Not Cool, Dude
After a quarrel with his longstanding friend and artistic rival, Paul Gauguin, Van Gogh cut off his ear. He would go into depressive episodes where he hallucinated, but he didn’t recall cutting off his ear at the time.
The fact is that historians think he had manic depression (bipolar disorder), and today’s drugs to control it are known to dampen creativity. To put it another way, if Van Gogh had been treated for his condition, we would probably not be looking at the great art he produced today. This is true of many other artists who have gone down in history as legendary.