Is Creativity a Stepping Stone to Addiction?

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Is Creativity a Stepping Stone to Addiction?
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• The notion that drug use fuels innovation has
  been around for decades. And it's easy to see
  why.
• Images of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Whitney
  Houston, Amy Winehouse, Heath Ledger and River
  Phoenix -- all brilliantly creative and all dead
  at a young age due to a drug overdose -- come to
  mind.
• Winehouse, whose manager urged her to partake in
  intensive outpatient treatment (IOP) for women,
  refused and instead wound up with a best-selling
  single based on the experience.

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• So why is it that every time another celebrity
  adds their name to the list, the question is
  posed Did drugs or alcohol help usher in the
  creative process?
• Would Stephen King, for instance, be such a great
  writer if he wasn't such a prodigious cocaine
  user? As writer F. Scott Fitzgerald once said,
  First you take a drink, then the drink takes a
  drink, then the drink takes you.

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• But where does the addiction take you? All too
  often, it leads to a tragic end, as evidenced by
  the pantheon of hugely popular artists whose
  careers and lives were cut short due to drugs and
  alcohol.
• While some creative types participate in IOP drug
  treatment for women or men, others continue to
  struggle with untreated addiction throughout
  their lives.
• Addiction is a disease, not a cheery path to
  success. We only need turn to science for
  confirmation. When questioned by Scientific
  American whether there is a link between
  creativity and addiction, neuroscientist David
  Linden of Johns Hopkins University School of
  Medicine succinctly responded, "No." To make
  other conclusions is to blur the line between
  coincidence and cause.

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• That said, might there be a predisposition toward
  drug and alcohol use in people who are creative?
• Additionally, might creative people be more
  likely to refuse IOP treatment for women and men?
  Possibly. As Aristotle once declared,
• "Those who have been eminent in philosophy,
  politics, poetry and the arts have all had
  tendencies towards melancholia." And melancholia,
  as medicine proves, has a strong correlation with
  addiction.Inserted IOP

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