Who needs drugs when you've got music?

Some notes on drugs and music: The bebop era jazz world was devastated by heroin and I (and pretty much every informed fan) assume a LOT more great music would have been produced without it, with many less dead musicians. I've been a musician since the 60s and can say without hesitation that drugs NEVER helped any serious music along...maybe somebody was inspired by an acid trip or was helped to stay awake by some stimulant, but to say "weed or drugs" played (or plays) an important role in the art itself minimizes the effort it takes to make good music, and is an insult to working musicians. Alcohol and hard drug use by "bohemian" artists and writers might be a fact of life but certainly has never helped the art or writing, except in the imagination of the delusional.

Wolf, perhaps you are exagerating for effect. I've heard drug-fueled improvisations that would not have happened otherwise. Better than straight? Very rarely, and never, really, if clean, error-free playing is what you're after. But sometimes something new and different comes out.

Is the answer to the OP, probably the people who made the music?

Drugs/booze and music are linked. Both in the creation and observation of it. It is about finding boundaries and removing them. Finding new ground or a new interpretation or a new language or even courage. Removing boundaries is sometimes about removing ones self. Hense drug use in music.

Obviously you do not need them, but isn't it odd that so many great pieces of music or creative movements were created under the influence of the fashionable drugs of the time?

You can smoke pot and noodle all day, but few other drugs allow that...sort of speaks to the "lumping together" nonesense of the term "drugs." The image of the "creative stoned musician dude" is a lame parody to most pro musicians who have experience and chops, and can force the overuse of quotation marks.

"Really? Is Alice In Wonderland the only novel ever written?"
That was fiction?