I'm not sure why the post on guitars and drugs was locked. It didn't seem to be out of control and it is an interesting issue. In fact it leads on to quite philosophical musings on the connection between external influences, state of mind and playing music.
While it is probably generally agreed that playing guitar in an altered state of mind is not usually beneficial towards actual technique, it can have interesting effects on creativity. Creativity is always spurred on by new external stimuli which is why people are often inspired when camping out in nature, travelling to new countries, or lying on a beach looking up at the stars. Other events can also change our point of view, allowing us to see outside our normal reality and translate this into new music - things like being dumped by your girlfriend, the death of someone close to you, political upheaval etc. Drugs can have the same effect by temporarily changing our view of reality and perhaps letting us noodle away on guitars where no one has noodled before. Drugs are certainly not the only way to get creatively inspired however.
Perhaps some of you could tell the rest of us if there are any things in particular you do to be inspired creatively (excluding drugs)? I almost always come away from seeing live bands with inspiration and new riffs in my head.
I always laughed at the start of the Tool song Third Eye from Aenima. I think it's a sample of comedian Bill Hicks but I'm not 100% sure of that. I'm putting a link here instead of the quote because it contains words and topics I probably can't post, so please don't click it if you think you'll be offended. http://chrisl.zip.com.au/aenima.html#Third
I hope I didn't stomp too badly on anyone's toes by re-raising this post, but this forum seems to be fairly mature and I thought it could handle a discussion on this topic. I don't see why we have to dance around this when music and drugs have historically had close connections with each other. For the record, although I have dabbled in various illicit substances in my time I don't recommend drugs as a pathway to creativity, and now that i'm old and grumpy I leave that stuff up to the crazy kids.
