Drugs and alcohol don’t feed your creativity

The idea that drugs and alcohol can fuel creativity is a myth, it was claimed yesterday.

While many well-known artists and writers were famous for substance abuse, most produced their greatest works while not intoxicated, according to psychiatrist Dr Iain Smith.

In fact alcohol and drugs were more likely to stifle creativity, he claimed.

Dr Smith, an addiction expert from Gartnavel Royal Hospital in Glasgow, said: "The reason why this myth is so powerful is the allure of the substances, and the fact that many artists need drugs to cope with their emotions.

"Artists are, in general, more emotional people and the use of substances to deal with their emotions is more likely to happen."

American writers Tennessee Williams and Ernest Hemingway were both addicted to alcohol, said Dr Smith speaking at a Royal College of Psychiatrists meeting in Edinburgh.

Poets Coleridge and Keats took opiates, as did writers Proust and Edgar Allan Poe, while painter Vincent van Gogh drank the highly potent spirit absinthe, he added.

American writers F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eugene O’Neill and William Faulkner all received the Nobel Prize for Literature and all were alcoholics, said Dr Smith.

He told the meeting, the American writer Hunter S. Thompson once wrote: "I’d hate to advocate drugs, alcohol or insanity to anyone – but they’ve always worked for me." While the 19th century French poet Baudelaire urged his peers to "be drunk always".

But after reviewing the evidence, Dr Smith said that most of these artists were most productive when level-headed and sober.

"The idea that drugs and alcohol give artists unique insights and powerful experiences is an illusion," he said. "When you try and capture the experiences (triggered by drugs or alcohol) they are often nonsense. "These drugs often wipe your memory, so it’s hard to remember how you were in that state of mind."

Source: John von Radowitz, The Irish Examiner, 25/06/2010