4 ms·
Feels like there's also a connection of being brilliant and thus tortured so they turn to the escape of self medication.
by none2585 3mo ago
Feels like there's also a connection of being brilliant and thus tortured so they turn to the escape of self medication.
- smitty1e 3mo agoThis is the conundrum: do the chemicals enhance or detract? Would Coleridge have delivered "Kublai Khan" without dope? The answer is ambiguous, but I'll take sobriety, thank you.
- Fricken 3mo agoNew drugs enhance. If you can get your hands on a chemical that invokes an altered state no previous artist has experienced then you're in undiscovered country. Ken Kesey was a guinea pig in the CIA's early experiments with LSD. He went on to be amongst LSDs earliest recreational users, and that led to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", which is a strikingly original and lucid novel.
- TFNA 3mo agoI contend that John Berryman’s Dream Songs wouldn’t have come about without the poet’s alcoholism. The fractured syntax that makes it such a moving collection seems a reflection of a mind clouded by drinking, and a sober poet may have never stumbled upon that style.
- n4r9 3mo agoI suspect that many of these characters used both creative arts and psychoactive substances as a way of coping with or processing intense and difficult feelings.