most authentic and productive self. Enjoy!
A provocative lunchtime question concerning the impact of psychotropic medication on creative genius triggers a thought-provoking two-part essay on medication and mood disorder, artistic personality and productivity. The Stress Doc ebbs and flows between his study of Van Gogh and personal reflection on depression-driven creativity -- pre-and post-Prozac.
Van Gogh, Prozac and Creativity: A Mere Pigment of the Imagination? -- Part I
Two recent communications - one real, the other virtual - have been hyperactively percolating in my primal wellspring. The first occurred over lunch with a soulful and insightful seventy-year-old grandmother and friend. I mentioned seeing the movie, Vincent and Theo, about the Van Gogh brothers. Just before or after my statement, I also shared a recent discovery: a series on my own depressive condition and medication trial-transformation has been indexed by the Yahoo Search Directory under "Rapid Responders" (to Prozac). (Email stressdoc@aol.com for the series.)
Ernestine, who has a daughter successfully taking medication for manic- depression, raised a provocatively poignant question, highlighted by the recent National Gallery Van Gogh exhibit. (An exhibition that had allowed both DC residents and tourists some distraction from the insufferable and omnipresent Clinton Impeachment process.) As for Ernie's enigma: "Would Van Gogh have been as creative if he had taken Prozac?" Actually, a number of psychohistorians suspect the artistic giant of having a bipolar condition. So, more accurately, Lithium would be the damnable drug in question. (For a thought-provoking work on a link between creativity and moderate to serious mental illness, try Kay Redfield Jamison's, Touched with Fire: Manic- Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament.
The second communicational catalyst was an email in 18 point bold type: "What if you're taking 150mgs of Zoloft (an antidepressant first cousin of Prozac) and you're still not happy?" (My instinctive response here is get a second psychiatric opinion, find a good psychotherapist and start a regular exercise regimen, for starters.)
And both queries raise two fundamental issues: what are the purposes for and outcomes of psychotropic mood medication? Actually, we have a mirror image conundrum. Ernestine asks about the potential negative consequences of too much happiness through chemistry. The emailer's question laments her lack thereof despite chemical intervention.
Stress Doc's Van Gogh Mania
This has been "My Fall of Van Gogh's Genius and Discontent." In addition to catching the awe-inspiring exhibit, I've seen two movies about Vincent Van Gogh, (the other, the compelling Lust for Life, with a youthful-looking Kirk Douglas). Also, I'm currently reading a collection of the voluminous, impassioned letters to his brother titled, Dear Theo.
Now I must declare a number of people have commented on a likeness with Van Gogh, especially when wearing my New Orleans brim. (For the pic, check out my homepage: www.stressdoc.com .) It's probably the shape and rust coloring of my trimmed beard. But I will recognize some affinities: a passion for creative expression and a predisposition to depression. Though not manic- depressive, some cyclothymia (a tendency toward moderate mood swinging) is a diagnostic possibility. (And certainly, various depressive/psychiatric labels, like Christmas ornaments, have been strewn on the family tree.)
While Van Gogh committed suicide at 37 years of age, my self-destructive musings remained mostly hypothetical. Though I did commit academic suicide -- self-immolating and burning out of a doctoral program over a wildly creative and off the academic wall dissertation project at age 33. Twelve years later, after a rapid series of personal and professional upheavals (and a history of overt and covert depression denied), I reluctantly started taking a clinical baseline dosage - 20 mgs - of Prozac. Over a two-year period, I've reduced my intake to 1/3 of a 10mg capsule, twice/day. Basically, it's my daily serotonin supplement. ;-)
So dispassionate lunchtime listening was hardly possible. When Ernie pondered about Van Gogh and Prozac, as a patient, therapist, writer and performer, a heartfelt protest jumped from my guts and throat. The issue of medication drying up or blocking a creative wellspring defies simplistic speculation.
Has being on Prozac affected my creative process and product? Surely there's been an impact. (Which I will reflect upon shortly.) Still, I do know agitated depression and emptiness. It just doesn't take as long to mourn, crawl around, reach out for support or to massage the obsessive thoughts and piercing emotions, and to muster, finally, the energy to get back on my feet. And I still grapple with my creative muse and self-doubts on a near daily basis.
But now let me conjure up Van Gogh's response to biochemical intervention. This mind game may not be possible if a person has been medicated for a lengthy duration in early childhood. Such intervention in the formative years may well change a person's biochemistry and subsequent maturational development. It may also impede an uncommon biological and psychological sensitivity to and acuity with certain types of information processing and experience. So I will not ponder a hyperactive Baby Van Gogh getting Ritalin. Though I do agree this is a legitimate area of professional and ethical concern.
The Van Gogh/Prozac Hypothetical
So which scenario are we contemplating? Van Gogh, struggling with a career identity in his 20's, not fitting in as an art seller or as a "man of the pulpit," seeking therapy and medication instead of following his love of art and his intuitive sense of himself as an artist? Or Van Gogh the struggling artist, almost always on the financial edge (despite his brother's support), with little recognition, few friends, fewer sales. Would he have short- circuited a full-blown psychotic break along with his full development as an artist by opting for some peace through Prozac or lightness with Lithium?
Drawing on my various explorations of Van Gogh, along with personal and professional experience, here are my premises along with hypotheses about the interaction effects between this manic-depressive artist and medication usage on his creative processing.
1. The Essence of the Man. Van Gogh's biochemical imbalance is definitely an intrinsic part of his being and likely a family predisposition. It's a component that would predictably and, at times, scarily and uncontrollably, excite, exhaust or flatten mood and energy levels and cognitive processing abilities. However, his essence was also forged by overall genetic predisposition, family dynamics, including being raised in a clerical family, and an upbringing that placed high value on the beauty and aesthetic appreciation of nature. And he was fortunate to have the financial and emotional backing of a brother with both an aesthetic sensibility and a capacity for resonating with a family predisposition for psychiatric instability.
Clearly, he also had creative genius: a compelling need and ability to look behind and beyond the superficial, to capture, unmask and transform the obvious. He was driven to distill and achieve both a universal and an uncommon synthesis - an elegant simplicity - in his understanding and representation of humanity. Van Gogh was compelled to experiment with varying modes of seeing, methods of applying color and, in general, designing new relationships among the flora and fauna of his artistic world.
2. Impact and Use of Medication. I will allow myself the conceit of contemplating how Van Gogh would use medication. A bias may be present. Based on my readings of his letters he would take the least amount of medication possible and would experiment with lowering the dosage. Or, he would obsessively study the impact of medication on his perceptual faculties. He'd probably do the same sketch multiple times at different dosages. In other words, medication would as likely be subsumed by art as art by medication. Important to Van Gogh would not be emotional equilibrium or contentment, but the incessant drive to develop his mind and his heart, his eye and his hand…to strive endlessly to absorb and depict the essentials of nature and human nature in a fresh and idiosyncratic manner.
Medication would not have changed a tenaciously reflective student of his own history and the work of other artists. In addition to his paintings, he wrote unceasingly, poignantly and analytically to Theo on all facets - high and low - of his art, philosophy and life -- sixteen hundred pages worth of letters. Van Gogh's genius was a mix of gifts combined with a personal quest to find difficult and wonderful artistic problems to work on rather than "saleable" solutions to gain favor with family, other artists or the marketplace.
Whether on medication or not, the reality of limited sales would have been a perennial source of frustration, isolation and disappointment. And what makes him a personal and powerful role model, stronger than Prozac, is a conviction that he would always revere and pursue the most demanding aesthetic -- not commercial -- standard. Medication might smooth out some of the mood swings, but it would not change the basically precarious and heroic course of history for an individual who was destined to be cutting edge!
Of course, one may ask whether he would have rejecteded medication even if it was available. Van Gogh often noted that his work, and its contribution to society, was more important than his life which he believed, because of exhaustion and his enigmatic medical condition, was likely to be short-lived. Nonetheless, if only to appease his brother, I believe Van Gogh would have done a meds trial. (He did voluntarily commit himself to a sanitarium and, as a patient, produced some major works.) Medication may well have extended both his longevity and his productivity.
3. The Essence of a Work-Life. Van Gogh never fit into the bourgeois world of his upbringing. He was not suited for the logical or conventional career choices that appeared along his path. Certainly, a depressive or bipolar condition when combined with an artistic temperament heightens the sensitivity to and sense of a poor fit between the environment and the individual. It's why depressive-creative people can appear inflexible; they have great difficulty accommodating an environment that leaves little room for individual expression, the workings of their inner clock or the passionate pursuit of their mission. (Of course, some folks shroud themselves in this tortured mantle and are basically just spoiled prima donnas or narcissistic legends in their own minds.)
Gradually, then steadily -- by his late 20s -- Van Gogh knew he would wholeheartedly pursue the artistic life. And he pursued his calling despite a life of much deprivation and near poverty. Actually, Van Gogh often noted that losing himself in his work was a valuable distraction from material deprivation and melancholia. So would Lithium have detracted from painting as a distracting and refocusing agent? While there is commonly a period of adjustment to medication, and balance is more pronounced with effective chemical intervention, the fire of compassion and vision, alienation and inspiration still rages within. In other words, medication would not have motivated Van Gogh to take a day job. He would have continued to accept financial support and live on the financial edge because of his beliefs in a higher quest. Van Gogh would continue to empathize with and paint those living a marginal existence. This man would not have become mainstream.
The Stress Doc Newsletter The Higher Power of Humor Section...
The second section will consist of humor material that filters down from cyberspace. To counterbalance the creative side of obsession and passion, we'll feature a couple of familiar addictions. Of course, there's often a fine line between innovation and inebriation or cybervision and holistic hallucination. And I stand guilty as charged!
Cyberaddict...You Know Who You Are ;-) From: SWells1835
Hello.
Yes, you. You, looking at this screen for hours on end, online. You, bleary- eyed. You, an addict. Have you looked in the mirror lately? Been outside? Know what day of the week it is?
Your name was given to us by a spouse or family member who is concerned about your internet addiction. At Internetaholics Anonymous, we can help. We're a non-profit society of recovering addicts that provides support and counseling through weekly meetings designed to help WWWs - World Wide Wimps - like yourself you cope with your problem.
We feature a twelve-step recovery program and, in extreme cases, interventions. Although it is our firm belief that you are never "cured," you most certainly can recover.
We have designed a brief checklist to determine if you are an addict. Do you: 1) Have twitches of the hand when you walk by your terminal? 2) Check e-mail more than five times a day? 3) Spend more time chatting than eating or sleeping? 4) Surf aimlessly with no direction, if only to be online? 5) Leave your name and information at countless sites if only to hope you'll receive a reply one day from a company you'll never do business with anyway? 6) Log on before engaging important personal habits or tasks, such as meal preparation, hygiene or bodily functions? 7) Have red, swollen eyes that hang halfway out of your head? 8) Spend hours online on a holiday from work, where you'd usually be griping about your carpal tunnel syndrome? 9) See smoke arising from your computer or WebTV box? 10) All of the above?
If you answered yes to four or more questions (or chose #10), you have a problem. Please call us at Internetaholics Anonymous at: 1-800-LOGOFFNOWFORSWEETJESUSSAKES.
We're here, we're free, and we're confidential. The first step to recovery is admission that you have a problem. Call us today. If you can power off to free up your phone line, that is.
Five Stages of Drunkeness From: barbaray@open.org
Stage 1 - SMART
This is when you suddenly become an expert on every subject in the known Universe. You know you know everything and want to pass on your knowledge to anyone who will listen. At this stage you are always RIGHT. And of course the person you are talking to is very WRONG. This makes for an interesting argument when both parties are SMART.
Stage 2 - GOOD LOOKING
This is when you realise that you are the BEST LOOKING person in the entire bar and that people want you. You can go up to a perfect stranger knowing they want you and really want to talk to you. Bear in mind that you are still SMART, so you can talk to this person about any subject under the sun.
Stage 3 - RICH
This is when you suddenly become the richest person in the world. You can buy drinks for the entire bar because you have an armoured truck full of money parked behind the bar. You can also make bets at this stage, because of course, you are still SMART, so naturally you will win all your bets. It doesn't matter how much you bet 'cos you are RICH. You will also buy drinks for everyone that you fancy, because now you are the BEST LOOKING person in the world.
Stage 4 - BULLET PROOF
You are now ready to pick fights with anyone and everyone especially those with whom you have been betting or arguing. This is because nothing can hurt you. At this point you can also go up to the partners of the people who you fancy and challenge to a battle of wits or money. You have no fear of losing this battle because you are SMART, you are RICH and hell, you're BETTER LOOKING than they are anyway!
Stage 5 - INVISIBLE
This is the Final Stage of Drunkenness. At this point you can do anything because NO ONE CAN SEE YOU. You dance on a table to impress the people who you fancy because the rest of the people in the room cannot see you. You are also invisible to the person who wants to fight you. You can walk through the street singing at the top of your lungs because no one can see or hear you and because you're still SMART you know all the words.
Seek the higher power of humor...May the Farce Be with You!
And, of course...Practice Safe Stress!
Mark Gorkin, LICSW, the Stress Doc, a psychotherapist and nationally recognized speaker, trainer, consultant and author, is also known as AOL's and the internet's "Online Psychohumorist" ™. Check out his USA Today Online "Hot Site" website - www.stressdoc.com and his page on AOL/Online Psych, Keyword: Stress Doc
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(c) Mark Gorkin 1998 Shrink Rap Productions