Why, In Order To Be A Writer, D'You Need To Be Drunk, Stoned Or Crazy?

[Seil]

Hemmingway, Marquis De Sade, Allen F***ing Ginsberg!

Drunken, crazy layabouts, and they churn out (questionably) brilliant works! Even Leonard Cohen dropped off the map for a couple 'a years and sampled Budhism and toured Europe and did the "Bohemian" thing. Why are the crazy people the most (arguably) brilliant ones?

[Jagos]

The best intuitions usually come when you're high or you're that far in left field.

See also, Gospel of Mark.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Originally Posted by Jagos

See also, Gospel of Mark.

Huh?

[Azisien]

This seems like a really easy question to answer even on the Seil Spectrum of questions. You've been drunk before, haven't you Seil? You think about wacky shit when you're high, at least on anything I've ever been high on. The smartest of us just see fit to actually write it down and make it coherent in the morning.

[Jagos]

Originally Posted by Smarty McBarrelpants

Huh?

Not to get too religious, but you have talking bushes, snakes to staffs, etc. That's some of the greatest fiction I've ever seen in a book.

[Amake]

You don't need to get high, it's just easier that way. Grant Morrison compared it to doping, which athletes tend to use in order to reach the maximal potential of their bodies, faster than they would otherwise but with debilitating long-term effects.

He also went on to point out writers aren't competing like sportsmen do, and doping yourself up therefore is much more morally defensible.

Meanwhile I haven't written anything in three days, and I also haven't had any caffeine in that time.

[Seil]

You've been drunk before, haven't you Seil?

No.

But I manage to think of wacky shit when I'm sober. Then I get drunk and the juices flow. Also I become good at writing.

[Seil]

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,
who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,
who passed through universities with radiant eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,
who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,
who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,
who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night
with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls...

.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

It's a trend among creative types in general. Best reasons I can think of:

*You're more likely to have ideas and do things that no one else thought to before, but as a result you have trouble relating those ideas or the thought processes that lead to them to anyone who isn't also a creative type, so you get stereotyped as crazy or some other outsider by the general public.

*A lot of artists might have been drawn to art to escape something traumatic in their pasts or to instruct others about tragedy in an effort to get them to do something about it. On the side, they might indulge in other common avenues of escape, including drugs and alcohol. Can't be that bad if it makes the bad feelings go away, plus the altered mental states might give you inspiration for your next work.

Keep in mind I'm typing this just after I woke up and haven't had my coffee yet, so if it sounds like a load of bull it probably is.

[Magus]

Those three are quite arguable as to their quality, though their impact on culture is undoubtedly high. I'm not a big fan of any of them. Also even if we consider them "brilliant", you cited three cases out of hundred of authors/poets who are also "brilliant" without being known for their alcoholism or drug use.

EDIT: Also is the Marquis de Sade supposed to be your "crazy" one, because from what I've read his "sadistic" tendencies were actually just consensual BDSM fetish shenanigans with numerous women. Quite radical for the time which is why he was given such a sinister reputation, but actually not really that out there by today's standards. He was more of a hedonist than a psychopath if I remember correctly.