From Hunter S Thompson’s infamous daily pre-writing routine of cocaine, Chivas Regal and acid to Vincent Van Gogh’s love for absinthe and Andy Warhol’s prescription drugs habit, the idea that drugs and alcohol produce great art is deeply culturally ingrained.
Yet researchers have found this is likely to be myth – many drugs, including alcohol, amphetamines and psilocybin (magic mushrooms), do not inspire creativity. Instead, they say travel, exposure to culture, meditation and training programmes are more effective.
Dr Paul Hanel, from the University of Essex’s department of psychology, said: “It doesn’t do anything for creativity. People don’t benefit from it – it just has no effect at all.
“What we hear about in the media is people who successfully enhance their creativity using drugs, but you don’t hear about the examples where someone took drugs and passed out and therefore their creativity was lower.”
The researchers, from Essex University and Berlin’s Humboldt University, examined hundreds of papers to reach their conclusions. An additional paper published following their work found that people who took psilocybin – infamously popular for its creative effects in Silicon Valley – felt they were more creative while on the drug, but were actually underperforming relative to their sober state.
Jennifer Haase, a co-author of the paper at Humboldt University, said: “Ideas generated under the influence often seem disjointed or ill-suited as solutions later on. Given the numerous side-effects associated with drug use, it is scientifically unsound to recommend their consumption in pursuit of enhanced creative output.”
However, Hanel acknowledged that there may be some specific contexts in which drugs enhance creativity – for example, if you have a vision on hallucinogenics and paint a beautiful picture inspired by it.
Many artists would beg to differ with the scientists’ conclusions. Much of Harry Styles’s latest album, Fine Line, was made while on mushrooms, which he said helped him be “fun and be creative”. Electronic producer Jon Hopkins said “crazy cosmic experiences” of psychedelics were one of the primary inspirations for his latest album, which was structured to follow the “build, peak and release” of a hallucinogenic trip.
Canadian singer-songwriter Lights said it was constructive not to “paint all ‘drugs’ with the same brush”, and instead carefully explore the benefits and downsides, and the situations in which these might be helpful or harmful.
She has been alternating between three months of microdosing psilocybin and a three-month break, to “accelerate the development of positive pathways while doing meditative or creative things”, which she finds helps her to be in a peaceful rather than depressive state. “Overall, I think most people find themselves to be more creatively efficient when they are able to retain and enjoy focus.”
But she thought the role of drugs in creating art was often “romanticised”, when their misuse often reflected mental health issues. “The ‘troubled artist’ has been far more appealing in the past than the idea of an artist with a healthy mind.”
Bryan Saunders, an American artist who created 50 self-portraits under the influence of drugs including Valium and lighter fluid, agreed that taking care of your mental health was key. He developed brain damage during his experiment, and now only takes drugs prescribed to him by a doctor. “The main thing I learned was: ‘Don’t take too many different drugs at the same time too many days in a row!’” he said.
But he appreciated the relationship between drugs and risk-taking, novelty and youth culture. “Starting a drawing or painting with perceptions of my changing physical sensations has always seemed to give me great potential for creativity. Especially when the drug is being taken for the first time.”
Rona Cran, associate professor of American literature at the University of Birmingham, said the romantic view of the artist-addict stems from a reaction to socially conservative postwar culture, and is increasingly a thing of the past.
She researches Beat writers and poets, and whose work and lives were strongly associated with drugs such as marijuana, speed, heroin and, to a lesser extent, LSD.
“The counterculture of the 1960s, and its prelude in the 1950s, was also a drinking/drugs culture,” she said, with cheap rents enabling artists to spend their time socialising in New York bars, parties and clubs, “where connections were made, ideas shared, deals struck, collaborations germinated”.
Yet this concealed the addiction issues, crime and premature deaths, as well as the fact that it fostered an “alienating and exclusionary” atmosphere for many people, including women, those from certain faiths or backgrounds, and people who needed steady jobs.
Most writers of the 20th century were not alcohol or drug addicts, she said, yet the cultural fixation with narcotic inspiration reflects how “drinking and drug taking were certainly celebrated and romanticised”, from the cafe culture of 1920s Paris to 60s counterculture and the punk scene in the 1970s and 80s.
“Speed gave Joe Brainard the energy to make a lot of art in a short space of time; drinking enabled Frank O’Hara to be the ‘chatty poet’ whose work is still read and loved today; William Burroughs, a lifelong heroin addict, forged the entirety of his career as a writer in relation to his drug use,” she said.
But she added that this narrative ignored the fact that many came to a grisly end: Burroughs shot his wife during a drunken game of “William Tell”, O’Hara was unable to survive his injuries after being hit by a vehicle in 1966 because his liver was so enlarged, Ernest Hemingway shot himself and Jack Kerouac died in his forties of cirrhosis.
Drugs and creativity: four 20th-century examples
Amedeo Modigliani
The Parisian art scene at the turn of the 20th century played out in bars, and one of its most infamous sons is Modigliani. Said to have provided the blueprint for the troubled artist, the Italian painter developed his distinctive portrait style under the influence of absinthe, cocaine and hash, as well as joining Pablo Picasso for opium-smoking sessions in his studio.
Yet his addictions also proved his achilles heel: he became penniless trying to fund his habits, and died aged 35 of tuberculosis aggravated by alcohol and drug abuse.
Hunter S Thompson
Perhaps the writer most strongly associated with drugs, Thompson’s schedule is infamous. It begins with a 3pm rise, followed by Chivas Regal, and alternates between cocaine and grass “to take off the edge” until he drops acid just before midnight and is ready to write, ending the session with champagne and fettuccine alfredo in the hot tub at 6am.
It’s this schedule as much as his cult novels Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and The Rum Diary that have made his literary fame endure, and his propensity for living life on the edge arguably resulted in his pioneering gonzo journalism writing style. Miraculously, he lived until the age of 67, when, fearing the onset of old age, he shot himself in the head.
Andy Warhol
Although not as big a drug-taker as many of his entourage in mid-century New York, Warhol was addicted to Obetrol – marketed today as Adderall – an amphetamine diet pill that has a similar effect to speed.
Although he initially took the drug to help with his mental health, his daily dose is thought to have fuelled his increasingly frenetic artwork as his career progressed, as well as possibly contributing to his death aged 58.
The Beatles
Rock’n’roll is arguably the genre most iconically linked with drugs, while 60s counterculture is the cultural movement with the strongest association. The Beatles exemplified both.
They were fans of marijuana, which they were introduced to by Bob Dylan, leading John Lennon to describe Rubber Soul as the band’s “pot album”. But their experimentation with LSD and psychedelic experiences were most influential, forming the inspiration for Revolver, now considered their most innovative album.
While other bands of the era, including the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and the Doors, sought to make music under the influence, the Beatles instead wanted to capture the feeling of taking LSD.
As Ringo Starr observed: “We found out very early that if you play it stoned or derelict in any way, it was really shitty music, so we would have the experiences and then bring that into the music later.”
