I'm currently on what I'm fairly certain will be the tail end of a highly psychedelic phase of my life (I averaged about one mushroom or LSD trip per month between January 2005 and April 2006, but nowadays I'm a bit less interested) and I frankly feel like a much more mentally and creatively active person for it. But I didn't use the drugs for direct inspiration. I'm barely up to amateur level when it comes to making music and my dubious talent at visual arts is even less practiced, so the results of any drug-inspired creative expression would reflect this. But I've found that the psychedelic state (which, after the amount of tripping I've done, I can easily and consciously approach if I smoke good weed) doesn't give me ideas directly as much as it allows me to more clearly express ideas that I can't really fully think through in a sober state.
I like to think that using drugs in this fashion is a good idea. It certainly has given me positive results so far ... I feel worlds more conscious of my own thinking and the processes by which I create art of any sort than I think I would without having used drugs. I think my relationship with myself and the world has become a closer one, or at least I'm now more able to notice and reverse myself when I take it down the wrong direction. But while I feel that my life has been enriched by my drug use, I don't think I can really say that I've become more creative for it. I've just become more in touch with the creativity that was already there. It comes to the same thing in the end because I think my creative output is greater now, but I think it's important for me to recognize that it's not a direct result of the drugs, and that I'm responsible for deciding to take my drug experiences in that direction.
On the visual/audio art phenomenon that's been pointed out, well, I think it's safe to say that the culture surrounding visual art is very, very different from the culture surrounding musical art. Visual artists are "supposed" to create work that reflects their surroundings (or at least I've seen a tendency towards this idea) and it's very hard to give credit to a visual artist who uses something as intensely personalized as an LSD experience to inform their work, because art critics tend to see that as a sort of pollution of the artist's vision. It's not really an acceptable idea in mainstream art nowadays that drug-enhanced art is really only enhanced through the process of bringing the artist in touch with himself, instead of being inspired by a substance that the artist is using as a creative crutch. If a visual artist wants to use hallucinogens to enhance their artwork, they can't allow too much imagery directly relating to the drugs without being discredited in the eyes of those who see drugs as crutches.
Musicians, on the other hand, are not restricted (except by the harshest of critics) to art that "reflects" anything outside of themselves. Only a minority of musicians are even thought of as being better for having expressed a statement about their surroundings. Most are lauded merely for their originality or their technique. As such, when musicians use drugs, people are more likely to see their output as originally inspired and drug-*enhanced* instead of the other way round, which is how visual artists are often seen.
This is all compounded, I think, by the idea that hallucinogens are primarily visually-stimulating drugs. This is absolutely not the case. Musicians can convey the "visions" they experience on halluciongens just as easily and purely as visual artists. One of the most intense psychedelic trips I ever took had virtually no visual component at all and I went through the majority of it without any sort of visual distortion or hallucination whatsoever. There's a lot more to hallucinogens than just seeing shit.
Yeesh. Can you tell I care about this stuff?
