Creativity is my New Favorite Drug

We wonder, how can we emulate the ecstasy that certain drugs make us feel? Are we restrained by the time limit of certain drugs? Can we only experience true creativity and mental integration when tripping on magic mushrooms or are we restricted to the bliss cocaine makes us feel during the 30 minute long high period? We, as humans, are attracted to these measures because they recreate something we have always wanted all our lives — austerity.

For one time period, life is simple. Life is so complicated when sober. It becomes a grueling, horrid task to wake up each morning and escape from your dream state, full of simplicity, conclusions and control. Drugs are simple, especially cocaine; it jumpstarts your dopamine reward system, and provides you with something you’ve wanted all your life — answers to why you’ve been feeling so unfulfilled the entire time you’ve been on this planet.

Drugs are a forced state of the abandonment of the mind. It’s like a cheat code for the brain, or at least that’s what it feels like. It feels like we can bypass all the hard work it takes to reach the enlightenment that comes alongside creativity. 

I remember I used to think I was only a good writer when I was on cocaine. What Sigmund Freud had to say about cocaine was “You perceive an increase of self-control and possess more vitality and capacity for work. In other words, you are simply normal, and it is soon hard to believe you are under the influence of any drug. Long intensive physical work is performed without any fatigue.” He’s not wrong; cocaine is magical in the sense that it makes you feel superior than human. It makes you feel stronger, makes thoughts flow easier and makes words easier to construe together. I was really onto something when I thought cocaine enhanced the experience of writing.

But I would like to tie it back to this specific Bojack Horseman episode, where him, Todd and Sarah Lynn get high on cocaine and write his autobiography, which turned out to all be gibberish. And that’s exactly the point I’m trying to make: cocaine makes you feel like you’re stronger and you’re more articulate than before. That’s it.

But it’s simply by hacking the dopamine reward system, as I mentioned before. It provides you with endless reward, telling you that every word you are writing is the best one you’ve written. It gives you no self-awareness, which is the benefit of the sober mind. It only provides action, and in a world that is so dependent on it, that doesn’t seem so bad.

There used to be this song that I loved and the lyrics write: “I do coke so I can work longer, so I can earn more, so I can do more coke.” This sounded genius to me at the time. In our hustle-bustle society, this seems perfect. I remember I used to think if I had an IV of cocaine endlessly in my system, then, and only then, could I accomplish all my goals.

But I am sober now. How have I been able to go on? How have I been able to write without cocaine? I used to think that that was impossible. I used to think my sober writings were boring, because there was no story attached to them.

It’s funny, because the very thing that made me think I needed coke was also the thing that made me realize I didn’t need coke at all, and in fact, it was holding me back.

When I was in active addiction, I could only remember the good parts of my drug use, and I ignorantly forgot all the bad parts. I remembered that I could only write when I was on coke (only because I had fried my brain chemistry so much), but forgot I could only write a mere few words. Because doing coke alone is boring. For someone who hated being alone with her own thoughts, cocaine made them run free. That should’ve scared me away from needing it as much as I did, but I couldn’t connect the dots. I only saw the perspective of how I couldn’t write when I was sober, and could only find the will when I was on cocaine.

And just like Bojack, my writings were pure gibberish, uninteresting and lacked creativity. It was because I suppressed everything I felt, so I had nothing truly to write about. I would only write about how I wanted to forget everything I kept remembering on cocaine. I never could see the cycle that cocaine was putting me through; no, instead I loved tiring myself out on the hamster wheel.

Would you believe me if I told you that there’s a way to want to live in the world without the excitement that comes from drugs? Would you believe me if I told you I found a way to write more happily than I was when I was high? 

My writings plainly sucked because I lacked what Krishnamurti puts it as “abandonment.” He defines this as “the sense of not being held, of no restraint, no defense, no resistance.” And I couldn’t write well because I was allowing my creativity to be restrained, to be reliant on something. 

Creativity is not induced in a state of drugs and it never can be. The only reason why people come to conclusions on such drugs is because it is the only time they can ever spend by themselves. Every other moment of the day not on drugs is an attempt to escape themselves.

Krishnamurti says that inward beauty is the key to creativity, and can only be attained “when you feel real love for people and for all the things of this earth.” And, funny enough, you yourself are a part of this earth. As long as you hate yourself, you can never unlock your full potential, your full capacity of creativity and you can never love another being. You can read and know everything there is to know about writing, but “without this creative beauty inside, your talent will have little significance.”

We tend to overcomplicate things. We tend to create more problems for ourselves than is necessary. Sometimes, we create pain so that we have an excuse to take a pain-relieving substance. Krishnamurti says “we can thus abandon ourselves only when there is austerity, a sense of great inward simplicity.”

Creativeness is the beauty in life that you are so desperately seeking.

I bet you might ask about the Grateful Dead, and how they created such beautiful music by tripping on acid, or peyote, or mushrooms. You must think I am so stupid, that drugs can elevate creativity. 

But if you ask any member of the Grateful Dead, they will say the same thing. They will say their fans are all misled, that their band was never dependent on the drugs while everyone else seems to believe so. Drugs are a shortcut, but most of the hard work was generated sober. If you need a drug to enjoy a band, think, maybe they aren’t that good.

The thing I do when I want to use again is write, when that was the thing I would lean towards whenever I was on a substance. And that is because creativity is a drug. Drugs, at least for me, were the first time that time flew and I wasn’t impatiently waiting for the day to end, watching the hands on the clock tick. Actually that’s not true; it was the third time. The first time was when I found out how much I loved writing. And the second time was when I found out how much I enjoyed researching neuroscience.

Creativity is simple, yet drugs overcomplicate it. It makes it feels like creativity is a threshold one has to achieve, when it’s as simple as putting a pen to paper and letting something flow out of you. 

Hemingway stated that “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

Creativity is like catching the beauty of the world in a butterfly net and making it your own. We were born into a world that is not our own, we were born into a body that is not our own, but our actions are what are our own. And we can choose if we want to spend our precious acts being wasted and reliant on something to carry us through the next day, or developing a habit that will be there for you when nothing else is.

Krishnamurti says “You can be creative only when there is abandonment — which means, really, when there is no sense of compulsion, no fear of not being, of not gaining, of not arriving. Then there is great austerity, simplicity, and with it is love.”

Once I realized I loved myself, I realized how much I loved writing. And with loving something, comes hating it as well. Hatred can only sprout from the seed that was previously love, but they can interchange at will. When I am in a writing stump, I hate writing more than anything in the whole world, but I only have hated it because I love it so much.

I was in the depths of my creativity when I was using drugs, when they are said to create creativity. Even the neuroscience of psychedelics suggest that they cause the neural pathways of the brain to be more interconnected than before and thus, provide more conclusions and ideas! 

But, creativity does all that and more. It leads to hyper connectivity, cognitive disinhibition and an increase in cognitive flexibility, and it does all of that sober.

I used to be so interested in the impacts of drugs on the brain, but I find I am more interested now in what the human brain is capable of without the injection of other substances, what it is able to do all by itself. 

I urge you to meditate 5 minutes every day, and see how creative you truly are. You are just being stuffed with stimuli — either on social media, or with drugs, or with other things. Creativity is creating something nobody has ever seen before. 

Creativity is making the world’s beauty your own. We shouldn’t be afraid of the sober brain — we should be in awe of it. I find it’s more interesting how specific breath work exercises or specific contemplative or concentration meditation practices lead to similar psychedelic sensations as those seen in psychedelic drugs. 

The human brain is my favorite drug, and I am going to get high on it.