Does alcohol unleash our creativity?

Alcohol & Creativity — Myth or Masterpiece?

I hear the same story over and over again:

alcohol and creativity go hand in hand.

Great writers, poets, musicians, actors — they all drank, and in their haze created the works that shaped culture.

Or did they?

Is this truth… or just drunken folklore we tell ourselves to justify drinking?

Take A Farewell to Arms:

“The sandwiches came and I ate three and drank a couple more martinis.

I had never tasted anything so cool and clean. They made me feel civilized.”

A brilliant line, yes — but is there any evidence Hemingway wrote masterpieces because of alcohol?

Or is the more honest answer that he created them in spite of it?

And what about the vast number of alcohol-free creative geniuses who shaped our world — innovators, thinkers, artists, founders, leaders who created with a clear mind?

Creativity doesn’t disappear — it gets buried

Speaking from my survey of one:

I only rediscovered my creative side after I stopped drinking.

When the fog lifted, something opened.

Ideas returned.

Dreams resurfaced.

I could actually feel my own mind again — not the dulled version hidden behind hangovers and anxiety.

We are all creative.

Every single one of us.

But as adults, creativity gets dampened by:

• age

• comparison

• social pressure

• the fear of looking foolish

• the belief that if we aren’t a prodigy at 25, we’ve missed the boat

Yet as children, we were all artists.

We painted, wrote, invented, imagined, built whole worlds.

We weren’t scared of expressing ourselves.

So what happened?

Alcohol doesn’t fuel creativity — it kills execution

Sure, after a few beers I could imagine plenty.

Wild ideas. Huge plans. Grand projects.

But like most drunken dreams, they were flushed straight down the toilet of never going to happen.

Alcohol sparks faux-confidence — but it removes the ability to follow through.

When you take alcohol out of the equation, something shifts:

You stop caring what people think.

You stop following the crowd.

You stop hiding the parts of you that want to create something real.

When the majority walks one way, you quietly walk the other — and this is powerful.

I’ve realised something:

conventional wisdom is usually wrong.

I’m done being held back by the fear of judgement.

If I want to write, I will.

If I want to paint, I will.

If someone thinks it’s rubbish, that’s their problem.

I’d rather try, experiment, fail, grow — than stay silent because I’m scared of the lads laughing.

Creativity needs energy, presence and courage — not booze

Writing helps me think.

Helps me express.

Spellcheck saves my life, but who cares? I love it.

Same with painting and drawing — arts I abandoned years ago.

Now I have time, energy, clarity… so it’s game on again.

Recently in Ireland — the place where I lived for years and married an Irish girl — I wrote a tiny poem.

My first since preschool.

And I loved it.

But here’s the sad part:

for many men, writing a poem is “not macho.”

Drawing is “weird.”

Creativity is “soft.”

This is exactly why so many people never explore their creative side — they’re terrified of judgement.

How tragic is that?

Do you care what people think? And if you do… why?

Caring what others thought kept me drinking longer than I should have.

It kept me boxed in.

It kept me performing a role that wasn’t me.

When I finally stopped caring — creativity came roaring back.

So here’s my nudge to you:

Get creative again.

It’s already inside you.

This is what makes us human.

And here’s my tiny poem — my first in decades:

‘My Island.

My omnipresent beauty,

My Ireland.’