It is noteworthy that probably the vast majority of society's innovators and benefactors were drug users. There is all too many we simply do not have the data on, and in the current political climate it is highly unlikely any studies will be done on this. In much of human history, drugs have been so much the norm as to not warrent mention regarding this or that personage.
Has this held humans back? Is it not oppressive governments and laws which have impeded progress, rather than the selection of human pastimes? In some cases, drug use has been far more than a pastime. To many of these people, their drug use has been an integral part of their work. Could Lewis Carrol create Alice, if he did not use mushrooms? Could Picasso paint Picasso without opium? Would Paracelcus have learned to refine drugs, were he not an addict? Could the Rolling Stones have become "the greatest Rock-and-Roll band in the world", if they did not get stoned?
I once ran accross a study saying that geniuses, on the average, have done their best work in their twenties, and taper off thereafter. Physiologically, however, the human brain does not begin to atrophy until the mid-thirties. Even then, the growth of new dendrites can compensate for as long as the body is reasonably healthy. Clearly, the problem of continued genial creation is not physiological, but conceptual.
How do you evoke a paradigm shift in a mind that has gone rigid?
What better than a drug, to jog your mind into a new perspective?
This average is not a hard-and-fast rule. There have been many who went on to do their best
work late in life. The indication is there that drugs have been a factor in this continued productivity. Even some apparent exceptions are telling. I have found no indication of drug use on the part of William Blake, Baruch Spinoza, or Immanuel Swedenborg, but Blake, Spinoza and Swedenborg were among those of history's great geniuses who found other ways of altering their state of consciousness, and used that alteration to view reality from different perspectives.
"Threats to Society":
Isaac Abrams,artist LSD
Lewis Daniel Armstrong, musician ("Satchmo") marijuana
Marcus Aurelius, philosopher, emperor of Rome opium
Marion Barry, mayor of Washington, D.C. cocaine, alcohol
Charles Baudelaire, poet absinthe
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, poet opium
William S. Burroughs, historian, author: "Naked Lunch", "I, Claudius" cocaine, opium
Lewis Carrol, mathematician, photographer, author: "Alice in Wonderland" mushrooms
Winston Churchill, British prime minister alcohol
Grover Cleveland, U.S. president cocaine
Jean Cocteau, playwrite: "Orpheus" opium
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, poet: "The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner" opium (laudanum)
Wilkie Collins, author: "The Moonstone" opium
Salivor Dali, painter "Everyone should eat hashish, but only once." hashish
Thomas DeQuincy, author: "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" opium (laudanum)
Charles Dickens, author: "A Christmas Carol", "Oliver Twist" opium
Arthur Conan Doyle, logican, author "Sherlock Holmes" cocaine, opium
Thomas Alva Edison, inventor, industrialist cocaine, alcohol
Havelock Ellis, physician, author: "Psychology of Sex", essay: "Mezcal: A New Artificial Paradise" peyote
Ben Franklin, inventor, publisher, scientist, American statesman opium, marijuana
Sigmund Freud, physician, "Father of Psychoanalysis" cocaine
Ulysses S. Grant, U.S. president cocaine, alcohol
Albert Hoffman, chemist, discovered LSD and became a proponant LSD
Aldous Huxley, author: "Brave New World", "Island", "Doors of Perception" mescaline
William James, physician, philosopher nitrous oxide, ether, peyote
Thomas Jefferson, U.S. president, inventor, architect, marijuana farmer marijuana
Jesus the Nazerite, Carpenter, Rabbi, "Christ" * Amanita muscaria, also known as fly agaric. Evidence available from R. Gordon Wasson, ("Soma, The Divine Mushroom of Immortality") mushroom expert and executive to J.P. Morgan. Another case was made by John M. Allegro, noted Bible scholar and linguist, who presented evidence in "The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross" that the story of Jesus was actually an
allegory on the properties of the amanita. alcohol, mushrooms*
Steve Jobs, co-creator of the Apple computer, the NeXt computer, and former head of Apple Computers, Inc. marijuana, LSD
John Keats, poet opium
Ken Kesey, author: "One Flew Over the Coo-Coo's Nest", "Once a Great Notion"
Timothy Leary, psychologist, Father of Transactional Analysis, software author: "Mindwheel"."Turn on, tune in, drop out." LSD, marijuana
Pope Leo XIII cocaine
John Cunningham Lilly, physician, scientist (electronics, dolphin communication, sensory deprivation), philosopher, author: "Mind of the Dolphin", "Center of the Cyclone" LSD, ketamine
Bela Lugosi, actress opium, morphine
Bob Marley, musician "The Father of Reggae Music" marijuana
Judge Marquat, Arizona Supreme Court Justice, involved in Miranda ruling. marijuana
Joseph McCarthy, U.S. Senator opium
Mohammed, spiritual leader hashish
Marcia Moore, Sheraton Hotel heiress, author: "Hypersentience", Journeys into the Bright
World" LSD marijuana, ketamine
Jack Nicholson, actor marijuana, LSD
Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus, Father of Modern Medicine opium
Pablo Picasso, painter, "The smell of opium is the least stupid smell in the world." opium
Plotinus, Roman philosopher, 205-270 AD opium
Edgar Allen Poe, poet, author: "The Raven", "The Fall of the House of Usher" opium
Jackson Pollack, painter (His work sold for up to $8,000,000 a piece.) alcohol
Cole Porter, composer cocaine
Elvis Presley, singer, actor prescription drugs
Richard Pryor, actor, comedian cocaine
Cardinal Duc de Richelieu, leading minister to king Louis XIII opium
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, U.S. president alcohol
Sir Walter Scott, poet, author opium
Shelly, poet opium
Arlene Sklar-Weinstein, artist LSD
Robert Louis Stevenson, author cocaine, morphine
The Rolling Stones (reputed to be the greatest rock-and-roll band in the world) marijuana, LSD
Desmond Taylor, film director cocaine
Vincent Van Gogh, painter absinthe, camphor
Jules Verne, author: "The Time Machine", "War of the Worlds", "2,000 Leagues Under the Sea" cocaine
George Washington, U.S. president, marijuana farmer marijuana (sensimilla)
Andrew Wiel, physician,psychopharmicologist, anthropologist, fire-walker, alternative
health expert, author: "The Natural Mind", "Spontaneous Healing", "8 Weeks to Optimum Health" marijuana, peyote, yage (S. American hallucinagin)
William Wilberforce, almost singlehandedly got slavery abolished throughout the British Empire opium
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