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# Friday
- URL: https://thedailyeudemon.com/34904/
- Published: 2014-12-05T06:03:53.000Z
- Updated: 2014-12-05T06:03:53.000Z
- Author: Eric Scheske
- Tags: Essay, Miscellaneous, #wpChunk

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ea/fd/eafdb338-c9b6-4f87-8363-78ab94cc3a18/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Kingsley_Amis-196x300.jpg "Kingsley_Amis")

Kingsley Amis shares a little banal insight into the artistic life: "\[L\]et me just observe in passing that the reason why so many professional artists drink a lot is not necessarily very much to do with the artistic temperament, etc. It is simply that they can afford to, because they can normally take a large part of a day off to deal with the ravages." Kingsley Amis, *Everyday Drinking*.

I have little doubt that's true, but I also have little doubt that there *is* something about the artistic temerament that leads to such excess, at least among the non-genius artists. I tend to view alcohol and drugs for the artist as a kind of artifiical door to perception. In this, perhaps my outlook is skewed by [Aldous Huxley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The%5FDoors%5Fof%5FPerception?ref=thedailyeudemon.com) and Jim Morrison. I mean, most of us have been drunk, but how many of us can claim to some super-charged mode of creative existence in such states? When I'm drunk, I claim a super-charged mode of creative TV remote control manipulation, but that's about, and even that charge of activity normally gives way to another viewing of *Caddyshack*  or *GoodFellas* and snoring.

I also don't think marijuana gives rise to much creativity. I've been around a lot of stoners. The most creative they get is finding new ways to open a bag of Doritos. And acid? Forget it. When Cheech takes that handful of acid at the beginning of Up in Smoke, Chong doesn't say, "Get ready to write a novel," but instead, "Ho, ho, ho, ho. Wow man. . . . I hope you're not busy for about a month."

But then again, we have the example of Roger Miller, who wrote a lot of great stuff while piped on cocaine. He kicked the addiciton and, the story says, never wrote another decent song. There's also Jack Kerouac's *On the Road*, which he cranked out while on Benzedrine, but whereas [Ian Fleming's James Bond took Benzedrine](http://dailyeudemonannex.blogspot.com/2014/11/bennies-and-bond.html?ref=thedailyeudemon.com) I could find no reference that Fleming himself did. Poe, [Marion Montgomery assures us](http://www.amazon.com/Why-Poe-Drank-Liquor-Trilogy/dp/B000FEJMX2/ref=sr%5F1%5F3?ie=UTF8&qid=1416171994&sr=8-3&keywords=why+poe+drank+liquor&ref=thedailyeudemon.com), drank liquor, but while he wrote? I can't bring myself to pay $50 for Montgomery's book, so I might never know.

So, bottom line? I don't have one. Just a few educated guesses: A moderate amount of alcohol opens up the creativity; excess kills it. Marijuana and acid kills it. Bennies and cocaine? A moderate amount fuels the physical component necessary to create (a guy can't write while asleep), but doesn't contribute much to the creative element, except perhaps in a handful like Roger Miller.