Should we consider using drugs in the workplace? By Dave Birss

The History of Drugs

Throughout history, humans have been taking all kinds of substances to change their mental states. These stimulants, relaxants or psychotropics go in and out of fashion over time. Opium was publicly available in Victorian times; and a perfectly acceptable recreational elixir. And these days we’re seeing a relaxing of attitudes towards marijuana. Even if you’re a staunchly ‘just say no’ kind of person, you probably still take some kind of mind-altering chemical, whether it’s caffeine, alcohol, nicotine or – if this whole topic makes you uptight – Prozac.

Whether you’re “buzzed”, “trippin'” or “like, totally out of your gourd”, the substance you’re using is shunting your thinking out of the norm. Many drugs have the effect of bringing down the barriers that stop you from having and expressing ideas. And all of them alter the way your brain normally works to give you access to new perspectives and concepts.

But please note that I’m not condoning the use of drink and drugs. On the other hand, neither am I condemning it. It’s something that’s had a long association with the world of creativity. And no look at divergence would be complete – or honest – without talking about it.

Bad bad advertising

If you’ve ever watched Mad Men, you’ll have noticed how much of the advertising workday seemed to be fuelled by scotch or martini. Rarely is Don Draper seen without a whiskey glass in his hand. And this approach to drinking wasn’t entirely fictional. There was a time when it wasn’t unusual for an advertising executive to have a drinks cabinet in their office. These were very different days. And I feel fortunate to have caught the tail end of them.

When I started as an advertising creative in the early 90s, it was normal to head out to the pub for lunch. Sometimes we returned to the office, sometimes we didn’t. Drinking beer was almost part of our job descriptions and the agency bosses would often join us for a lunchtime tipple. We weren’t avoiding work. In fact, it was quite the opposite. We took our sketch pads and marker pens to whichever pub we fancied that day and came up with ideas while we drained our pints. Many of us believe this helped us do our job better.

It all changed sometime around the turn of the century. It seems that the millennium bug bypassed the computers entirely and infected the minds of management with a humourless drive for efficiency and responsibility instead. The lunchtime pint in the pub was replaced by tasteless sandwiches at the desk.

The party was officially over. And the accountants turned off the lights behind us to save money.

100% proof

A few years ago, I was talking about these old glory days with the Editor in Chief of The Drum magazine (over a few drinks, of course). We got together with another former advertising creative director, John Jessop, to run an experiment to see if alcohol does, in fact, help creatives do their job better.

We recruited 20 advertising creatives and split them into two groups. Each of them had three hours to work on an advertising brief. The only difference was one group was allowed to drink as much as they liked while the other group was only allowed soft drinks.

At the end of the slightly messy night, we collected all the ideas the teams had produced. We picked the ten best ideas from each team and visualised them to the same standard so that no one would be able to tell the difference. We then presented these concepts to a group of top creative directors, as well as to members of the public. And the results surprised even us.

The group with an unlimited alcohol supply dramatically outperformed the other team. They came up with four out of the top five ideas, they produced more ideas overall and they churned out ideas more consistently throughout the course of the experiment.

Of course, this wasn’t done to rigorous laboratory standards. And it would never make it into an academic journal. It was more about fun than verifiable statistics. (But if there are any university researchers out there who want to run the experiment under more stringent conditions, I’d love to talk.)

Dave Birss is the author of How to Get Great Ideas: A system for smart, extraordinary thinking, priced £12.48. He is also the co-host of the “ultimate anti-conference”, the Fast Forward Forum, due to run in Venice on 6^th to 8^th October 2019. For more details visit https://fastforwardforum.eu/

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