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

  • Thread starter Thread starter grimtraveller
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JG96 said:
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.
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This. I like having a beer or two before I play a show, but nothing more than that. I hardly do drugs to begin with (I smoke weed maybe two or three times a year, did mushrooms once), but your perception of music changes, so it's easy to have an idea when you're high that you'll hate sober. There's definitely been music I listened to and enjoyed when I smoked regularly (2-3 times a week) that I ended up hating when I wasn't high/hadn't been for some time.
 
Strange Fires said:
There's definitely been music I listened to and enjoyed when I smoked regularly that I ended up hating when I wasn't high/hadn't been for some time.
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That I find fascinating. That's never happened to me. The stuff I liked straight, I liked when I was roaming the universe and vice versa. It's a bit like my dreams in that I never behave in my dreams in a way I wouldn't when awake. I don't fight lions in my dreams, I run !
 
After a heavy weekend of MDMA and ketamine, I once found myself very motivated to do a recording. I already had the arrangement done in my head (was a cover), but I'd been avoiding getting down to work on it for ages. After that weekend (when I should really have been in bed feeling sorry for myself), I suddenly felt confident in it and focussed on the job and got it done in a day (I was and am still such a noob, so that's a good work-rate for me). I've read before about anti-depressant qualities of ketamine, so I guess that might have pulled me out of my usual state of apathy.
 
Acid makes any DAW confusing to the point of evil mindfuck.
 
Given that I spent close to 3 decades high on pot every day (other than time spent at my day job) - I did compose often while high. In retrospect, it did not enhance or improve my creativity - it was simply a constant state of mind. As Grim points out, if anything it simply compromised the potential quantity of writing, simply because being high did not lend itself to being overly productive.

During the last 2 decades (when I no longer have partaken of drink or drugs) I've become a much more focused, articulate and prolific writer - which I do believe is in large part because I'm more motivated since I'm not contantly high. I do beleive the quality of my writing has improved significantly in the last 20 "drug free" years - which in part may be because I likely accepted more mediocrity when I was high - but I suspect the improvement in quality is mostly the result of simply learning to be a better writer through more years of experiance.
 
As a teen, I would come home completely out of my head on some combination of stuff, write full opuses until 4 in the morning, then when I woke up later have no recollection of the songs. I'd look at the scribbled lyrics and not have any idea what they were supposed to be.
 
mjbphotos said:
As a teen, I would come home completely out of my head on some combination of stuff, write full opuses until 4 in the morning, then when I woke up later have no recollection of the songs. I'd look at the scribbled lyrics and not have any idea what they were supposed to be.
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Had those too. Some said something like "dah-dah-dah--dadadun-daaaaah---duhduhduh-daaaah!". Really.
 
DM60 said:
Is he Norvagan or really Jarman? The plot thickens.
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The plot may thicken, but I suspect my head is already thick as a pigs face! What the hell do you mean? Are you implying that I might in fact be german?
 
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