{"id":18199,"date":"2021-04-20T12:55:45","date_gmt":"2021-04-20T16:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ceros.com\/inspire\/?p=18199"},"modified":"2021-10-05T15:00:01","modified_gmt":"2021-10-05T19:00:01","slug":"cannabis-and-creativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ceros.com\/inspire\/originals\/cannabis-and-creativity\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Cannabis Spark My Creativity or Blunt It?"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 5<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

Cannabis has a mythic reputation in the creative community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everyone from Jimi Hendrix to Ted Turner has credited their imaginative success (or at least some of it) to cannabis. Steve Jobs once said<\/a> that cannabis and hashish made him feel \u201crelaxed and creative\u201d when he used them in the \u201970s. And now that over 40 percent of Americans live in a state where cannabis is legal, many more people might be interested in exploring its  relationship to their work. But does pot really enhance our creativity? Or does it just get us high enough to convince ourselves that the work we\u2019re doing is good?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, it\u2019s complicated. While it’s impossible to imagine a scenario in which Hendrix becomes Hendrix without smoking pot, cannabis affects each person differently. One person might find that it helps them break through writer\u2019s block or devise a creative approach for a marketing campaign, while someone else might discover that cannabis dulls their thinking, clouds their judgment, or inhibits their motivation. Ultimately, finding strains and situations that are most complimentary is an individual process, but now that the drug has lost its stigma and much of its legal risk factor, it may be one worth exploring as a tool for creativity. It doesn\u2019t work for everyone, but it might just work for you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The stereotypes of cannabis users\u2014both as couch-bound stoners or as free-thinking innovators\u2014are both fairly outdated. So let\u2019s get past the narrow cultural associations and figure out what, if any, are the strains that are most likely to spark, rather than inhibit, your productivity.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The science of cannabis & creativity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Although there are many ways to measure \u201ccreativity,\u201d one way that scientists quantify it is the number of different solutions to a problem that a person can come up with, also known as \u201cdivergent thinking.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, testing divergent thinking isn\u2019t easy. Clinical psychologist Gr\u00e1inne Schafer is a leading researcher<\/a> on the topic, and even she feels that the relationship between cannabis and creativity isn\u2019t sufficiently understood by scientists. Her team does note that cannabis produces effects that can help a person connect seemingly unrelated concepts together, and that might help some people in their creative pursuits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n