Mood and the witch

I knew I'd find a use for this picture of Freud's couch eventually! The proportion of witches who have mental health problems of one sort or another is astounding. Notice I don't say 'mental illness' - I realise this is because I'm trying to exclude such illnesses as schizophrenia, where you have a definite break with reality. I have known witches with mood disorders, who have self harmed, with gender identity problems, post traumatic stress disorder... You name it. I myself am just coming to the end of my second depressive episode, with relief because the side effects of sertraline - photosensitivity and night sweats - are giving me more trouble this time around, but fortunately I'm on a reducing dose & should finish the course in a couple of months.
Sertraline? - you say - shouldn't you be taking Valerian or St John's Wort? Well, no. If all acts are magical acts, it means not excluding anything & making the best choice one can in the circumstances. SJW has a good evidence base in mild to moderate depression, however I know sertraline works with me & washes the grey world with colour quickly. The real reason we enjoy long life & health in the 'one third' world is because modern medicine has stamped out or can control the diseases that compromise life in the two-thirds world. The reality is, for example, that what will make me keep my sight is not the quantities of spinach & blueberries I eat, but the drops I take every night to reduce the pressures in my eyes. Without them I would be looking at something like ten more years of sight before being registered blind.
This is not to deny the more 'epic' aspects of mental and other illnesses: not many people can otherwise get the sense of resurrection that you get coming out of a depressive episode. Being diagnosed with a chronic illness is a test of how a person confronts what comes their way. I'm not sure which comes first, but magical powers are frequently conceived in illness. Maybe it is that in illness you are placed in an 'initiatory' context, where you have to make irrevocable decisions & emerge changed by the experience. Maybe those who are on the (h)edge attract illness because being a witch means coming into contact with so many of the highs & lows of life. This would be enough to wear anyone down - Terry Pratchett says somewhere that witches age inside - but for the magical person a depressive episode or other illness can be turned into a challenge to be surmounted, managed, avoided, but in some way dealt with to turn the shit that happens into fertilizer.
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