: Re: Accessing different parts of brain for creativity OK. So, here's the thing. Some writers (e.g. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Parker, others,) used alcohol. I cannot help but notice that I love all

@Karen856

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Sure, alcohol is a psychoactive drug. If you drink a bottle of wine next time you sit down to write, you’ll probably write a little differently to usual.

What alcohol does to the brain [1]:

Suppresses and releases certain neurotransmitters to slow down
motor functions. Movement and speech are going to become sluggish. So
that’s your typing (fix typos tomorrow, it’s fine!), and possibly
part of your thought process gone a bit messy.
Suppresses centres of the cerebral cortex that control thought, consciousness, and the senses. So while your inhibitions will be lowered, you’ll have more trouble thinking straight.
Acts on the medulla, which controls automatic functions such as consciousness, thus making you sleepy. You might fall asleep at your desk!
Increases dopamine to make you feel happy! Perhaps this will affect the tone of your writing. More likely, it will just make you want to keep drinking.

I don’t really see any of these contributing to increased creativity, though. So, how about you have a bottle of wine every time you sit down to write? Soon enough you might develop an alcohol dependency. As an addict, you might have a new way of thinking (brain shrinkage, deficiencies in fibres carrying information between brain cells), a new perspective on life (mental health problems), and a new purpose (staying drunk). All that stuff’s pretty likely to affect your writing, too. Maybe it will inspire different sorts of stories, themes, and tones from you (creativity?). Maybe it will just make writing, and life, a lot harder.

My point is, with these guys, I don’t think they were using alcohol to unlock anything. They were just addicts - they probably struggled to do many things without drinking. Of course that contributed something to their works, but it depends what it is about them all that you admire. Profundity? Melancholy? Suffering? Dark humour? Do you think that state of mind was reached by being drunk, or by virtue of being an alcoholic and the lifestyle and struggles that come with it? Or is it just that they were good writers, who happened to be alcoholics?

As for why they drink, I don’t believe it’s relevant. Some artistic people struggle which such things, some have other reasons. Again, I don’t think the purpose was to improve their writing. That's just how alcoholism works.

And is it suggested? From the above, I can’t imagine so. For creativity, a hallucinogenic might be a better bet.

[1] science.howstuffworks.com/life/inside-the-mind/human-brain/alcoholism4.htm

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