How does drug use affect the creative process?

The program for visual and media art at Emerson College can be seen as infamous and absolutely low-island. The students live in a real-time campus bubble the Hollywood furniture gathering. From one film to the next to write down your scene ideas to finding the darkest music for your next soundtrack, during the film the Emerson VMA dynamics is like no other.

Hollywood represents the most extreme version of how to be seen in films such as “Babylon”, in which the film industry as a chaotic and adrenaling experience is presented with drugs that enable individuals to experience the wildest situations, which leads to a creative masterpiece.

Otto Pressler, a second VMA major at Emerson, considers the degeneration of the film industry to be appealing.

“The idea is interesting for me to travel the lifestyle all the time, to work twelve hours, to provide everyone and then to go back to the set,” he said. “In my twenties I have something almost appealing that I would like to experience.”

He added that there was definitely a stereotype about drug use among the filmmakers and cited the example of Quentin Taratino, the director of “Pulp Fiction”, “Reservoir Dogs” and many other legendary films. He explained that many non-filmmakers believe that aspiring filmmakers are all the huge fans of Tarantino who have many stories about him, make the cocaine piles and at the same time write great films. Even if these rumors are not actually based, they support the perception that large film directors such as Tarantino consume drugs.

“I think that is the idea of ​​the amateur filmmaker, someone who only smokes a lot of cigarettes, does a lot of drugs, doesn’t sleep a lot and does art. But I think that is a kind of romanticization of unhealthy life with every artist,” said Pressler.

But what if medication is actually not a source of creativity? What if it is instead the result of a very complicated social, academic and creative space in which medication acts as a coping mechanism? Individuals tend to use drugs to relax and relax and get away from reality.

Pressler agrees and said that the VMA majors feel “up to (the) border, and the only thing they can really do afterwards is decompress. And whether this is through drugs or another socket – that’s up to the individual.”

Nora Gibbons, a second VMA major at Emerson, believes that smoking and other drug use are celebrated as a creative path if it can be more harmful than beneficial.

“It can be harmful to reduce your creative practice and rely on something to arouse her creative river,” she said, adding that drug use is something that can of course feel for people in the creative area, since these people can experience a high degree of stress and feel the need to reach for something to relax. “I think it is because we are all on ‘on” all the time. ”

Drugs will always be present in society – they are too fascinatingly unknown and magical to disappear. And it makes sense for some communities to turn drugs to relax and also emphasize an artist’s cathartic and chaotic experience. The attempt to create what has never been created before is an overwhelming and intensive task. Why not take a psychedelic or hallucinogen to increase your imagination? Why not insert the stress of innovation by smoking a weed and diving into euphoria?

Drugs, if they are used as intended, can be a moment of calm for some and a way to restart from a creative block. The use of everything in moderation protects us from being consumed by the substance consumption.