drugs and creativity

[MrsAngelElms]

I believe that taking a drug shrugs off the preconceptions, perimeters and restrictions that your own mind creates due to the status quo. Some great literary works which push the boundaries of thought and take you to a whole 'nother level probably would not have done so if they were not drug induced, though the greatest minds can reach that pedestal without taking the shortcut. I believe that when used once in a blue moon drug taking can release you and encourage your wilder side which will come out in any art you create. But taken regularly as a matter of course will cloud your mind to the articulated side of what you are trying to achieve and make it worthless, dulling your wits. Use, not abuse, all in the name of art.

[WyattGwyon]

It might be good — after several weeks — to clarify a few issues.

First of all, and unless one is on drugs continuously, dawn to dusk, the notion of writing under the influence is meaningless, trivial, and academic. You write something stoned and read it later. If it has promise you revise it, more likely than not while sober if for no other than mere statistical reasons — like being sober more than one is stoned.

And why must composing high versus straight be framed as a question of better or worse? Perhaps the essential thing is not whether one state or the other is better suited to creative activity, but whether seeing an aesthetic object from two different perspectives might be better than seeing it from one. Long familiarity with a work in progress can make it difficult to see what one is creating as an outsider might — that is, purely as an object of aesthetic contemplation. And sometimes this sort of external, estranged perspective is just what one needs to solve a problem or suggest a new direction. Some folks I have talked to report this "making strange" (as Schkolvsky, the Russian formalist, is sometimes translated) helpful.

And the issue of long term versus short term abuse is important too. The occasional altered state might be conducive to creativity in the short term while habitual abuse might lead to a degeneration of ones creative powers over time.

Okay, I'm bored. Think I'll go smoke a joint.