There was a comedian who did a bit about how she got stopped after a show and told "If you take antidepressants your art will suffer! We wouldn't have gotten The Sunflowers if Van Gogh was medicated!" to which she pointed out that we only got The Sunflowers because Van Gogh was medicated. He was taking foxglove, an herbal remedy for depression at the time, which has the side effect of making you experience the color yellow a little too intensely.

It will definitely be different. It won't be worse, though.

Sorry, for your challenge, I hope real science, not pharmaceuticals, find the answer for you & all others challenges that do not help, their are ones like my own I would never want cured.

I am no way a expert doctor in this field & doubt you will find one hear, you should find one IRW. With that being said, I do not trust hugely profitable pharmaceuticals industries “solutions”. Especially in The USA, & even more so now. Side effects are often less bad then the challenge, even if it is not they can horrible & still not worth it. I watched a ‘Free Speech’ show called ‘Rising Up with Sonali’ episode where a person suffering from serve depression was having bad trouble with pharmaceutical solutions, so he dived into research & found pharmaceutical solutions do not work at for depression & advised against it. I hear LSD & such illegal in The USA drugs, works because they rewire the brain, as you safely, under supervision of a foreign countries’ experts, go through the experience, after take the drugs, that are legally available for such practices in countries extremely close to us. Plus, they have no side effects,
I too would not take such pharmaceuticals, because yes more problems are created/side effects are added to the challenges, in most cases do not even solve the challenges. Oh yeah pharmaceuticals are a lot more expensive & take longer, if they are going to work at all.
Plus there are none drugs & pharmaceuticals solutions you could research, talk to a expert & try.

Looking at Trent Reznor's life and career I don't think it's ethical for me to tell you the answer man

I had a doctor explain to me that normally antidepressants help you heal and function.

But in my case my problems are very real and anyone would be severely depressed with my problems.

I tried them anyways, really improved my quality of sleep mostly but it also made it easier to piss me off. Overall they only did well to rescue me from extreme despair.

I think they are valuable tools and I wish access to them was ubiquitous to those in need.

Here's a thought experiment you might find worth pondering:

Assume, for this experiment, that becoming more mentally healthy definitely leads to being less artistic. You still make art, but it isn't as good or profound as before.

Given that premise, would you forgo happiness for the sake of your art? Would you recommend others do the same? If you could offer Van Gogh advice, would you tell him to avoid help and embrace suffering so that he could produce nice paintings?

Man I feel this. I sometimes think about how if everything was relatively better it would still not be good enough. Its like it might be more tolerable but still so much bad.

No. You are creating in spite of your depression, not because of it.

You might become drawn to different subjects or style, but it's horseshit that depression and misery causes you to make 'good' art.

I think it might change your art, but let me explain why I don't think it's that bad: whenever you change your habits, you will notice a difference to your mood and day-to-day headspace.

Antidepressants also change your habits, and thus they change what you think about, when you can be creative, and how you create.

I used to be scared that I would "lose the spark" over time when my habits changed drastically or when I took breaks from my craft, and I still am, but I can tell you in 8 years I've always bounced back and I still do some cool things and other people like some of the things I do. It definitely changed, but I know I learn and grow and thus my experiences necessarily change anyway, and so change in inevitable. BUT: for now it hasn't stopped me - sometimes I just need a little bit of a push.

Honestly just see what it's like and don't get scared when your habits and thoughts change. Try to adapt to it and switch up your workflow if it absolutely won't work. And don't forget: you can always add restraints to kick-start your process. Best of luck and may your future art be beautiful as well:)

Taking antidepressants does not have to reduce your creativity. Artists express their experience with their art. Sometimes it does it so well that people observing the art (through the lens of their conditioning) get moved. More damatic emotions get noticed more. But art can capture subtler experiences too. Antidepressants won't remove your capacity to experience, it just changes the quality of the experience. Pay attention to all the qualities of your experience and you'll notice it's not just the intense ones that have vibrancy. You can convey that in art beautifully as well.

The suffering artist is a known trope but don't think it's a prophecy.

Absolutely not! I have always found that my creative output has been at its best when I’m at my most mentally healthy.