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The Relationship between Drugs and Genius in Literature

Literary genius has little to do with drug use. They wouldn't have written so many wonderful works if they weren't talented in writing to begin with.

More like literary geniuses tend to have outcast personalities with depression and/or mania and that tends to lead to drug use.

I'm sure the original author of this topic has already written their research paper, but that said opiates are too small a field to write about.

Advice: always look for unbiased sources, i.e. not from the authors themselves or their friends.

Sort of an aside: If you look up Bukowskis last book of letters, before he died he wrote that he was finally glad to be off the alcohol and hoped he could stay off !!!

Hunter S. Thompsons shot himself... heavy prolonged drug use never ends in anything but misery.

Well maybe except for William Burroughs but I think he quit the junk habit before he died.
 
holy cow why no write about lecomte ?? and wasnt artaud on morphine quite a lot of the time ? he was certainly a genius!! I know lecomte wouldnt qualify but he lived and died a morphine freak and um .oh yeah ..ME !! I nearly forgot to mention my own brilliant self..though at the time of writing I am NOT hooked on opiates .. knock on wood
 
Junksick; I dissagree that drugs don't help writers out. Just look at Hunter S. Thompson's writing before he delved into serious drug use, and while it's subjective, I beleive that his writing dramatically improved from Hells Angels to Fear and Loathing. (sidenote: Thompson did shoot himself, but I see that as something to respect. He had been told that his bones were to frail to enjoy his favourite past times, so instead of turning into a lame commercialised drugged out tenny bopper idol, he went out like Hemingway, before he became a perversion of himself. Live hard die when you choose. RIP HST)
Also I would look at all the beat writers Kerouac, Ginsberg (Howl, is not acid related he was on benzedrine, pot it is rumoured that he was smoking opium, even though he doesn't mention it), Bukowski and Burroughs. Definitely Huxley, very good opportunityto observe how drugs affected his writing over a period of time. Kesey of course, especially the parts of cuckoo's nest he actually wrote on acid. Heazlett coleridge, eliot, freud etc etc so many possibilities.
 
Dope_User said:
I got an A+ which got me an A for the semester! But then I got high and never picked it up...
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Man, and here I was reading this thread thinking of all kinds of clever suggestions and I come to find out you've already completed the paper.
 
stpbuddhakween said:
lewis carroll
wrote one of the best "kids" stories about drugs and on drugs!
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No. Lewis Carroll was an odd mathematician. He was eccentric yes, but he did no more drugs than victorians did at the time, meaning almost nil and it has been echoed a hundred million times that he was not on any sort of drug when he wrote alice in wonderland. He spun out the tale with a friend to his favourite child "friend" whether or not carroll was a pedophile is a different story--most say he was harmless though.

The reason the story is so "trippy" is because one it's a fairy tale and two a lot of it is math problems explained through story, songs, and poems. Sorry but it pisses me off, people should know by now they didn't even have LSD during Carrolls time.


Originally posted by eltoro
Junksick; I dissagree that drugs don't help writers out.
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Never said it didn't help them out. I was saying that if they didn't have literary talent in the first place the drugs wouldn't have helped them--I think it zaps their energy into a short outpouring of brilliance which will eventually fizzle out as they get older. If they hadn't used drugs they would probably write more consistently till old age, but probably not have anything as good as they could have done on drugs.

Kudos on the original poster getting an A.
 
JTMarlin said:
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.
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I would say Jim Morrison was more specialized in Mescaline and Alcohol more than anything. He even did Datura, but only once. The first 2 i mentioned were his prime outlets.

EDIT - back in highschool, in 9th grade, we had to dress up as an author and act out what they were like...i chose Jim Morrison. It's fucking hilarious thinking back on that now...i just acted really stoned and permafried. blhhaha
 
junksick said:

Never said it didn't help them out. I was saying that if they didn't have literary talent in the first place the drugs wouldn't have helped them--I think it zaps their energy into a short outpouring of brilliance which will eventually fizzle out as they get older. If they hadn't used drugs they would probably write more consistently till old age, but probably not have anything as good as they could have done on drugs.

Kudos on the original poster getting an A.
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I completely agree, drugs are like turbo boosters for writers, it gives them a burst of energy, exitement and brilliance, which they must pay for in old age, why HST took himself out.
 
in my opinion, drugs have no place in writing. Drug-induced lucidity is all too temporary, and the creativity is false. If you can't write, you're not going to be much better under the influence.
 
junksick said:
No. Lewis Carroll was an odd mathematician. He was eccentric yes, but he did no more drugs than victorians did at the time, meaning almost nil and it has been echoed a hundred million times that he was not on any sort of drug when he wrote alice in wonderland. He spun out the tale with a friend to his favourite child "friend" whether or not carroll was a pedophile is a different story--most say he was harmless though.

The reason the story is so "trippy" is because one it's a fairy tale and two a lot of it is math problems explained through story, songs, and poems. Sorry but it pisses me off, people should know by now they didn't even have LSD during Carrolls time.

\
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Yes, but Carroll is rumored to have used amantia muscaria mushrooms. If you look at the picture with the caterpillar smoking the hookah and compare that to a fly agaric mushroom.......
 
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