Drug Myth 7

Any new experience can foster creativity, and drugs can provide fascinating and unique experiences. The most famous example of this could be the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh. His heavy use of yellow pigment, most notably the yellow coronas in Starry Night, likely came from the visual distortions of the drug, digitalis.

Some drugs have left their imprints on entire eras. The influence of LSD’s perceptual distortions can be seen all over the art of the 1960s from the surreal music of the Beatles and Pink Floyd to the comic artist, Robert Crumb, who credits acid for molding his trademark distorted figures. The writer Ken Kesey came up with the idea of a schizophrenic mute narrator for his acclaimed book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), during an acid trip. Allen Ginsburg wrote the famous poem, Howl (1956), after a night spent walking San Francisco’s streets under the influence of the natural hallucinogen, peyote.

Just like LSD was the influence on 1960s artists, marijuana was the influence on French artists one hundred years earlier. Members of the Hashish Club included the great literary figures Dumas (Count of Monte Cristo), Nerval, Hugo (Les Misérables, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame), Boissard, Delacroix, Gautier, and Baudelaire. Across the ocean, their American counterpart, Edgar Allan Poe, was also a marijuana “adherent.” The 20th century literary giant Norman Mailer has said that marijuana is “divine” for providing one with new associations and “extraordinary thoughts.”

Drug invoked creativity has not been limited to artists. A Nobel Prize winning chemist, Kary Mullis, has credited LSD with assistance in formulating the concepts for a paper he published in 1968. Similar credit has been given to marijuana by the psychologist, Susan Blackmore, and the astronomer, Carl Sagan. Ralph Abraham, the mathematician who invented chaos theory, said, "In the 1960s a lot of people on the frontiers of math experimented with psychedelic substances. There was a brief and extremely creative kiss between the community of hippies and top mathematicians."

Perhaps the most stunning acid induced discovery was that of DNA’s structure by Francis Crick in 1953. Crick, who was active in the drug legalization movement, told associates that he was on acid when he perceived the infamous double helix, the software of life. When confronted about this by a reporter he did not deny it but did threaten to sue if the reporter made it public. (The reporter went public after Crick’s death in 2004.)

Hallucinogens also played a role in the personal computer revolution that has transformed society. Early visionaries such as Mitch Kapor (Lotus), Douglas Englebart (invented the computer mouse), Steve Jobs (Apple, Pixar), and Bill Gates (Microsoft) all used LSD. It is not coincidence that the tech capital of the world, Silicon Valley, sprouted adjacent to the psychedelic center of the universe. Kevin Herbert, a programmer who was an early employee of Cisco Systems, still solves his toughest technical problems on acid and was instrumental in Cisco banning drug testing. A 1999 study of 63 Silicon Valley companies found productivity was 29% lower in firms with pre-employment and random drug testing.

Pharmacological muses are not limited to hallucinogens. The modern intellectual, Susan Sontag, found marijuana too relaxing to use while writing and preferred speed (amphetamine). Most of Philip K. Dick’s science fiction stories were produced on speed and they could explain his prolific output. Dick would write 60 pages a day and nine of his works have been made into movies, most notably Blade Runner (1982), Total Recall (1990), and Minority Report (2002).

The famous Beat writer, Jack Kerouac, used the amphetamine, benzedrine, to write his groundbreaking novel, On the Road (1957); and said:

Stimulants served writers before amphetamines were synthesized. The natural stimulant, cocaine, inspired Robert Louis Stevenson and he wrote his 1886 novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, during a sleepless six day binge.

Opiates have not received many creative plaudits from artists but their extensive modern use by them is notable. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“Kubla Khan”), Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Sir Walter Scott (Rob Roy) all produced timeless writings while under its influence.

The exceptional jazz saxophonist, Charlie Parker (1920-1955), was a heroin addict. Because other jazz musicians were awed by him, heroin became the drug of jazz. As the jazz sound transferred into rock and roll so did the drug use. One of the reasons the influential band, the Rolling Stones, used a potpourri of drugs that included heroin was, “to identify with the jazz musicians’ credo that expanding their minds would lead to greater artistic excellence.” Notoriously burned out Rolling Stone, Keith Richards, would become the model for the “elegantly wasted” rock outlaw.

In 1967 The Velvet Underground & Nico became the first rockers to make overt references to drugs with their heroin songs, “I’m Waiting for the Man” and “Heroin,” with “Heroin” clearly mimicking the dreamy state of a heroin high. If heroin does not assist creativity, it does not appear to hurt.

The Velvet Underground’s open drug references have now become ubiquitous in popular music. However, outside of marijuana, the “drugs are bad” message is usually not undermined by rockers who want to be seen as living dangerously. The youngest generation of artists have lived their entire lives under the anti-drug media blitzkrieg launched in the 1980s. While they still do illicit drugs, few publicly speak of drugs in a positive manner with so much of their income now coming from corporate endorsements.

Numerous people take drugs because it allows them to be rebel cool. One of the countless unintended consequences of criminalizing recreational drugs was that they became associated with anti-authoritarian risk-takers (“rebels”).

This can be seen by comparing caffeine use with cocaine use. Binging on caffeine can rival the effects of powder cocaine and even lead to hallucinations, but people who snort No-Doz pills or pound a six-pack of Jolt Cola are seen as morons not rebels.

One reason for this is that the caffeine binger is taking little risk. There is no danger of arrest. The person knows exactly how much she is taking so there is little chance of overdose. In addition, the media have not been able to exaggerate caffeine’s dangers because everybody is familiar with it. Not even the most paranoid mother can think the caffeine binger is playing with “death.”

Another reason is that the popular image of someone binging on caffeine is a ten year old kid bored at her birthday party. Thanks to the criminalization of cocaine the popular image of someone taking cocaine is no longer a distinguished fogey drinking Vin Mariani. The popular image is now one of hell-raisers and rock stars doing lines off of strippers.

Just as important to rebel cachet as who does it, is who does not do it. Rebel status can be lost when conformists (“squares”) join the action but illegal drugs will never have this problem. Squares may drink a lot of caffeinated soda, but squares will never break the law.

Rebel cool has the most appeal to self-conscious adolescents and young adults. The advent of criminalization at the turn of the 19th century allowed kids to use drugs to defy authority, and drug use quickly became a rite of passage for young adults

Dutch authorities brag that through legalization they have made marijuana boring. Marijuana use by Dutch teenagers actually declined in the decade following its legalization in 1976. Although it has gone up significantly since then, Dutch teens still try marijuana at roughly half the rate of American teens.

Apparently marijuana is not as cool when anybody can try it. As Richard Mack, a narcotics agent who smoked it when undercover, said, “... I found myself wondering what in the heck the big deal was.”

People use drugs because the people around them are using drugs. The anti-drug crowd has branded this sinisterly as peer pressure. However, is someone that eats turkey at Thanksgiving doing it because of peer pressure? When you recommend an enjoyable activity to a friend are you peer pressuring them into doing it?

Just as alcohol has served as a social nexus in bars and get-togethers for millennia in Western culture, other drugs have served and continue to serve the same function for other groups. For example, the chewing of coca leaves by South Americans, the smoking of marijuana by Jamaican Rastafarians, and the chewing of khat by East Africans.

Medical use is the only acceptable use of drugs according to the government, however, medical benefits have still not been able to remove recreational drugs from the DEA’s clutches. For example, in the cases of marijuana and MDMA, the DEA refused to decriminalize their medical use against the recommendations of the DEA’s own judges. The stonewalling on marijuana is astoundingly fraudulent with no less than 80 state and national health care organizations, such as the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, advocating for immediate medical access to marijuana.

Although criminalization has made the public forget the more natural forms of drugs, those forms had nutritional value. The plant that cocaine is derived from, coca, has been ingested by South Americans as far back as 2500 BC. The Indians claimed it was, “a gift from the gods to satisfy the hungry, fortify the weary, and make the unfortunate forget their sorrows.” Coca leaf chewing and coca tea were used for sustenance. Coca was an essential source of nutrients to those living in the high-altitude Andes, and without coca it is likely the Indians would not have been able to survive in that severe environment.

Perhaps the most underestimated use of illicit drugs is for self-medicating mental health issues. For example, studies have found alcoholics and smokers had less dopamine (pleasure chemical) receptors in their brains than their peers. Numerous people who use the drugs that manipulate dopamine levels – cigarettes, alcohol, cocaine, amphetamines – are arguably just trying to be as content as normal people.

Recreational drugs provide pleasure. Although the preference for specific drugs – and drugs in general – is highly subjective, most people use illicit substances because they make them feel good. A scientific survey of over 4,400 subjects found that marijuana users are happier and less depressed than non-users. For many, drug experiences rank among the best moments of their lives. One of these is Apple co-founder and self-made billionaire, Steve Jobs:

After a hundred years of government propaganda and media sensationalism drug users are afraid to give pleasure as a reason. The popular perception is that drugs are so evil and destructive that to take them for an inconsequential purpose such as enjoyment is blasphemy. Therefore a never-ending line of people convicted of drug possession march before judges all across America for sentencing and give “The Script.” The usual themes are tragedies drove them to drugs, drugs overtook their will, and drugs drove them to do bad things. The performance ends with, “Now that I have been arrested and prosecuted I have seen the error of my ways and will repent.”

The Script works well because it fits into the myth that is drilled into the population from birth, and on which the criminalization of drugs is built. The Script also comforts the judge, the arresting officer, and the prosecutor. They are not ruining lives, they are saving them. Even more importantly, all the people who have never taken drugs are reassured that they are not missing out on anything and that everything is right in the world.

Person	Drug	Quote
Tori Amos	Ayahuasca (Hallucinogen)	“It’s not like I’ve never done cocaine but ... if I can’t see dancing elephants I’m not interested ... [Ayahuasca] can grab you by the balls and just shove you up against the wall.”
Sigmund Freud	Cocaine	Freud was inspired by the “exhilaration and lasting euphoria,” and warned his wife of the pleasures she would get from, “a wild man with cocaine in his body.”
Rick Root	Cocaine	“It gave a very pleasant high. It gave me the impression that I could dig deeper into my mind .... It gave me the ability to look at things in a broader view.”
Jon Marsh	Ecstasy (MDMA)	“Apart from falling in love, taking Ecstasy is the most enjoyable thing I’ve ever done.”
Lenny Bruce	Heroin	“I’ll die young, but it’s like kissing God.”
William Burroughs	Heroin	“If God made anything better, he kept it for Himself.”
Francis Moraes	Heroin	“... being a chipper [occasional user] can be a lot of fun ....”
Morgan Freeman	Marijuana	“God’s own weed.”
Allan Mattus	Marijuana	“Pot is just really fun – that euphoric buzz you have.... A crappy day isn’t a crappy day anymore .... One of my favorite things is to go to a park. There’s nothing better than toking up and going to look at some great scenery.”
Bill Santini	Mescaline (Hallucinogen)	“... it was one of the unique sensations of my life – patterns on patterns. Very interesting .... sounds had colors and colors had textures, and I very much liked the experience.”
Bruce Rogers	PCP	“A lot of bang for the buck.”