Saturday 19 October 2019

Creativity, Drugs,Temperance

WARNING: This is not going to be about drugs in RPGs. This is going to be about drugs in real life, or rather, what to do in their absence.

So here is your chance to walk away from a post that will be both a) deeply personal and b) barely mentions RPGs and the OSR. If you don't want to see life's dismal results, look away now!



"What are you on?! That's mental!"
"Wow, you must smoke a lot to come up with such crazy ideas!"
"Huh? Wha? Nah... Nah way! I don't... huh? Whoa!"
[followed by series of other noises issued to express the querents incredulity] 
I used to get that a lot when I was younger, and I used to find it infuriating. As soon as I dared to drift off the beaten path, or follow a tangent to its absurd yet perversely logical conclusion, I would be met by expressions that such thinking was a consequence of either mental illness or substance ingestion. Never "how imaginative" or "how creative!"... just "that's too fucking weird to occur within the mind of a ordinarily functioning brain. 

It was only occasionally (I think) meant as an out-and-out insult, but I always took it that way because I felt robbed of the ownership of my own thoughts. It wasn't really relevant to me that I was taking drugs and I was experiencing mental health issues, because these "crazy ideas" were already part of my identity before drugs and mental illness were even on my radar.

DRUGS
Recreational narcotics - particularly stimulants and psychedelics, but lots of other ones, too - were a ubiquitous presence throughout my teens, twenties and the start of my thirties. Usually their influence was peripheral, other times acute, but always within reach. This is no longer true, and has not been true for more than five years. Things are different, and this is what I wish to discuss.

Before continuing, it should be noted that this is not an account of a reformed addict, and have no desire to trivialise other people's struggles with addiction by creeping into their camp. Nor am I evangelising the virtues of abstinence (which would in any case be hypocritical given that I continue to drink alcohol, but more on that later). This is an account of how those dim, creatively bereft souls mentioned at the beginning of this post might actually have been on to something, for when I made a radical change to my habits, my creativity plummeted, and what I did to get it back.

TEMPERANCE
The effects were not immediately noticeable: I'd endured extended periods of sobriety in the past, so things like restlessness, boredom, irritability, impatience were not alien to me. The depression was still there, but it was mitigated somewhat by the volume of exercise in which I was engaged. Besides which, I'd started this blog and was writing for psychocartography.blogspot.com and https://theglobalgrid.org/, drawing every day and taking in the sites and sounds of a new country. 

Things didn't catch up to me until about eighteen months later. I started a new job as a landscape architect in Ho Chi Minh City: there I was, returning to my chosen career after an extended sabbatical, once more getting paid for my creativity and talent, rather than just for my time! But things just weren't happening: I felt as though I had nothing to offer, and forced out a succession of substandard work. I was fortunate that I had so many hard-working and talent colleagues around me to make up for my own shortcomings, but I felt deeply ashamed.

In retrospect, it is apparent that the well-spring had dried before the move: my project "to do" pile had been festering due to neglect for some time, and I wasn't coming up with anything new. Regardless of the precise moment that the malaise set in, blame for its inception lay with my restrained habits. In short, the drugs really do work, and I'd fired them. So I looked at strategies for making those restrained habits truly virtuous,  in every sense, not just fro complying to antiquated notions of morality.

CREATIVITY
So here's the self-help bit, brought to you by someone who can rarely help themselves. If you - for whatever reason - have given up narcotics and are feeling uninspired, you might find some of these things useful.


  1. SWITCH DISCIPLINES: Frank Zappa once said something along the lines of "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Although it was meant as a critique of music journalism, I've always thought that dancing about architecture sounds fucking incredible, and even tried to organise a collaborative, multi-disciplinary exhibition along those longs (to a muted response). But yeah. Change things up: stepping into unfamiliar territory produces unexpected responses.  Learning a new skill is also a joyous thing in and of itself and very much worthy of your time. As an example, in Saigon I began designing a video game. As well as being an incredibly enjoyable pursuit, it also inadvertently drew me back to the tabletop community, which has since resumed its role as my primary creative outlet. 
  2. INITIATE OR JOIN A DIALOGUE: This is a given, but to really maximise the benefits from this face-to-face, in the flesh conversation cannot be beaten. I really value the exchange of ideas in spaces such as reddit and discord, but I'm not entirely at home in a the quick-fire text exchange world. I find that even the most welcoming online spaces contain unspoken hierarchies, and the desire for acceptance and validation can occasionally outweigh the value of the conversation itself. I speak for myself only: it can hurt when one is misunderstood or casually ignored. Of course, the search for meaningful human relationships in our day-to-day lives is a huge challenge in postindustrial society, and one of the reasons online communities continue to thrive! But yeah, if you're lucky enough to have a creative and inspiring group of friends, spend as much time in their company as you can. 
  3. EXPERIENCE THE SUBLIME: Viewing the night sky is the only occasion when the full awareness of one's own maddening insignificance incites joy. Do it as often as you can. This will involve leaving the city.
  4. ENJOY SICKNESS: In Tokyo I ate chicken sashimi. It was delicious. I spent most of my trip to Kyoto on the toilet in a state of delirium. It was utterly vile, but the horrible story that grew in my addled brain like a sceptic lesion survived the purge that drove out the rest of my sickness. Likewise, a recent bout of flu has granted me the partially fleshed skeleton of a text adventure involving a journey up the sephiroth. When your body is not right, neither is your mind: exploit it.
  5. COFFEE: Your reasons for going straight edge may also preclude minor stimulants like caffeine, but if not you may be surprised by how effective they are, especially after a prolonged period of sobriety. Excessive use may also lead to experiences with 4) and 6).
  6. TIREDNESS: The Beatnik Lord of London once claimed that "even tiredness is a buzz", and I didn't grasp that at first, but I get it now. Exhaustion is a boon. See 4 and 7.
  7. EXERCISE: Set new limits for your body and break them. Then see what happens to your mentality. Also excellent for building discipline.
CONCLUSION
This started as a really good idea, then quickly turned into a chore, and finally this. Probably the least useful piece on this blog (and that includes all the stuff from 2015). Thank you for experiencing my catharsis.

14 comments:

  1. Thank you for writing this.

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    1. Thank you for reading it. I felt a little bit disappointed with how things went towards the end, I thought I had something useful or interesting to say but I think it started to collapse into cliches towards the end... so if it was useful to you in anyway then it was worth it.

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    2. Also I just looked through your blog Noise Sans Signal blog: it's really great, I hope you find the time to get back to it in the future.

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    3. @Alone in the Labyrinth, it was. I don't have drug dependency, but dependency could be not only in drugs and I found your thoughts applicable to some of my situations.

      I didn't abandon the noise.sans.signal, but I post quite rarely as a matter of course. Thank you for giving it a shot.

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  2. In the mid 90s the “you’re so weird you must be on drugs” led to me pretending to be on drugs so I could continue to be weird. Which eventually led to actually using drugs. I was once on acid in a restaurant and was later told that it was the best behaved I’d been in a while. People’s permissiveness of how one can behave is so strange.

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    1. Yeah I definitely think this is one of the reasons I got into them, too. Plus the people who were getting caned all the time had the best tunes. The restaurant episode sounds interesting... do you think you were just hyper focused and attentive?

      Actually, you've reminded me of another lost piece of adolescent culture: there was sort of this virtue attached to being a "messhead", which incorporated behaviours like forgetfulness, paranoia, being easily amused and/or surprised... basically, all of the side effects of drugs but as part of everyday behaviour. It was subtle, but I can state with certainty that I exaggerated these behaviours on my part in order to gain further currency with the drugs crowd.

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    2. (that's not to say that I wasn't already nervous and paranoid and forgetful)

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  3. I was more on than off acid and mushrooms during the 90's and early 2000's. I would frequently supplement my psychotropic intake with ephedrine in various forms. If this conjures images of a spastic Energizer Bunny with a torrent of high grade nonsense pouring from his mouth like a prison hose, then I am sad to disabuse you of such an amusing visual.

    Like the Green Destiny sword, I mastered holding by buzz in stillness. No one would suspect that there was enough energy humming just under my skin to explode into instant action at any time, no matter the challenge; physical or mental (Much like the Terrible Old Man, excuse me, the Horrible Old Man's restaurant experience above). I had a strong sense of self during that time and was thoroughly immersed in my own sense of personal epic. I was at the height of my powers, playing in bands, and studying jujitsu. I was also running an Amber: Diceless game which lasted, on and off, for 12 years. In short, I had a matrix of interests to channel my energy into at any given time.

    I have milk crates full of notebooks from that period, mostly containing gaming, but also poems, stories, and songs. It was a very productive era, and I loved nothing more than sitting on the back deck of my house with a pot of coffee and an old school typewriter, exorcising my creative demons upon the page as I navigated the labyrinth of thrumming ideoplasm behind my eyes; except, perhaps, running the games which came from said exorcism.

    I wanted to let you know that I took something very valuable from these words you took the time to write. You reminded me of many things which are part of the process of remaining a healthy human being at a time when I am floundering. So thank you for that.

    Also... your "weirdness", aberrant thought processes, whatever you want to call it, incite a powerful feeling of kinship in me. Speaking of text adventures from Malkuth to Kether, conceived during a fever dream, is something I can relate to, believe it or not. I ran a crossover game in the WoD, set during 1928 (just before the raid on Innsmouth), which was strongly influenced by my favorite comic at the time, Grant Morrison's Invisibles. Did you know that he conceived the story of the Invisibles while on a hash trip in Kathmandu during an alien abduction "hallucination"? He also was inspired mid-series by visions he had while suffering a staph infection.

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    1. This is.... eerily familiar, right down to the milk crates of notebooks! I must say that I was rarely able to maintain the level of composure you profess, however, and was much more... cyclic? The other difference is the jujitsu, and I occasionally wonder how different things might have been had I found a physical outlet earlier.

      I've actually never read the Invisibles, but have seen Morrison describe his inspiration in multiple interviews with him. Actually, someone mentioned Morrison in an exchange on Reddit recently (in reference to his New X-Men)... I think the universe might be trying to tell me something, especially as I saw some Zoids for sale in a toy store and started explaining to my wife how Grant Morrison's first job was writing mini-comics to go with these robot dinosaurs...

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  4. Well... I just wrote an extensive reply and accidentally navigated over to Psychocartography by accident, losing everything. :-P I'm a bit too tired to sally forth and attempt to salvage it, so I'll just say:

    I've enjoyed your work here and on P-Cart, and have drawn inspiration from both. If you want to explore something Morrisonian, I would recommend Invisibles. Based on what I have seen of your stuff, I believe it's in your bailiwick. Speaking of Vertigo Imprint comics... have you ever read Scarab? The title of this blog reminds me of it.

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    1. I posted this as comment instead of a reply...

      Wow,much as I'm sorry for the loss of your comment I'm excited to hear of someone reading both blogs! I've really neglected Psychocartography these past few years, in part because of lifestyle changes but also because I very much felt like I was shouting into the void with that one, despite the relatively heavy site traffic. It is very rewarding to hear that you have found both inspiring.

      I'm afraid that I've not read Scarab, nor am I familiar with it. The title of this blog came because I was reading Borges and doing a lot of solitaire roleplay back in 2015 (an account of one playthrough I actually posted). It's also the title of a book published in 2018 (a compilation of blog posts by someone called Hugh Curtler), google searches for which are a common referring URL to this site.

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  5. Wow,much as I'm sorry for the loss of your comment I'm excited to hear of someone reading both blogs! I've really neglected Psychocartography these past few years, in part because of lifestyle changes but also because I very much felt like I was shouting into the void with that one, despite the relatively heavy site traffic. It is very rewarding to hear that you have found both inspiring.

    I'm afraid that I've not read Scarab, nor am I familiar with it. The title of this blog came because I was reading Borges and doing a lot of solitaire roleplay back in 2015 (an account of one playthrough I actually posted). It's also the title of a book published in 2018 (a compilation of blog posts by someone called Hugh Curtler), google searches for which are a common referring URL to this site.

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  6. Creativity is an elusive thing. I can come up with a lot of ideas, but most of them are bad. And then when you do have a good one, you have to *execute*, which can be just as difficult.

    I have no doubt that drugs can enhance creativity, but drug abuse can have a tremendeously negative impact on people. Cannabis is probably the safest (it's safer than alcohol) but for some individuals even that can be harmful to one's life and happiness in the long run. Bravo for sharing!

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  7. Thanks for picking out the time to discuss this, I feel great about it and love studying more on this topic. It is extremely helpful for me. Thanks for such a valuable help again. גמילה מחשיש

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