I'm also an artist. Just been through 3 weeks of mania, did a lot of really creative work, blew up at and let go of some false friends and a situation I was volunteering for that I was not pleased with. Colors have been AMAZING, creative ideas non-stop, piling up one on another. Yesterday the Lamictal kicked in...I quite literally felt it in my entire body. The rage I've been carrying dissipated, but my creative ideas went kind of...normal. I'm now having to work to achieve paint colors, whereas before the colors just happened.

I feel like crying. I AM crying. But I have to take the Lamictal because when the mania turns into depression life will get really bad.

I'm 55 and I have to keep learning it all, all over again.

I hear you, Aviza.