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The Relationship between Drugs and Genius in Literature

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Dope_User

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I'm about to start writing a research paper based on "the relationship between drugs and genius in poetry or short stories." Here are some of the criteria/requirements:

1) Must focus on either poetry or short stories by a single author (can use any other resources, books, internet, interviews, critics' opinions, etc. to support my position)

2) Ideally, I'd like to find an author who has written several poems (prefer to use poetry but short stories would be okay) relating to and/or under the influence of opiates

3) Establish a casual relationship between the use of opiates and "genius in poetry" (or short stories)

If anyone knows of any authors of poetry (or short stories) who wrote about and/or used opiates, it would be greatly appreciated if you could provide me with some names and poems/stories. One exception, I'd like to stay away from using anything by Poe as I have found too much controversy/conflicting opinions on his usage of opium.

If I can't find anything related to opiates and literature, I may go with the poem "Howl" (by Allen Ginsberg, IIRC and maybe some of his other works) and compare it with an acid trip (then somehow establish a casual relationship between drugs and genius in literature).

The real key here is that I would like to "prove" that a CASUAL relationship exists (at least in one author) between drugs and genius in literature, rather than having people just assume that only a correlation exists (which doesn't prove cause) or that it's just coincidental, or in the worst case, an exception. Thanks in advance for any help/info. that anyone could provide.

Mods, if this is in the wrong forum, please feel free to move it to where ever you feel is most appropriate...I felt it was most closely related to Drug Culture, but I could always be wrong.
 
sorry... theres nobody home in the brain department :/

maybe a few of our smarter readers will chance by this thread...
 
there is a poet by the name of Charlie Smith who wrote a book called Heroin and Other Poems , i read it a while ago but i don't think it was too bad. he lived out in the country which gave his poems a different perspective. i couldn't find the one i wanted online but here is an example of a poem:

Heroin

I left a message for my editor to send copies of the contracts
to my new agent,
and then I read a passage about how no one talks
about heroin anymore, and the old life came back to me,
it was early yet, I hadn't used heroin for years,
I was one of the few rural junkies in the nation,
one of the few who tended cattle, there I was
nodding on a rock as the cows, stiff with unendurable shyness,
stumbled up to me. My wife and I would eat mashed potatoes
from the pot and lie out on the porch smoking reefer
until it got too dark to see. I bought drugs
from my friend at the railroad repair depot
just off the main line from Norfolk, Indochinese material,
Long Bin—to Guam—to Fort Ord—to VA—then by Mr. Fixit train to me,
traveling in a nylon medic's bag. I never trusted
the supply—like love—it could dwindle,
or simply give way,
the flexed utensil, like one of those measuring sticks
you unfold and lay across a map; anybody could step on it.
I loved the graciousness of heroin, the way everything externalized
and obvious in the daylight opened its shirt and revealed its soft pale breasts.
The world slept curled in its own foolhardiness.
And my wife came over the blankets to me and seemed
not to mind who I was. We inserted words
into spaces in the rain. For years I remembered the words
and whispered them to myself, half thinking I might
conjure her back into the world. They never caught us.
We missed them on the way to Mexico, to Puebla,
where eventually the line gave out. We slept on a bench outside a church.
It was two days before she died without regaining consciousness,
as I say in the memoir they are paying me handsomely for.


or... you could use some of Jim Carroll's diary entries.

also, the playwright Eric Bogosian has some interesting monologues and poetry (i think). check out Drugs, Sex, and Rock and Roll

good luck!
 
Carroll and that other dude are relatively nothings in the scheme of things; they're not geniuses. Hate to burst your bubble, but your paper isn't going to be very long if you only talk about opiates and only talk about poetry. Limit yourself to drugs and writing. Research Jack Kerouac, Jim Morrison (your best bet for poetry and drugs in one package...he was a poet, ignore all the Doors stuff), Sigmund Freud (Uber Coca), the writer of "Blade Runner" (forgot his name), Alduous Huxley, Thomas de Quincey (Confessions of an English Opium Eater), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Kubla Khan was an opium dream), Percy Shelley, Hunter S. Thompson, Ernest Hemingway, and a few others I forgot. Amphetamines, alcohol, opium, cocaine, and LSD are the drugs all those people I mentioned specialized in.
 
Who the fuck was that guy that wrote that poem about Kubla Kahn? Was it called Kubla Kahn? Anyway, it was this fantastical voyage into some crazy land and it apparently all came to him when he was fucked up on opium. Look into it.
 
I don't really care how edgar allan poe died, I just care that he was one of the most brilliant writers of all times
 
The guy who wrote The Seafarer (sp?), that story about the Albatross bird and stuff.. he was an amazing writer addicted to Laudenum (spelling again?) .. an opium and alcohol tincture...
 
william s. burroughs used a wide variety of opiates in his lifetime.. just the first person that came to mind. in the back of my version of naked lunch, he writes a great deal about his various drug use, including which detox methods worked best for him. also short sections on cocaine, barbituates, yage, and cannabis

found an online version of the above-mentioned writing: http://www.lucaspickford.com/burrletters.htm

there's also various references to opiate use and junkies in naked lunch

"Opiates.--Over a period of twelve years I have used opium, smoked and taken orally (injection in the skin causes abscesses. Injection in the vein is unpleasant and perhaps dangerous), heroin injected in skin, vein, muscle, sniffed (when no needle was available), morphine, dilaudid, Pantapon, Eukodol, paracodine, dionine, codeine, Demerol, methadone."
 
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digital_phreedom: It's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Coleridge. It brings tears to my eyes -- a vivid drama of sin and redemption.

Iron Maiden did a heavy-metal version of it, which I also highly recommend :)
 
The writer of Blade Runner is Phillip K. Dick, but the book is titled "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" He has some excellent drug fueled as well as drug related writing, my favorite is A Scanner Darkly.

What divides a genius from a good writer?
 
I mentioned Coleridge before. Yeah, Phillip Dick. That man was fucking crazy, he stayed up for months at a time on amphetamines.
 
yeah Coleridge. I misspelled it. He's the same guy that did Kubla Kahn. Sounds like a winner to me.
 
All the beat writers, Bukowski, Ginsberg, Burroughs.....to name a few....my god there are SO MANY!!!!! lemme get back to you when ive sorted my brain out.
PS. CHeck out this book. Its AWEZOME
road_of_excess.jpg
 
One of my fave pothead writers is Gertrude Stein. She used to stay up in the teens, twenties, and thirties, smashed on hashish writing all this weird repetitive stuff, and her wife, Alice B. Toklas would type the stuff out. Tender Buttons is probably my favourite text by her.

I also think Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to be pretty amazing at getting reality slippages into language. Much better than I thought it would be. And way better than the movie.

Canadian poet bill bissett was very influenced by Stein and Kerouac, and his work is littered with pot, acid, MDA references, and captures the free fall of thought.

Although not a drug user as far as I know, Emily Dickinson is great to read high.

Dope_User, have you looked at Sadie Plant's book on drugs and literature? http://www.csp.org/chrestomathy/writings_on_drugs.html

I reread William Burrough's Naked Lunch about a year ago, and found it really did match with contemporary events and the yage experience.

Walter Benjamin's experiments with hashish are wonderful to read about. http://www.wbenjamin.org/protocol1.html
 
Don't forget leary! A crazy bastard, that he was. Still had some interesting literature.
 
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