What nourishes me also destroys me

As an artist I often find that the most difficult thing is not getting in the mood to draw but figuring out what to draw. You can spend days just thinking, researching and studying. It is an absolutely soul crushing feeling not being able to find your Muse. Then you just stop thinking about it and all of a sudden you know what you have to draw. It's not just hey here's an idea; it's this is what hurts, it is this that makes a masochist of me and I have to aestheticize it. After which it stays quiet for a time until it rises up and you have to rip it from your chest again. What a life, what a mixture of pleasure and pain. Which I know is a definition of what it means to be alive but it's sharper and more intense for the artist. But that moment when you have an image materialize itself to you and you just know what you have to get down on paper. I would describe it as liberating. I read not long ago though I can't recall where that the chemical surge that an artist gets whilst in the flow State is the most addictive experience that we human beings can partake in. That makes so much sense when you consider how far and where we are willing to go to access it. Perhaps this is why we artist are so self-destructive; this supreme ecstasy a communion we have with the truth of ourselves and the mirror we hold up to the rest of our species.