Alcohol can seem to make us more creative. After a few drinks, ideas seem to come more easily. We stop judging everything, talk more freely and might write down something that feels brilliant at the time.
So it makes sense that we gave alcohol the credit. But feeling creative and producing good work aren't always the same thing.
Why the ideas feel better
Alcohol lowers our inhibitions. We become less worried about whether an idea is sensible, original or even possible.
We might become more willing to say whatever comes into our head. And there might be a good idea in there.
But alcohol is also changing our judgement. The idea might feel better at the same time that we're less able to judge it clearly.
That's why notes made after drinking can look very different in the morning.
Creativity needs more than ideas
Coming up with the idea is only the start.
We still have to decide whether it's any good, remove the weak parts and do something with it. That's the part alcohol rarely helps with.
We could start something and lose the thread. We might repeat ourselves, miss an obvious problem or decide we'll finish it tomorrow.
Then tomorrow arrives with poor sleep and less energy, so the idea sits there unfinished.
Alcohol can become permission to create
For some of us, the drink becomes a kind of permission. We don't let ourselves play with an idea, write badly or make something that may not work unless alcohol has taken away the self-consciousness first.
Then it looks as though alcohol created the confidence. But the ability was already ours. Alcohol only became the routine we thought we needed before using it.
And once that belief gets repeated often enough, sitting down to create without a drink can feel strangely difficult.
Try the whole process without alcohol
Creating without alcohol might feel less exciting at first.
The ideas might not arrive with the same rush. But we can stay with them, decide what is worth keeping and remember what we were trying to do.
We also get the next morning. We can return to the work without first recovering from the night before.
Alcohol may have made an idea feel exciting. But that doesn’t tell us whether it actually helped us finish anything worthwhile. When we look at the finished work, the answer often looks very different.
— Brent