Write Away

I believe 100% that the myth that drugs and alcohol cultivate creativity is just that: a myth. It's a pernicious one, and one perpetuated by many an MFA program. I can't tell you how many of the MFA professors hold class or peripheral activities in bars and shame students who come and don't drink or just don't come at all because they don't want to come to bars. Add in a handful of really creative and/or prolific writers who wrote high or drunk or whatever and you have one hell of a myth.

I believe those writers wrote well DESPITE having problems with alcohol and drugs not because of them.

I've written stuff while I was drunk, some of which I was pleased with when I was sober. But on the whole, I feel that my best writing efforts happen while sober.

I think Stephen King's discussion of this myth in On Writing is the best I've read in a published book.