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comment by tacocat
tacocat  ·  2421 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Judging A Book By Its Sobriety

    Drinking, quitting drinking, lying, falling in love, trying to kill oneself, starting drinking again . . . this way of living can become almost ordinary. The Re

Cool. I've done those in that order.

I speak from experience and the anecdotes of others of the fear that creativity is tied to substance abuse. Alcohol loosens inhibitions which can help lose the the of the blank page.

Any who. I'm about to go into a Heroin Anonymous meeting with a fair certainty that I will want to blow my brains out by the end.





_refugee_  ·  2421 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Is that one specific creativity really worth condemning yourself to death for?

Even if - let's say - you were a writer, loved writing, and could only write while drunk -- would you, sober you, take a step back, look at this situation, and decide, "You know, it's the only choice I can live with: writing is so important to me, and nothing else can ever satisfy me and fulfill me and make me happy the way writing can, so i'm willing to give up basically everything else I could get out of life including my health in order to keep doing it. I'm willing to be drunk daily so that I can fulfill myself through writing" ? Like really? writing is so important you don't mind not being able to legally drive by midday on the daily?

it lowers inhibitions : it makes people believe in themselves. it doesn't alter their abilities just their confidence

if anything i think the increased creativity is a coping mechanism

and if your coping mechanism is more important to you than, you know, living a life where you don't have to have coping mechanisms....

well then you're going to keep hurting yourself so you can keep on with your idiotic stupid beautiful coping because you have the wrong priorities in life and like i said. probably a martyr complex

tacocat  ·  2421 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Is that one specific creativity really worth condemning yourself to death for?

Thus the mental gymnastics the author mentions

    Even if - let's say - you were a writer, loved writing, and could only write while drunk -- would you, sober you, take a step back, look at this situation, and decide, "You know, it's the only choice I can live with: writing is so important to me, and nothing else can ever satisfy me and fulfill me and make me happy the way writing can, so i'm willing to give up basically everything else I could get out of life including my health in order to keep doing it.

Yeah. Probably. It's not like anyone only drinks to write. Your question implies a common lack of understanding of a complex problem. But I've heard Stephen King say pretty much what I said earlier

Addiction is incredibly powerful. It's much easier to reason your way back into it or to remain in it than to reason your way out of it. Some would say it's impossible to reason your way out of but they're fucking dumb

_refugee_  ·  2421 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I get the fear. I truly do.

I think if you buy into that fear, you've got a bigger problem causing you to do that. I think the fear is the alcohol talking.

You can't listen.

tacocat  ·  2421 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It's not something I'm currently buying into. I'm a much more productive writer when I'm sober. I was published online last year and I will be in a journal in the fall

Addiction is not a terribly rational state. On days when I feel like calling it a disease I call it a mental illness. No one really wants to wake up hungover every day or pawn Christmas gifts for their children on December 21 but the thought pattern is that powerful. And it's not totally illogical to assume that if you exclusively or primarily do something drunk and are successful like Stephen King before his wife dumped a 30 gallon trash bag full of empty coke bags, nyquil bottles and beer bottles on his desk and forced him to shape the fuck up that the two activities are related in a way where changing one will affect the other. Fallacious reason, sure, but not exactly so illogical that the brain wouldn't naturally come to that conclusion. And when writers, artists and baseball players have stupid superstitions they know are stupid but do anyway, a thing that noticeably changes your behavior is much easier to shake than only writing standing up or on a typewriter or whatever