Medicated Creativity is Hard

What do you mean I can't hyperfocus my way into a skillset any more?

I’m sitting here trying to sketch. I have my favorite art streamer on in the background (if you haven’t see Nen Chang/Retromortis’s work, go look at her stuff on instagram and twitch, it’s amazing), and I’m struggling. I stopped drawing and painting in 2020 after we moved because I was burnt out. I’d been trying to make it a major source of income, and I had just pushed myself too hard in the wrong directions and I was exhausted. I’d drawn and painted off and on since I was a kid and I’d been dedicating every spare moment to my artwork that year. And when I stopped, I STOPPED.

A few months before, I’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but I wasn’t on the right combination of medications yet, and wouldn’t be for another year or two, so I was still having manias. Fast forward to the last few months, and not only have I been on the right bipolar meds for years, but I’m now properly medicated for my ADHD, managing my boundaries, and learning about myself. I realized how badly I wanted to reconnect with my creativity. I have written tons in that time, but I haven’t sketched or painted.

So I’m sitting here, trying to sketch. and it’s hard. It’s harder than I ever remember it being. I’m frustrated remembering how easy it had felt in the past, and how I was at a place where I was really proud of the things I could draw and paint when I stopped. And now? Now rusty doesn’t begin to describe the feeling.

Something just occurred to me that is making me a bit kinder towards myself though. I’m not just trying to pick up something that I stopped doing entirely almost 5 years ago. I’m trying to do something stable, medicated, and measured, that I had only ever done depressed, manic, and obsessively.

There’s a stereotype that starting medication makes you less creative. I can’t count number of times I’ve heard people talk about how they’re not going to go on medication because it will kill their creativity. It’s a really common refrain amongst creative communities, because those communities are safe havens for neurodivergent people, and often simultaneously have a problem with enabling the lack of treatment or diagnosis of mental illness and disabilities.

I’m not less creative with my medication. I’ve recently realized that the reason I’ve been so stressed and exhausted is because I haven’t been allowing myself to be creative, and that it’s such a major part of me that not engaging with it negatively affects me. What I can’t do any more is hyperfocus on my art for days at a time to the exclusion of spending time on other things, so that I learn how to draw facial features within a week. I can’t churn out 6 different full color sticker designs, put them on Redbubble, and make social media posts about them in 2 days. I can’t spend hours doing a deep dive on paint flow extenders, and come out of it with a shopping cart full of new brands of paint, canvases, and pour painting medium.

All of the stuff I just listed made me feel productive and successful, and it got me to a place where I was really proud of what I was making, but it also felt like I was holding onto it by a constantly fraying thread. Eventually I burned out and stopped creating things entirely, outside of writing, which still had the same manic “I must make it as big and complete as I can as fast as I can” energy to it.

It’s hard to do it this new way. I’m so used to being able to seemingly magically pick up skills at record speed, and to being able to just focus my way into a particular skill. Now I’m faced with understanding how I actually learn, that it takes time to try and fail and try again.

I feel like I’m failing.

I could do it before, so why can’t I now?

The price of stability is realizing that no matter how well I did things before, they were never sustainable. Sure. I’d learn to draw faces in a week. But I wouldn’t clean, keep commitments to my partner, or remember to eat.

Medication and diagnosis doesn’t “kill the creative spark”. It just makes us cognizant of the work, time and care that we have to put into it, and that other things have to keep happening while we do it. We still have to feed the cat, do the laundry, and cook dinner. It might take longer, but I feel like a more complete person while I’m doing it.