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hemingway vs. alcoholics anonymous

I have a lot of thoughts on this topic. I guess I consider myself a writer, and up until five weeks ago I was also a heavy drinker.


I see your point, I have had the same thought at several times, but really it only looks good from a distance. If you take those great drinker-writers, how many of them were able to keep up the creativity into their late lives, even if they continued to drink. Look at Hemingway. The guy basically destroyed himself psychologically over the idea that he couldn't write anymore. He wrote a great book about it, The Old Man and the Sea, and then he shot himself. Long term alcoholism will shatter you outright. Hunter Thompson, another alcoholic, is a writer and humorist that i greatly respect, but take a look at how he turned out in his later years. There is a video on Youtube with Hunter on Conan, it's pretty sad from a big time Hunter fan's perspective. Also, look where he ended up, same place as Hemingway, with a bullet to the head.

My point is that it probably isn't quitting drinking that makes people lose their talent for writing, not entirely at least, and long term alcoholism will have just as bad an effect, if not much worse.

Mix some alcohol or drugs with a youthful fire and you can get some explosive creativity, but fast forward forty years down the line and you just have a bloated shattered and pickled mind.
 
Now Nietzsche in his autobiography-thing 'Ecce Homo' says that through his twenties he drank an uproarious amount, and it wasn't until his thirties, after he had stopped drinking entirely, that he started to produce his work, which only got better and better before he blew his fuse.


I'm sure there are a great many. It would be interesting to go down the line of great works and find out the drinking and drug patterns of their authors. Even Bukowski acknowledged that toward the end his drinking had become more mythology than reality.


I think that alcohol can help you get that spark if you can't get it otherwise. A big problem with some people is that they just can't get it otherwise. If you need alcoholics anonymous to guide your life then your hopes of writing anything of value are pretty slim.

Lots of people move to bland zen lives after they give up drinking or drugs. Recovering alcoholics from all walks of life have trouble finding the internal will that they once had, but this doesn't really say much for what drinking will do for you, just what not drinking will do to the hopelessly addicted.
 
I don't know if this works for this topic I guess it does..I am a painter and if i don't smoke weed my creativity is null.....I hit a blunt and it's on.. I can see the Forrest thru the trees:)
 
im really a complete 180. i try my hardest to write 100% of my stuff as sober as possible. i usually get away with 90% of it being sober.

eta: when i'm high my writing just feels so undisciplined and like i'm just rambling on drugs and nothing looks or sounds right. so i gave up on that pretty quick. i like to write in my journal high though, but that's different than writing, you know?
 
I'd say Hemingway FTW! I have always been a firm believer that writers use their drink/drug of choice to see outside the particular boundaries of consciousness. While it is truth to say that there are plenty of artists/ writers who do not use drugs and are innovative, I think the amount that do or did is most likely close to double. There might just be something about writing and alcoholism that go hand and hand together, maybe it is seeing the more morose parts of life and being able to accept that not everything tends to be all smiles, I do not know. I simply say keep it up fine writers :D
 
I'm a writer, looking into poetry/fiction MFA programs right now actually. I've used a ton of drugs in the time between now and when I became very serious about my writing. even now a lot my best stuff is written while I'm stoned or otherwise intoxicated. but the key for me is revision. and revision really has to be done sober, or on stimulants like adderall or coffee. for example, I'll write the makings of something really awesome in 30 minutes while extremely blazed, then leave it overnight, and spend an hour a day for the next week of sober revision time. but sometimes I unfortunately feel like I could never have gotten such fertile "raw material" to work with had I been sober.

not to mention the subject matter aspect. a lot of my ideas come from things that have happened, or emotions I've experienced, that have arisen from drug use. that and mental illness I sometimes see as necessary sacrifices for the work, though lately I've been trying to change that attitude. if I don't, I fear I'll never really be able to take my writing to the next level. I think readers like to romanticize about the mad-genius writer who's bottle is his muse. but in reality, writing well is very difficult and time-consuming - it's a life-long endeavor of diligence, study and trial and error, and it takes just as much carefully refined skill as it does sheer talent.
 
I always wrote best, or at least the sheer most, on opiates. Alcohol usually leaves me unable or unwilling to do much of anything. When I was heavy into opiates I would write like a mad, filling up a new notebook every night, with no hand cramps (nice).

But I still believe that you don't need it to be creative. People of the last couple of generations are incredibly lazy. They think that creativity should be immediate and unearned. If your stock as a human is good enough, you will reside in that state naturally.

Nietzsche had a couple of good quotes on the subject of creativity and intoxication. I might go looking for them.


Another way in which your idea is flawed is this. You said that no one has written their better work post-sobriety. But this assumes someone who has achieved their critical success while using. When they got sober they were not the same person they were before, they were the 'successful artist', and anyone can tell you that the 'successful artist' is a whole different animal than just the artist, and often not for the better.
 
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