Made on Drugs

The webs that spiders spin when high. See, kids? Not all drugs are the same...

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.

—Trainsawlaser on Tip of the Hats with Crash, Jerma, Star, and more!

A work which is subject to this trope was made, at least in part, under the influence of drugs stronger than caffeine.[1] Ironically, a work subject to this trope doesn't necessarily look like it was written on drugs, and some works 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. (Sleep deprivation may cause similar effects, but does not count for the purpose of this trope.) Usually this requires Word of God or his close associates[2]; 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 do use mind-altering substances, but not 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.

Not to be confused with This Is Your Premise on Drugs.

Examples of Made on Drugs include:

Straight Examples

Advertising

  • Tim and Eric's ads for Old Spice featuring Terry Crews. Being Tim and Eric, little more needs to be said other than, "Yes, it was made on drugs, you idiot!"

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.[3]
  • Madlax is a prime example of how strange you can get in a plot. The director and writer conceived the series ending during an intoxicated brainstorming session.

Art

  • Artist Bryan Lewis Saunders purposely took drugs and then created self portraits, to see the effect the substances would have on his art.

Comic Books

Fan Works

  • William Country is a literal Crack Fic in that the animator reportedly did drugs while making it. The plot itself is fairly straightforward (although it does involve a character in a relationship with an Original Character who looks like himself), but there are countless unusual moments, related to the plot or otherwise, and bizarre background events (such as a bunch of buses flipping around while Chris is narrating). All in all, it's somewhat surreal.

Literature

  • So that nobody has any doubts, Hunter S. Thompson's books and articles were made on drugs. All of them.[4]
  • 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.
  • Illuminatus trilogy author Robert Anton Wilson is well-known to have taken drugs, and supported their legalization under his libertarian philosophy. He also has a book called Sex, Drugs and Magick which details his own personal experiences with a variety of substances.

Live Action Films

  • John Boorman admitted that he was high on drugs when he was directing Zardoz, and it definitely shows.

Music

  • "Pirates, We Are" by Walid Feghali.[5]
  • Ozzy Osbourne, in his own words "for the last God-knows how many years, I've been a major practicing drug addict and alcoholic", now claims to be completely drug-free, and that his 2007 album Black Rain was the first one he's ever recorded while sober.

Video Games

Web Original

  • YouTube Poop. In fact one maker answered the question "Did any of your ideas for Poops come from recreational drugs or alcohol?" with a "Yes."

Other

  • A US college student -- pseudonymously called "Mark" by his roommate Keith Fraley -- designed an ekranoplan[7] while drunk. See this article at The Guardian.

In-Universe Examples

Literature

  • Henry Kuttner's series of stories about Gallegher. He's a genius inventor for hire, but can work only while very drunk, and is really good only on the right sort of alcohol at that. The problem with this is that Gallegher is unable to remember what he did while drunk. And his approach tends to be so far out of the box that the hard part is figuring out what his new toy does and how this can possibly do the intended job - or is it something he built for fun (which can be even more arcane and roundabout) and there's another device somewhere else. Most of the plot is the process of self-investigation - once he hears the request again, thinks about it, studies his invention again... but this takes a while, and not all the clients are patient, especially since most people deal with a drunk genius only if quite desperate. It gets worse if he takes several requests, because he tries to find a solution for several at once - which may end up in Mad Scientist grade weirdness - but does not know which job(s) it performs, if any.
  • Anything in the least bit creative manifested by anyone under the effects of the Reality Pill in The Butterfly Kid.

Stand-Up Comedy

  • Invoked by Robin Williams during the comedy tour that became his 1979 album Reality... What A Concept:

“And now a poem written on acid entitled 'Ahhabulaguhala'...”

which he then recites, a stream of warbling liquid vowels that ends with a clearly-enunciated "Eve Arden".

Web Comics

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


  1. ↑ Quite honestly, if we included caffeine, we'd have to list just about every work created in the West for the last few hundred years, and for several centuries further back in the East.
  2. ↑ Secondhand sources are better than none.
  3. ↑ As cited in this Wikipedia article.
  4. ↑ All of his works. And all of the drugs.
  5. ↑ See here (annotations need to be on).
  6. ↑ By unofficial custom map standards, at least.
  7. ↑ Like an airplane, but is designed to fly over water at very low altitude, getting much of its lift from the ground effect.
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