Sobering thought: idea that drugs aid creativity is a myth, scientists report

From Hunter S Thompson’s infamous daily pre-writing routine of cocaine, Chivas Regal whisky and LSD, to Vincent van Gogh’s love for absinthe, the idea that drugs and alcohol produce great art is deeply ingrained in culture – but researchers have now found that this is likely to be a myth.

Drugs including alcohol, amphetamines and psilocybin (found in magic mushrooms) do not inspire creativity, they say, and artists looking for inspiration would be better off travelling, exposing themselves to culture, meditating and taking part in training programmes.

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 their creativity was lower.”

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 felt they were more creative while on the drug, but were actually underperforming relative to their sober state.

Jennifer Haase of Humboldt University, a co-author of the paper, 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.”

Hanel acknowledged that there may be some specific contexts in which drugs enhance creativity – for example, if you are inspired by a vision you have on hallucinogenics.

Many artists would disagree with the scientists’ conclusions. Electronic producer Jon Hopkins said the “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 that it was constructive not to “paint all ‘drugs’ with the same brush”. 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”, and finds it 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,” she said.

But Lights thought the role of drugs in creating art was often romanticised when their use can reflect mental health issues. “The ‘troubled artist’ has been far more appealing in the past than the idea of an artist with a healthy mind.”

Rona Cran, associate professor of English literature at the University of Birmingham, said the romantic view stems from a reaction to socially conservative postwar culture and is increasingly a thing of the past.

She researches Beat writers and poets, and those 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 bars, parties and clubs, “where connections were made, ideas shared, deals struck, collaborations germinated”.

Yet this concealed addiction issues as well as fostering an “alienating and exclusionary” atmosphere for many people, including women, those of certain faiths or backgrounds, and people who needed steady jobs.

Most writers of the 20th century were not alcoholics or drug addicts, Cran said. She pointed out that the romanticism ignores the fact that many writers known for their drug or drinking habits came to a grisly end: William S Burroughs shot his wife in a drunken game, Frank O’Hara was unable to survive his injuries after being hit by a vehicle in 1966 because his liver was so enlarged, and Jack Kerouac died in his 40s of cirrhosis.