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Does Intoxication Make Things More Poetic, Does Caffeine and Nicotine Help Productive Thinking, Does Marijuana Improve Creative Abilities, and Do We Really Need to Eat Chocolate Before an Exam?
Honore de Balzac worked 15 hours a day, drinking up to 50 cups of coffee daily. William Faulkner said, “I mainly work at night, and always keep a bottle of whiskey handy so that all the ideas I forgot during the day come back to my head.” In the comedy “Don Juan,” Moliere called tobacco the passion of all respectable people – “and anyone who lives without tobacco, that’s right, does not deserve to live.” David Lynch admitted that he puts up to ten teaspoons of sugar in coffee and claimed that the sweet taste gave him new ideas for films. Marijuana was honored not only by many musicians but also by Stephen King, Steve Jobs, and Carl Sagan.
Is it really true that psychoactive substances increase our creative and intellectual abilities, or is it self-deception and propaganda of an unhealthy lifestyle? Let’s start with the most popular psychoactive substance in the world – caffeine.
Caffeine
Although caffeine produces a stimulating effect, in reality, it is not a stimulant. It releases already existing sources of energy and indirectly affects mood.
Caffeine molecules block adenosine receptors, which signal the body of fatigue, and also release dopamine, adrenaline, and serotonin. As a result, after a cup of Americano, you feel alert and focused. But the effect doesn’t last long: when the reserve energy runs out, there is even more fatigue.
Many studies confirm the positive impact of caffeine on thinking. It improves concentration, lifts mood, enhances cognitive functions, and increases problem-solving ability. Moderate doses of caffeine have a positive effect on memory, motor skills, and spatial thinking.
Like other psychoactive substances, caffeine is addictive. After a short break in consumption, some people experience withdrawal symptoms such as headaches, lack of energy, and depressed mood.
In 1997, researchers from Johns Hopkins University attempted to prove that the positive effects of caffeine are due to the relief of withdrawal symptoms: people feel better after drinking coffee, but in reality, they just feel less bad. However, other experiments have shown that caffeine improves cognitive skills in all people, regardless of whether they regularly drink coffee or not.
Coffee reduces the onset of age-related dementia. The positive effects are not due to caffeine itself, but to the combination of components contained in coffee beans. People who frequently drink coffee are less likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, perhaps because the drink performs a neuroprotective function.
Overall, experiments show that caffeine’s positive effect on thinking is most pronounced if you are already over 60.
The best-proven influence of caffeine is on concentration and ability to perform routine operations for a long time. On the other hand, caffeine’s relationship with creativity is more tense. Caffeine intensifies the effects of two stress hormones – cortisol and adrenaline. Therefore, a large amount of caffeine can cause anxiety and irritability.
New ideas most often arise in a relaxed state when thoughts wander without a specific direction. Caffeine narrows our area of attention and therefore can have a negative impact on creativity.
If you need to concentrate and quickly finish a project, nothing will help you better than a dose of caffeine. But if you need to conduct a brainstorm and come up with new ideas, it’s best to leave the coffee aside and turn to other substances.
Alcohol
Alcohol affects many functions of the brain at the same time. Firstly, it triggers the activation of dopamine and the GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid) system. As a result, a person first feels a mild excitement, then calm. It becomes difficult to concentrate, cognitive processes slow down, vision is distorted, and speech becomes slurred.
Regular alcohol consumption leads to many unpleasant consequences: memory deteriorates, attention and ability to plan are reduced, emotional intelligence is impaired. Contrary to popular belief, alcohol does not kill brain cells, but destroys connections between neurons. As a result, the density of white matter in the hippocampus decreases – a part of the brain where new memories are formed, and the activity of the prefrontal cortex decreases, which is responsible for planning and self-control. But even with severe alcoholism, it is usually enough to abstain for a year to bring mental functions back to normal.
Scientists have long debated whether small doses of alcohol are beneficial or harmful to health. According to a 2011 analysis, moderate alcohol consumption, especially in the form of wine, reduces the risk of dementia and mental disorders in later life. However, another study conducted over 30 years and completed in 2017 found that even moderate alcohol consumption negatively affects memory and cognitive abilities.
In general, the data is conflicting. But almost all scientists agree that more than 10 ml of alcohol should not be consumed daily.
American psychologists have found that after a small portion of alcohol, test subjects performed better on the Remote Associates Test, one of the standard tests for creativity. But on a task for divergent thinking, where one has to think of as many ways to use everyday objects, the drinkers performed no better than the sober ones.
Alcohol is a bad helper if you need to focus on work: it reduces working memory and causes “wandering of the mind”. But this is exactly what you need if you want to discover unexpected connections between ideas. Alcohol itself does not increase creative abilities, but it relaxes and helps to turn off the inner critic. But the more you drink, the less likely you are to have the strength for creativity. As Fitzgerald said, “first you drink alcohol, then alcohol drinks alcohol, and then alcohol drinks you”.
Prolonged alcohol consumption reduces cognitive abilities, but small portions will not harm you too much. Perhaps in the early stages of the creative process, alcohol can help, but this is not accurate.
Nicotine
Nicotine is an unusual drug that works as both a stimulant and a sedative. It improves concentration and helps relieve negative emotions. Nicotine affects acetylcholine receptors, activates the reward system, causes the release of adrenaline and dopamine. Synapses begin to transmit signals more quickly, resulting in an increase in the speed of thinking, improved working memory, mood, reaction, and motor skills.
Through tomography, it was possible to explain how this happens. Nicotine increases the activity of the prefrontal cortex, thalamus, and hypothalamus, areas of the brain that are responsible for operational control and the formation of memories. On the other hand, activity in the brain’s passive mode network decreases, which is activated when we are inactive and not thinking about anything specific. Hence the understandable effect: nicotine helps one to be focused and concentrate on the present moment.
Nicotine affects smokers and non-smokers differently. For example, after a cigarette, the working memory of smokers improves, but not for non-smokers. This may be due to the withdrawal syndrome that smokers experience within an hour after their last cigarette.
Some data indicates that years of smoking can impair intelligence, and people who quit smoking at a young age soon become less anxious and impulsive. The cause-and-effect relationship is not yet clear.
Nicotine greatly affects mood: it first causes stress and then helps to relieve it. Participants in psychological experiments found that smoking helped distract from negative stimuli. This is one of the reasons why it is so difficult to quit smoking: without nicotine, we feel stupid and unhappy. It is not surprising that nicotine has an addictive potential comparable to cocaine and is only slightly inferior to heroin.
More and more studies are pointing to a link between smoking and an increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, even among passive smokers. However, nicotine itself is not so harmful to health and mental health. Currently, there are studies according to which it can even perform a protective function in Parkinson’s disease.
Nicotine temporarily increases attention and thinking speed, but has no effect on creative abilities. In the long term, nicotine has a negative impact on work capacity – although it is not as harmful as other components of tobacco smoke.
Marijuana
Marijuana contains many components, but the main ones are tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). The first is responsible for stimulation, euphoria, and psychedelic effects, while the second relaxes and reduces anxiety. Research has shown that samples with a lower THC content have a better effect on the psyche. Participants given a higher dose performed worse on tasks that required intelligence and creativity.
Everyone has heard of the stereotype of a “stupid stoner,” but scientists are not sure that marijuana makes people stupid.
Long-term and regular marijuana use reduces the amount of gray matter in the orbitofrontal cortex, which is involved in motivation and decision-making, and also decreases the size of the hippocampus. At the same time, the total number of connections between brain regions increases.
People who smoke 5 or more joints per week experience a significant decrease in IQ. After several months of abstaining, the intelligence level returns to its previous level.
Authors of a widely publicized study in 2016 claimed that marijuana significantly decreases mental abilities of teenagers. However, it was later discovered that the negative effect was greatly exaggerated. If the participants were asked to abstain from smoking for 72 hours, their cognitive functions fully recovered.
Does marijuana affect creativity? Some studies found a connection, others did not. In 2017, American psychologists discovered that marijuana smokers perform better in tasks of association, one of the tests for creative thinking. But before and during the experiment, the participants didn’t use any drugs.
The researchers explain the results of the experiment as follows: marijuana is more often smoked by people with a certain personality trait—high openness to new experiences. It turns out that marijuana itself does not affect creativity—creative people simply smoke marijuana more often than others.
As Dr. Elise Frater from the Harvard Medical School notes, the effect of marijuana greatly depends on the context and personality of the person who takes it. Marijuana can help reduce anxiety and see connections between diverse phenomena. But for others, it is more likely to be an obstacle and even lead to severe neurosis.
Sugar
Finally, about the main drug of humanity. Sugar, which you add to coffee, consists of glucose and fructose molecules. Glucose is a universal form of energy that sustains the entire body, especially the brain. An adult needs about 200 grams of glucose per day, which he receives not only from sugar but also from other carbohydrates. The characteristic of sugar is that it is rapidly broken down into glucose and fructose and causes a rapid surge of energy.
The task of the organism is to maintain a stable level of glucose in the brain. When there is too little of it, our mood drops, attention, memory, and ability to absorb new information deteriorate. Participants in experiments who were given glucose drinks after several hours of fasting performed better on verbal and spatial memory tasks. Sudden drop in glucose levels, even in people without epilepsy, can lead to seizures.
In stressful situations and high mental workload, the brain requires more glucose than usual. People who received a dose of glucose before memory tests performed better on tasks. However, the data is ambiguous. In another experiment, participants who were given glucose, instead of slower forms of sugar (fructose or sucrose), performed worst on tasks.
We’re not scared of sugar scares for nothing: too high a glucose intake leads to nothing good. This is especially true in the case of diabetes, a disease where the body’s glucose levels are constantly elevated. Diabetes causes memory deterioration, visual perception, attention and productivity to decline, and doubles the risk of Alzheimer’s disease.
Scientists recently discovered that excessive sugar consumption gradually deteriorates memory and other cognitive abilities even in people without diabetes.
Apparently, high blood sugar levels cause premature aging of nerve cells. A diet with a high glycemic index increases the risk of cognitive impairments by 80% and is associated with a decrease in IQ in young people. Rats fed with fructose performed worse in mazes after only 6 weeks. High sugar consumption can cause metabolic syndrome, a disturbance of carbohydrate metabolism that results in obesity, increased fatigue, apathy, and frequent headaches.
It’s unlikely necessary to completely exclude sugar from your diet, but limiting its consumption will not hurt. Even David Lynch, who used to call sugar “granulated happiness”, recently admitted to eating less sweet. However, he still couldn’t give up donuts.
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