Drugs, alcohol, and creative pursuits

This post here is another in my series on “How to BE a Writer” — although this lesson could be applied to anything creative. Or spiritual. Or really anything requiring focus and dedication.

I have just one word regarding the use of drugs, alcohol, and any other self-administered non-prescribed mind-altering medications: Don’t.

Okay, technically, that’s a contraction made from two words, “do” and “not.” Still applies. This may seem self-evident to many of you, my Imaginary Readers, yet the actual truth of this is more complicated than it might seem on the surface.

(More on the flip)

Allow me to address the basic premise of mind-altering substances first, then we’ll move along to the complications. People who are drunk, stoned, or otherwise have altered their brain chemistry in some manner will think they’re more creative, more intuitive and spontaneous — when in fact for 99.9% of us, the opposite is true. (The rare exceptions exist, I’m sure. I read somewhere that Carl Sagan believed he had his most profound insights after smoking grass. Don’t know if it’s true or not, but I’m skeptical.) For most of us, our drunk/stoned ideas are actually garbage. They’ll usually be sloppily executed, the concepts probably derivative and unoriginal, and when we’re sober again, we will most likely kick ourselves and hope we weren’t so stupid as to have shown anybody what we did.

Thank goodness the Art Police don’t hand out CUI (Creating Under the Influence) citations.

Here’s where the complications come in, and where I can actually understand the rationale behind the decision to drink&type (or sculpt or paint or whatever one does as a creative activity). Our ‘superego’ (to use Freud’s term) is often a harsh censor. We won’t even sit down to write a poem because we believe our work is crap. Won’t use the paints and canvas because it’s a waste of good money.

Then it might occur to us, “Y’know, I was a lot less shy at that dinner party last week, after I had a glass of wine. Maybe I could give that a try.” We try it and guess what? It works. We sit down, drink the wine as we type, and somewhere along the way, our inhibitions lower enough for us to create something.

Believe me, something is far, far better than nothing. The error lies in the mistaken belief that the wine was necessary for the act of creation. That wine did not increase your creativity, it merely slapped a temporary gag on your internal censor. When the censor wakes up, which it always does, you will pay a harsh price, too. Even if your story, poem, sculpture or painting has some merit, that censor will really come down hard on you. “Oh, gawd…what was I thinking? This is garbage.” (Perversely, this may cause us to think that if one glass of wine helped get us going in the first place, maybe two would work better and keep the censor unconscious longer. Funny how we can fool ourselves with utter illogic and nonsense.)

I’m of the opinion that this is the case for any in the general class of drugs known as ‘intoxicants.’ These do what? They impair certain brain functions, that’s the classic definition of such — and most notably and commonly, inhibitions are what’s impaired first. Yes, this may have useful, but it would be foolish to then confuse inhibition suspension with an actual increase in creativity.

It’s not. In fact, you give a small piece of actual creativity along with the inhibitions. If your inhibitions are really strong (thereby requiring lots of self-lubrication), you will find only a fraction of creativity remaining after you consume most of a fifth of single-malt scotch. Plus you get the joy of dealing with the inevitable hangover. If you’ve been doing it a long while, you get the special bonus prizes of permanent liver injury and alcoholic brain damage. Whee! At that point, you’ll be lucky if you can even read “My Pet Goat.”

Marijuana doesn’t usually help with creativity either. It may quiet the superego, but at the cost of focus, attention-span, and good judgment. It can also make you really hungry for bad food and want to do nothing but listen to “Dark Side of the Moon” over and over again. With the exception of Sagan and perhaps a few exceptional others, grass is a drug that usually makes one passive and sponge-like. Nice perhaps for relaxing, and great for pain-relief and appetite enhancement for those who need such. But getting majorly stoned and really creating something amazing? Doubtful.

Now I’m going to move along to the other classes of drugs, in turn. I simply can’t imagine why someone would take a barbituate or tranquilizer and expect to manage anything greater than either sleep or being fascinated by TV talk shows. Both of those reduce overall brain function, and so I rather doubt there’s much temptation among us creative types to pop a Valium and then try to paint a masterpiece. (This isn’t to say we might not self-medicate using such things for other reasons…but that’s usually more related to being blocked and trying to shut out the existential pain of denying our creative desires.)

One commonly abused class of drug for creatives is amphetamines and other stimulants. (I’d actually include nicotine in this category, as well as very high intake of caffeine.) Here, we’re trying to get our brains out of their rut, to turbocharge our thinking. This also can have the useful side-effect of so swamping our super-ego censor that we’re able to produce something. I’m going to borrow that automobile metaphor for a little while longer though, because I think it’s an apt description of what’s going on. What happens when you drive really, really fast? You get to where you’re going more quickly, yes, but you drive much more erratically and inaccurately, you’re a danger to yourself and to others, and you run out of gas a lot faster. I’d also add that you’re so focused on keeping from crashing, you don’t even notice what’s going by around you. You crash eventually anyway; all you have to do is drive fast enough, long enough, and I guarantee it’ll happen.

I think stimulants have much the same effect. Yes, they may give us some temporary energy, but the costs are huge. We’re borrowing against the bank account of our body and brain, and sooner or later either we become completely tapped out or else we crash and burn spectacularly. Often both. It’s simply not sustainable, and I would argue that stimulant-influenced art will be flawed in ways similar to that which was influenced by intoxicants. It will be sloppy, jangly and jagged, and often unoriginal. Moreover, the kinds of things which made perfect sense to one’s speed-enhanced brain will make no sense whatsoever to other humans in non-altered states of consciousness. (I once read a story written by a guy who did it while on meth. The only useful purpose was it showed me the weird thought processes of that mental state. Run-on sentences, lightning fast changes in topic, horrible grammar and spelling. As a snapshot of a speed-freak, I suppose it worked, but as a story? Not a chance.)

This leads me to the third common class of drugs which tempt creatives: Hallucinogens. Here, we’re talking ‘shrooms, acid, mescal, absinthe, and so on. To this I would also add those things we humans practice which can produce visions — sweat-lodges, extreme meditation, fasting and privation, forced exhaustion. Here, the illusion is that by altering our brain chemistry and causing dream-like visions to rise to the level of our conscious minds, we’ll produce great works.

I’m sorry, but I think that’s mistaken, too, not to mention a potential misuse of sacred practices. If we come back from some ‘trip’ or vision quest with insights, these are almost never really meant for public consumption. They’re intended only for the person who experienced them (unless you’re Carlos Castaneda or some other spiritual figure…but even today, lots of people argue that he was nothing but a ‘shroom-head who figured how to get his stuff published). I would also add that particularly in the case of many of these stronger drugs, we may come back with some notion that has huge importance to us personally, but typically you won’t have a whole lot of success communicating your experience to others. Why? Because they won’t be on the same drugs or experiencing the same stressed physical state you were.

As an exercise — a legal one, I promise — consider keeping a dream journal for a week or two (this isn’t hard if you’re doing morning pages journaling). Write down everything you can remember about your dreams, as soon as you awake. Wait a week, then go back to read what you wrote.

Typically, that which made so much sense to you in the moments upon waking will seem jumbled, weird, and utterly nonsensical later on. Sometimes there might be useful scenes or imagery in there, or deep insights. I’ve personally gotten some great story ideas from my dreams — but I can’t think of a single instance where I had a fully- and well-executed story from beginning to end in a dream. I always had to rework it massively just to get the scene or image to work.

I posit that hallucinogens are similar. They’re like sledgehammers. Useful possibly for battering down walls, but you can’t build a house with one.

Sure, you might get a great notion or two, but if you paint or write while on acid, only those on acid will get what you meant. Also, like stimulants, they draw heavily on the body’s reserves and don’t represent a sustainable long-term strategy for being an artist. (And if you really want to flame out like a supernova, there’s no faster way to do it than to use combinations of mind-altering substances. With frequency.)

Of course these are just my opinions, but I believe there’s truth in this. Intoxicants can shut up our internal censor, but our work suffers as a result. Stimulants can give us energy, but at the cost of focus and skill in execution. Barbituates turn us into passive tree-stumps, and kill the creative impulse altogether. Hallucinogens can spark creative-like impulses, but we lose the ability to communicate them in any meaningful manner. I would add that ‘creative-like’ isn’t the same thing as actual creativity; genuine visions are meant for us alone, not for the general public.

I’m not saying this is the case 100% of the time. But if you have the conceit that you’re of that tiny fraction of a percent who do better on drugs than not…well, I’d suggest trying to be more honest with yourself. Consider this: Could you be even more effective, more creative, off the medications than on them?

Would it not be possible to create even better things if you didn’t need a six-pack of beer just to get started? In other words, are there not other ways to deal with that internal overly critical self-censor? Instead of a stimulant so you can run all out in a sprint that leaves you dead for a long while after, wouldn’t it be better to learn how to run marathons? What I mean to say is, wouldn’t it be a better long-term strategy to learn how to produce at a steady, sustainable pace? And as for the hallucinogens…well, again, these fool us into thinking we’re being creative. Visions aren’t creativity; they happen to us, they’re not truly the product of a conscious, creative mind. Plus there’s the lack of sustainability. The human body simply isn’t meant to be processing these chemicals on a habitual basis.

What I would urge as alternatives are to find non-chemical ways to overcome whatever blocks are keeping you from your maximum creativity. Free-form journaling, for instance, to overcome the censor. Regular exercise and healthy foods so as to have the energy to produce. Plus meditation, prayer, or other spiritual activities so as to help bring more creative ideas. And practice-practice-practice.

As an aside, a personal observation: Although antidepressants probably saved my life, they also seem to kill my creativity. A few years back, I was in a really bad place, very depressed. First antidepressant prescribed for me was Pamelor, a tricyclic (essentially a serotonin substitute) — the kind where you have to get your blood tested every few weeks because only a certain ‘window’ of dosage will work for a given person. I got some good effect from it though, a mood lifting…but I wasn’t creative at all while on it. Nine months later, I stopped taking it at my shrink’s suggestion — and all of a sudden, I was writing like crazy. For nine months after, roughly, I was producing a new chapter every week or two. A few years later, I tried the serotonin reuptake blockers — Paxil (made me sleep 14 hours a day, so wasn’t exactly a good choice), then Wellbutrin. Once again, the antidepressant really helped (more effective than the Pamelor, actually), and I got a lot done. Made huge and positive changes in my life.

And I didn’t write a single word during that 2 1/2 year period, because the creative impulse just wasn’t there. As soon as I stopped taking the med, boom. I was writing poetry for the first time in over a decade and lots of good work on my novel. My theory is that while antidepressants raise the floor of one’s mood, they also lower the ceiling. For me, to be really creative and productive, I need that ceiling gone — even if it’s at the risk of not having a floor under me. Anyway, it’s created an incentive for me to avoid antidepressants if I possibly can.

So anyway, those are my opinions regarding self-medication and creativity. I really do think that adding chemicals just gets in the way of us and our channel to the divine. This isn’t to say I don’t enjoy a glass of wine now and then. But that’s for relaxing time, curled up with a book, not when I need to be focused and on target like a laser beam.

Until next time…