Forum / Medication and Writing

Bill Yarrow
Jul 02, 02:58pm

If anyone was or is on medication to treat ADD or ADHD and would be willing to discuss with me the effect of the medicine on his or her writing, I'm be most grateful.

Thanks,

Bill

P.S. Please email me privately at johnson1740@yahoo.com

Bill Yarrow
Jul 02, 03:00pm

That is, I'd be most grateful.
Cheez!

Gill Hoffs
Jul 02, 03:24pm

I have a friend just diagnosed with ADHD there - she, too is a writer, and I'll pass on your email address in case she is willing to share her experiences. All the best, Gill

Bill Yarrow
Jul 02, 03:53pm

Thanks, Gill.
Bill

Susan Gibb
Jul 02, 05:47pm

Don't know about that, Bill, but when I first tried the nicotine patch several years ago, I wrote a 180k word novel in three months. Vivid dreams, constant flow of creative ideas and words.

Jim V
Jul 02, 07:00pm

After I quit smoking, I could not write for 4 years.

Gill Hoffs
Jul 02, 08:47pm

Susan - if the patch ,akers included testimonials like that in their adverts, even nonsmokers like me might buy a few!

James - how on earth did you cope? And how did you get back into it? The idea of losing writing makes me feel a bit sick.

Gill Hoffs
Jul 02, 08:47pm

*makers - sorry, knackered.

Susan Gibb
Jul 03, 12:55am

Gill, I thought it was going to become the new trendy drug of the 21st century.

Marcus Speh
Jul 03, 10:03am

as a licensed psychotherapist (yes, that, too) i'd be careful with & suspicious of psychiatric diagnoses, especially when they lead to drug prescription (so popular nowadays)...among the few stories here, susan's rings especially true: beyond purely physical effects (they don't really exist, not in the real world where mind and body are one), you will simply change when you drop an old behavioral pattern and there is no way of knowing who you'll be.

not to belittle the phenomenon or the experience as such, but in terms of the unconscious (which keeps a close watch in these cases) it doesn't really matter if the behavior is anchored as an addiction: rather, addiction is a particular manifestation of a pattern that creates different (but not necessarily more or more serious) resistance against change.

on a personal level: if my circumstances would have allowed it, i would most certainly have been diagnosed as an ADD child and teenager. having gone through nicotine addiction only and never having been medicated in any way, i can't really say anything about the effects you're asking about.

i stopped smoking 18 months ago for the 2nd time (cold turkey, with nothing else than writing to sustain my resolve & a wife who did the same) in my life & it's been uneventful probably because i feel ruled by different demons now.

generally speaking, no matter what pattern you drop, you will end up in a different pattern: one addiction will turn into another. but not all symptoms/patterns are equally hard on your body and your mind. changing patterns (of any sort) is a condition of the living soul. when you stop dropping habits (and adopting new ones) you die.

gosh, perhaps it's time for a blog post "addiction for writers - a grammar"...i seem to not want to shut up about this topic...

Linda Simoni-Wastila
Jul 03, 10:56am

as a licensed pharmacist who specializes in mental health and substance use disorders, i would suggest that the RIGHT medication can be very helpful to treat many maladies, including ADD/ADHD. Indeed, this complex of conditions IF correctly diagnosed is very responsive to medication AND cognitive behavioral interventions. as well, the medications prescribed to those with add/adhd include those with the potential to cause addictive behaviors, as well as those that do not. the key is monitoring and prescribing with diligence to a patient's history.

i also will add that EVERY INDIVIDUAL responds differently to different medications, so it is difficult to predict how taking a medication might influence writing and/or other creative endeavors. the add/adhd itself can cripple the creative process. medication may address the inability to sit still, to focus, to construct clear throughts, all symptoms which the classical ADD/ADHD patient suffers. be patient with treatment -- the first medication one is prescribed may have intolerable effects, which is why one with add/adhd should be under the care of a specialist; another medication may provide entirely different relief and activity.

the children i know who take medication for add/adhd have had a wide range of effects, from somnolence to a tighter controlled ability to create. several are musicians and song writers, and they feel that medication improves their productivity and reduces their frustration. another girl, one growing in the fine arts but also a mathematician, feels stunted at times. her words. changing the dose to nights versus mornings helped with that.

finally, there are differences in care of adult vs pediatric add/adhd issues, and not all specialists treat both populations.

i provide this as a public service announcement ;^) i started writing this privately to bill, but say the posts here. much as i feel marcus raises interesting points about over-medication and such, i wanted to clarify that treating add/adhd is not treating an addiction, nor is it necessarily leading to one. for many people medication is a god-send and allows them to live functional and creative lives. peace...

James Lloyd Davis
Jul 03, 01:53pm

As the use of tobacco declines, so will the culture.

David Ackley
Jul 03, 02:08pm

Based on several books under review, each of them by psychotherapists, Marcia Angell in a two part recent article in the NY Review of Books, summarizes a fairly scathing case against the exploding use of drugs for nearly all treatment of mental illness, including conditions that are disputably pathological. As a non-professional I don't have any standing to dispute your judgement, Linda, but it seems to me the article at least shows that the global effects of treatment with drugs are only now coming clear, and that they should give everyone pause.

Linda Simoni-Wastila
Jul 03, 02:26pm

James, haha. Tobacco DOES have an amazing place in culture, history, and society.

Oh David, I am in complete agreement with you re giving pause before launching into medication use without need. I've read Angell's reviews, and she raises important points.

There is a balance, and my post is intended to provide the argument for treatment when necessary and appropriate. Psychiatric medications do provide tremendous relief to many who would suffer needlessly without. As well, there are individuals who opt for a quick fix for the slightest pain or symptom rather than doing the work needed to get at the root of the problem. This goes for physical conditions as well, obesity, diabetes, and hypertension among the biggies that come to mind.

BTW, the reason I started writing fiction was because of this conundrum between medical need and not. It's a fascinating issue to explore with my characters. Peace...

W.F. Lantry
Jul 03, 02:41pm

What interests me the most here is the actual effect of the medications in question. Even Emerson knew drugs effect writing, and he laments the advantage they give, while approvingly suggesting such writers will be "punished for this advantage by a dissipation." But what form will these changes take? I don't have many answers, but I do have some basic questions.

First, will one particular drug make it more or less likely the user sits down in a chair and starts writing? Second, will the production of a typical individual writing session increase or decrease? Will the form change? (I've known poets who write only in free verse after smoking weed, and only in forms when not smoking). What about sentence length, and variations of syntax? And then there are even more basic questions of stylistics: variation of diction, sensory words, etc.

These last issues may be most telling. I've known writers who convinced themselves they could gain some advantage from alcohol. And yet, in general, their diction choices contracted, their syntax became more pedestrian, in short they were less articulate. I would think drugs used to treat ADD would be the opposite, since some are essentially speed. If used in moderation, they'd be better than caffeine. Unless there's an actual medical condition they're treating, and then, of course, all bets are off... ;)

Thanks,

Bill

Susan Gibb
Jul 03, 03:02pm

Ah, so we're researching the steroids of the writing sport then...most interesting!

James Lloyd Davis
Jul 03, 04:47pm

I love research.

Tobacco is not the steroids of the writing sport, but a mere booster for the required whiskey of choice. While I prefer a good single malt, a bottle of Jack will suffice and the shape of the bottle makes a fine, handy weapon to use when the critique group gets unruly.

Of course, this has little or nothing to do with Bill's original and serious inquiry for input, but it's been a long weekend and I never go out in the woods on a holiday weekend, (too many weekend hikers and cyclists on the trail ... spandex and cockroach-shaped helmets as far as the eye can see. Not a pretty sight.) so I'm stuck here with waaaay too much time on my hands.

Apologies to Bill. I'm done here. Maybe.

Gill Hoffs
Jul 03, 05:08pm

I'm following this thread with great interest, and I'm particularly interested in Bill Lantry's observations of friends' writing habits. When I studied Psychology at Uni, we barely touched on what I understood [prior to the course] to be classic psychology, e.g. Freud, but studied an awful lot about the biological science behind animal behaviours [e.g. bee waggle dances] and physical structures [how a cat's eye differs from a fly's or a human's, for example]. I was a terrible student, but I have retained the curiosity also prevalent in writers, and wish we had studied creativity more.

Especially since the neurologist I see about migraines has recommended, very strongly, that I start a course of medication to treat them as he feels there will be some negative and very unpleasant changes to my body and health if I do not. He was understanding of my concerns that treating the migraines would kill my creativity, especially when I explained to him that the two seem to be in tandem, and I will accept the trade if the migraines don't get much worse. Except he thinks they will.

I have a few months before the prescription filters down to me through layers of the health service, and I can't remember what the medicine is called, but I intend to do a before and after type test, keeping a log of my writing here and at home, in the hopes of unbiased perspective from others.

Anybody got any thoughts on this too? [should I have started a different thread? - sorry, Bill - new here, learning the ropes]

David Ackley
Jul 03, 06:30pm

Ginsberg in an exchange with Creeley (Published in pamphlet as "The Contexts of Poetry") remarks that he wanted to try writing poems under every possible condition of his life, and this had to have included a variety of chemically induced states. Similarly of course with a good deal of the literature of the time. Examples abound though from every period of literature from the 18th century on including De Quincey's "Confessions of an Opium Eater," and the famous first half of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," adapted from an opium dream immediately upon waking.

Lowry's harrowing UNDER THE VOLCANOE is supposed on good authority to have been significantly written when the author was lit, and may be one of the better examples of what the effects on style and substance might be. Pretty salutory as it appears.( "I'll have what he's drinking.")

Parts of Faulkner's "The Bear," and perhaps some of his other more rambling, semi-coherent passages in other works bear traces of liberal applications of sour mash bourbon.

Examples abound I'm sure of poetry or prose then and now chemically induced, enhanced or at least--maybe--affected.

Pax my previous response to Linda which seemed to say that drug treatment of mental illness was a pretty bad thing( no doubt because I'd just read Marcia Angell's article and I always believe the last thing I read) I just remembered an interview with Tom Harrell the great jazz trumpeter who has schizophrenia and hearing him say the medication saved him, life, sanity and music. Apologies for appearance of zealotry, Linda.

W.F. Lantry
Jul 03, 07:59pm

Gill,

Try this:

http://www.fictionaut.com/stories/wf-lantry/ezekiels-wheel

I'd rather put up with them and be able to write, than be medicated but silent. I usually go into a kind of focused trance when I'm writing, almost a directed gaze when everything else is blocked out. In those moments, I don't feel them. But as soon as I'm done they return.

Along with Hildegard and Ezekiel, Teresa of Avila had them as well. The list goes on and on. I really don't think there's any direct correlation, I think people produce 'in spite of,' not 'because of' them. I never had anything like this until about 18 months ago. Now they're with me all the time. It's odd how things can change in a day!

Thanks,

Bill

Gill Hoffs
Jul 03, 08:44pm

Bill L.,

Loved the piece! I think you must be my 'migraine-twin' - mine became really noticeable in January 2010. I went to the doctor, who thought I was pregnant [!] but it turns out I just have a weird type. Hildegard von Bingen was mentioned in a psychology lecture we had at Uni on the perils of diagnosing people after their death - if I remember correctly. I remember the vivid descriptions of her auras and 'visions', and wishing I could experience something so vivid and beautiful too. Case study in 'be careful what you wish for'!

Before the migraines I enjoyed writing but things never 'clicked' as well as they did when I was at school completing set tasks. Since the migraines, I find I'm full of stories, and can do a novel in a month and stories every day if Mike's looking after Angus [and I'm not vomiting].

Perhaps you're right, and it's just like having the pressure of a pestle and mortar to get the juice from a herb. Did yours start being noticeable within a day? Gosh, that sounds intriguing.

Really feel less alone with it now - thank you for sharing.

Gill

Michael Dickes
Jul 03, 10:55pm

Folks with ADHD and ADD usually get prescribed an amphetamine based drug. Worked for Hunter S. Thompson.

Meg Pokrass
Jul 03, 11:22pm

i drink coffee all day and most of the night slowly, in bird-sips. I was diagnosed w/ ADD and it explained a lot to me about 5 years ago. My doctor worries (and he's one of the prier neuro-psychiatrists in the country) about the long term medical effects of ritalen and ritalen-like medictions re: and stroke increase, and took me off it immediately (I had been using it for about a year). He said someday people will look back on this time of over-prescription of ADD meds and shudder from all the ill health issues they have created. He said coffee is not great, but much, MUCH safer IF IT WORKS. I think for the most part, the constant drip of coffee works for me.

So Bill, and anyone else, I do not write without coffee next to me. And it works (for me). I focus much better during the sips.

Meg Pokrass
Jul 03, 11:23pm

i meant to write "premier" and somehow i spelled it "prier" and so, yeah, i need more coffee!

Ann Bogle
Jul 04, 05:42am

Meg, thanks -- that is very helpful. I scored 98 of 100 on the TOVA in '95. The doctor, who used equipment called the BEAM Lab to test my brain, said it indicated ADD. He couldn't prescribe Ritalin because the other doctor (without testing) had dx'd bipolar. I drink coffee all day (can sleep on it) and smoke half a pack of Nat Sherman's. I take low-dose med's for bipolar. The beat is steady most of the time, no symptoms, no side effects. I've gone without tx and become spacey beyond belief. I stand in the middle of the room, for days, doing nothing, until it's time for bed. It's hard to know if that's due to withdrawal or me. I sometimes experience situational anxiety: In large cities, such as NYC, I fear falling while walking, in large airports, too, but in towns and regional airports, I walk with ease. I ride my bicycle then write. I try not to write and drink, because the writing races -- like going too fast over speed bumps. Alcohol releases endorphins.

Linda Simoni-Wastila
Jul 04, 11:49am

Fascinating responses on this thread. Coffee is most effective in small constant doses over the day, as Meg says. Taking it in large doses all morning, for example, builds tolerance, but the "IV drip" approach does not.

Nicotine is a wonderful drug (other than the smoke) because it relaxes AND stimulates at the same time. A rare thing.

Lots of writers are bipolar. Kay Jamison, a psychologist and writer, has two books that touch on the association between temperament and creativity (Touched by Fire; Exuberance) -- I highly recommend them. Another book (The Hypomanic Edge) by an author whose name I forget writes about leaders, artists, politicians and other who have low-level bipolar and who have created great things. These folks somehow managed to channel the best of bipolar (and yes, hypomania is a wonderful thing if you can keep it in check).

ADD/ADHD and bipolar share a similar path. It is difficult to tease either from the other, especially in pediatrics and young adults. As well, they are conditions which do co-exist with each other. Both tend to be over-diagnosed (the bipolar was sort of the mental illness du jour a few years ago, overtaken by OCD and autism), although imho a lot of folks walking around with what they think is depression are actually more on the bipolar spectrum of things.

Meg, I agree -- there are not a lot of studies re long term Ritalin and other amphetamine use (even though there is a growing body of literature suggesting kids on these meds for a long time have a much higher propensity for substance use and alcohol use disorders later in life). They are dangerous without adequate monitoring. I love that you have found a regimen of coffee that works for you.

Ann, I would always be leery of getting medication for a condition you haven't been tested for. But if what you do keeps you going, stick with it!

The past few days, I have been in the midst of a final polish of a novel about my bipolar character, and I was in the midst of the section where he faces choices of medication. Everything here resonates. Karmic.

Peace...

Ann Bogle
Jul 04, 03:51pm

Linda, thanks. There is no test for bipolar. I reconfirmed this recently with a neurologist friend who herself has been dx'd with bp2.

Linda Simoni-Wastila
Jul 04, 05:18pm

Hi Ann, there are several validated scales and measures to assess BP (and differentiate from other conditions, say major depression or ADD/ADHD) to assist in dx. But you are correct -- there are no blood or lab tests, just psychiatric scales. I must be careful with my verbage! peace...

Ann Bogle
Jul 04, 06:43pm

Linda, perhaps the scales were not expressly in use in '91. In bp groups, we began by stating our year of dx. Mine came with the first Gulf War. Another wave of bp dx came in '99. People who already had PTSD were swept in at 9/11. I feel that Angell's two-part article, though fascinating to literate undx'd, may actually cause further harm to those who felt required to live in compliance with tx. I feel a mix of relief and dread for what has been lost when I read that a prisoner has been released due to DNA evidence. I feel dx as a way (in the absence of a test) to classify persons. No article by Angell or Jamison can make up for general perceptions of the dx'd. Treatable would mean that one lives much the way one would have lived without dx, and for me, that was not always achievable, though med's worked well, itself the test. Writing gives existence. It is like attaching flippers to swim. I stay with the doctor I have had for 12 years because he advocates creative writing. Angell seems against the role of doctors. Peace.

Susan G., you are so right about the patch and dreams! My story about that is called Dreams-in-progress, coming in an ebook soon.

The title of my story, "Rule Out Euthymia", though not the subject of the story, comes from a phrase in the DSMIV to guide doctors in dx'g bp.

Linda Simoni-Wastila
Jul 05, 02:02am

Ann, totally appreciate your insights -- very helpful and I get your perspective on stigma and the role of diagnosis in feeding stigma. Writing gives existence = very powerful and very true. With every treatment that provides a gain comes an accompanying loss. Thank you for your candor and sharing - a gift. Peace...

Linda Simoni-Wastila
Jul 10, 10:47am

Dear all,
Peter Kramer has an interesting piece up in the NYT Sunday Review on antidepressants:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/opinion/sunday/10antidepressants.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

He's the prof who wrote 'Listening to Prozac'. Here, he calls for an end to suggesting antidepressants are as effective as placebo. Interesting balance to the Angell pieces. You may need to register to get access to the story. Peace...
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