Aleathia Drehmer: It is well known that throughout history artisans, in particular writers, have used mind altering substances to enhance their state of mind while writing. Keats and Byron used opium. Proust was into ether. Balzac, Rimbaud, Yeats and the Beats smoked marijuana. Leary, Burroughs and Thompson cornered the market on psychedelics. Then there were the drinkers. These were very successful writers and all of them wasted.

Let's discuss what you think the effects drugs have on a writer's work. Do you think it enhances or deters the writers style? Do you think certain types of drugs lend writers to produce specific styles of writing? Feel free to add any personal experience on the matter.

 Jason Neese: i have to believe that any external influence on one's craft is a case by case situation dictated by the perspective of the artist. sometimes i wonder if it's not our approach to using these chemicals as much as the effects themselves that change the landscape of our imagination during the creative process.
a great book i read on this
"alcohol and the writer" by.... yeah, i suck. can't remember the author.
interesting observations about some of the greats and their own use of chemicals.
i find myself abusing caffeine currently. it used to be herb. it's rarely alcohol and when it is, it's in smaller amounts than the copious consumption i indulge in socially.
caffeine, like seriously abused amounts of caffeine, for me, does things to my narrative voice that i like. deadens the internal dialogue and even brings out a wit that i don't normally utilize.
i would imagine most would agree, any writer that endlessly fixates on chemical use, is probably trying to make a presentation out of their self destructiveness more than reveal their process.

Aleathia Drehmer: I can remember writing on several kinds of drugs acid, ecstacy, herb, alcohol and of course caffeine....sweet, wonderful caffeine. I have to say that most of that work is lost to me now. I can go back and read it but it makes no sense. It is in the sober moments, when I look back at those times that the actual imagination can work for me. I always found myself too in the moment to be ultimately conscious about my creation. I think better works came from after the dust had settled and I could see clearly what my mind was going through.

I think the only effect drugs had on my work was to make it bizarre. Reading it the next morning was always a treat. I do have to agree with you about those that fixate on chemical use. I find some make it the center of their work....write about it the doing of drugs instead of what the drugs opened them up to.

Douglas Thompson: The most destructive of all myths...alcohol especially. "If you want to be a writer, you have to be a serious drinker." I bought into that one all the way. I threw away 20 years, drinking with fellow writers and doing a lot of talking about writing. My work was okay, but I really hit new heights when I gave up that shit. With poetry, drugs and alcohol seemed to unlock the mind and let it roam, but I've found that it's all in there anyway. Your mind is the key, not the substances. Eventually, these things fuck you over.

Chris Toll: hello all. i just take a case by case look at whatever drugs produce. someone can be stoned and write a good poem. someone can be stoned and write a piece of junk. what matters is not the drugs or even the one ingesting the drugs - what matters is the printed page or glowing screen where the words dance. i've been writing (on and off - there have been some fallow periods) for 44 years. at a certain point - and this was not deliberate, it only seems deliberate in hindsight - i decided i had "mastered" my craft enough (oh, the joys of being young!) that i could experiment - so i smoked a bunch of pot and started writing - and i liked the result - the poems had a sweep and a reach that i had not previously known. so that became my routine. i would smoke pot (one more e and we have poet!) and write poems. and this went on for at least 12 - 15 years. and i liked the poems. i still have them and i like a lot of them (of course, there's the unfortunate line here and there - but that's to be expected in any old writing). needless to say, i did a bunch of other drugs - but pot was the one i wrote under - almost exclusively. and then one day the words just stopped - i was still smoking pot - but the words were just not there. i kept trying to write and i was just writing sad little poems that had no merit. so i gave it all up and became a visual artist. and i did my collage work for several years (i actually still do collage work) - my collages are very methodical and there is just no way you could cut out what i did and be high. so it helped me to see an art that was not dependent on drugs. and i was smoking less and less pot - and then one day i just stopped smoking pot. i thought i would just walk the trail alone and see what happened. and then one day the words came back and i could write them without any pot and i liked what i wrote. and now i just write without any chemical help at all.

F.D. Marcel: The only substances I've had any remote success writing under the influence of have been alcohol and dissociatives. A bit of drink loosened me up and made me more honest, but it also led to sloppy writing, taking blatant shortcuts to a perceived goal. The first time I poured myself a drink with the exclusive intention of writing, I had to give it up. I'm always somewhat wary of looking at a particular piece I've wrote and being ashamed that it was more the product of an outside influence than an inner one. Maybe that's egotistical. Ah well. Dissociatives are the only drug I've ingested with the specific goal to write. Being able to detach from yourself and allow your ego to be torn to shreds is incredibly freeing. But like all hallucinogenics, you have to work for results. And many times, the experience is lost to laziness and the trip becomes worthless. I've wasted plenty of nights to simply being unable to pull anything out of a dissociation.

I completely agree with the idea that Douglas Thompson posted above:
"...drugs and alcohol seemed to unlock the mind and let it roam, but I've found that it's all in there anyway. Your mind is the key, not the substances. Eventually, these things fuck you over."

In the past few months, I've been able to detach from myself a little more without dissociatives for the purpose of writing. Not as much as w/ the drug, but enough that it allows me to try new things w/ short stories and poems. Although I only take dissociatives a few times a year, to be able to take my ego out of the picture to write w/o the need for a drug is a worthy goal. Even when writing on a dissociative, I've only ever left one piece untouched after waking up in the morning and looking over the previous night's work. I can usually salvage a few lines out of something written under the influence, but most of it is discarded.

The topic alone is just such a subjective thing. All there really can be is personal experience. I don't know the detailed ultimate demise of most writers who used drugs as a muse, but the ones I do know of either died from it or cut back drastically and eeked out a longer life. It seems that, in the long run, depending on any ooutside influence would lead to ruin. But again, depends on the person I guess.

Not to wander off-topic, but also I wonder less about the effect of drugs on the writer's work, and more about the effect on the writers themselves. Bukowski was writing before he was a heavy drinker, would he have kept writing without alcohol? What kind of writer would he have been? Would Kerouac have had a successful career if he hadn't dove into alcohol and subsequently died in '69? Burroughs w/o junk, Leary w/o LSD? Along the lines of if the substances sometimes make the writer.

Pat King: Some people seem to think that drug/alcohol abuse is particular to artists. I think that if a study were done, it would be found that writers and artists are simply on par with the population as a whole: that is, there's a ton of substance abuse in the U.S. The thing is that writers are generally more open about what we do. Aunt Mabe and Joe Businessman keep their demons secret or within socially accepted parameters.

I don't think there's anything that really drives an artist toward substance abuse. Some are balanced, some aren't. In the end, all that matters is the work. And, shit, if someone can put out some kick ass work all fucked up, I say go for it.

I've abused several things in my lifetime. But I've found that nothing helps my writing more than having a clear mind. I can't even get any decent work done when I have a cold. Just doesn't happen.

Last update : 24-12-2007 11:38

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