Bear in mind, there’s a HUGE difference between writing/painting/composing WHILE high and writing/painting/composing on subjects experienced while high.
Samuel Taylor Colerige’s “Xanadu” was inspired by things he saw during an opium dream. That doesn’t mean he could have written a coherent (let alone classic) poem about those visions while still high.
Some Beatle lyrics were undoubtedly inspired by drugs- but the melodies came from Lennon and McCartney’s God-given talent. Music composed by drunk or stoned musicians is invariably crap.
Most of the great musical works of the late 60s early 70s.
The thing to understand about hallucinogens is:
It’s quite difficult to write while on them, believe me I’ve tried.
Even if you write while sober the reality is that if you’re doing hallucinogens regularly you live in an altered state of consciousness that can last a long time after you stop doing them like months and years.
Oh, no doubt the drug use and his job played a large role in inspiring the book, but, again, I don’t think he actually wrote it while high. My high school English teacher claimed that he had read an early manuscript of a chapter that WAS written when Kesey was high and that it was mostly incomprehensible nonsense (I don’t know how true this claim is though).
Perhaps. But it may be a different matter for (some) poets. I refer here to Dylan Thomas who, supposedly, was often totally soused when he put pen to paper.
Several of Philip K. Dick’s stories and novels (The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch especially) were at least inspired by LSD trips. I recall reading in a bio that he would also pop amphetamines like candy in order to write for several days straight without sleeping. I think that was more about meeting a deadline than it was about addiction, though.
Dick also qualifies under the “mania” category, as anyone who has read excerpts from his Exegesis can attest.
No, in fact, Dick hadn’t tried LSD before he wrote The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich. It is true though that he wrote his books of the 1950’s and 1960’s while he was using amphetamines:
Julian Jayes wrote a book claiming something to the effect that all the epics of the classical age were composed by men who hallucinated out of the right side of their brains.
A bit misleading i n this thread, especially since fewer people nowadays know who Julian Jaynes was.
But he clearly wasn’t implying that any of them were on drugs when either composing their works, or being inspired to compose them.
I came in to say Edgar Allen Poe but in checking before I see that actually that notion is now very much in debate. Surprising, that, as I’d always heard he was a frequent opium user. Perhaps not.
For an overview of creativity and its relationship to bipolar disorder, I recommend Kay Redfield Jamison’s Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, in which she examines the work of artists known to have had or believed to have had bipolar disorder, like Byron and Van Gogh, and through her own perspective as both a psychiatrist and a sufferer explains how the disorder enhances and hinders creativity.
As far as writing is concerned, I very much doubt anything of any lasting artistic merit has ever been written while high or drunk. Brilliant and esteemed writers who happen to be alcoholics rarely, if ever, mix their alcoholism and their writing. Example: Faulkner. Definitely an alcoholic; never wrote while drunk. I’m sure the same applies to Joyce, Fitzgerald and any other writer of genius who happened to be an alcoholic. Please don’t cite any dreadful Doors lyrics, or the nonsense of the beat ‘poets’ as counter-examples.
