Whether in show business or in the music scenes, many creative people seems to be using drugs or alcohol. Talk to them and many will say that drugs or alcohol (or both) helps them become more creative compared to when they are sober.
Gorillaz
In fact, Damon Albarn, frontman of Blur and Gorillaz, admitted in interviews in both Q Magazine and Time Out that heroin have helped him become very creative.
Probably, this is because drugs and alcohol decrease your inhibitions. You lose any restraint you may seem to have and then just go ahead and do things.
However, a Harvard study debunks the role of certain substances in creativity, alcohol in particular. Apparently, alcohol even reduces brain activity. You think more slowly and less clearly. In short, you’re dumbed down when you’re intoxicated but you don’t know it. You’re even confident, so you think you can do what you’ve set out to do.
And the same goes with marijuana. What happens is actually a confidence trick, when in fact, you just think you’re more creative, but you’re really not.
As for heroin and other opioids, the drug causes you to have crazy thoughts. And with the death toll of heroin overdoses on the rise, the material you come up with just isn’t worth it in the long run. Take Dee Dee Ramone, Jeff Buckley, Janis Joplin and Sid Vicious, for example.
While all these substances cause your brain to work in ways it otherwise wouldn’t when sober, the longer-term effects are devastating. Overtime, your brain would want more of the drug as you build tolerance. Then, it wouldn’t be long enough before you get addicted.
And the thing you wanted to be creative for in the first place? That and more will be gone. All gone.
In the end, the dangers still outweigh all the benefits. It’s important to keep in mind that the awesome stories of people who are able to function well on heroin, alcohol, and other substances are the exception, not the rule.
Supporting the idea that drugs and alcohol can make people creative is dangerous. These ideas degrade music, art, and human creativity. You can do more when you use up the full extent of your mind and you let unbridled and unadulterated creativity take the reins.
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