Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave us a body of riveting stories about Sherlock Holmes, detective, master of deductive reasoning and drug addict. As The Sign of Four opens, Holmes punctures his arm with a hypodermic needle and savors a seven percent solution of cocaine. His partner, Dr. Watson, scolds him. Holmes admits that the drug could damage his health but adds that cocaine is "so transcendentally stimulating and clarifying that its secondary action is a matter of small moment."

People in real life have made a similar claim -- that alcohol or other drugs stimulate creativity. On the surface, this idea seems to ring true. The list of creative people who abused alcohol or other drugs is long. Among writers it includes Sinclair Lewis, Jack London, Thomas Wolfe, Truman Capote, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eugene O'Neill, Hart Crane, John Cheever, John Berryman and William Faulkner. You can add numerous painters, musicians and other artists to that list.

Faulkner captured his fondness for alcohol when he remarked that "civilization begins with distillation." Fitzgerald said, "Drink heightens feeling. When I drink, it heightens my emotions and I put it in a story. My stories written when sober are stupid . . . all reasoned out, not felt."

Behind such comments is a theory about the nature of creativity. According to this theory, creativity is the ability to see ordinary things in an extraordinary way. Chemical use leads to altered states of consciousness and helps the artist look at everyday life with fresh eyes. "When you work hard all day with your head and know you must work again the next day," wrote Ernest Hemingway, "what else can change your ideas and make them run on a different plane like whiskey?"

Alcohol and drugs are often part of an artist's working routine. Faulkner wrote with a bottle of whiskey in reach. Poet Stephen Spender admitted that he drank endless cups of coffee when writing and sometimes wanted to smoke two or three cigarettes at once.

There's no disputing the genius of writers such as Hemingway, Fitzgerald and others. However, in all probability, great artists create great works in spite of, not because of, their heavy use of alcohol. This conclusion is supported by empirical evidence, including a study led by Ernest Noble and associates from the Alcohol Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles ("Creativity in Alcoholic and Nonalcoholic Families," published in the journal Alcohol, Vol 10, pp 317-322, 1993).

Noble's study found that, based on a battery of creativity tests, alcoholic fathers and sons had generally lower creativity scores than nonalcoholic fathers and sons. The alcoholic fathers and sons scored significantly lower on most of the personality questionnaires, which have been found to be reasonably valid measures of creativity.

The most consistent conclusion to be drawn from Noble's research and other studies examining the creativity-chemical link is summed up best in Noble's study: "Whereas creative people may sometimes be alcoholic, alcoholics are seldom creative."

In the The Thirsty Muse: Alcohol and the American Writer (Ticknor and Fields, 1989), author Tom Dardis pokes holes at the creativity-chemical link. In his book, Dardis, a professor of English, reviews the work and lives of Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald and O'Neill. All were alcoholic. He suggests that addiction may have diminished the creativity of several writers from this group later in life.

Dardis argues that Hemingway's most notable writing ended during his 41st year with For Whom the Bell Tolls. And after the publication of Go Down, Moses when he was 44, Faulkner's work declined.

Often artists return to the work they did while intoxicated and end up disappointed. Even Fitzgerald regretted that he wrote the second half of Tender is the Night while drinking.

In many cases, alcoholism and other drug use probably contributed to circumstances that ended the lives of artists. Hemingway committed suicide. So did London, Crane and Berryman.

Even if we agree with the theory that some chemical use promotes creativity, there is no proof that addiction does so. In addiction we find a formula for creative burnout, rather than creative inspiration.

Among the writers Dardis studied, O'Neill was the only one to choose the path of recovery. When he turned 38, the playwright decided that alcoholism would devour his writing talent and lead to suicide or insanity. He stopped drinking. During his years of sobriety he produced two classics of American drama: The Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey Into Night.

--Published July 22, 1998