Addiction can come from the creative personality, the nature of creativity itself, or even using drugs or alcohol for practical purposes but letting it get out of hand.

The Creative Personality

One of the most stable personality traits of creative people across all industries is that they’re open to experience. Its what allows them to experience more, consider different possibilities, and see the world in shades of gray rather than black-and-white. But that openness can come at a cost of letting harmful addictions in your life.

Creative people tend to fancy themselves as adventurous as well, so they’d be less likely to back down from experimenting with a drug in the first place.

Impulsiveness is another important trait of creative people. Eisenman (1974) found that art students who were encouraged to be impulsive produced more creative work and that people who smoked marijuana scored high on creativity tests, were more adventurousness, and scored low on authoritarianism… all of which would be correlated with unique thinking and creativity.

Creative Activity

Another issue that leads to addictive behavior is disconnectedness and depression. Because creative people see the world so differently than non-creatives, it can lead to feeling disconnected from others, which can lead to depression. Many creative fields also require significant time in solitude, which could exacerbate the problem.

Creativity is very self-expressive. In many creative fields, people feel only as good as their last work. When I was working as a stand-up comedian, how good I was depended on how my last show went… which wasn’t different from what others felt as well. This lends itself to having very high highs and very low lows, which could lead to coping through some type of addiction.

Enhancing Creativity

I think the majority of addiction is simply coping, but there’s been plenty of research into drugs’ effects on creativity. Drugs that relax the brain lead to defocused and broadened attention, which benefits original thinking. When taken in small amounts, moderate increases in creativity can be seen. So perhaps a final possibility is that the addiction began because it benefited creativity and then got out of control.