• DPMC Moderators: thegreenhand | tryptakid
  • Drug Policy & Media Coverage Welcome Guest
    View threads about
    Posting Rules Bluelight Rules
    Drug Busts Megathread Video Megathread

17 Geniuses Who Used Drugs To Inspire Their Best Work

Jabberwocky

Frumious Bandersnatch
Joined
Nov 3, 1999
Messages
84,998
1. Steve Jobs: LSD.
Drugs-Celebrities-EMGN1.jpg


Jobs credits a lot of his innovative talents to experimenting with LSD at a younger age. He says his forays into LSD use was “one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life.”



2. Sigmund Freud: Cocaine.
Drugs-Celebrities-EMGN2.jpg


Freud was an advocate of using controlled doses of cocaine regularly. Of the drug, he says: “If all goes well, I will write an essay and I expect it will win its place in therapeutics by the side of morphine and superior to it…I take very small doses of it regularly against depression and with the most brilliant of success.”



3. Bill Gates: LSD.
Drugs-Celebrities-EMGN3.jpg


Back in those days, even the brightest minds experimented. Bill Gates has said, of his drug use: “There were things I did under the age of 25 that I ended up not doing subsequently.”

4. Carl Sagan: Marijuana.
Drugs-Celebrities-EMGN4.jpeg


Pioneering astrophysicist Carl Sagan openly discussed his smoking habits, and made cases for the medical legalization of the drug. He once wrote an essay called Marijuana Reconsidered, where he talked about the benefits of the drug.



5. Richard Feynman: LSD, marijuana and Ketamine.
Drugs-Celebrities-EMGN5.jpg


Feynman dabbled in different drugs, but stopped using when he feared he was getting addicted. He once wrote that he got “such fun out of thinking that I don’t want to destroy this most pleasant machine that makes life such a big kick.”


6. Francis Crick: LSD.
Drugs-Celebrities-EMGN6.jpg


Ever wondered whether acid played a role in the discovered of the double helix? Crick, while working with Watson and Franklin on their DNA structure experiments, took LSD.

7. Thomas Edison: Cocaine.
Drugs-Celebrities-EMGN7.jpeg


This American inventor used the cocaine of the day – Bordeaux wine laced with coca leaves, a plant that’s the main ingredient in cocaine.



8. John C. Lilly: LSD and Ketamine.
Drugs-Celebrities-EMGN8.jpg


Lilly’s work with electrical brain stimulation was absolutely groundbreaking, and some of that might be due to his experiments with LSD and Ketamine.


9. Paul Erdos: Amphetamines.
Drugs-Celebrities-EMGN9.jpeg


This eccentric mathematician made outstanding contributions to the field in the 20th century, and it seems like his amphetamines had a lot to do with it. He was once challenged by a friend to go clean for month – he won the bet, but couldn’t do any math during that time.

10. Friedrich Nietzsche: Opium.
Drugs-Celebrities-EMGN10.jpg


He’s one of the most celebrated philosophers of his time, but the German’s notions were perhaps influenced by drugs. He wrote The Genealogy of Mortals during a two-week opium binge.


11. Pablo Picasso: Opium, morphine and hashish.
Drugs-Celebrities-EMGN11.jpg


He’s easily one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, but some critics, and some fans, believe that cubism was a result of some psychotropic drugs. Sure, we know Pablo used, but would he still have produced cubism without it? No one knows.



12. Dr. William Stewart Halsted: Cocaine.
Drugs-Celebrities-EMGN12.jpeg


This pioneering doctor is credited with inventing the mastectomy, a procedure that’s now saved countless lives. Cocaine played a large part in his career: he sued it both as an anaesthetic for his patients and as a recreational drug for himself.

13. Howard Hughes: Codeine and Valium.
Drugs-Celebrities-EMGN13.jpeg


Howard Hughes was a pioneering aviator and film director. He found that Codeine and Valium helped him pack a whole lot of achievements into one lifetime.

14. Aldous Huxley.
genius-drugs-emgn-1.jpg


The great novelist and screenwriter Aldous Huxley wrote a masterpiece in Brave New World but sought and failed to find continued inspiration from religion. After trying many belief systems, Huxley turned to drugs as a means of cultivating a personal philosophy. During this time period he wrote The Doors of Perception.



15. Ralph Steadman: LSD.
genius-drugs-emgn-2.jpg


Steadman was the illustrator behind the works of Hunter S. Thompson. Anyone who knows anything about Thompson probably realizes that if you were around him long enough, you were going to take drugs. Steadman’s first experience with drug use came after he asked the famous Gonzo writer for something to battle sea sickness – Thompson gave Steadman LSD.

16. The Beatles: LSD.
genius-drugs-emgn-3.jpg


After experiencing LSD, George Harrison and John Lennon said that they just couldn’t relate to Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr anymore because they had never taken the drug. The clean cut boys from Liverpool all eventually got a ticket to ride the LSD train and they also credited the drug for allowing their creativity to evolve into the late 60s and beyond.



17. Alejandro Jodorowsky: LSD.
genius-drugs-emgn-4.jpg


Jodorowsky explains he only took LSD one time, which was in between the directors two biggest films: El Topo and The Holy Mountain. The director states that he brought a guru with him to administer the drug: “He gave me LSD, and I was initiated for eight hours. And this was an incredible resource; directed by the guru, I discovered images of my mind there, I discovered treasures inside me. That was a big revolution, I must say.”


Source: http://emgn.com/entertainment/17-geniuses-used-drugs-inspire-best-work/
 
LOL maybe this explains my love for LSD and Ketamine... Someday maybe ill be on this list and it will simply say "All" prior to the development of RCs (this is a joke not meant to be taken as dick sizing or for real)
 
Its cool to see Paul Erdos (air-dish) on the list even though he didn't want anyone to know about his drug use. I believe he thought kids might get the idea that drugs could help them become more intelligent. If you're not familiar with Erdos he's an interesting character. A mathematical savant who didn't believe in god but believed in "The Book". There is a supreme being out there, the S.F, (supreme fascist) who is withholding the most elegant mathematical proofs in the universe.

Even if you're not a mathematician there is a way to strike back at the S.F...

The game with the SF is defined as follows:
- If you do something bad the SF gets at least two points.
- If you don't do something good which you could have done, the SF gets at least one point.
- And if nothing — if you are okay, then no one gets any point.
- The S.F always wins, the aim of the game is to keep the SF's score low.



 
Last edited:
Hmmm I notice I'm not on that list for some reason...lol

Cool post, lsd is truly something amazing.

lol

i wonder why hunter s thompson and those drunk writers like hemmingway etc weren't included. these men were noted for being drinkers iirc
 
I can just imagine Sigmund Freud stumbling around on blow, ranting about psychoanalysis while a fat stogie hangs out of his mouth, etc
 
I can just imagine Sigmund Freud stumbling around on blow, ranting about psychoanalysis while a fat stogie hangs out of his mouth, etc

This made me giggle.

You have to give it to these gents though. They were sophisticated drug users who knew their limits.
 
Erdos did most of his best work long before he started using amphetamines. I would have added Jean-Paul Sartre to the list, I read he was using amphetamines often as he got older.
 
Hmm...i always find flaws in these kinds of articles.
From what i'd read of Ralph Steadman's experience with LSD, it was nightmarish and he hated it. Not to mention that he was already working with Hunter Thompson, and had developed his artistic style prior to tripping.

Also, the Beatles took all kinds of drugs. Acid is the obvious and famous one, but Preludin/phenmetrazine and cannabis had already greatly influenced their music.
Nice bit of clickbait, but could do with a fact-check IMO. :)
 
Not really a "genius" IMO but JFK liked to tweak hard ;)

President McKinley also liked that cocaine wine mentioned in regards to Edison, as did one of the popes of that time. William Halsted was also a morphine addict.
 
Halstead is probably the most notable person in that list in my opinion - and his inclusion does more to demonstrate that drug users can contribute a hell of a lot to society, rather than some tenuous link being drawn between their drug-induced revelations and achievements (as it is with people like Gates and Jobs - or Nietzsche).
 
I think it is true that lsd and marijuana were mainly responsible for the majority of 'good music' from 1965-1975. I remembering reading this quote from Steve Jobs regarding Bill Gates:
Steve Jobs said:
“He’d be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger,”

This one is even better considering the irony..

Steve Jobs said:
He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.
 
Fun Fact: Nietzsche wrote his own prescriptions to obtain drugs using his title "Doctor" Nietzsche. He had a PhD in philology (a non medical degree).

I think the Crick thing was debunked as a Daily Mail hoax. He didn't take LSD until after discovering the double helix.
 
^ i think you might be right about that.
(The Crick thing).
That Nietzsche - what a prankster!
 
Seems like a lazy inclusion because of some vicarious link to the "drug culture" via Thompson.
Says more about Hunter than Steadman - but calling HST a "genius" would be a stretch - except perhaps if it were prefaced with "mad".
 
HST a genius? I'm not entirely sure. But boy was he able to filter what he saw into words like none other. But that's just my opinion, not a fact or anything.
 
Yeah, i think he was an interesting journalist.
An entertaining writer. But i wouldn't go so far as to call him a genius.
 
It would have been interesting to include people like Cary Grant who claim to have cured their alcoholism with LSD when it was being used as a trial drug for that purpose.
But I agree, most of this is just conjecture and grasping at straws.
 
Top