I’m reminded of this story
(All credit to SK for actually quitting his habits.)
I used to be far more productive when I was on drugs. The only reason I quit is because of the police harassing me. Now I’m just a shell being addicted to online media. I’m currently waiting until I can get my drivers license back which was taken. Not because I was driving under the influence, but because they simply found some stuff in my saliva. They really want to make the world safe of drugs so now I’m depressed at home trying to pay off my debt to the government because they want to keep me safe? Well it doesn’t make sense but if me being punished and repeatedly being kicked to the ground is the correct way of making the world safe I will do that! Instead of being a happy guy, driving safe on the road and doing some drugs at parties sometimes, I will embrace the nights of insomnia the government forces upon me. At least I can’t drink all of the problems they caused me away, as the only money I have is now considered theirs. What a great society to live in.
Sorry to hear, that sucks. I hope you can get back on drugs safely someday.
They don’t enhance creativity but when you take them, instead of sitting there thinking/stressing about how you are gonna do your creative endeavor, you just do it. It allows you to act on you creative urges and allows you to formulate them into full concepts rather than jumping from one idea to the next.
Imagine you want to write a paper, you have this idea you desperately need to write down, not just to share it with others but also to help yourself fully understand the idea you have but instead of writing this personally important paper you instead sit there and stress about the action of writing for so long that you lose energy and motivation despite never writing a single word. For so long that you lose sight of that original glorious idea and if you eventually write that paper it feels like an utter dissapointment. It took so much damn energy just to think about and when its finally done its shit. Its not even close to what you had in your head and now you don’t even want to improve it bc the whole process was exhausting.
ADHD meds get reduce the severity of that original issue, that executive dysfunction. So no it won’t make you more creative but it will stop you from stressing so much about the process that you forget the creative part.
Reading about the guy, I’m convinced he was autistic too. “Diagnosing” historical people is always a bit sus, but I believe this because I know so many autistic nerds in academia who are so much like Erdős. More than that though, I see the ableism in how his narrative is framed. Take for example the following passage from Wikipedia
“He would typically show up at a colleague’s doorstep and announce “my brain is open”, staying long enough to collaborate on a few papers before moving on a few days later. In many cases, he would ask the current collaborator about whom to visit next.”
That quote isn’t one of the bad ones, but other stories about the same thing often frame him turning up at his colleagues’ homes almost like charity, and they emphasised how he had basically never lived independently and struggled with many essential daily living tasks. Except the charitable vibes are diminished by how this is often framed like a trade — housing the genius man-child is an inconvenience and a stress, but ultimately worth it for the ability to bask in his genius and collaborate. It can reduce Erdős down to a 2D character, and adds a weirdly transactional vibe to what is better understood as a community, separated by geography but united by love of maths, supporting each other.
Maybe it’s because I’ve known people like Erdős — weird people who you remember forever because if anyone deserves the label “genius”, they do — but also, they’re just people who have some things they struggle with, and plenty of stuff that they can do, but prefer not to. Hell, I even have one of them crashing on my floor right now, while he’s between homes.
Let’s not forget the movie, Maximum Overdrive Cocaine.
On a less auspicious note, 1986 also marked the nadir of the cocaine addition phase of King’s career in the form of Maximum Overdrive, the first, last and I think it’s safe to assume, only, adaptation of Stephen King’s work to be directed by Stephen King himself. In Hollywood’s Stephen King, King says, with characteristic self-deprecating bluntness, that he was“coked out of [his] mind all through its production, and [he] really didn’t know what [he] was doing.”
That comes through loud and clear in every frame of the movie. King is credited as director here but this might be another case of a giant bag of cocaine becoming sentient and deciding to direct a movie that reflected its sensibility in its purest form. King is one of our greatest storytellers, but a movie about a crazy world full of Southern-fried assholes where all the machines suddenly become sentient and try to kill all humans sure seems like the kind of idea a sentient bag of cocaine would come up with.
Maximum Overdrive is crazy fun schlock. It’s not even a guilty pleasure for me; I simply unironically and full-throatedly love it.
Not all movies need to be Citizen Kane. Sometimes a coke-fueled, overly acted B-movie is exactly what the soul needs.
You succeeded at XKCD 2184
Edit: wait, it has to have come out after 2000. You almost succeeded at XKCD 2184.
Titan AE has exactly 50% on Rotton Tomatoes, but I’m giving it a shout out anyway because it is an underrated gem
Carrie: The Musical was also around that time. It was one of the biggest flops in Broadway history. I would not be at all shocked if cocaine played a big role in Stephen King okaying a musical based on Carrie.
Cocaine “Hey Stephen.”
Stephen King “Yeah, cocaine?”
Cocaine “You like musicals, right?”
Stephen King “I do now.”
Cocaine “You know how people are trying to get Carrie turned into a Broadway musical?”
Stephen King “Yeah…”
Cocaine “You should a okay and use the money.”
Stephen King “What should I buy?”
Cocaine “More cocaine.”
Stephen King “Damn good idea.”
Oh shit that’s so crazy!
Some dude also just made a horror game based off of called decimate drive, where cars try to run you over at night. Kind of spooky but weird that I just watched this recently:
Meh. Doesn’t work. Used to have coke every day, for years and years. Never made me a better writer.
Maybe I shoulda’ tried Pepsi?
I smoked weed for thirty years and it made me a much better programmer. That app is going to be done any day now.
Edit: I haven’t checked lately, but Visual Basic 3 is still what everybody’s using, right?
Only if you’re looking to write a book about Remote Controlled things. If you want to write about medicine or even self-help to a degree, you’d be best to stick with Dr. Pepper.
King actually has a book on writing. And yes, it’s about having the discipline to write everyday.
If I remember correctly, he does talk about his drug use in that book. He even talks about drinking mouthwash at one point because he was that much of an alcoholic.
Yes, and he also makes the point quite clearly that drugs don’t make you super productive as a writer. If anything, they make your writing worse. But it’s a good excuse to live that “drugged artist” lifestyle, telling oneself that, sadly, that’s how you have to do it (while opening the next beer can).
I haven’t read the book, but I know he’s a very dedicated and hard-working writer. I just thought the meme was funny.
Writing is like exercising your muscles. You usually have to do it regularly in order to have the ability to do something like write a novel. My mom writes novels and when she isn’t, she writes short stories. She doesn’t even send them to be published, they’re just practice for when she writes novels.
Of course, in Stephen King’s case, if has a collection of his grocery lists, someone would publish it.
I seriously wish I could just do it the way your mom is! I can’t seem to get “over myself” though. I start writing and immediately think “who the fuck am I to be writing?! How fucking pretentious can I be?”
People say you aren’t your job, but I can’t help believing all I am is an uneducated factory worker and it affects my motivation tremendously.
To be fair, she did not start writing fiction until her 70s. She wrote a couple of academic books back in the late 1960s and that was it. She even got out of academia by the 80s and did absolutely no more writing.
But when my father died and she was looking for something to do with the extra time she had, she picked up writing fiction. She’s gotten some good reviews too. Obviously nothing even close to the level of Stephen King, but she is published by a legitimate publisher.
That said, now that she’s in her 80s and her memory is not what it was, there are some pretty serious continuity issues I’ve had to point out before she submits manuscripts now.
But it’s clearly never too late to start… and considering some of the absolutely shitty writers in this world, I wouldn’t feel pretentious about it if I were you. You can’t possibly be worse than, for example, E. L. James. And people make movies out of her bad S&M Twilight fan fic.
I’d highly recommend it, even as an autobiography. It really shows who he is, was, and is only about 30% craft advice sprinkled among good shit.
I will put it on my ever-growing list. Thank you. I’ll probably be able to get to it by 2030 or so at this point. So many books, so little time.
I’ve re-listened to it countless times.
It certainly is his book on the craft, but it’s so much also autobiography and breakthrough underdog story too. It’s a great read/listen even if not seeking story advice.
Most of this isn’t directly related to the comment but it got me typing.
I do like the bit where he said he put the rejection letters on a nail, and it was pretty full, think this was his teen years, probably submitting to pulp magazines. It didn’t seem like any time in his life wasn’t filled with wanting to write, and he kept at it (obviously heh) and used the rejections as motivation to improve. He is a pretty good narrator as well, I enjoyed listening to Needful Things read by him, and have listened to On Writing a few times now.
That man can spin a good yarn, his stories have been a part of my life since I was probably too young to be reading them(not to mention tv and film adaptations) but I was reading at least. Even remember one time getting extra credit for the summer reading program cause I read The Eyes of the Dragon since it was much longer than most kids reading material. I just read whatever and a lot at the time, since no Internet back then.
He was a better writer when he was on massive amounts of drugs and alcohol.
Sometimes. Ever read the story the movie Lawnmower Man wasn’t actually based on even though it says it was?
There was definitely such a thing as Stephen King doing too much cocaine.
I’m over here wondering if someone is sitting on the movie right to The Mangler.
Hey!
Congrats on that whole “worst user on lemmy.world” nomination!
I’m honoured to stand in your shadow!
cheers
Do we have a timeline for that? I need to know if he was high while writing the Dark Tower novels.
He was high as a kite/drunk as hell for at least the first two, the rest he was sober/recovering since they were written from 1991-2012. He got clean in the late 80s apparently.
The Gunslinger was actually one of the first things he wrote, even before Carrie, it was a short story that he wrote in 1970, and then was submitted to and published in a Sci-Fi magazine in multiple parts in the late 70s, and then sat on it for a while. The Gunslinger as a whole wasn’t published until 1982, and then re-released in 1988. The Drawing of the Three was released in 1987.
Damn, that doesn’t explain why the series is getting more and more ridiculous towards the end.
