There are many mythologies about drugs of abuse.
I am allied in spirit and attitude with a great writer on the problems of recreational drugs, Anthony Daniels, who writes as Theodore Dalrymple.
Dalrymple’s book Romancing Opiates describes the silliness of this great mythology that has been created around opiates–opium, heroin, morphine (Ms Contin and others) hydromorphone (Dilaudid), oxycodone, hydrocone, fentanyl and a few others. How could I hope to do him justice, since he is one of the great essayists of current literature.
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/romancingopiates/
Dalrymple is a psychiatrist in Britain, in some terrible low down town like Birmingham or Liverpool and he takes care of people in and out of prison. His talent is writing and he is a writer, no doubt. A wonderful man of letters, regular contributor to my understanding. Writes at City Journal and on his own.
http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=1636&sec_id=1636
He thinks the whole thing about opiates (opium, heroin, the derivatives) is a myth, and that opiates really are just a retreat from reality for weak and unsuccessful souls, who then create a mythology about the nature of addiction, and opiate use. They build the mythology on the romantic literature of the artsy world that is into drugs too, from the Romantics to the present.
I agree, and you might say I have some personal exposure as a 20 year jail doc and an emergency physician for 40 years.
I did my internship at Harlem Hospital in 1971 and treated many Heroin addicts and dabblers and mostly what they needed was a purpose in life.
The ones that survive their youth usually give up the habit as non productive for a reasonable adult. They do it on their own. The methadone clinics and the drug treatment programs are for the program abusers who use and whine and look for support and methadone clinics are OK when they don’t have access to the good stuff.
The addiction they had was not “Man with a Golden Arm” (Frank Sinatra plays a guy with a heroin habit), they needed something else to do.
We withdrew heroin addicts at Harlem Hospital by taking them off opiates cold turkey, as they say in the movies, and they never suffered like Frank did in the movie, got a little anxious, felt bad, got itchy, that’s it.
Opiates are overrated as a life changing thing, and Dalrymple’s book explains it as a symptom of their lack of purpose and weakness/selfishness, but emphasizes that its a scam–they are users, no doubt, but they choose to use and the “addiction” is way overrated.
could I pretend to say it better, I don’t think so.
John Dale Dunn MD JD Consultant Emergency Services/Peer Review Civilian Faculty, Emergency Medicine Residency Carl R. Darnall Army Med Center Fort Hood, Texas Medical Officer, Sheriff Bobby Grubbs Brown County, Texas 325 784 6697 (h) 642 5073 (c)
There by demonstrating my thesis that the capability of sound judgment is greatly distorted by the taking of the opiates and that the degradation was in process before the taking. I do agree that they are powerful pain suppressors and as such quite useful and necessary for that purpose. However, for the purpose of enhancing creativity in any meaningful way, no way and no how!
They do not sharpen the mind nor improve the quality of the output of the affected mind. At most, they distort your perceptions and judgement such that you believe you have a sharper mind and that it is giving superior output.
“Association for unrelated things” have by definition no association but random. It still takes a clear mind capable of sound judgment to see the value in such random noise. However, that value is not put their by the randomness, it is put there by the clear mind capable of sound judgement noticing the accidental association has some interesting a valuable qualities.
I’ll admit my experience is limited. It seems from observation that if the performer is on drugss, the audience needs to be on similar drugs to “get it”. Either way, a naturally creative person wouldn’t feel the need for creativity enhancement, so it may just be that the creators that are on drugs just aren’t that creative to begin with.
I think part of the problem here is the general misconception by people without the experience is that all drugs are about a ‘trip’, some drugs are about an overall mode or state.
Most people only have exeprience with weed so they think of the distorted sense of reality, or taking magic mushrooms or dropping some acid while in college. Which is also why stupid teenagers over do things and get in trouble because they think all drugs are about ‘tripping balls’.
Opiates are more about an overall state of contentment. Think along the lines of a 4 hour orgasm and you get the idea sort of. The endorphin rush and dopamine boost will do that to you. It’s also why heroin heads will be content living in pretty much the gutter while thier life goes to shit and pretty much forgo and don’t even care about sex or presonal hygine or pretty much anything, just the next hussle to get a few bux for thier next high.
Depends on which one. Lots of people try to do work on weed or dissociatives and that stuff is always crap. Only people who work well are weed are those who do mind numbingly repetitive jobs. Also weed smokers tend to be some of the dullest people to be around.
As for some of the synthetic opiates (more specifically the thebaine derived oxycodone) bare none it does help you find assoications for unreleated things. Writing jokes, good choice, need to relate things good choice, doing math problem, bad choice.
Ah if I’m going to blow the cash on coke I’m going out partying screw working. Coke is way too overpriced verus the return. Adderall and the like never really did anything for me unless I needed to pull an all nighter (well with two or three tums of course).
Part of that, I believe, is that the public is spared the slow artistic death that comes from getting old. If Jim Morrison hadn’t died, he wouldn’t be remembered as the defiant voice of youth culture, but rather as that old guy that does benefit concerts full of songs you’ve never heard before getting pissed off that the audience only wants to hear “light my fire”. Compare the legacies of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Even the kids that go on about how great John was, and what a tragedy it is that he died young rarely listen to anything he recorded in his later years.
Couple that phenomenon with the reluctance to speak ill of the dead and the recipe for posthumous idolatry is complete. I don’t think Heath Ledger’s joker was all that impressive. If he’d lived, he’d have been subjected to, if not harsher, at least less gushing reviews. His performance certainly wasn’t as good as Mark Hamill’s. The notable point is how much focus is put on the last role he did. No one went back and talked about what fantastic acting he did in “Knight’s Tale” or “Ten Things I Hate About You”. Nostalgia and the youth culture’s collective fear of being forgotten prop up legacies far in excess of merit.
From what I’ve seen, drugs make you think you’re more creative while you’re on them. From the outside, or after you’ve come down, what you created while stoned usually turns out to be crap. I’ve had friends record hours long compilations that they were convinced were life changing, genre shattering masterpieces untill the sober light of morning. Even Ringo Star admitted the Beatles often wrote music while experimenting with all sorts of drugs, but all of it was crap that never ended up getting released.
It is a term of “art,” so to speak, that “drug influenced” passes for “different” passes for “creative,” and eventually passes for dead. We seem to still have a deadly fascination for that, whether fictionally by Poe or actually by Winehouse. It helps to be considered a great “artist” if you are dead. It really helps in this current culture if you died from a drug or alcohol related incident. `It like makes what you did so much more profound – or something. (I think Jim Morrison was at times OK and that Heath Ledger was superb as an insane Joker because he was insane on drugs at the time.)
They don’t actually make you more creative, they simply help you think that you are. Actually, your real and productive creative output will rapidly degrade into worthless random noise thought worthwhile by similar demented minds.
Simply to be different is not necessarily creative. What end would be served by making random and purposeless changes? An active mind capable of making sound judgements in context would sill have to identify the value of any change. That, as such, is far more creative than the act of making that random purposeless change. Otherwise, you would identify the action of a hurricane as creative because it makes makes many changes to the land as it passes over the land.
u, my friend, are just too much fun. although I would say opiates are not nearly as productive as cocaine and meth in moderation.
John Dale Dunn MD JD Consultant Emergency Services/Peer Review Civilian Faculty, Emergency Medicine Residency Carl R. Darnall Army Med Center Fort Hood, Texas Medical Officer, Sheriff Bobby Grubbs Brown County, Texas 325 784 6697 (h) 642 5073 (c)
To say that opiates don’t make you more creative is just plain crazy. Opiods like oxycodone do make you more creative, they just have a way of increasing the fluidity of thought and just help you connect thoughts and ideas way way better than if you were sober. Bar none.
And the synthetic opiates again can make you physically one hell of a productive person. In fact if given enough oxycodone I could clean my house, your house and your mothers house without even minding.
It seems like the thebaine dirviative opiates are more stimulating and help you be more productive.
Now if you want to take this out of the realm of doing them occasionaly to doing themevery day you are insane. You’d build one hell of a tolerance and you’d be one broke sucker.
On the other hand the more tradiational opiates like codine and heroin at least to me are more sedaiting and aren’t really all that useful if you want to be productive.