Marijuana and creativity.

[ojedson]

I started using marijuana 4years ago for recreation but I've been an active and regular user for a year now. Some months ago, I was writing a fictional piece but was stumped on ideas. I decided to try writing stoned and to my surprise, I had this smooth flow of ideas I've never experienced before. Convinced that marijuana had everything to do with this sudden burst of creativity, I've been using it ever since to pretty much think. Some research on the internet recently has disproved that marijuana has anything to do with creativity. That it only brings about a feeling of creativity but there's no actual science to it.
How many marijuana users can attribute newfound creativity to it and are there scientific facts to prove that marijuana actually enhances your thinking capacity?

 

[Slowmymind]

Hi Ojedson,
Although Marijuana doesn't necesarily enhance your thinking capacity, it does help you hyper focus on what you are doing. Perhaps when your sober you are unable to let your writing be the only subject your focusing on, and perhaps marijuana gives you that undivided attention to really become engrossed in your desired writing mindset.
Just a thought...

 

[yacob]

i dont write the bulk of a project with just weed, i need more motivation but one really good trick that i learned from george carlin is to smoke a little joint and then go through and tweek what you can just a bit to make each thing just a tiny bit better and then when you go back and re-read it amps it up in a massive way.

that george carlin, smart guy



cool to see a couple writers, work it and you improve all the time. what kinda shit yall like to write? maybe ill post an essay i wrote years ago or something. maybe we can compare notes or something if you guys like feedback

 

[thujone]

When I was young I wrote a lot of stuff on herb and thought it was brilliant creative stuff, wasn't until I read that stuff years later that I realized it was such shite. The worst part was fucking friends told me it was good, but I guess they were stoners too so maybe none of us were seeing clearly. I think it's true that MJ brings out a lot of amazing ideas and I do to this day use it as a means of drawing out special ideas but now I just write bullet points stoned and put off properly fleshing out an idea until I'm sober again when I'll have the capacity to think critically and actually distinguish between good ideas and bad ideas that might have seemed good while I was stoned.

 

[yacob]

lol oh man i can only imagine a 15 year old version of myself writing about marijuana, everytime i even see a marley quote or anything "deep" about pot it just makes me groan and roll my eyes.

its definitely true whether sober or not when you actually write to come back a couple days later after not thinking about it, and if it still holds up to what you thought it was, usually it is pretty solid in my experience although nothing you ever write will be as good as you want because its the sound of your own voice. if you get to the point of actually being surprised what your reading came from your brain, then progress is really starting to take hold(if you are able to look at it criticaly enough that is or else everything you do is great in your own eyes) but its incredibly difficult to keep climbing once that happens at least in my personal experience. the thing is i have a hard time taking a few days off to regenerate and that seems to stunt development. finding topics that youre really deep in knowledge is key but its hard converting that into something completely new...if this makes any sense whatsoever

ive seen multiple writers that i look up to either write or say that the key to really becoming an exceptional writer is being incredibly critical of yourself. basically if you think youre really good then you probably suck haha

 

[Mafioso]

I find that low doses of psychedelics can have boosts in creativity, usually much more so than heavy doses that become more inebriating than anything else... but they can also hamper creativity as well. I would definitely write and complete more structured songs before I started smoking weed and as my use progressed, my recordings did the opposite.

Personally, I have realized that although getting stoned seems to give an initial rush or drive to be creative, it makes it harder to actually do so. Creating more complex riffs and songs becomes harder the more stoned I get. A lot of that type of stuff relies heavily upon short term memory. I still like to use it, and have come up with some really cool riffs stoned out of my mind, but when it comes to practice and discipline- which are essential parts of the creative process, it is completely inhibiting.

If you use, it doesn't mean you will better or worse IMO, but it definitely can become problematic. Some of the greatest musicians are straight as an arrow, some are terrible drug addicts. The drugs are not what makes someone great.

 

[yacob]

you make great points. its good to get stoned and then come up with raw ideas and then put it all together later with a clear head. its incredibly difficult sticking to the process and step by step slowly building something creative when stoned, i just want to get all the awesome parts out and then when the time comes to bolt the pieces together i just lose momentum hard

 

[Mafioso]

you make great points. its good to get stoned and then come up with raw ideas and then put it all together later with a clear head. its incredibly difficult sticking to the process and step by step slowly building something creative when stoned, i just want to get all the awesome parts out and then when the time comes to bolt the pieces together i just lose momentum hard

Man I agree but I've been unsuccessful at that for years. I've heard Tenacious D would do something similar, but in opposite order, and I thought it was really cool. Supposedly they write their songs first so they can map out the structure and get the bulk of the song done, then come back when they are stoned and spruce it up a bit. Something I'm currently trying to mimic. My problem with getting stoned first then going to an empty canvas is it is so easy to get side tracked on a tangent, then once the high wears off you kind of lose the idea and I end up moving on to another.

 

[yacob]

maybe tenacious d learned that same trick from george carlin too, thats funny they do that as well. you really should try this a few times if at first it doesnt work because looking at a soberly put together coherent piece you wrote after you get stoned just makes the "oh shit i missed this"s flood in and from there it just grows. with jokes its about one word at a time to make it funnier. its all the same method we just use different outlets. my best friend is a retardedly good guitar player and we always learn from each other by sharing tips on just how to follow the process, because really its the same thing

 

[Mafioso]

maybe tenacious d learned that same trick from george carlin too, thats funny they do that as well. you really should try this a few times if at first it doesnt work because looking at a soberly put together coherent piece you wrote after you get stoned just makes the "oh shit i missed this"s flood in and from there it just grows. with jokes its about one word at a time to make it funnier. its all the same method we just use different outlets. my best friend is a retardedly good guitar player and we always learn from each other by sharing tips on just how to follow the process, because really its the same thing

Wow that's wild I didn't know carlin did that too.. I wonder how many other greats had this secret... I'm sure many were just always fucked up as well lol.

it might be a little off topic but care to share some tips from one artist to another? lol been stuck in a bit of a rut lately and could use some creative advice.

 

[Foreigner]

I find MJ more stimulating than creative. Psychedelics like LSD and mushrooms create way more novelty. MJ increases the speed of things so that you can reflect on more, more rapidly. That's been my experience anyway.

 

[yacob]

Wow that's wild I didn't know carlin did that too.. I wonder how many other greats had this secret... I'm sure many were just always fucked up as well lol.

it might be a little off topic but care to share some tips from one artist to another? lol been stuck in a bit of a rut lately and could use some creative advice.

when i get stuck i just listen to music, but since you're a musician im not sure it'd be the same for you, so maybe just watch some tv, preferably something that'll promote thought to at least get some things moving.

if its like a week long rut or multiple day rut you just gotta walk away completely for a day or two. if you dont feel like it after even days or weeks and theres still no creative spark, dont get worried that its gone. ive gone 2 months without touching a notebook multiple times and was absolutely positive it was all over but when the light gets turned back on you'll make up for lost time and then some for sure. once you get that spark in your brain, you'll always have it. its like that Tribe song "i wanna scream cause thats how good it feels" when you put down fire its better than any drug ever. so long story short take a break without fear of losing any of your talent, because it was always there somewhere anyway. although i think that fear of losing it has helped me personally because even subconsciously my brain must be trying to find it frantically like a lost boy looking for his mom in a shopping mall.

dont underestimate the power of other art forms giving you inspiration in yours, i get so much shit from instrumental music and i write words...so yeah inspiration makes no sense and isnt in the same place twice

oh and vibes are a base level thing to just riff on. in my case i write a paragraph just practicing trying to convey feelings indirectly, in your case its the same idea just instead of writing stream of consciousness you will just simply improv trying to reach a sound you have in your head maybe? i would honestly love to know the process of writing music, it seems so much harder than what i do because honestly 90% of what i do is straight up practical work like editing and drafts and arranging words, stuff that i dont even like doing. you guys have just so much grey area

double edit: oh and if you're curious to hear george talk about that method i believe it is his final special, not 100% but really almost positive thats the one. he doesnt really go into depth on it but that whole last hour he had is so good its worth watching to find out. easily one of the biggest talents to do anything, miss that old fuck

 

[Steven325]

When I was young I wrote a lot of stuff on herb and thought it was brilliant creative stuff, wasn't until I read that stuff years later that I realized it was such shite. The worst part was fucking friends told me it was good, but I guess they were stoners too so maybe none of us were seeing clearly. I think it's true that MJ brings out a lot of amazing ideas and I do to this day use it as a means of drawing out special ideas but now I just write bullet points stoned and put off properly fleshing out an idea until I'm sober again when I'll have the capacity to think critically and actually distinguish between good ideas and bad ideas that might have seemed good while I was stoned.

I think this is pretty stereotypical stoner stuff though.. lots of people thought of great things high, think of musicians etc. I'm a web programmer/designer and while after smoking weed daily for so long I don't really get creativity boosts from it anymore but it helps me work insane amount of times without a break, kind of like amphetamines for others I guess. But the first years of smoking I had insane ideas that were actually legit and worked out.

 

[EphemeralOutlet141]

Marijuana greatly decreases the time it takes for thoughts to travel through your brain, so in a way it does help. Not necessarily by giving you great ideas, but increasing the rate at which you can think of them.

Most of the tattoos I have I've thought of while stoned now that I think of it. It usually takes me a loooooong time to work up a design I like, but when I'm high it just feels so much more streamlined. And yes, I'm still happy with them when I'm sober.