Writers and Drugs

6/25/2026 at 6:51:58 PM

That was a fun read. It’s interesting to me that my favorite writers loved cocaine/amphetamines while my favorite musicians were junkies.

If you’ve ever dabbled in the arts it is extremely easy to be tempted down that path. Alcohol especially, considering its ubiquity.. but I agree with the article “… booze is a malicious, treacherous muse.”

by hosel

6/25/2026 at 4:51:59 AM

One reason that alcohol is so popular is that it is easily, legally obtainable, and a social drug, unlike (say) heroin, which this article seems not to mention (I may have missed it)and might have done less damage (look at the long-lived William S Burroughs).

by zabzonk

6/25/2026 at 8:40:59 AM

Burroughs came from an upper middle class background. People with money are sometimes able to avoid some of the health dangers that come with heroin use. It's the heroin users who are poor that end up with the worst health outcomes. Malnutrition and risk of infection for example. Not being able to look after yourself because you have no money left.

by squishington

6/25/2026 at 8:41:49 AM

Perhaps partly because heroin was late to the party. It was identified/extracted in 1874 and only had around 40 year of legal use before controls came in.

Compared to opium and alcohol where consumption dates back thousands of years.

by manarth

6/25/2026 at 5:58:25 PM

With alcohol, most people are dishonest about it, most don't call it a drug which is quite worrisome and people addicted to that drug don't even consider themselves drug addicts, there has been such a lobby in communication around the separation of "Drugs" and "Alcohol" and people have fell for it hard. Literal propaganda :/

Even today, we can find mostly older people that refuse to call themselves drug users and literally insult "other type of drug" users despite literally being one and consuming a drug on a daily basis.

by pixel_popping

6/25/2026 at 8:38:18 PM

Because normal people are using the term as a short-hand.

It doesn’t seem especially useful to lump everyone from coffee drinkers to people using antibiotics to people shooting up fentanyl all together, so I don’t really see the point in insisting on such a literal use of the the term.

by SubmarineClub

6/25/2026 at 10:14:13 PM

They don't use it as short-hand, very truthfully if you ask them if they are drug users, they'll say no, and when we say drug user, we understand that we don't mean antibiotics but an addictive drug of some kind.

It's important to insist so people really understand that the damage is as bad as "drugs" (even worse in many cases) and that would allow to start having wine and spirit bottles and so-on at least have to deadly labels like cigarettes, which might make people slow down their consumption.

by pixel_popping

6/25/2026 at 3:12:42 PM

Good essay. In my own readings on art and artists, one overlap with substance abuse is that artists tend to be highly sensitive people - the type of people who are drawn to both creative pursuits and also to coping mechanisms like drinking to numb the over-stimulation.

So it is not so much that writing leads to alcoholism, so much as being the kind of person who is deeply sensitive to the world around them makes both of those activities appealing.

As heavily drinking becomes less socially acceptable, and people learn more about mental health and healthier coping mechanisms, I wonder if there will be less famously intoxicated public figures - and if art will be better or worse for it.

by garethsprice

6/25/2026 at 2:17:57 AM

I've often wondered, with a cohort (community/society) of people who do not discourage freedom of expression, how many great works would come to fruition, but instead one is held back and then set free by drugs...?

by adm4

6/25/2026 at 4:34:17 AM

“There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times to develop psychic muscles.”

by colechristensen

6/25/2026 at 4:59:31 AM

Interesting that there's not a single mention of cannabis, perhaps it's more of a musician's choice.

by david_shi

6/25/2026 at 6:08:44 AM

Hashish is a form of cannabis.

by AgentMasterRace

6/25/2026 at 3:06:53 AM

I'm not sure it's the amount they drink, but the basic metabolic reality of aging. Everyone starts to feel it in their 30s and 40s. These writers just choose to keep drinking well past when anyone else would have slowed down or quit.

I feel like it's probably their lifestyles were not flexible enough to accommodate that kind of change without losing out on opportunities. The fear of death and stress of that life would make anyone work harder.

by sublinear

6/25/2026 at 9:53:02 AM

> In fact, several have claimed they had little choice but to drink, and heavily at that, if they were to perform at their creative peak.” This is the most astonishing part: even if they were well aware of the carnage that drink was wreaking on their lives, many of them did not realize that, as their addiction progressed, their work actually became worse and worse, sometimes even to the point of rendering them completely silent.

This is the terrifying part. I can understand using alcohol to help write. But to do so, not realising that over time it numbed output...

The scary part is the lack of self-awareness, combined with the loss of valuable creation.

by vintagedave

6/25/2026 at 11:32:41 AM

Puts me to mind a dear musician friend I lost to heroin (or those drugs related to its use, since the details of the death remain a mystery to all but the immediate family). Muse of musicians. Wicked substance.

by xtiansimon

6/25/2026 at 3:13:50 AM

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

by none2585

6/25/2026 at 10:22:55 AM

I 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.

by n4r9

6/25/2026 at 3:17:53 AM

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.

by smitty1e

6/25/2026 at 3:38:25 AM

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.

by Fricken

6/25/2026 at 1:00:00 PM

I 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.

by TFNA

6/25/2026 at 5:41:33 AM

[dead]

by strathmeyer