Points for trying to consider alternative hypotheses, but I think you missed the obvious. Why treat sobriety as the pinnacle of (narrowly instrumental) rationality for a potentially disturbed artist?
Spider Robinson, who may have some past experience with drug use, has one of his characters say the following about opiates and
a Ray Charles or a James Taylor. Someone, that is, who was already that talented before they ever got high.The average human in the best of circumstances spends a hell of a lot of attention and energy on monitoring the body’s thousand and one aches and pains and twinges and other sudden small alarms. At least as much energy and time goes into constantly combing the environment for immediate dangers or enemies. And as much again is spent on impending or chronic problems, the struggle to stay afloat, the need to be loved, and the underlying awareness of mortality.
A man on a morphine high has none of these worries.
(I assume I don’t have to give his disclaimers here.)
Meanwhile, Aleister Crowley—whose experience would probably make a good discussion post—has a great deal to say on the subject of hashish. He distinguishes three main effects of the drug and goes on to describe many other experiences (ie, data points for self-analysis and material for the imagination to work on) that hashish might help one produce (if only by showing that novel states of consciousness can exist). His effect #1 might or might not fit one of your hypotheses:
This, the first evanescent symptom, gives the “thrill” described by Ludlow, as of a new pulse of power pervading one. Psychologically, the result is that one is thrown into an absolutely perfect state of introspection. One perceives one’s thoughts and nothing but one’s thoughts, and it is as thoughts that one perceives them. Material objects are only perceived as thoughts; in other words, in this respect, one possesses the direct consciousness of Berkeleyan idealism. The Ego and the Will are not involved; there is introspection of an almost if not quite purely impersonal type; that, and nothing more.
I am not to be understood as asserting that the results of this introspection are psychologically valid.
In other writings he implies that Hemingway’s “edit sober” has relevance here. Perhaps the two states of consciousness could mitigate each others’ flaws.
...I think one should add that these results of my introspection are almost certainly due to my own training in philosophy and magic, and that nothing but the intensification of the introspective faculty is due to the hashish. Probably, too, this effect...would be suppressed or unnoticed in a subject who had never developed his introspection at all.
Points for trying to consider alternative hypotheses, but I think you missed the obvious. Why treat sobriety as the pinnacle of (narrowly instrumental) rationality for a potentially disturbed artist?
Spider Robinson, who may have some past experience with drug use, has one of his characters say the following about opiates and
(I assume I don’t have to give his disclaimers here.)
Meanwhile, Aleister Crowley—whose experience would probably make a good discussion post—has a great deal to say on the subject of hashish. He distinguishes three main effects of the drug and goes on to describe many other experiences (ie, data points for self-analysis and material for the imagination to work on) that hashish might help one produce (if only by showing that novel states of consciousness can exist). His effect #1 might or might not fit one of your hypotheses:
In other writings he implies that Hemingway’s “edit sober” has relevance here. Perhaps the two states of consciousness could mitigate each others’ flaws.