The perfect drug.
I have always been a try it at least once type of person. I behave this way on the premise that I am keeping an open mind, trying not to judge, and a bit of self-righteous justification of being liberal…I have come to learn through various lessons that no one is truly open-minded or liberal. We all have our own variations of biases, but some of us are simply more tolerant and accepting of allowing people to be who they want to be.
My past is not the brightest of beams for anyone to use as a guide for a good path, but if you have engaged in similar activities as I have and came out better for it, then cheers to you for being here today, like I am.
In my early days of self-awareness, if you will, and finding some form of definition in who I am, which was around my late teens heading into college. I left behind what I considered to be fear, a more conservative outlook on life. I became more experimental, I tried things because I found them interesting, they had an attractive appeal. Substances, various forms of drugs, alcohol, and sleep depravity became journies I would take simply to see what would happen.
I opened myself to these things because I was curious about what others experienced. I would hear different people speak of creative prowess and how they achieved it. I too wanted to free my mind and open it creatively. I mostly tried these things when I was doing my artwork, to see if I was actually consciously creating or was being directed by something otherworldly or the substances themselves. You may have read about famous people who tried various substances and proclaimed the heavens opening up and experiencing extreme euphoria and creative greatness.
However, after much experimentation, I realized that not all their works were great, and I started observing what others did under the influence of drugs and very few of them were great, it was an oversell of exceptions. I concluded that drugs have nothing to do with it, although a very pleasurable experience at times, and yes, some great creative results took place, it was more about mental processing.
Drugs induce a euphoric state of mind, and in this state, one of two things happen, your thoughts become free-flowing, or you become fixated on one thing, an idea and you immerse yourself into this idea and take all you possibly can from it. These are the two possible positives, everything else is, as they say, tripping out your f*cking mind. This was what I experienced, others may have had different.
I started sobering up so I can be more aware, I started practicing to tap into that same state without the influence of external aids. The more I did this, I started developing processes, a framework for observing information, processing it, and executing testing phases.
A complex I still have trouble with was what I called “a stupidity complex.” I had really bad dyslexia growing up, I could not process information properly, the feeling of being intelligent or smart in any way was void of me. I also believed others thought me to be an idiot — which, if I am being honest, may or may not have had more to be with my shenanigans than my dyslexia, hindsight as they say is 20/20 — Reading and spelling was a dull and difficult task for me.
Of course, we now know that dyslexia has more to do with how we learn and process information, it’s not a sign that you’re not intelligent. A teacher also told my parents when I was in primary school that I was very intelligent, I just learn differently from the other students. Understand that me reading tons of books and writing today was not something I saw myself doing.
A bit of irony took place in my high school years, I have always loved the sciences, I fell in love with them and I did quite well, not so much in art…I did ok but not as great as I did in the sciences. This had more to do with the experimental approach to science, research, exploration, and I believe, my teacher also helped. In my art courses, the teachers were the opposite of my science experience. It felt more like “do as I say” than explore and have fun when it came to art classes.
Science has practicals, processes, parameters and you learn about variables and constants, controls. In order to achieve creative greatness or greatness overall, you need a defined process and consistency, more importantly, the ability to adapt to different problems or challenges. We cannot be lazy about this. We must be restless.
“Creatives need to be intellectually restless.” — Tham Khai Meng, Worldwide Chief Creative Officer & Co-Chairman
We must not shy away from the challenge of going down or up a different road, perhaps a good lazy would be to find a better and shorter way to do something, but it must be effective and sustainable. Bad lazy is trying to avoid finding a solution because it’s easier to keep putting band-aids on a problem.
What drugs taught me was this, we had more locked away inside ourselves than we realize, drugs remove our barriers and fear. I did not want to become dependent on substances to achieve greatness. This is not to say I did not do some amazing things under the influence, but I had to lock myself in my studio as my control because the price of being under the influence is that I lose my awareness.
If we can tap into our greatness without the help of substances, we can become even more powerful and deliberate in our work. Knowledge gain is important, but there is something even more amazing about engaging the mind and finding out what you are truly made of without any external help from substances. The answers to problems are simply spending the time to research and experiment with full consciousness.
