Create Sober

I just need to get something off of my chest. You probably won’t agree. A lot of people I know, especially those who are artists, either claim that if you create when you’re high, you’re at your most creative. A lot of people I know, also artists, claim it’s the best to write when you’re drunk (read: wasted) because you’ll be at your most artistic. It’ll ‘loosen you up’.

It’s my humble opinion that these are mere excuses to be able to get high all the time or be drunk all the time. If you look back at you work after these episodes of not being sober, and are honest with yourself, is any of the world you made the least bit good? 

Everyone says first drafts must be crap.

But, if a first draft is crap, crap, and only crap, how can you change something that terrible into something good? You can’t. It’ll never be on par with something that started off as ‘good’. Good work can only get better. Terrible work will, for the most part, stay terrible. 

If you’re clearheaded when you create, you have the chance to make a draft that isn’t terrible. If it’s not terrible, you have a better chance of writing something that will continue to evolve. Evolution must always be the goal of an artist. If you don’t continually become better, you’ll either get stuck… or, you’ll devolve.

Allowing yourself clearheadedness when you work will also teach you how to open your heart, mind, and soul without changing your sobriety level, and, rather than making a mess, you’ll build something honest — something that touches people. Not creating work sober creates devolution because you’ll always need a high or a low in order to create, which destroys your state of humanity. The more purely human you are when you write, paint, or do any art, the better your work will be. 

Creating while high or drunk is the opposite of reaching your humanity because the high is not humanity, neither is the drunkenness. If you need something outside of yourself to reach your artistry, then it’s not you speaking. It’s the drug speaking. In order to create something good, you need to ditch what masks your humanness.

Only when you’re humane to yourself can you be humane to your work. Adding a layer, such as this ‘magical creativity medication’ in order to create will separate you from yourself. If it creates a separation, then how is it you speaking? That separation shuts down emotivity, and it’s our goal as artists to push for those emotions, actions, and fears to open each other’s minds.

Only when you rid yourself of the filter, such as the high or drunkenness, can you teach yourself how to think as yourself, rather than thinking as the drug in your system. This is a lot different from taking things such as anti-psychotic medication because instead of throwing your body off, these medications work to fix the chemical imbalance in your brain allowing for you to see your work in the light of humanity.

As artists, our first priority will always be to make the most human work as possible. The more your mind is balanced, the more humanity will peek through, the more you will poke through. The more humanity peeks through, the more you’ll be able to push yourself to feel what you’re afraid to feel.  The highs and drunkenness filter out what you’re afraid of because you’re no longer afraid of it. These filters don’t allow you to truly feel your work. If you can’t feel anything, how are you producing work other people will feel?

The more you feel your work, the more other people will feel your work. Taking something to merely ‘get the words on the page’ or ‘open up your creativity’ will become more of a crutch because it will filter every emotion through the alcohol or high. If you allow yourself to feel that fear as you write, it’ll become more and more pronounced the more you teach yourself to feel, rather than hide.

Filters cannot create your own art.

Only you can do that.