Does Alcohol Make Us More Creative?
An experiential reflection
There’s a statistic somewhere that says the initial feeling of euphoria alcohol elicits lasts, on average, 30 minutes. After that, you’re just playing chase.
I used to drink because I knew that for 20-30 minutes a day, I would at least like myself. There were lots of other reasons, that being one.
Alcohol gave me permission to like myself. If I hadn’t eaten that day, possibly even love myself. THIS is what permitted me to create. The liking of myself. The thinking that I’m pretty cool. For 30 minutes. Sometimes, if I drank more (which I always did), the alcohol stripped my inhibitions enough to continue whatever errant artistic expression held my interest until belligerence kicked in, and I couldn’t see straight - maybe another 45 minutes to an hour.
I believed in the 27 Club. I believed in the culturally romanticized lives and legacies I’d marveled at growing up. I believed in Janis, Jimi, Ernest, Hunter, Kurt, and Elliot. I believed a life of pain and sorrow made good lyrics. Substances were the stones strung to the ham hocks of the greats. In decadent descent to the bottom of star-strewn wells, whose positioning deemed them chosen deliverers of greater depths. Where the only sound that came out of those depths was silver. I believed in wild and free. I believed alcohol would deliver all this to me.
I was also pretty hell-bent on leaving this world early. I used to smoke a pack of Marlboro Ultra Lights a day, keeping the box rolled up in my short-sleeved shirts. I was fine living hard and dying young. That is, before I had kids. At that point, I felt the added burden of having to stay alive for them, which crimped my ethos significantly. Like 80s crimped.
I didn’t love myself because I didn’t know there was anything in my well to love. I grew up feeling like the real me was not welcome. So I tried to drown her and come up with someone new. You can imagine the fundamental mind fuckery this presented. What a trip!
I’m not saying everyone who drinks hates themselves. I’m just asking the question:
What belief did you inherit that makes you think you have to become someone different in order to create?
Here’s a counterpoint I know I’ll be met with: alcohol doesn’t make me a different person.
Here’s a counter counterpoint: Alcohol is classified as a drug, specifically as a central nervous system depressant. It alters your brain chemistry, impairs motor function, and slows down essential body processes. So yeah. Yeah it do.
I don’t have all the answers. I still drink a ton of coffee and take Strattera to lasso my ADHD. Everybody cheats.
Nobody is wrong here. Nobody is right, either. That’s not how life works. The only thing I know to be true is my own experience. Creativity is my life force, my lifeblood, my oxygen. I couldn’t survive this life without the outlet creativity provides.
The thing I was chasing through drinking is the thing I found in its purest form through sobriety. Sobriety offers everything drinking promised but didn’t deliver on.
I get to be wild, free, fancy, creative, rebellious, euphoric, and an agent for myself. One I can wholeheartedly count on to wake up every morning with bright eyes and waggly tails. I get to be someone I love. Someone who thinks she’s pretty cool. Someone who’s ready to kick death in the teeth if that’s what it comes to.
Speaking of teeth Jesus.
^^Circa 2016. Believing alcohol would make me love myself enough.