Arts: Prescription Drugs and Creativity

With the increased number and availability of prescription medications used to treat mental disorders such as anxiety and depression over the last few decades, there has been a renewed interest in what effect, if any, these substances [Page 213]have on the creative process. The ability to draw upon creative faculties may once have been a province reserved primarily for the artist working in his or her medium of paint, poetry or music, but as the global economy has continued to evolve from product-based to a service-based, knowledge-centric enterprise, creativity is a quality that is now prized in almost every field of endeavor. Bureaucrats, middle managers and frontline workers in even the most mundane occupations are now expected to dig deep and draw upon their inner ...