Made on Drugs

• Main
• Quotes
• All Subpages
• Create New

Kip: So um, How high were you when you made this map? UEAKCrash: I was actually very drunk for most of it. Kip: Alright. UEAKCrash:It was very alcohol fueled.

A work which is subject to this trope was made, at least in part, under the influence of drugs stronger than caffeine. Ironically, the work doesn't necessarily look like it was written on drugs, and some that do, weren't.

In order for a work to qualify for this trope, the creator has to be known to have created at least part of it while ingesting mind-altering substances, or when inspired by an experience had under their influence. Usually this requires Word of God or his close associates; simple speculation or "everyone knows" opinions will not be sufficient to justify the use of this trope. Citations and other evidence are, while not mandatory, strongly encouraged. Examples should include specific works and specific drugs (where known); just putting down something like "(Band name) were known to take LSD" is a Zero Context Example and will be subject to deletion.

Also, when a creator denies having used drugs when creating a certain work, we take their word on it.

It probably goes without saying, but some creators did use mind-altering substances, but did not do so while creating. A prime example would be Ernest Hemingway. He was a heavy drinker -- but not while writing; he wrote in the morning and early afternoon, and only began drinking in the middle of the afternoon when he had accomplished the writing he had set out to do that day. The work he and others like him created would not qualify for this trope.

In-Universe examples from works of fiction are welcome, and have their own section in the examples.

Contrast What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?, which is when the work looks like it was created under the influence, but demonstrably wasn't.

Please note, by the way, that this page explicitly does not endorse or recommend the use of mind-altering substances as a part of the creative process -- it just documents it. The actual impacts that drugs may have on the creative process can vary wildly from creator to creator, and to be honest, it's likely that the more drugs a creator does, the less likely the resulting work will be worth experiencing. Or even completed.

Examples of Made on Drugs include:

Straight Examples

Anime and Manga

• The staff of Gurren Lagann had a trip and got drunk when that show was over. Much of Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt's shell was made, or at least voiced (perhaps for the first time), during this trip..

Literature

• So that nobody has any doubts, Hunter S. Thompson's books and articles were made on drugs. All of them.
• According to Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Ken Kesey wrote several passages of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest on LSD and/or peyote.
• Nineteenth-century British author Wilkie Collins was addicted to laudanum and later opium during the period during which he wrote what have been called "the best and most enduring novels of his career": The Woman in White, No Name, Armadale, and The Moonstone. By the 1870s, though, his opium addition (along with a general decline in his health and a growing problem with his eyesight) began to adversely affect his writing; it's hard to point to any particular feature of his later work which can be definitively attributed to the drug use, though.
• The poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge were written while on drugs. One of his most famous works, "Kubla Khan, Or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment", is explicitly the result of an opium-influenced dream.
• Portions of the Don Juan books by Carlos Castaneda are first-hand accounts -- written during or shortly after -- peyote trances. Depending on where you stand on the disputed subject of their authenticity, these books may actually belong under In-Universe examples.
• At least some accounts attribute the waking nightmares that inspired Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein to opium, by way of laudanum.

Music

• "Pirates, We Are" by Walid Feghali.

Video Games

• The Team Fortress 2 (Video Game) map maker behind the famous Everything Is Trying to Kill You map, Koth trainsawlaser, stated much of it was made under the influence of alcohol.
• Michael Kirkbride created some of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind's stranger bits of lore while under the influence of peyote.

Other

• A US college student -- pseudonymously called "Mark" by his roommate Keith Fraley -- designed an ekranoplan while drunk. See this article at The Guardian.

In-Universe Examples

Web Comics

• Questionable Content has a "Fantasy Metal" band Mythic Slaughterbeast, whose lyrics "read like Tolkien on PCP". And they should, because...

Dora: According to the band's website, massive amounts of both were involved in the recording process.