I used to draw and paint pretty much all the time and now--nothing. Once I got medicated, I just quit and could never get started again.

I don't have a point of comparison, because Lexapro is the only AD I've ever taken, but it hasn't affected my creativity at all. (Of course, that doesn't speak to quality of output, mind you.) Something to consider, I guess, if anyone is thinking of switching.

I was on just the Celexa at first. But I couldn't write at all, had trouble doing anything creative, even passively. Reading, listening to music, it all went stale. So I told my doctor I'd rather go back to wishing I was dead than to not feel anything at all. It was all the hollowness of depression, without the achey feeling at the core that at least allowed me to outlet the excess into something arty.

That's when he mentioned that patients who have careers/hobbies in the arts/creative fields also describe that hollowness. Um. Thanks for that, doc.

I have that too, with the Celexa. Very hard to be creative or care enough about theatre to want to do it. But I would rather feel like this than like I am going to drive my car off a bridge.

I took prozac, by the way. And I eventually got off of that. My depression hasn't gotten out of control (with the exception of the last presidential election) since. I still can't get my creativity jump started. It's weird.

For anyone who's interested in creativity and bi-polar disorders, I highly recommend the book Touched by Fire by Kay Redfield Jamison. It's pretty interesting.

There was a straight-faced comment in the NYT about how having a national anthem in another language was risking turning us somehow into Canadians.

I'll be more likely to believe that if I see hints of say, universal health care. Many Canadians know portions of the french version of O Canada from hearing it at the beginning of hockey games ("... les plus brilliants exploits ... God keep our land ...")

French-Canadians were founders of our nation. It is fascinating to watch the USA forcibly evolved via illegal immigration. It's so viral and cyberpunk.

The milk discussion the other day made me hunt down this book: [link]

I had heard a report on NPR witht the author and among the interesting this he discussed was that lactose tolerance is a relatively new adaption for humans.

In the days of prehistory, brave hunter/warriors would risk life and limb to hunt and trap the rarest of beasts. Only the bravest among them would then dare to drink the milk of the wild cow....

French-Canadians were founders of our nation.

My people! OK, not much the founders of the nation, but I am descended from Jacques Cartier. More or less. We're pretty sure.

I'm swimming against the tide, here, I know, even though I have no problem with the immigration kerfuffle. But if I take up residence in Paris, they will *not* sing La Marseillaise in English for me, much less play it publicly sung with English lyrics. Why is this an issue?

Monday here, too. Dang. And my mind's not ready yet for Beltane, it's unseasonably cool here, so it just doesn't feel like it.

I'm also on Lexapro. I haven't noticed any effect on creativity, but that's never been my strongest area.

Dosage may also be important. My dosage was just increased last Thursday, and I've noticed that I'm much more sleepy than usual. But that may be just temporary while I adjust -- I don't know yet.

I had heard a report on NPR witht the author and among the interesting this he discussed was that lactose tolerance is a relatively new adaption for humans.

Yup. Couldn't occur until after domestication, around 8000BC in the Old World, or thereabouts. And there are estimates that only about 15% of the human population now maintain lactose tolerance after infancy.