Pharmaceuticals / Meds and recording / the creative process
With a large percentage of the population on meds, I was wondering if anyone cared to share their experiences with meds and recording, songwriting, mixing, and/or the creative process in general? Obviously, there's a whole spectrum of ailments and prescriptions (anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, bipolar meds, painkillers, etc.) and I'm wondering what people on different medications have found in this context.
Have you noticed them altering your ability to hear well?
Different creative decisions you may not have made were you not on them?
Sapping your creativity or viceversa?
Hindsight on recordings made while you were on meds?
Allowing you focus on the sounds better?
I don't personally have anything good to share, but I know someone must. I remember taking Ritalin recreationally once in college and it seemed to sap my creativity, but other than illicit ones I don't have any stories of these things.
Since I was perscribed adderol, I notice my ability to mix for long periods of time without being frusterated has been extended infinitely
My girlfriend was just prescribed Adderol, which actually led me to thinking that started this thread. She likes it, it helps her focus, but she ends up working way later than she should.
Narcotics (opiates) can cause you to suddenly or slowly lose you hearing, which can be severe and permanent.
Other than that, Im not aware of any specific connections between drugs and mixing per se.
Personally, I think most drugs will in some way alter ones judgment and will cause a person to stray from personal protocol. Usually the results are pretty unwanted. They might sound cool at the time, but later (and sober) sound like ass.
Alcohol is usually bad for the gear cause 8 of 10 times you get wasted while mixing, you're gonna spill something inside your console. Too much pot will usually lead to cheetos powder and donught jelly to get imbedded into your microphones. Many drugs (amphetamines, LSD, ectasy etc) can of course can cause you to hear things that arent really there at all. That might not be a good thing for your mixing results in general. Hallucinagens can cause you to be absorbed by your preamp, fed mercilessly through a compressor, and stereo returned through your nearfileds. This can sometimes slow your progress for the evening.
Hallucinagens can cause you to be absorbed by your preamp, fed mercilessly through a compressor, and stereo returned through your nearfileds. This can sometimes slow your progress for the evening.
My hearing specialist at John's Hopkins was also Rush Limbaugh's doctor and he is certain that Limbaugh's addiction to painkillers directly caused him to lose his hearing.
I had been taking Percocet and Vicodine for low back pain and this doctor called my regular doctor and told him that I simply can not take any more opiate based pain killers because my hearing is already severely damaged.
FYI, after a broken back injury, I was taking Vioxx for quite awhile. After a couple months, I started getting pretty severe ringing in my ears. Talked to the doc, got off of it and after a couple of weeks the ringing went away completely. Come to find out, that's pretty normal for that drug. WTF!!! Never again.
if you have tinnitus, caffeine can exacerbate its effects--the ringing gets louder, higher pitched, etc. mine got a LOT better when i stopped drinking mountain dew (it was a staple of my diet ).
caffeine is so ingrained into our culture and lifestyles (who doesn't need coffee to function in the mornings?) that we don't really think of it as a drug........yet it's one of the most widely used drugs in history.
and aside from the donut and cheetos powder all over everything (), pot can also roll off ones high frequency hearing ability. it's essentially a LPF on your ears.
Since I was perscribed adderol, I notice my ability to mix for long periods of time without being frusterated has been extended infinitely
Adderall is essentially an amphetamine like Ritalin with one important difference; it contains four different amphetamines. The idea is that the onset and half-lives of the four amphetamines are different so instead of the one big hit and the one big crash, the effects are divided up into four different curves. Kinda like dividing an audio signal into four busses and applying four different compressors instead of running the the signal through one compressor.
There is a segment of the population who are able to relax and focus under the influence of amphetamines. I'm one of those people. I took the stuff for a while, and the results were positive, but in the long run, I'm better off without it. But amphetamines always have a dopamine-triggering effect. Adderall is a dopamine and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor (I believe that's the technical term; I didn't check so this is from memory). They keep your brain from getting rid of dopamine and norepinephrine. This means that most anyone will have a feeling of "well-being" under it's influence.
So it's important to make the distinction between those whose chemistry benefits from Adderall and brings them up to "zero" and those who simply perform and feel "happier" under the influence of amphetamines. It's a fine line, and it's also a fuzzy line. Some people may cross back and forth over the line.
Adderall doesn't have a cumulative effect the way a Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (like Prozac) does. You literally take Adderall as you need it (this may or may not be how it's prescribed) whereas if you did the same with an SSRI, it wouldn't work at all, and in fact, it would work backwards as you'd always be fighting the initial onset anxiety. SSRI's take something like two weeks to take full effect. That's a long half-life.
Amphetamines aren't addictive the way opiates (like Xanax or heroin) but there's a definite potential for dependency. Opiate withdrawal manifests itself in emotional and phsyical ways but amphetamines are mostly emotionally addictive. Of course, there may be physical symptoms of withdrawal caused by emotional dependence but it's not the same mechanism.
If one were going to take Adderall, I would suggest to really examine the result; do you really "need" it or do you "like" it?
Just be careful.
I think it's great that we can talk about depression and other illnesses (yes, it's an illness and it's not your fault.) There's no reason to live "in a hole". There's situational depression and there's physiological depression. If one lives long enough with situational depression, the phsyiology of one's brain can actually change which may contribute to non-situational depression. In such cases, SSRI's and other anti-depressants can be a diety-send. It's almost like if you forget how to smile and you need a reminder.
One reason I think SSRI's are good is that it's hard to abuse them. And I think the best way to figure out whether or not they're for you is to try them; if things seem better, you most probably need them.
None of these things are miracle cures, but they can certainly help.
And of course, like Max Cooper said, if you have a serious mental illness, medication can be an important part of therapy.
I'm in tears I'm laughing so hard...
Of the seemingly dozens of "Drugs and Music" threads around here, this is by far the funniest. Keep it up.
Actually, I guess I can relay one 'don't drink and mix' experience ... In my home studio (thankfully) I had a few too many one night and thought one particular song really called for the sound of beer bottles being smashed on my console. As in, stand back, drain the bottle, and throw it as hard as I could at the board. I mean, it was a Soundcraft board, nothing high end, but still... WTF was I thinking.
And by the way, it didn't sound cool. So, yeah, alcohol.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by shipshape
All the haters. Have a beer and move on to porcupine Tree or something. We are here doing the absolute best we can. It's hard work.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson
Actually it's considerably less expensive to hire the best musicians and record live in a first class studio than spending months making records Sgt. Pepper style in a cheap studio.
The crazy thing about drugs is it seems to effect different people differently. I know of some people that hallucinate like crazy off of some drugs that aren't supposed to cause hallucinations at any dose! I know of other people who are completely unaffected by certain kinds of drugs. Benzos have almost no effect on me, but the caffeine in a single cup of coffee will keep me bouncing off the walls for about 8-10 hours.
So when it comes to drugs, you just never know. We're all wired differently.
The above talk of Adderall... The singer in my sig, Irish Mike, was on that stuff all last year, prescribed by some quack.
By early February of last year he was getting weird, by like April our sessions had ended (he started crying out of nowhere one day, cause he couldn't come up with a part). By May he was stealing our CD money, and I cut him off. In September he went crazy and shot a guy in the face. His trial starts soon.
(Plus all these public shootings lately, the school and the mall guys, were all on that stuff).
I sure don't want to do any more sessions/writing with someone like that. It made me appreciate all the producers who pulled great albums out of the Aerosmiths and Black Sabbaths of the world...
Actually, I guess I can relay one 'don't drink and mix' experience ... In my home studio (thankfully) I had a few too many one night and thought one particular song really called for the sound of beer bottles being smashed on my console. As in, stand back, drain the bottle, and throw it as hard as I could at the board. I mean, it was a Soundcraft board, nothing high end, but still... WTF was I thinking.
And by the way, it didn't sound cool. So, yeah, alcohol.
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