What is your opinion on the artistic process vis-a-vis the need for some artists

Question:

What is your opinion on the artistic process vis-a-vis the need for some artists to fuel their creativity....?

... with some form of vice? I ask this because I have noticed that many great artists that I admire, be they painters, writers, musicians, actors or what have you, tend to be the ones that suffer from some form of addiction... it could be Voltaire with his fifty cups of coffee a day, Charles Bukowski's alcohol, Jim Morrison's drugs and alcohol, Brando's early womanizing and later gluttony, McQueen's obsession with speed and danger and women and drugs, Keith Moon, Anthony Burgess, Vincent Van Gogh, Edgar Poe, John Belushi... the list can go on... and it could be drugs, alcohol, obsessions with sex, work, food... lack of sleep and other deficiencies... and general mental illness.

Does excess lead to dazzling creative output in artists? Is it the cause or effect?

What are your thoughts?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

I think excess in artists is the effect of the creative output.

The creative spirit energizes artists and also causes their obsessions. Each artist is affected by the spirit in different ways, of course, because each artist has their own individual creative spirit.

There is an interesting book that approaches this subject:
Touched with fire : manic-depressive illness and the artistic temperament by Kay Redfield Jamison, New York : Free Press : Maxwell Macmillan International, c1993