Creativity and mental illness are linked (see Miller’s Spent, earlier results in http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/10.23/01-creativity.html ); to the extent a drug reduces inhibition, one would expect that too. (I say ‘a drug’ because it’s easy to think of drugs which might increase inhibition and reduce creativity: Adderall and amphetamines are frequently accused of destroying original thinking and promoting a pernicious focus. One wonders what benefit Erdos realized from amphetamines—did he have plenty of good ideas but simply didn’t work them out without amphetamines?)
Creativity and mental illness are linked (see Miller’s Spent, earlier results in http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/10.23/01-creativity.html ); to the extent a drug reduces inhibition, one would expect that too. (I say ‘a drug’ because it’s easy to think of drugs which might increase inhibition and reduce creativity: Adderall and amphetamines are frequently accused of destroying original thinking and promoting a pernicious focus. One wonders what benefit Erdos realized from amphetamines—did he have plenty of good ideas but simply didn’t work them out without amphetamines?)
Insanity in mathematicians seems likely to be overrated—even in the most prominent, where one would expect mental illness to be most prominent based on the average/extreme model, the rates seems quite reasonable and fairly similar to the general population: http://blog.computationalcomplexity.org/2011/07/disproofing-myth-that-many-early.html
EDIT: One sequence of images that always interested me was http://www.cowboybooks.com.au/html/acidtrip1.html—the drawings degenerate as the LSD takes hold, but some of them struck me as much more interesting and attractive than the first one, like http://www.cowboybooks.com.au/html/acidtrip6.html