Have drugs ever enhanced your creativity as a songwriter or player ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter grimtraveller
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grimtraveller

grimtraveller

If only for a moment.....
Notwithstanding any harmful effects, do you feel any drug ever has ? I don't mean this as a general question initially, I mean it specifically to you.
And would you ever actually recommend drugs of any description ?
 
Nope and nope.

Edit: I take back the 2nd Nope. I'll recommend a cold beer. Alcohol is a drug, but legal for adults in most locales. As for writing songs under the influence, I hav found that i cannot create anything I would be interested in listening to the following day.
 
Chili said:
Nope and nope.

Edit: I take back the 2nd Nope. I'll recommend a cold beer. Alcohol is a drug, but legal for adults in most locales. As for writing songs under the influence, I hav found that i cannot create anything I would be interested in listening to the following day.
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I tried once to drink a few beers before recording to try and loosen up, thought it would help. Well, I got loose alright, sounded like crap (I do mean a 2-3 beers). I use to think I was more creative if I hit on a joint, I didn't, I just got weird (long time ago and maybe weirder is the right term).

For me, clearheaded and focused is the best way to compose and record. I can't even half butt play once I start drinking.
 
Well, not really for composing, but I have been enhanced to the point where my fingers pretty much played by themselves and all I had to do was watching them go. This allowed me to really get into the stage show part of the deal. I'm pretty sure that specific show would have been worse without them (not the fingers) as we played stuff that I don't normally play.
 
gasbag said:
I am screwed up enough in my natural state and you want me to take drugs. I'll pass.
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No one asked anyone to take drugs, the question was, "have you and do they help?" Looks like the trend is, no they don't help.
 
The singer in one of my bands went thru a Jim Morrison phase. He dropped some acid at the start of a gig( I found this out later) , he was acting kinda strange but all in all did good until the end of the gig. During the last song he suddenly threw his guitar and mic down and bolted off the stage ran thru the club and bolted out the back door, people were like what the fuck, at first a few got up to see where/what he was doing, as we finished practically everyone was bum rushing the back door, once I fought my way thru the crowd to get outside I saw him running on top of every parked car in the lot!! Car alarms were going off people were screaming, and a few people were giving chase. After going back and forth across car hoods probably 6 times , he jumped off ran like hell and then jumped into a dumpster!! We finally got him out and put him in a car and got him the fuck outta there.

That gig ranks #1 as the most bizzare ever, and I have about 5 total and they all are because drugs or alcohol.

Drugs are bad mmmkay!
 
I have found A little bit of alcohol during a show can calm the nerves and help with focus. Too much can be a disaster. I have friends who have written songs based off experiences with drugs but not while under the influence of them.
 
I've never actually even tried a drug (no pot, no mollys, or any of the "harder" stuff).
I'll be honest - it's not something I can ever remember consciously deciding, I've just never felt like it.

As time went on though I started seeing how many of my musician friends relied on drugs/alcohol for their "creative inspiration". One friend in particular said "something about weed just makes writing so much better". I disagree - I heard plenty of his stuff pre and post drugs and it all sounded the same to me. I just think it changed his personal perception of it.

I'm a big fan of the band Tool. And I absolutely hate the fact that it's impossible to go on a youtube video for one of their songs and not see a drug comment. Usually something about how "listen to this high. it will change your life", "I don't think you can really understand this music unless you can open your mind with [drug] and really explore it uninhibited"

lolwut?
I just need music to make me "explore" and "lose myself".
Relying on anything else cheapens the music in my eyes.

But yeah they've never appealed to me and I don't anticipate trying drugs in the future (smoke grosses me out, I don't want to snort anything, needles?!?!?!, and I can't even take advil PM without feeling weird).
 
A slight sidetrack; In the book "Here, there and everywhere", Steve Spignesi and Michael Lewis made a very poignant observation about George Harrison's LSD songs ~ none of them produced anything joyous and happy. They were heavy and moody and left the distinct impression that drug enlightenment came at quite a cost to his mental demeanour. One gets the impression that acid left a sourpuss even more sour !

As far as I recall, I've only ever written two or three songs under the influence because whether with marijuana, hash, acid, mushrooms, coke or amyl nitrate, the last thing I ever wanted to do.....was anything ! I was more inclined to read or in particular, listen to music {Pink Floyds' "Echoes" being a particular fave}.
Yet at the same time, I'd be naive if I said that being in a drug enhanced mode of life for four or five years, at the very same time I was writing songs, had no effect. My mind was certainly opened up to take on board ideas and sounds that I might otherwise not have.
By the same token, I have spent infinitely more years {both before and after} not in a drug enhanced mode of being and have embraced many ideas and sounds that I might not have, once in my life. It's hard to say exactly what was down to drugs, what was down to age, what was down to circumstance and what was down to straightforward liking.
I never tried drugs to make me a songwriter or see God or be the key to life's meaning. It was curiosity, pure and simple, followed by a liking for, followed by the realization I'd reached the end of that particular road.
It's not hypocritical to say that I wouldn't recommend the use of drugs to enhance creativity but neither do I pretend it can't because the weight of evidence to the contrary is just too, well, weighty.
 
Senator, I have no clear memory of that. But in a word, yes. You can't play till you tune up.
 
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