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Drugs: Creative Aid Or Hindrance?

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Anonymous

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Just said something on another thread that I think warrants expansion.
Some people seem to assume that anything weirdly creative or fantastical or a bit off the wall were created under the influence of drugs.
Take Frank Zappa for instance. If I had a fiver for everytime someone said that Zappa must have been on some weird sh*t to do the stuff he did I would be living in Tuscany right now being served by my own Oompa Loompas.
Zappa actually detested drugs and never really used them. He just had a rather unique mind.
Drugs can really hamper creativity. Coleridge forgot the rest of a potentially great poem because he was bombed off his gourd.
Usually when you're stoned all you can do is eat pizza and watch shite TV. I find it impossible to write under the influence.
I just think that the human mind is weird and wonderful enough to come up with uniquely fantastic visions without the aid or narcotics.
So anyway, I shall put this to you all.
Do drugs hinder or help creativity?

Take it away you gnarly dudes.
 
If a man “whose talk is of oxen” should become an opium-eater, the probability is that (if he is not too dull to dream at all) he will dream about oxen. - Thomas de Quincey
 
speeking from experience ...with persons takeing drugs i would say its really then end of creativity.... the drug experience is such a selfish thing that any crativity quickly leeks away... also some of the least creative people i know take drugs, and it dont make one scrap of diference... people who say anyone makeing soemthing they find "off the wall" or "odd" is looking thro avery small window at someones vision of which they can know little.
 
Dagon
Coleridge did not forget the end of his poem not because he was bombed,it was an opiate that gave him his inspiration.It was because some pillock from Porlock knocked on his door and interupted him
 
that was the excuse...he probably just coudlnt be arsed...thats what opium does for you..... if it was now hed probably say he didnt finish cos he had to nick a car radio to sell down the pub to get more opium.
 
Easy Dude I've done opiates in the past and I didn't nick car radios or anything else for that matter !!!
Just because you know drug takers who are not creative does not mean that all people who take drugs must therefore also be non creative.
 
That's not what I'm saying at all. I don't think that people who take drugs necessarily lack creativity. The Beatles, Hunter S. Thompson, Aldous Huxley, Philip K. Dick etc etc all kind of refute that point. Incidentally though, Dick did his best work in his more sober moments. Apparently as the drugs got more and more hold on him his manuscripts had to be heavily edited to make any kind of sense. Ubik was apparently a complete mess and it was only through very carefully editing that it became anything like the great novel it is. "Allegedly" should also be added here just in case somebody knows otherwise.
I know that Coleridge was interrupted in the writing of Kubla Kahn, I'm just guessing that being heavily stoned didn't help any when it came to trying to remember something.
By the way, I'm not at all being a prude about drug taking. I have used drugs recreationaly and so have a lot of my friends. A lot of them to a greater degree than I.
I stopped smoking cannabis on a regular basis though because it was destroying my will to write or do anything at all really other than watch TV.
One thing that does bore the tits off of me are the endless drug films that the British film industry seem to be so keen on. Especially those that focus on heroin. They seem to be wallowing so much in self pity it hurts.
 
Abraxas said:
Easy Dude I've done opiates in the past and I didn't nick car radios or anything else for that matter !!!
Just because you know drug takers who are not creative does not mean that all people who take drugs must therefore also be non creative.

no but i think the creativity happens dispite the drugs not because of them
 
I wonder though if Coleridge would have had the inspiration to write Kubla Khan without the use of opiates?
I gave em up because I was getting little flashbacks after I thought the stuff was ought of my system.I dont mind been out of full control when in the company of friends but it's too dangerous alone.Still a very pleasant experience though not necessarily creative.
On the same theme I was told of a guy in the sixties who was high on acid and claimed he had just been given the answer to the riddle of the universe.After a great deal of persuasion he wrote the answer on a scrap of paper.When his friends looked at it it read



"I can touch the ceiling."
 
im not at al into poetry,,, but Colaridge may have done more if he wasnt stonned all the time lol.. i know painters who painted under the influence and produced good stuff but then they could paint anyway...and ive known painters paint under the infulence and produce self indulgent crap but then they were that without the drugs.. in fact all the heavy drugs users ive know have been esentialy selfish.
 
"no but i think the creativity happens dispite the drugs not because of them"

That's pretty much where I'm coming from also.
I don't know whether I would describe drug addicts as selfish though, they are sick and should be treated with care. It's a whole different debate I know but treating addicts like criminals is a seriously bad idea. Treating them as people who will get better with the proper medical treatment and counselling is the only way.
 
that all dipends on if they have just brugled your house ..in which case i favour tieing them to a rock at low tide and waiting with a nice warm drink....
 
There are probably people out there who would say that being spanked enhances their creativity. And who are we to say that it doesn't? :D
 
"There are probably people out there who would say that being spanked enhances their creativity. And who are we to say that it doesn't"

Friend of mine actually makes spanking movies and weird Victorian erotica. So, yes it does in a way I guess.
 
IIRC, there's a famous story that John Cipollina, a founder member of Quicksilver Messenger Service, once got hold of some truly righteous acid, and, while tripping, the muse grabbed him so strongly that he took himself to his typewriter and battered out a song so perfect and profound it was destined to live forever in the hearts of music fans the world over.

It was so good, that just reading the words, he realized, would bring about World Peace, Universal Brotherhood and a General Happy. Once it was done, he sacked out, resting his weary head, in preparation for revealing this perfect lyric to the world upon the following day.

When he woke up, he ran to the typewriter on the kitchen table, grabbed the paper from it and hungrily re-read the words he'd been lysergically-inspired to write the night before.

But apparently it was just half a page of incoherent tripe.*

Quel surprise. :rolleyes:

([EDIT]*Actually, in that case it probably turned up on one of their later albums.[END EDIT])
 
Originally posted by Dagon
[B
Friend of mine actually makes spanking movies and weird Victorian erotica. So, yes it does in a way I guess.

i wonder if hes rehursed his Oscar speech yet lol... i bet he sells scads...(aprently the US porn industry is worth more than Holliwood)
 
sidecar_jon said:
...(aprently the US porn industry is worth more than Holliwood)
Well yeah. I mean, their product is often better-written (and more complexly plotted), usually just as well-acted, and always far more ...ehr, 'uplifting'... than the Hollywood movies. :nonplus:
 
He just makes them for fun. He's a man with a lot of money and free time.
My friend under the influence of mushrooms swore that he came up with an idea that would abolish the need for all fossil fules and end pollution forever. Something about an amazing fuel system anyway. Needless to say he forgot it when he sobered up.
Another friend of mine (when I was at my smoking lots of dope stage) decided that everything we said when stoned was hilarious and endevoured to write it all down. Again, it just made us like like a bunch of twats.
 
sidecar_jon said:
i can see you have studied the genre
Not particularly. I was basing my comments more on a strong familiarity with the Hollywood product than on my slight (and at this time largely out-of-date) acquaintance with the other. :)
 
Dagon said:
Usually when you're stoned all you can do is eat pizza and watch shite TV. I find it impossible to write under the influence.

different strokes for different folks.
 
Usually when you're stoned all you can do is eat pizza and watch shite TV. I find it impossible to write under the influence.


i can do that with the aid of drugs.
 
If you need to take drugs to enjoy yourself or be creative then that's pretty sad. If you haven't got the imagination or inner motivation to create something or find ways to happily pass the time without the aid of outside substances then that's a shame.
I have no time for drugs and the 'Whoa, we're so cool cos we do drugs' attitude.
 
I used to think drugs can make you more creative then I saw that BBC4 prog on the National trust and some of those guys - what a bunch of fluffy logic they were spouting on about. Didn't see a real druid amongst them (not that I'd probably recognise one :()
 
But apparently it was just half a page of incoherent tripe.

LOL yeah, I used to know a few people who drew or wrote while on acid, in the end they all said the same thing, you can produce your most amazing work ever, then you come down and realise it's a pile of sh*t.

I did write a song about spanking once though...
 
Stone Solid Hit!

I'm watching Keith Richards on Deutsche Welle TV, at the moment.

Just looking and listening to the ageing old hippie gives me flashbacks. :D
 
Originally posted by jay72
[BI have a theory as to why people use drugs. I think one of the driving forces, even more than the "high", is the fact that drug use supplies the user with an identity, a social peer group, a family of a kind. For the user, the drug and the network of fellow users and dealers occupies the psychic space that other folks fill with their favorite political party, or church group, or sports team. Drug use supplies a context, an arena, even a meaning and texture to the users life.

I agree with this. In my early 20s I was very heavily into the rave scene. All my friends were involved in one way or another being either DJs or fellow ravers.

We ate spoke and breathed scoring, taking and the effects of all the drugs we took. Everything from the clothes I wore and, obviously, the music I listened to was completely influenced by the scene and that in turn was influenced by drugs.

When I cooked my head once too often and realised I needed to stop before I became a complete acid casualty and I had to change my whole life. The music became tedious, the people boring and no one wanted to do anything bar rave and drop as many Es as they could and there was no other topic of conversation. I became tedious and boring because I wanted something different to that of all my frineds. I thought I could do it straight and I was utterly wrong.

For awhile I grieved the loss of my "family", life seemed a bit shallow and boring without it and them but now I'm so glad I did. I'm glad I did what I did, I had an absolute cracking time but when I was free of it I did feel like I'd been released from a cult who'd been sucking the very life blood from me. And I suddenly realised that I finally had more than one topic of conversation.

The people who I used to rave with I wouldn't spend one night in a pub with now. This is for no other reason that strip everything away none of us really had much in common, which is very sad because at that time we were all totally united, just for the wrong reasons.
 
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