Thoraiya DyerDrugs and Creativity: The Lame Artist’s Excuse
February 19th 2009 13:24
You’ve heard it a hundred times.
“I need (Insert drug or alcohol) to be creative.”
In the words of Stephen King, from his memoir “On Writing”:
“I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to work any more if I quit drinking and drugging, but I decided…that I would trade writing for staying married and watching the kids grow up. If it came to that.
It didn’t, of course. The idea that creative endeavour and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time…substance-abusing writers are just substance-abusers – common garden-variety drunks and druggies, in other words.”
Yet so many musicians, artists, writers and philosophers claim that an altered state of mind is their source of inspiration.
Are they telling the truth, or are they simply deceived into thinking they are geniuses precisely because they’re off their heads?
Let’s examine the science, as is our wont here at Demented World.
From Creativity Research Journal, Volume 13, 2001 ( Really Long Link ):
“This research sought to evaluate the effect of marijuana use on creativity as defined by the term divergent thinking. Another objective was to verify if there was a difference in the creativity of regular users (60 participants) and that of novice users of marijuana (60 participants) under 3 experimental conditions: without marijuana, with placebo, and with marijuana.
The 4 divergent thinking factors (fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration) were measured by the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Form A, Figural scale).
The results showed that the use of marijuana had no positive effects on divergent thinking (creativity) in novice users and reduced it in regular users.”
Awesome, dude. I gotted stupider!
More bad news for stoners in Runco and Pritzker’s Encyclopedia of Creativity:
“Marijuana use apparently results in increased originality, but has a negligible or slightly negative impact on creative achievement. Since marijuana use is associated with short-term memory degradation, text comprehension difficulties and slowed reaction time on some cognitive tasks, the apparent advantages of marijuana use may be balanced or outweighed by marijuana-induced cognitive detriments.”
Oh, dear. What about other drugs?
What about the famous Dr Janiger test where 70 artists took LSD and created 250 “amazing” artworks based on an American Indian doll? Doesn’t that prove that LSD enhances creativity?
BEEP.
There was no control group.
Thank you for playing.
You can’t just give drugs to a bunch of hippies and then ask them if they feel more creative.
When you do it properly, you find that there is no real difference.
“Overall, the LSD subjects and the placebo controls did not differ significantly in performance on a battery of creativity tests which included remote associations, originality of word associations, and creation of original designs from tiles.”
(Zegans, Pollard and Brown, 1967)
“In brief, although LSD did not enhance performance on creativity tests, it appeared…to produce a subjective feeling of enhanced creativity.”
(McGlothlin, Cohen and McGlothlin, 1967)
There it is. The delusion of genius. Here it is again, from a different source ( Really Long Link ), for those who missed it:
“Frank Barron (1963) administered psilocybin to a number of highly creative individuals and recorded their impressions…Barron's artists…were wildly enthusiastic about their apparently increased sensitivity during the drug experience only to discover, once the effects wore off, that the production was without artistic merit.
One painter recalled, "I have seldom known such absolute identification with what I was doing—nor such a lack of concern with it afterwards." This statement indicates that an artist is not necessarily able to judge the value of his psychedelically inspired work while he is under drug influence.”
Finally, there is alcohol.
In the fascinating article, “I drink, therefore I am” ( Really Long Link ), by Beveridge (no, really) and Yorston, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1999, we find this little discourse:
“The medical view of drunkenness is a negative one…Clinicians who deal with the human consequences of excessive drinking – the broken homes, the victims of violence, the multiple physical and mental ills – feel justified in their condemnation of the drunkard. However, this view does not enjoy an untroubled consensus with the lay public. In particular, many writers and artists take quite a different view…Rather than being seen as a sign of personal failing, alcoholism is taken as evidence of artistic integrity.”
What would Stephen King have to say about that?
“The four twentieth-century writers whose work is most responsible for it are probably Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson and the poet Dylan Thomas….Any claims that drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit…Hemingway and Fitzgerald didn’t drink because they were creative, alienated or morally weak. They drank because that’s what alkies are wired up to do.”
And the science?
Here is another really intriguing article on creativity (are gays more creative?) ( Really Long Link ) which reports that alcohol doesn’t enhance creativity, but if you think you’ve had alcohol, you delude yourself into thinking you’re more creative:
“Further, Lang, Verrat and Watt (1984, as cited by Gustafson & Norlander, 1994) used a balanced placebo design and tested subjects on four different creativity tests.
Alcohol did not affect the creative process, but later when subjects evaluated their work, subjects who thought they had consumed alcohol evaluated their performances more positively than subjects who thought they had not received alcohol.
In a separate study, Gustafson reported that alcohol in fact reduces the number of creative solutions produced in response to a stimulus object on a traditional creativity test.”
But what about all those alcoholic writers? James Joyce? Hugh McDiarmid? Dorothy Parker? Jack Kerouac? “In the United States, five of the eight writers who have won the Nobel Prize for literature have all suffered at some time from severe alcohol abuse and/or dependence (Rothenberg, 1990).”
Well, maybe it started off innocently enough.
“Gustafson and Norlander (1994) found that people drink more alcohol after hard creative work than after hard non-creative work. Rothenberg (1990) collected data on the alcohol consumption patterns of writers and found evidence that supports this finding.
Very few did their actual writing, or even thinking about writing, while under the influence of alcohol. Or to put it more exactly, their writing was seldom successful when done under the influence of alcohol, and at various points in their lives, drinking absolutely interfered with their ability to do any creative work.
By and large, they did not use alcohol when they were actually engaged in writing, but tended to drink when they were finished for the day.”
Well, whatever the excuse, don’t let the creative people in your lives try and convince you that they need the stuff. Evidence is that they’d be even better without it.
Evidence is that EVERYONE would be better off without it.
“I need (Insert drug or alcohol) to be creative.”
In the words of Stephen King, from his memoir “On Writing”:
“I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to work any more if I quit drinking and drugging, but I decided…that I would trade writing for staying married and watching the kids grow up. If it came to that.
It didn’t, of course. The idea that creative endeavour and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time…substance-abusing writers are just substance-abusers – common garden-variety drunks and druggies, in other words.”
Yet so many musicians, artists, writers and philosophers claim that an altered state of mind is their source of inspiration.
Are they telling the truth, or are they simply deceived into thinking they are geniuses precisely because they’re off their heads?
Let’s examine the science, as is our wont here at Demented World.
From Creativity Research Journal, Volume 13, 2001 ( Really Long Link ):
“This research sought to evaluate the effect of marijuana use on creativity as defined by the term divergent thinking. Another objective was to verify if there was a difference in the creativity of regular users (60 participants) and that of novice users of marijuana (60 participants) under 3 experimental conditions: without marijuana, with placebo, and with marijuana.
The 4 divergent thinking factors (fluency, flexibility, originality, and elaboration) were measured by the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Form A, Figural scale).
The results showed that the use of marijuana had no positive effects on divergent thinking (creativity) in novice users and reduced it in regular users.”
Awesome, dude. I gotted stupider!
More bad news for stoners in Runco and Pritzker’s Encyclopedia of Creativity:
“Marijuana use apparently results in increased originality, but has a negligible or slightly negative impact on creative achievement. Since marijuana use is associated with short-term memory degradation, text comprehension difficulties and slowed reaction time on some cognitive tasks, the apparent advantages of marijuana use may be balanced or outweighed by marijuana-induced cognitive detriments.”
Oh, dear. What about other drugs?
What about the famous Dr Janiger test where 70 artists took LSD and created 250 “amazing” artworks based on an American Indian doll? Doesn’t that prove that LSD enhances creativity?
BEEP.
There was no control group.
Thank you for playing.
You can’t just give drugs to a bunch of hippies and then ask them if they feel more creative.
When you do it properly, you find that there is no real difference.
“Overall, the LSD subjects and the placebo controls did not differ significantly in performance on a battery of creativity tests which included remote associations, originality of word associations, and creation of original designs from tiles.”
(Zegans, Pollard and Brown, 1967)
“In brief, although LSD did not enhance performance on creativity tests, it appeared…to produce a subjective feeling of enhanced creativity.”
(McGlothlin, Cohen and McGlothlin, 1967)
There it is. The delusion of genius. Here it is again, from a different source ( Really Long Link ), for those who missed it:
“Frank Barron (1963) administered psilocybin to a number of highly creative individuals and recorded their impressions…Barron's artists…were wildly enthusiastic about their apparently increased sensitivity during the drug experience only to discover, once the effects wore off, that the production was without artistic merit.
One painter recalled, "I have seldom known such absolute identification with what I was doing—nor such a lack of concern with it afterwards." This statement indicates that an artist is not necessarily able to judge the value of his psychedelically inspired work while he is under drug influence.”
Finally, there is alcohol.
In the fascinating article, “I drink, therefore I am” ( Really Long Link ), by Beveridge (no, really) and Yorston, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine in 1999, we find this little discourse:
“The medical view of drunkenness is a negative one…Clinicians who deal with the human consequences of excessive drinking – the broken homes, the victims of violence, the multiple physical and mental ills – feel justified in their condemnation of the drunkard. However, this view does not enjoy an untroubled consensus with the lay public. In particular, many writers and artists take quite a different view…Rather than being seen as a sign of personal failing, alcoholism is taken as evidence of artistic integrity.”
What would Stephen King have to say about that?
“The four twentieth-century writers whose work is most responsible for it are probably Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson and the poet Dylan Thomas….Any claims that drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit…Hemingway and Fitzgerald didn’t drink because they were creative, alienated or morally weak. They drank because that’s what alkies are wired up to do.”
And the science?
Here is another really intriguing article on creativity (are gays more creative?) ( Really Long Link ) which reports that alcohol doesn’t enhance creativity, but if you think you’ve had alcohol, you delude yourself into thinking you’re more creative:
“Further, Lang, Verrat and Watt (1984, as cited by Gustafson & Norlander, 1994) used a balanced placebo design and tested subjects on four different creativity tests.
Alcohol did not affect the creative process, but later when subjects evaluated their work, subjects who thought they had consumed alcohol evaluated their performances more positively than subjects who thought they had not received alcohol.
In a separate study, Gustafson reported that alcohol in fact reduces the number of creative solutions produced in response to a stimulus object on a traditional creativity test.”
But what about all those alcoholic writers? James Joyce? Hugh McDiarmid? Dorothy Parker? Jack Kerouac? “In the United States, five of the eight writers who have won the Nobel Prize for literature have all suffered at some time from severe alcohol abuse and/or dependence (Rothenberg, 1990).”
Well, maybe it started off innocently enough.
“Gustafson and Norlander (1994) found that people drink more alcohol after hard creative work than after hard non-creative work. Rothenberg (1990) collected data on the alcohol consumption patterns of writers and found evidence that supports this finding.
Very few did their actual writing, or even thinking about writing, while under the influence of alcohol. Or to put it more exactly, their writing was seldom successful when done under the influence of alcohol, and at various points in their lives, drinking absolutely interfered with their ability to do any creative work.
By and large, they did not use alcohol when they were actually engaged in writing, but tended to drink when they were finished for the day.”
Well, whatever the excuse, don’t let the creative people in your lives try and convince you that they need the stuff. Evidence is that they’d be even better without it.
Evidence is that EVERYONE would be better off without it.
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Comment by Cheryl J
Rhythmatism
Budget Centsability
Comment by jimmy
cyberperson
Comment by Anonymous
Comment by Anonymous
Are you the new author of a peer-reviewed scientific study showing that drugs do make you more creative?
If so, please post an abstract and/or link.
The article isn't about how much you personally enjoy recreational drug use, it's about whether it makes you more creative.
And you don't seem very creative at all.
Comment by Diana Christine
Comment by Diana Christine
Comment by Anonymous
However, I have to make sure to write them down, because the above part of increased short-term memory loss is also true. If I don't write them down when I'm high, there is little to no chance I'll remember them when I'm sober.