[er4hn]

Taken further - Art can be created as a response to seeing or experiencing suffering, but it is important to manage your own response to suffering.

In On Writing, Stephen King has this lovely quote about his journey to get off of drugs: “The idea that the creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. ... Substance abusing writers are just substance abusers — common garden variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that the drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit. I've heard alcoholic snowplow drivers make the same claim, that they drink to still the demons.”

[Fricken]

Ken Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was a groundbreaking novel and wouldn't have been so if it weren't for LSD. Of Course, that was Kesey's first and only criticaly acclaimed novel and he has said later in life that too much acid screwed him up, I certainly wouldn't argue it's sustainable over a career. LSD also changed pop music in a pretty major way.

[zabzonk]

A lot of people liked "Sometimes A Great Notion". I personally prefer it to "Cuckoo". It doesn't read like something written by someone whacked out on acid.

[sudoshred]

Lifestyle choices and an individual’s work product should be acknowledged to be uncorrelated. The practical reality is never that simple but attributing your own success, or that of anyone else, to external factors does a disservice to the originator of the work and to society at large.