It is High Time to Resurrect Research on Psychedelics and Creativity
Over the last twenty years, there has been extensive research on the effectiveness of using psychedelics to treat psychological ailments such as end of life anxiety and PTSD. There has also been some amazing research into psychedelics inducing mystical experiences like in the revision of the famous John Hopkins Good Friday experiment or in the case of Rick Strassman‘s studies on DMT. There has been very little research, however, at least since the early 1960s, about the effects of psychedelics on art and creativity.
I have both seen and experienced the effectiveness of psychedelics to enhance creativity, whereby after a psychedelic experience an artist’s work can become dramatically more sophisticated, more experimental, more novel, and more creative. This level of novelty, ingenuity, and inventiveness poses an evolutionary advantage for us as a culture and as a species. I think we can all acknowledge that there are dramatic problems that we face as a species and as a global community. From both personal experience, social and historical observation, and from many stories I have heard from friends and others, I believe that psychedelics make us more open, more receptive, and more creative. Wealth disparagement, racism, addiction, and climate change are just some of the difficult issues that we have inherited as a generation to contend with. I believe that these nuanced and complicated issues require creative solutions, and a higher perspective to be able to adequately attend to them. I believe that psychedelics may give us the creative upper hand to not only produce better and more meaningful works of art, but to make progress towards resolving these pressing and serious concerns.
There are many problems which we face collectively as human beings in this time and I believe that psychedelics can give one the creative advantage to be able to help tackle these major issues and find solutions for them. Psychedelics are also great evolutionary catalysts for creative professionals like painters, musicians, filmmakers, etc. and I am fascinated by the work of psychedelic artists both contemporary and historic.
There are many artists that have demonstrated that psychedelics can have an evolutionary impact on their work. You can see this in the work of The Beatles, for example, with the music that they created after they first took LSD being remarkably more inventive than before. In the mid-1960s before the Beatles had taken psychedelics their music was very commercial and although remarkable in its own way, it lacked a certain degree of maturity and sophistication. After their first time using LSD they began producing very progressive and experimental songs and albums like the song Tomorrow Never Knows and the entirety of both the Magical Mystery Tour and Sgt Peppers albums. The Beatles, especially guitarist George Harrison, were very outspoken about the positive impact that psychedelics had upon their lives and creative work.
In the case of my own work, psychedelics had a dramatic effect and changed the way that I see the world very differently and this impacted the work I create very much. My work used to be very dark both aesthetically and conceptually. My drawings and paintings were rendered with intentional roughness and obscurity to have a more disturbing effect on the viewer. My work was macabre and horrific and I was creating a lot of artwork inspired by, and for, death metal bands. Although my work has always probed the mythological, the themes of my work were more demonic and satanic. After my first psychedelic experience, which was with psilocybin mushrooms when I was 18 years old, my work matured and evolved and changed very much and I began creating work that explored the transcendental experience that I had during this first trip. I began drawing and painting Buddhas and other themes related to meditation. My work became more colorful and more beneficent. Flash forward to present day, since having had perhaps more than 100 psychedelic experiments, my artwork seeks to illuminate the profound revelatory experiences I have had on psychedelics. My work explores the themes of the numinous, the transpersonal, the unconscious, equanimity, love, and transcendence. Psychedelics and other transcendental experiences through meditation and lucid dreaming, gave me a subject in which to orient and revolve my creative work around and to be continually fascinated and inspired by.
I have witnessed the work of other visual artists transform dramatically after an encounter with the transcendental through psychedelics. Android Jones, who is one of the most notable contemporary psychedelic artists, also had a profound reorientation in his work after exploring psychedelics. His artwork prior to his use of psychedelics was very dark and he used a lot of greys and browns in his color palette. The themes of his work were more horrific and menacing and often revolved around the theme of apocalypse. This is to simplify his personal journey to a degree that does not do it justice but now, many years and many healing psychedelic experiences later, his work is transcendent, colorful, feminine, and beautiful.
The work of Alex Grey was similar whereby before he was using psychedelics he was doing very dark and macabre performance art pieces utilizing corpses and studying the material decay of human bodies. Now his work is not only transcendental and beautiful but complex and refined and symmetrical and has a focus on themes of love and unity. In the 1970’s, Alex Grey had a powerful experience with LSD in which he experienced a visual spiral of energy that unified the polarity of darkness and light. Through this he experienced non-duality, and had an experience in which the previously outspoken atheist Alex Grey would call God. Psychedelics transformed Alex Grey from a depressed, nihilistic, atheist into a Reverend, evangelist, and missionary of the spiritual transcendental experience practically overnight. Along with his wife and fellow psychedelic artist Allyson Grey, they continue to create astounding works of art that uplift thousands of people worldwide. This type of inception story is shared by multitudes of people and is one that is perhaps perennial within the psychological landscape of humankind from the very beginnings of human society. As long as there have been human communities, people all over the world have been having shamanic initiations that dramatically transform them and help them better serve the greater good. Many of these initiations have included the use of psychotropic plants, brews, and substances.
The band Tool, whose work has also taken a similar trajectory to that of Alex Grey, with whom they have shared a long time collaboration, also began with a much more menacing and angsty flavor to their music. Although not much is written about their use of psychedelics, it seems to me that much like the work of Alex Grey their work similarly evolved from a place of angst and pain into one of transcendence, with themes of beauty, the complexity of nature in the universe, and sacred geometry being consistent themes in their later work. I did at one point read an interview in which it was recalled that singer Maynard James Keenan and other bandmates first took LSD at Lollapalooza festival which was at least after the release of their first EP Opiate if not their first full length album Undertow. This makes sense to me because if you listen to Aenema, their second full length album, which was released after this Lollapalooza performance, this album clearly demonstrates an artistic shift in a dramatic way and much greater artistic maturity. This album also featured a track called Third Eye which is clearly based on psychedelic experiences. Culminating with their next release Lateralus, they reached their apex of psychedelic vision, it being the first album to include artwork by Alex Grey and the title track being based around the Fibonacci sequence. This album is a psychedelic masterpiece.
These artists are only a few of countless examples of people who had an artistic and creative rebirth upon first using psychedelics. For many artists the psychedelic experience is the great subject that they have been searching for throughout their entire artistic career. There are also many people who were not artists prior to using psychedelics but upon having a psychedelic experience developed an insatiable urge to create art. One of the greatest psychedelic artists to have ever lived, Robert Venosa, was a businessman working for Virgin Records in the 1970s when he took LSD for the first time. After experiencing a transcendent vision of jeweled angels he quit his prestigious job, moved out of his luxurious Manhattan apartment, and went to live in a van in Vienna to study with the master fantastic realist painter Ernst Fuchs in pursuit of a dream of being a painter. He went on to become one of the most prolific and masterful psychedelic artists in history. Robert Venosa’s story is only one of the countless stories in which a psychedelic experience catalyzed the genesis of one’s artistic journey and career. I have known musicians and singers that were not actively practicing music before psychedelic experiences and after having one or more profound psychedelic experiences, became professional musicians with a full-fledged and active career within a few short years. Robert Venosa’s story is one of an artist who achieved great mastery, success, and fame in his lifetime but there are likely countless other stories of “normal” people who have experienced a creative inception as a result of a psychedelic experience. Given my history of participation in Visionary Art workshops, I have met many such people, people who were given the courage to follow long-standing dreams of realizing their vision of becoming an artist after or during a psychedelic experience.
To me, the legitimacy that psychedelics are a powerful agent in helping human beings become more creative and inventive is incontestable. I think that many artists and musicians, whether closeted or outspoken, who have been impacted by their use of psychedelics would say the same. However there has been very little research done about this. In the 1950’s and 1960s there was a long term government funded research study led by Dr. Oscar Janiger in which a number of professional painters were dosed with LSD and under the influence of LSD were asked to create renditions of Kachina dolls. The artists were later interviewed about how this impacted their creativity and there were interesting results. This study was documented in the book LSD, Spirituality, and the Creative Process: Based on the Groundbreaking Research of Oscar Janiger, M.D. However, as far as I know, this experiment has never been repeated with contemporary artists and I think that it should be repeated and reevaluated. I would perhaps suggest, however, that it be done differently because I think that it is difficult, especially if you’ve never had a psychedelic experience before, to create art under its influence. The purpose of the psychedelic is not necessarily to help with the creative labor required to create a work of art, but rather to help the artist receive inspiration and vision. There are already many working, professional, successful artists who have had psychedelic experiences and claim that it made a positive impact on their work. Taking psychedelics might be illegal in the time that we live in, however speaking about it is not. And so there are many artists, musicians, and other professional creatives, who are out of the closet about their psychedelic use and how it has positively impacted their work. In contrast to the 1960s we now have many established, reputable, and respected artists who have been outspoken about how psychedelics have positively impacted their creative endeavors.
I also know that, before the prohibition of psychedelics, studies were done with scientists and other non-art related professionals, for which creativity is just as important, about how psychedelics can help these people solve problems that they were stuck on related to their work. Francis Crick’s discovery of the DNA double helix spiral was the result of one of these experiments. Francis Crick was under the influence of LSD when he had this realization and credits the use of LSD for this discovery. Apple founder Steve Jobs famously would not hire an employee who had never before taken LSD and considered his experiences with LSD to be one of the most essential catalysts of his creative work and one of the crucial experiences that allowed him to have the insights and realizations necessary to allow for the Apple products, such as the Macbook that I am currently using to compose this, to have been created.
I think that many people would claim that we are better off for having Apple products like iPhones in our lives and that we are better off for having Beatles albums like Sgt Pepper in the world and for Jimi Hendrix’s famously psychedelic guitar sound, all of which would never have existed had these creators never used LSD. There are many artists who are, either secretly or publicly, using psychedelics through illicit means. What would the world be like if artists and other powerful creative people had access to these tools legally? I have facilitated psychedelics in a more legal context with the intention of helping to unblock creativity and to foster and grow artists in a retreat that I helped facilitate last year in the Netherlands using Psilocybin truffles, which are legal in Holland. I think that all of the participants would say that it had a positive effect on helping them re-generate their creativity and probably some of the participants would say that it had a profound catalytic effect.
Historically, there is a precedence for psychedelics having a catalytic impact upon creativity. The Rites of Eleusis in ancient Greece was a psychedelic ordeal in which the most influential thinkers and creators of ancient Greek society would gather and ingest a psychedelic substance known as Kykeon. It was probably a more formal occasion but somewhat similar perhaps to Burning Man, a contemporary right which is also frequently attended by powerful influencers, creators, and thinkers. The Rites of Eleusis was extensively researched by Albert Hoffmann and Gordon Wasson, as documented in their book The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries, and there is speculation as to what Kykeon was made of, with hypotheses about its contents including psilocybin mushrooms, Ergot, which is the fungus which LSD is synthesized from, or perhaps Amanita Muscaria mushrooms. Whatever it’s contents may be, we know that it was a powerful psychedelic and that it was ingested by philosophers, architects, artists, and politicians alike. It had a profound effect on shaping the cultural landscape of ancient greek society.
I am not saying that you need psychedelics to be creative. Many of the greatest artists in history such as Mozart, Beethoven, and Leonardo da Vinci probably never used psychedelics in their lifetime. It is possible, however, that given the fact that cannabis was less prohibited and stigmatized back in these times that these artists may have had some experience with cannabis. I recall a private conversation with Alex Grey in which he pointed out that some of the lines of Shakespeare plays seem to point at the use of cannabis recreationally. Unfortunately I cannot recall the specific lines. Cannabis when used at sufficient doses, especially when ingested, can produce a powerful psychedelic experience. Whether or not these artists were using psychedelics of any kind, I simply wish to consider the possibility that psychedelics can in certain circumstances, and for certain people, be powerful catalysts to help people fulfill their creative potential. I believe that there is enough evidence of this anecdotally to provoke curiosity and for this to be worthy of greater research.
My goal is to provoke conversation and to help validate the idea that psychedelics are remarkable tools to help develop and foster creativity. However I am neither a scientist nor a clinical researcher, I am simply an artist who has benefited from the use of psychedelics, and an appreciator of psychedelic art. This research may not be my work to do but I wish to create a case that would inspire and motivate scientists and researchers to take seriously the idea that psychedelics can greatly improve one’s creative capacities and that this should be studied. There has been too little research about the effects of psychedelics and creativity and having seen and experienced the effectiveness of psychedelics to enhance creativity, whereby after a psychedelic experience, an artist’s work can become dramatically more sophisticated, more novel, and more creative, I must vow for this research. I believe this level of novelty, ingenuity, and inventiveness poses an evolutionary advantage for us as a culture and as a species and that psychedelics are one tool which can give us the creative advantage to be able to resolve major issues we face as a global community and to find solutions for them.