Out of my head | Film | The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2001/oct/19/artsfeatures
Drugs may be a way to a kind of liberation, but only for non-creative people. This is because the creative act is an act of magic - the more so the more it draws on the imagination. It is a ritual we invoke to exorcise demons and enter into a state of absolute freedom and absolute communication. Artistic creativity is essentially shamanistic, and the shaman makes use of drugs to induce the "creative" state.
Perhaps drugs are no more than a preserved and concentrated form of imagination. But the imagination also has a predilection for cruelty - which is why drugs can sometimes make people cruel and, instead of showing them the way to absolute freedom, drive them into the clutches of yet more demons.