Well I can only relate my experiences, cause a drug affects everyone differently. Lamictal has done nothing to hamper my creativity or intelligence. It has been a very good mood stabilizer for me, and certainly better than the Depakote I used to be on. The only side effect I ever experienced on it would be insomnia, back when I used to take it in the night, but I switched to the morning and haven't had a problem since. Depakote on the other hand, didn't lower my intelligence/creativity per se, but I was so drugged up/zombified it was hard for me to get anything done, and man does it make you sleep, I used to sleep around 14 hours a day. Can't do that when you have uni/work so I switched to Lamictal and I live a relatively normal life since. I would highly recommend it.