Gifted, Talented, Addicted
Beethoven reportedly drank wine about as often as he wrote music, and was an alcoholic or at least a problem-drinker.
A number of people with exceptional abilities have used drugs and alcohol as self-medication to ease the pain of that sensitivity, or as a way to enhance thinking and creativity. Sometimes they risk addiction.
Among the many artists who have used drugs, alcohol or other substances are Aldous Huxley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edgar Allen Poe, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Allen Ginsberg, composers Beethoven and Modest Musorgski, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Chandler, Eugene O’Neill, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dorothy Parker, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, John Steinbeck, and Tennessee Williams.
At least five U.S. writers who won the Nobel Prize for Literature have been considered alcoholics.
> From article: Gifted, Talented, Addicted - by Douglas Eby
March 24th, 2006 at 8:44 am
This long list of addicted artists is misleading because the list of healthy and happy artists is far larger.
This post really just perpetuates the idea that in order to be creative, we must be tortured and unhappy. That’s not the case and it leads some people to purposely make their lives miserable in order to become great artists.
It is possible to be a great artist AND be happy.