In an interview TV producer and writer David Milch ("Deadwood") had some interesting observations about the relationship between writers and drinking or drugs:
" I think that people who have
less of a stake in the given reality, risk-takers, are drawn to
experimentation. They feel less inhibited, and oftentimes they feel driven to
an alternative reality. I think that one doesn't create because one takes
drugs. I think one creates in spite of it. Saint Ignatius said whom the devil
would tempt, he tells not a lie but a lesser truth. Drugs are a lesser truth.
... And Jung
said that spirits--there is spirit--and there are spirits and that spirits are
offered to us by the devil as a shortcut to reaching out to God...but that the
indwelling with the spirit is achieved by humility. We're looking for
ego-suppression in either case. And so creativity, I think, is a separate
process, but what happens is we associate--I used to say, 'Well, I can't quit
smoking because I wouldn't be able to write. I can't quit drinking because I
wouldn't be able to write. I can't quit dope because I wouldn't be able to
write.'"
