Can an Aspie's creative writing be assisted by drug use?

Post Reply New Topic

I have AS. For some years I’ve attempted creative writing, but it has always been a struggle. By nature I’m an uptight person. Uptightness and creativity don’t go together. I don’t drink. I wondered whether unwinding with the use of pot might help my creativity.

Thoughts?

Honestly the only thing I've ever seen anyone high on pot write is utter crap they thought was deep and profound at the time, and only realized when they sobered up that it was utter crap.

I don't believe those who are uptight are any less creative than those who are more laid back. Exactly what aspects of creative writing are you struggling with?

Story ideas?
Prose?
Character development?
Cohesiveness?
All of the above?

I think most people who write do so as the effect of a cause. The cause being an idea of something to write about, and generally don't sit down to write, without an idea.

The only time I've seen people sit down to write when they have nothing particular in mind, is when they are forced to do so because of an assignment or contractual obligation.

I recently read a book by a well known author who is quite talented, and I could tell he only wrote it to fulfil a contractual obligation because it was an uncreative, directionless piece of crap and paled in comparison to most of his other books.

It had a good beginning, a mediocre ending, and nothing in the middle that justified cutting down so many trees to make the pages the ink was printed on.

Yeah, well. There are a lot of situations when an aspie can gain from a little reduction of tension. If a little pot doesn't trigger allergies or other no-nos for you, it can't hurt the "I don't know how to express this" cycle.

Just gather random facts already in your head and merge them all together in an unordered manner. My son got praised for improving his creative writing but when I read it later I worked out that's all he did. The teachers had no idea.

Writers and artists have been using mind-altering substances to try and "improve" their creativity for thousands of years. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't. But you still have to get your commas and stuff in the right places, however creative you might be.

I should probably point out that I'm basically anti-drug across the board, so there you go.

Have you tried something like meditation? Drugs aren't the only way to achieve altered states of consciousness, you know.

Yes. That is exactly what a professor at art school told our class many years ago, and I think he is right. He was referring to art rather than writing, but it applies in either case.

I don't use any illegal drugs, but I have to say I have found that alcohol in moderate amounts can help with the tone of my writing, when I want it to have a kind of urgent edge. But then it needs to be cleaned up later,of course.

Unfortunately, Salvia Divinorum (a plant that's more potent than LSD) is illegal in Australia, although you can order it online from a few stores overseas if they're willing to ship.

There's LSA (a "semi-legal" ergot alkaloid) which you can get in Hawaiian Baby Woodrose or Morning Glory seeds, but you'll have to make sure that the seeds you buy are organic and not coated in pesticides, and you'll have to eat a lot of them...

There's Mescaline (another hallucinogen) which in pure form is illegal, but you can buy Cacti that have it if you're lucky to see a gardening store that sells it. The Cacti you'll have to look for are specifically San Pedro or Peyote. You'll have to eat a lot of cacti though and it'll taste very bitter.

There's also Diphenhydramine which is a drowzy antihistamine, but it has deliriant properties at 150+ mg so you can hear voices and see things which don't exist in reality. However, there's a risk of muscular pain and dangerously high blood pressure.

I occasionally use weed to help my migraines. I'm also a (non AS) writer, and I'll attest to the fact that it's absolutely garbage for helping with any sort of productive activity. It's also worth noting that weed affects people differently, and can vary depending on the type of weed and what's going on with your chemicals that particular day. I dated a guy with bipolar, and he'd get downright giddy. I generally get the typical mellow effect, with occasional unpleasant dizziness or generalized anxiety.

I think most rock music was written under the influence back in the 60s and 70s. I would think you could use drugs to help stretch your mind and look into places that you normally don't tread because of conscious inhibition. That would okay for generating the idea, but I doubt you could write anything coherent while under the influence. I don't do drugs. The few times I used pot, it just made me giggly and unproductive. The hallucinogens would likely make you an addict and put you in the gutter, instead of opening new creative vistas. You are probably better off using some form of deep meditation technique.

MarchHare posted: I have AS. For some years I’ve attempted creative writing, but it has always been a struggle. By nature I’m an uptight person. Uptightness and creativity don’t go together. I don’t drink. I wondered whether unwinding with the use of pot might help my creativity. Thoughts?
---
Personally I do not subscribe to the idea of trying drugs to increase creativity. At the same time, there are instances of persons who have used drugs like LSD who have produced occasional pieces of creative writing. Also, there are occasional reports of persons with ADHD finding that the right central nervous system stimulant - alerting agent - for them somehow temporarily improved small aspects of their writing (not a cure). My personal belief is that a few persons are given natural gifts for creative writing and they are persons who do well with creative writing. Technically creativity is often associated with access to the right hemisphere of the brain. I think that if someone is born with Asperger's or something like it and creativity does not come easily that that is the deck of cards they have been given to work with. A few may be able to read creative works by various authors and try to mimic/do a logical variation on those writings but natural creativity is more of an effortless unfolding of ideas than a calculated rewriting (my view). For some persons, the skill known as the use of imagination is slightly inaccessible or slightly impaired and there really is no quick fix at all for such a challenge. Practice, repeated practice, can help a little here and there but practice simply will not open up the large box of robust imagination if it's not there to begin with.

I knew a man who wrote a number of novels stoned on weed. He said it was the only way he could write. I have never tried to write while I was high and I'm sure everyone is different.

Have you ever thought of guided meditation that stimulates your brain in a way that increases creativity. I believe The Monroe Institue has CD's that do that.

The more I write the better I become at expressing myself with words. Maybe simply doing that will also help you.

I doubt it. If creative writing isn't your thing, I don't know if pot would help. Like someone else said, sometimes when people use drugs to get their creativity flowing, they sober up and realize what they made was crap. I know it helps some writers. I know George Carlin said that he'd occasionally smoke a joint to help get ideas flowing. I guess it works for some and doesn't for others. But if you don't have talent for it in the first place, then drugs can only help so much.

I wouldn't ever recommend anyone take drugs. I've done quite a lot myself, I used to be a very prolific writer but since doing them I can't focus enough to write anything more than a couple of pages, so I'd say they definitely had a negative impact on me. But everyone reacts differently. What you need to do is weigh up the pros and cons, to see if it's worth it. the pros I guess would be the possibility that it'll have a positive effect on your creativity and that it might help you to relax. The cons are that it's illegal, so you do run the risk of getting arrested if caught, it might have a negative effect on your creativity and you might not react well to it, or even become hooked on it. There's also the chance that it might work in the short-term but in the long-term be detrimental.

My advice would be not to try it, but if you decide that you want to, make sure you do it somewhere you feel comfortable and with someone who has done it before and who you trust, so if anything does go wrong there's someone there to help.

It probably depends too on what kind of creative writing you're going for. Ernest Hemmingway and Hunter S. Thompson were both creative writers, but with different topical content. Personally, my tastes lead me toward the pro-drug stance. But I strongly recommend staying away from the addictive stuff. Pot, hallucinogens such as LSD, shrooms, salvia are safe and harmless, but I have plenty of friends and family who have ruined thier lives using stuff like pain pills, coke, heroin, even alcohol. Creatively, I think there is something to be gained from moderate use, but it is easy to fall into doing it repeatedly just because it feels good.

To those that are strongly anti-drug, I say this:
Without temptation, one canot learn self control, only self-limitation.
It is hard to resist doing something that you know for fact feels good.
It is easy to resist doing something if you convince yourself that it is the devil.
It's ok to smoke a joint once in a while, it is not ok to smoke all the time and let it define who you are. Allowing a substance to be the defining characteristic of who you are is the real mark of addiction.

The stimulating effects of weed are responsible for the good grades and social success I experienced in grad school. I find that it makes my mind work in a more "NT" manner, in that I find that reading social cues, or inferences in speech and written word, are easier when high. Feels like it creates "connections" between ideas in my brain that are not naturally there.

Weed has also saved me from the insomnia and nausea/vomiting/weight loss associated with my prescribed medication.

My late husband used weed to help with his nausea and stimulate his appetite the last four years of his life. When I was back in Arizona, I used it every evening to help me sleep and it did. I don't use it here in Virginia because I have to do random drug tests. I don't use any drugs other than the one's my doctors' perscribed.