“Telling her that men of genius conceived their best projects when drunk”

I love this quote from the Big Book of Alcoholics’ Anonymous. It’s from Bill’s story where he’s reassuring his wife Lois about his drinking. Today the story would no doubt include drugs. 

The subjective thought on drugs or alcohol is that of ‘superiority’ or ‘enhancement’. It’s not objectively true.  The book Not God by Kurtz discussed the perception of alcoholics of ‘god like’ capacity. This has been explained by modern neuroscience as the ‘regression’ which occurs with drugs and alcohol. The brains of alcoholics and addicts are not ‘enhanced’ but rather the ‘filtering’ is removed. FMRI’s show the frontal lobes of the brain, the frontal lobe, being the seat of judgement especially social judgement, being impaired.

Tom Waits, the musician and original song writer , of ‘the Pianos been drinking’ fame, said that he stopped drinking because it affected his ability to write songs.  Brian Wilson, the song writer of the Beach boy’s posited that one song appeared to be the product of the drugs and alcohol he used that week but that drugs and alcohol cost him many years in and out of asylum and struggling with insaneity.  The question he asked was ‘how many great songs he could have written had he avoided drugs and alcohol and stayed out of the asylums.’’

Most of the ‘genius’ are young and their most creative work occurs after 15 or 20 years without drugs or alcohol which are commonly a fact of the late teens, 20’s and thereafter. These early decades when drugs and alcohol are not a significant factor in development are described as the time when the ‘spiritual bank account’ is being enlarged on.  Commonly artists describe alcohol and drugs leaving them ‘spiritually’ and ‘creatively’ bankrupt.

Cocaine for instance causes a rapid discharge and depletion of neurotransmitters associated with activity and pleasure. The cocaine then interferes with the recovery of the brain for weeks thereafter.

The ancient tribes who did incorporate hallucinogens in their healing ceremonies recognized that these were best done annually with supervision of the community and witchdoctors.  This is clearly at variances with the compulsive driven experience of the addict daily struggling to experience something with a brain rather like a flogged and dying horse.  

The military studied drugs extensively to find if any ‘enhanced’ performance. They would have volunteers take drugs and then set them to do obstacle courses or perform simple tasks or strategizing as required in the rather straightforward environment of war scenarios. They found all drugs impaired function. Some aspect of function would be improved while another aspect was lost.  The only drug that the military subsequently used in war was ‘stimulants’, like Ritalin or Dexedrine.  These were found to maintain awareness and alertness for an extended period of a day or two or even three.  Deteriorating judgement over nights without sleep were the consequence beyond the initial benefit.  Further after the stimulant allowed several days and nights of function without sleep the person ‘crashed’ and slept for days.  This still allowed a person to stay behind enemy lines awake without ‘snoring’ in an awkward place.  Soldiers going ‘behind lines’ or on ‘certain missions’ carry ‘stimulants’ for very limited and specific use under extreme duress as a stopgap measure.  

Though steroids have been shown to enhance performance in sports to some extent the cost is in the realm of judgement, ‘droid rage’, and physical health.  One may win a ‘race’ but lose a marriage, alienate kids, lose a job, or go to jail.  All of these ‘consequences’ are overlooked by addicts who are usually responding to ‘cravings’ when they make their ‘best arguments’ for their ‘god like’ capability ‘if only they have another drink, toke or line’. 

It really was a false promise of the 60’s and 70’s that doing drugs and drinking would result in a ‘better world’ and ‘better people’.  The evidence collectively has been anything but. Indeed we now know that Hitler was a major proponent of ‘better living through chemistry’ and was on all manner of drugs during his reign of terror.  Mushrooms, not known in Canada for their ‘belligerent properties’ were recorded by Robert Graves as the drug of choice for the ‘Bezerk!” In medieval war. Peasants armed with rakes and hoes would do mushrooms and charge their opponents. These folk were part of the ‘cult of the mushroom’.  

The capacity of drugs to alter judgement is today most seen with alcohol though all drugs share this propensity. Alcohol abuse is the principal associated factor for domestic violence, social violence, sexual abuse, child abuse, and accidents.  Unfortunately government leaders are directly compensated from the sales of all ‘legal drugs’ so have a major conflict of interest and in general government sources of information are affected by this.  In the aboriginal communities of the north a decision was made to have a ‘wet’ or ‘dry’ reserve. Wet reserves were dominated by sexual abuse, incest, child sexual abuse, violence and suicide, sometimes described as ‘hell on earth’ or ‘Peyton place’ compared with the ‘dry reserves’ which were commonly model communities described as heavenly or ‘little house on the prairies’.  Most of the problems of ghettos are not gun ownership but drugs and alcohol and gang crime associated with drugs and alcohol.  

Fortunately 30% of a community doesn’t do drugs or alcohol, 60% don’t use drugs or alcohol to the point of ‘altered consciousness’ and only 10$ actuall use drugs or alcohol to get ‘drunk’ or ‘high’. Whatever ‘best projects’ this latter group might conceive is completely cancelled by the negative consequences of drugs and alcohol on judgment and genius.

Right now the ‘fentany’ epidemic is not affecting the 50 year olds who used to be the ‘junkies’ addicted to heroin. The people dying in the ‘fentanyl’ epidemic are in their late teens and 20’s.  The question then is how many of these genius who died might well have lived and found a cure for cancer or a new propulsion system that would take ships across the galaxy.  The same argument has been against war. But it’s always old men and old women who benefit most from the sales and promotion of drugs and alcohol and indeed war.  These folk are never considered genius by any stretch of the imagination. Clever men and women with character flaws of avarice and hoarding and abuse of power but not anything more than clever.  These are simply not the folk who write the songs that move a nation.  It actually can be argued that there is more money in stupidity than genius and that wealth accumulation is done by manipulating and using geniuses.  Sadly so many of those who have power abuse it and those that abuse it are commonly those with issues with drugs and alcohol.  

Requests for the leadership of the UN to be drug tested have fallen on deaf ears. Pilots and doctors are drug tested but today judges, congressmen and world leaders in the UN are not tested for drugs or alcohol abuse even like our athletes who have random testing.  The random testing of athletes has indeed shown that the greates of all by sheer numbers don’t ‘need drugs or alcohol’ and indeed ‘losers’ do.  So today we continue to have genius in the labs of Stanford and UBC but our leadership in the courts and parliament are not drug or alcohol tested despite all the evidence that their collective performance is grossly negatively impacted by their persistent belief in the very thing that Bill Wilson, one of the great genius of the 20th century was able to honestly and humbly admit to his wife.  His thinking under the influence was wrong.