{"id":1278,"date":"2014-12-06T20:17:30","date_gmt":"2014-12-07T00:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/?p=1278"},"modified":"2015-04-27T13:21:29","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T17:21:29","slug":"stephen-king-on-substance-abuse-and-creativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/2014\/12\/06\/stephen-king-on-substance-abuse-and-creativity\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen King on Substance Abuse and Creativity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"quoteText\"><a href=\"http:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-06-at-7.26.42-PM.png\" rel=\"http:\/\/www.al-anon.alateen.org\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-1279 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-06-at-7.26.42-PM.png\" alt=\"Screen Shot 2014-12-06 at 7.26.42 PM\" width=\"607\" height=\"151\" srcset=\"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-06-at-7.26.42-PM.png 607w, https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Screen-Shot-2014-12-06-at-7.26.42-PM-300x74.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 607px) 100vw, 607px\" \/><\/a>\u201cThe idea that the creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. The four twentieth-century writers whose work is most responsible for it are probably\u00a0Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, and the poet Dylan Thomas. They are the writers who largely formed our vision of an existential English-speaking wasteland where people have been cut off from one another and live in an atmosphere of emotional strangulation and despair. These concepts are very familiar to most alcoholics. The common reaction to them is amusement. Substance abusing writers are just: substance abusers \u2014 common garden variety drunks and druggies, in other words. Any claims that drugs and alcohol are necessary to dull a finer sensibility are just the usual self-serving bullshit. I&#8217;ve heard alcoholic snowplow drivers make the same claim, that they drink to still the demons. It doesn&#8217;t matter if you&#8217;re James Jones, John Cheever, or a stew bum snoozing in Penn Station. For an addict the right to the drink or the drug of choice must be preserved at all costs. Hemingway and Fitzgerald didn&#8217;t drink because they were creative, alienated, or morally weak. They drank because it&#8217;s what alkies are wired up to do. Creative people probably do run a greater risk of alcoholism and addiction than those in some other jobs &#8211; but so what? We all look pretty much the same when we&#8217;re puking in the gutter.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/3389.Stephen_King\">Stephen King<\/a>,\u00a0<i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/work\/quotes\/150292\">On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1281\" style=\"width: 427px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/31OmSIfvN3L.jpg\" rel=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B00E9J3MLM\/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&amp;psc=1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1281\" class=\"wp-image-1281 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/31OmSIfvN3L.jpg\" alt=\"31OmSIfvN3L\" width=\"417\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/31OmSIfvN3L.jpg 417w, https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/31OmSIfvN3L-250x300.jpg 250w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 417px) 100vw, 417px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1281\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Inexpensive time-locked &#8220;safe&#8221;\u00a0to keep keys, cards, and wallets from loved ones&#8230;<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cThe idea that the creative endeavor and mind-altering substances are entwined is one of the great pop-intellectual myths of our time. The four twentieth-century writers whose work is most responsible for it are probably\u00a0Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sherwood Anderson, and the poet Dylan Thomas. They are the writers who largely formed our vision of an existential English-speaking [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dead-friends"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1280,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278\/revisions\/1280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/factualfiction.com\/lighthouse\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}