I imagine Ernest Hemingway. He’s hunched over his typewriter click-clacking away. He’s crafting perfect prose. Maybe The Sun Also Rises or The Old Man and the Sea. Sips of a dry martini fueling his creative genius.
In reality, Hemingway never drank while he was writing. But he did drink to excess every day, leading the life of an alcoholic tortured artist.
The tortured artist. There’s a reason why we hear that cliché over and over again: It’s true. Many of the greatest artists, authors, and musicians have lived with mood disorders, and subsequently addiction. The two seem to go hand in hand.
Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald both battled depression and alcoholism. Edgar Allan Poe was a bipolar alcoholic. So was Vincent Van Gogh.
Kurt Cobain could’ve taken lithium for his bipolar disorder, but he chose heroin instead. Amy Winehouse was manic-depressive, and she drank herself to death, literally dying of alcohol poisoning.
The first statistically significant study to link creativity and mental illness was published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research a few years ago and is highlighted in an article, “Does Creativity Come With a Price? New Insight on Creatives and Mental Illness.”
It found that creative professionals are 8% more likely to suffer from bipolar disorder than the general population.
However, writers in particular were shockingly more prone to bipolar. Writers were 121% more likely to suffer from bipolar disorder than the general population.
I used to drink and write when I was manic. Wine or beer. I was prolific – cranking out stories and scripts for MTV News. I would stay up all night, fine-tuning each phrase until it reached perfection. The stories were truly some of my best writing. However, I attribute it to the mania, not the drinking.
Back to the tortured artist phenomenon. Is it worth it? Without a doubt, the unrelenting depression we deal with on a regular basis is crippling. However, I personally believe my creativity is enhanced by my bipolar. If I weren’t bipolar, I wouldn’t exercise my creativity in the unique ways that I do. We bipolar individuals have an intense capacity to feel emotions. Many of the people profiled in The Eccentrics wouldn’t change their diagnosis if they could. And I wouldn’t either. The disorder is what makes our art unique.
During 2015, I will be continue to share profiles from many of the artists and the writers and the musicians of our ilk. And more importantly, I invite you to share your story with me. Click on the yellow “Share Your Story” button on the right and share away.
Also percolating:
The Huffington Post: Does Having Bipolar Disorder Equate to an Early Death?
The Huffington Post: The Real Distinction Between Ambition and Mental Health
