For every tortured genius whose passion comes from pain, there's a hundred who never get started because they lack the energy to get out of bed half the time, are slowly killing themselves with alcohol and other substances, and so on. But a pill alone doesn't fix that -- hell, current research shows most of those pills do no better than a placebo -- so the mythology of the nobility of suffering will continue for some time hence.

(Fun fact, you know that "lorem ipsum" text that's used as filler? It's not nonsense Latin, it's from a speech by Cicero where he denounces the stoic ideal of suffering being good for the soul, or at least "pointless" suffering anyway)

> or at least "pointless" suffering anyway

What bulletproof word choice. Robert Harris called Cicero the first modern politician, and that looks right.

Do you have a link to research pointing at antidepressants being no better than placebo?