Language barriers have kept American scholars from learning about European studies on drugs and creativity conducted from the 1940s to the 1970s. An art historian reports on Swiss, English, French, and German studies offering new data in a research area banned since drugs like mescalin, psilocybin, and LSD became illegal. Different views of these drugs—revealed by terms like hallucinogens, psychotogenics, and psychedelics—colored researchers' aims. The notions of drugs dictating or liberating the intoxicated artist are criticized by discussing the importance of set and setting. Intentional drug use among artists expecting breakthroughs while intoxicated can be seen as a form of disinhibiting technique.
Intoxication, like dreams and madness, has historically been interpreted through two opposing cultural lenses: either as possession by an external agency or as liberation that reveals hidden truths (in vino veritas). Artists under LSD, mescaline, or psilocybin similarly describe feeling either possessed or liberated, influenced by their expectations and cultural dichotomies. However, analysis of a protocol suggests that intoxication can involve both possession and liberation almost simultaneously. Mediumistic and some psychedelic art display stylistic traits expressing both feelings. The demoniacal and psychedelic modes merge in experiential reality but are divided culturally.
A fourfold diagram models the feedback loop connecting cultural set and setting, individual set and setting, the drug experience, and its articulation back into culture. Because psychedelic drugs primarily amplify, their use tends to reinforce prior beliefs, making their sociocultural effect conservative. Transformative effects arise not from the drug itself but from impactful articulations of drug experiences in receptive environments. The paper argues that drug studies require minimal knowledge of cultural history.