I May Be Mentally Disordered

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Creative addicts

The biochemical and psychological causes of addiction have long sparked my curiosity. As someone who doesn't suffer addictive compulsions, it's hard to understand the mental state of someone like Layne Staley or Kurt Cobain, to name two of my favorite, modern rock personalities who were ultimately destroyed by their chemical mistresses. Maybe it’s the allure of the unknown that explains my gravitating toward the creative works of addicted minds. My favorite music artists read like a roll call of chemical dependency, going all the way back to Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison. Edgar Allen Poe, one of my favorite authors, suffered long running addictions to alcohol and drugs throughout the latter half of his life. Addicted, creative minds exhibit a sort of weakness and fragility that intrigues me. The paradoxical nature of their addictions calls out to me. The same demons they hide from in chemical dependency fuel a creative fire that expresses itself in beautiful works.

Artistic addicts, particularly those addicted to hard drugs, are fascinating because their addictions become the fuel that propels their creative expression, while simultaneously becoming the fire that will ultimately destroy it, often times taking them down in the process. In developing a dependency, they eventually marry the creative process to a consumptive process and thereby doom themselves to an inevitable failing of all processes. What starts as a muse eventually becomes an albatross, and by then it is often too late. Poe had his opium dreams, which inspired his writing. Staley had his heroin-fueled lyrics. While some might wince at me drawing parallels between a mere rock vocalist and a literary luminary like Poe, I think the comparison is fair in that they were both creative souls who lived lives saturated with emotional, and later physical, suffering. The intellectual merit of their work is a subjective judgment and irrelevant to the point I am trying to make.

Art is an expressive act. Inhibitions, fear, pain, unhappiness, intellect, and a million other influences can retard or distract the creative process. Chemicals become a way of stepping outside of that retardation, which can allow the artist to tap into their root inspiration without having to filter as much noise. I see any chemical dependency as a coping mechanism, sometimes necessary, sometimes elective, but always a means of coping with a malady, physical or psychological, real or imagined. Chemicals take the turbulence of physical or psychological pain and still them, bringing still waters to an angry river, if only temporarily. Subsequently, they can be incredibly powerful influences on life's troubled souls.

Speaking specifically of the creative addict, they are typically souls inspired to exorcise the apparitions haunting their mental spaces via words, images, objects, etc. Art becomes a component of their coping, but is often not enough. Like any other addict, the process begins innocently enough. The weekend escape, the eventual dabbling in stronger, different highs. The chemical intake begins freeing them from the mind's imagined limitations, and their work becomes more expressive. What separates the creative addict from other addicts is their ability to take us with them.

When you listen to an Alice in Chains song, you are not hearing about sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. You're hearing the descent of a creative soul into misery and rot. I read a quote that likened Alice in Chains sound, and Layne Staley's lyrics specifically, to "the beauty of decay". And the music is beautiful, just as the decay is obvious. Similarly, Poe's dark lyricism takes the reader on a journey through his inner workings. He was far more poetic in his expressiveness, but his suffering is no less evident. His most famous works are ominous and macabre and at the same time wonderful. His suffering mind did more than wallow idly in misery, it reached out, gave us its hand, and sought to take us on a journey.

The demons that haunt such souls, if left unchallenged, will eventually overcome any means of subduing them. That is the power and the tragedy of the creative addict. They have the means, the motivation, and the muse to take us on a temporary walk in their world. The good ones will move us, or even leave us unsettled, if not outright disturbed. At the same time, they stand as a warning and testament to the dangers in succumbing. The demons they feared and the troubles they muted eventually adapted and overcame them. It was not a question of if, but a matter of when. None of us can run if we're ever going to overcome. Real progress only begins when we finally stop struggling to escape. That’s the most powerful lesson and it transcends the entirety of human experience.