NYAPRS Note: The collective mourning process for Robin Williams has prompted much conversation about the nature of “mental illness” and how it can affect indiscriminate of social identity. The article below explores the link between behaviors that are seemingly abnormal; states of extreme emotions, both “psychotic” and genius. Reading this, I wonder if at times our national conversation can go beyond terminology that is often stigmatizing and debilitating for those of us with a label, and move toward a common understanding that uses imperfect and awkward words to get to a piece of human-ness that is hard to define and wrestle with.
Robin Williams’ Death Underscores Connection Between Creativity, Depression And Addiction
Forbes; Alice G. Walton, 8/12/2014
It’s no secret that creativity and mental illness are intimately connected – the death of Robin Williams yesterday was, perhaps, a sad testament to that fact. Williams was arguably one of the best examples of both extraordinary creativity and the darker sides of that sort of genius: Severe depression and addiction. Among his many talents, Williams was famous for his capacity to draw striking and hilarious connections between subjects – and to flit back and forth between them – at mind-blowing speeds. A.O. Scott in The New York Times writes, “The only thing faster than his mouth was his mind, which was capable of breathtaking leaps of free-associative absurdity.”
So why are creativity – including comedy – and mental illness so intertwined? Like any creative profession – writer, musician, and artist – the answer may be that the comedian’s brain might be wired a little bit differently to begin with.
In interviews, Williams was quite open about his battles with cocaine and alcohol, which he famously gave up in the 1980s. He said in a People magazine interview in 1988, that cocaine “was a place to hide. Most people get hyper on coke. It slowed me down.” After being sober for more than 20 years, Williams relapsed into drinking in 2004 after his good friend Christopher Reeve, with whom he’d attended Julliard, died. He checked himself into an addiction facility in 2006 to help him with his alcohol addiction. In 2009, Williams had heart surgery, which is said to have affected him deeply. Earlier this year, he went back into treatment, to “finetune” his sobriety.
It’s hard to know what Williams’ internal dialogue was like, but it was undoubtedly a dark one at times. “You’re standing at a precipice and you look down, there’s a voice and it’s a little quiet voice that goes, ‘Jump,’” Williams said in an interview with Diane Sawyer in 2006. “The same voice that goes, ‘Just one.’ … And the idea of ‘just one’ for someone who has no tolerance for it, that’s not the possibility.”
The Dark Side of the Comedic Mind
That extreme darkness can lurk underneath the humor is another reality of comedians. A study earlier this year in the British Journal of Psychiatry found a strong connection between comedic prowess and, if not exactly psychosis, something close to it. The authors wanted to see if comedy fell into the same category of other forms of creativity, long thought to be either product of mental illness, or an escape from it. “Being creative – writing, composing, painting and being humorous – might therefore be an outlet,” they write, “an escape from the pain of depression. The poet and writer Antonin Artaud, who himself experienced serious mental illness, wrote, ‘No one has ever written, painted or sculpted, modeled, built or invented except literally to get out of hell.’”
The authors had 523 comedians from the U.S., Britain, and Australia, complete personality tests, and found a stronger likelihood for schizotypy – the propensity for psychotic personality traits, without full-blown psychosis – as well as traits that might blur into manic-depressive disorder. Most fascinating was that comedians, compared to regular old actors, had traits of both introverts and extroverts, which the authors say could “combine synergistically to facilitate comedic performance.”
Comedians’ brains are constantly combing their reservoir of knowledge to arrive at unexpected – and therefore comical – connections and commentary on life. One comedian in the study likened the comedic brain to a high-speed Google search: “Comedians train their brains to think in wide associative patterns. This relates to joke writing, where the word ‘bicycle’ brings up a picture of a bicycle in the mind of a noncomedian, but for the comedian it’s like running a search on the Internet—everything related pops up, from images of fat people riding bicycles naked and getting chafed to the fact that Lance Armstrong has only one testicle.”
Williams wasn’t the only comedian to discuss the dark dialogue within. The study also recalls the now-famous quote by Stephen Fry, host of the BBC quiz show QI. He talked candidly about his own moment-to-moment double-reality: “There are times when I’m doing QI and I’m going ‘ha ha, yeah, yeah,’ and inside I’m going ‘I want to fucking die. I… want… to… fucking… die.’”
For Williams, his demons were not so hidden, and many have pointed out that the sadness was visible in his crystal blue eyes. “Mr. Williams spoke about this himself,” says Constance Scharff, PhD, Senior Addiction Research Fellow and Director of Addiction Research, at California treatment center Cliffside Malibu. “He had spoken too about how sometimes it’s important to be funny when you’re speaking about really painful subjects. Humor can be a tool to obfuscate pain. How many comedians have we watched die from addiction (accidental overdose) or suicide? Sometimes people make us laugh so we can’t see how much they hurt.”
The Creative, Addictive Brain
The brains of some of us are undeniably, and genetically, predisposed to addiction. For high-powered businesspeople and “creatives” alike, there seems to be a particular tendency for chemical dependence. It’s not that the one leads to the other – simply that the traits coexist, perhaps sharing a fundamental wiring that ups the odds for both.
“I’ve read reports stating that about fifty-percent of addicts also have a co-occurring psychological disorder, such as depression or anxiety,” says Richard Taite, founder and CEO, Cliffside Malibu. “In our experience, the percentage is much higher. Around three out of four of our clients have issues with addiction and a co-occurring disorder. With the most creative individuals, we can expect co-occurring disorders in almost all of them.”
But again, one isn’t necessarily a cause for the other. And there’s something to be said for the highly-sensitive individual theory – that some of us may just be more in tune with the world, comedy and tragedy alike. “I don’t believe that artistic talent – and I mean this in the broadest sense of acting, music, writing, visual arts, dance, etc. – is causative of these problems of addiction, depression or suicidal thoughts,” says Taite. “Rather, I think that people who are creative have an empathy for and sensitivity to the world that allows them to feel things deeply. I believe Mr. Williams could deeply feel and experience the pain in the world, the pain in his life – and among those who orient toward depression – both creativity and addiction are ways out, ways to feel and to feel if not more hopeful, at least less sad.”
A Sad Ending to A Rich Life
Article after article will tell you that help could have been there for the 34,000 people who commit suicide each year. This is mostly true. The irony, of course, is that severe depression can prevent a person from believing that treatment could help.
“Unfortunately, when the pain becomes too much and seems as if it is without end, suicide looks to be a viable alternative to suffering,” says Taite. “For those who suffer from depression and have relapsed after a long period of recovery, it is imperative that quality treatment be immediately sought and suicide guarded against… The tragedy here is that there is quality, evidence-based treatment available and Mr. Williams did not receive it… One of the world’s bright lights has gone out.”
That said, Williams used his 63 years in some extraordinary and profound ways – to make us laugh and cry, and to reflect on and cherish life. His work in philanthropy was well known, and he seemed to want to give back all the gifts he’d been given, in life and in talent. Perhaps he said it best himself: “You’re only given one little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.”