On: Writers and Drugs

[none2585]

Feels like there's also a connection of being brilliant and thus tortured so they turn to the escape of self medication.

[smitty1e → none2585]

This 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 → smitty1e]

New 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.