Someone said to me...You know Creative People drink and do Drugs more

[KoKo]

than other people. I asked: "What do you mean? Person (a professor) said, "Creative People have Demons haunting them from inside, and sometimes they need to cut loose, and drink and drugs somehow allow them to do this, this is how they write and create."

This professor ended up leaving and going off into wherever "honest professors go when they are controversial" but his thought has stayed with me forever.

Is this true? Do "Creatives" have inner demons that drink and drugs force out and somehow fuel their creative instincts? :shrug:

[Brahma Bull]

1. Your professor sounds like a dumbass.

[boobooday]

2. Ask me again when I'm sober.

heh heh

I don't know about all the rationalizations of your professor, but I think creative people are just always more open to openings, if ya know what I mean . . . inner demons or not.

http://www.wgoeshome.com

[Forkboy]

3. In my experience with myself and friends

I'd have to say your professor is dead on.

That doesn't mean,however,that people who dont indulge can't be creative.They can,and often with better results.

[Forkboy]

4. In my experience with myself and friends

I'd have to say your professor is dead on.

That doesn't mean,however,that people who dont indulge can't be creative.They can,and often with better results.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

5. Some do. Some don't. Some of the most famous ones did.

It is a generalization, like all others.

I mean do you believe that, oh say, factory workers are all lazy beer-drinking slobs who never have an original thought?

Or that freepers are morans?

Oh, wait, never mind the last one. :evilgrin:

[Kadie]

6. Give me a glass of wine and I become more creative.

[rogerhall]

7. Duh ...

Abso-f*cking-lutely. :}

[Burma Jones]

8. Everybody has inner demons

Creative types just give them form. There's some shamanic stuff going on with creative folks. I really don't think that Drugs and Drinking made anybody a better artist. I sure as hell know that drink and drugs are NOT how they create.

[Rabrrrrrr]

9. Nah, I don't buy it

creative people don't need the shit to be creative.

and for the most part, a vast majority of the country, if not the world, use drugs and booze anyway, so one can't say that creative people do it more. I bet the rate is about the same as any other profession.

hell, when I was working in a factory with high-school educated people working on the line, a lot of them were alcoholics and drug fiends. Though I have to say that, outside the factory, who knows - they might have been phenomenally creative with no outlet for it. But I don't know. Mostly they were just really messed up and had very sad lives. Factories were the most depressing places for me to work because of the sad lives of the people working in them.

Anyway, I don't want to hijack your thread with talk of factories etc., but I don't believe that creative do more drugs, nor do I believe that drugs make people creative. Either you are creative, or you aren't, and mostly I think drugs stymie real creativity.

[KoKo]

13. See my "wind up" post below,,but yeah, understand. Drugs & Drinking

are ways some folks "blow off steam" and doesn't have much to do with creativity..untless some of those guys are famous artists when they leave "the line" and go home. I hear what you are saying. Generalizations. Maybe that's why my professor had to find another place to teach!

[mkultra]

10. i agree

whether one causes the other or not, art and mind bending substances are two pees in a pod.

[Taverner]

11. Without suffering, there is no great art

Obviously, Kenny G never suffered

[KoKo]

12. Oh well.. I like Kenny G , but know the limitations and factory workers

who blow off steam are fine with me too, so reading the replies on this thread it says to me that a "majority" (now math is not my strong point) but a majority (slim) says that doing drugs and drinking just to unleash your creative demons is NOT the way to go! :D

I only posted this because this guy's thought stayed in my head and I don't come down to lounge often because I thought it was filled with druggies and drunkards looking for sex...or it used to be before Skinner cleaned it up...just being sarcastic/funny/whatever..lame excuse I can give for why I posted this..

[Kenneth ken]

14. may or may not be true but

just because some one does lots of drinking and drugging, does not mean that person is creative.

[WilliamPitt]

15. *hic* Bullshit. *bubble bubble*

[Sufi Marmot]

16. There are plenty of creative people who don't....

The person depicted in my avatar, for instance. I might argue that in many instances, drugs simply lower the threshold of what artists (and their fans) consider creative or profound (think jam-bands...). Or do many fans identify with certain artists mainly because of their indulgent lifestyle rather than the relative merit of the art itself?

How does one measure relative creativity anyway?

-SM

[VOX]

17. Creative souls (writers in particular) are often marooned in the cortex...

And it's very hard to live in one's head continually. Also, when you're the tool of ideas, there's often a fear that those ideas will suddenly dry up.

All of which can lay the groundwork for serious self-medication, either to anesthetize the senses, or in an attempt to lubricate the wheels of thought.

[Spider Jerusalem]

18. Not as a source of inspiration...

but, in my experience, a lot of creative people...artists and writers especially...tend towards introversion. Drink and drugs provide a vacation from being inside one's own head...also, certain drugs seem to sharpen or alter one's perceptions in ways that can be beneficial to the creative process. But I think mostly it's that that if your mind is always ON, it's nice to turn it off once in a while... and for some people the only way to do it is to get drunk, or smoke a joint, or snort some heroin, or whatever.

[The Backlash Cometh]

19. I do agree with the inner demons part, but it's a

dangerous distinction that he made that all creative people drink or do drugs to force them out and this fuels their creative instincts. Sometimes, these inner demons just take on the form of anger or even apathy, and both can be used to reach creative heights, without the aid of outside substances.

[7th_Sephiroth]

20. "i dont do cocaine

but it damn sure hasent hurt my record collection" Bill Mahr

[SarahB]

21. Sounds like an excuse

I consider myself creative and when it comes to much beyond alcohol, I've probably smoked stuff about 10-15 times over the course of the last 17 years. When I drink, I rarely drink more than one or two drinks. That stuff affects me too much and I basically like having control of my faculties. I don't need something outside myself to be creative. :D