Well float: most of the people on that list will be forgotten - if they had a drug problem there was usually a good reason - easy access (Freud) or a very personal reason (Tschaikovsky's suppressed homosexuality) I don't regard the Beatles as 'Great', gifted - yes, popular having created maybe a dozen songs with short melodic lines which are memorable - compare that to the output of a Schubert or a Mozart - no comparison. I have known a number of people who thought drug taking would take them from ordinary to extraordinary - didn't happen, doesn't happen IMO.
Many similar 'great' writers like Hemingway, often even in journals, unknown to their dying day - it's the luck of the draw, whether a publisher or the public likes you - Dickens did a great job pointing the finger at Victorian England's forgotten poor.
Good ole Freud was addicted to smokes too, had to keep his mouth open with a peg in the end to hold his cigar, despite mouth cancer - is that the act of a sane person? - yes he is the 'Father of 'all things psyche' nowadays birthing a huge industry, I guess they should give him god status for making so many people rich, and he wrote some amazing books (I actually have read one or two, including his clinical ones and he has a great analytical mind) - but he is now 'old hat', seeing he based a lot of his research on the bored leisured women of the upper crust - he also was one hell of a patriarch, even in his dealing with his own family, thus clouding some of his conclusions ('penis envy' my word; not by women, maybe by men ... and so on).
It would have been interesting if he got himself analysed - still great scientist, analyst etc and above all creator of the language and science of psychoanalysis.
I do not have a lot of respect for people who feel they 'need' something in their lives which in essence destroys them, to give it meaning; there are exceptions, of course, as in the case of injury, severe mental problems, trauma etc
I don't condemn people who have experimented - in a way I wish I could talk from an 'experience' basis - but can't. I am lucky I can get absolutely high on going out into the bush, smelling the spring flowers, playing a piece of music really well, dancing etc. - or just having a laugh and fun with friends (and a little bit of alcohol).
However, I find what is going on now, but most obviously with a mix of drugs in which alcohol plays its part as well, should be dealt with, as it endangers all of us. We are all road users, our houses get robbed etc. our young teenagers get sucked into that cycle.
a cavalier attitude towards drug taking is absolutely not on - just IMO.
Taurisk
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