Thinking as a therapist when it comes to drug and alcohol (mis)use, I am apt to get into arguments with people about the use of recreational drugs. The line I hear the most and, therefore have the strongest reaction to goes like this: "The drugs help me do my best work". First of all, I will always think this is a cop out because, well, if you want an altered state you can find it through meditation so there is NO NEED for drugs. Secondly, I react to the dependency in what is being said. Saying "I need it to do my best work" is a statement of dependence. It is a statement of dependence for the implication is that without the drugs/alcohol your work would be less than your best. If instead of saying that the drugs help you do your best work, you say that you enjoy writing while you're in an altered state so you take drugs before you write - this is not a statement of dependence. However, you will still need to make sure the drugs/alcohol are not interfering with your every day life or being used as a crutch to succeed in life (beware: you are rarely the best judge of this).
Of course, I personally don't do drugs and I do not drink in excess with any regularity. Maybe this means I don't know what I'm talking about. While I do not believe I need to have experienced everything in order to speak about it, I can understand this argument. Therefore, I am going to quote someone who has been there to the extent that he writes, "At the end of my adventures I was drinking a case of sixteen ounce tallboys a night, and there's one novel, Cujo, that I barely remember writing at all" (pg 99). That's right, the following statement (and the previous) comes from Stephen King in his book "On Writing, A Memoir of the Craft". He writes:
"The idea that creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-culture myths of our time. The four twentieth-century writers whose work is most responsible for it are probably Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, and the poet Dylan Thomas. They are the writers who largely formed our vision of an existential English-speaking wasteland where people have been cut off from one another and live in an atmosphere of emotional strangulation and despair. These concepts are very familiar to most alcoholics; the common reaction to them is amusement. Substance-abusing writers are just substance abusers -- common garden-variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit. ... Creative people probably do run a greater risk of alcoholism and addiction than those in some other jobs, but so what?" (pg 98-99).
If you're reading this and still believe I have no clue what I'm talking about, I'm okay with that. I hope that if you are that you will take a moment and assess your dependency on drugs or alcohol. If the drugs/alcohol do not seem to be interfering with your life - that's great! If you do believe you need the drugs/alcohol in order to do your "best" work - I hope you will find yourself knocking on the nearest drug rehab center door.
Let your best work speak for who you are - not for the drugs that you use.
