Writers on Drugs

Unlocked interviews with Allen Ginsberg and Gabriel García Márquez.

The Paris Review Redux: free interviews, stories, poems, and art from the archives of The Paris Review. View this email in your browser Louise Bourgeois, Untitled, 1994. From the Paris Review Print Series. "I could see myself at four just as clear and separate from me as if there were an actual, living girl walking up to me. A slip of a girl. Stick-straight limbs, stick-straight hair that was brown in the shade, golden in the sun, as she moved out of the … the corner of me where she'd been hiding," writes Lisa Carver in a piece we published online last week, on her experience at an ayahuasca retreat in Peru. "I took Little Lisa by the hand and leapt up the stairs (in the real world) to show her my room," she continues. "I held her and cried with joy—a lot, a lot." This week, we're unlocking interviews with Allen Ginsberg and Gabriel García Márquez, two writers whose perspectives on—and experiences with—drugs differ greatly.  INTERVIEW The Art of Poetry No. 8 Allen Ginsberg INTERVIEWER Anything interesting about the actual experience, say with hallucinogens? GINSBERG What I do get is, say if I was in an apartment high on mescaline, I felt as if the apartment and myself were not merely on East Fifth Street but were in the middle of all space-time. If I close my eyes on hallucinogens, I get a vision of great scaly dragons in outer space, they're winding slowly and eating their own tails. Sometimes my skin and all the room seem sparkling with scales, and it's all made out of serpent stuff. And as if the whole illusion of life were made of reptile dream … So—summing up then—drugs were useful for exploring perception, sense perception, and exploring different possibilities and modes of consciousness, and exploring the different versions of petites sensations, and useful then for composing, sometimes, while under the influence. Part II of Howl was written under the influence of peyote, composed during peyote vision. In San Francisco—Moloch; Kaddish was written with amphetamine injections. An injection of amphetamine plus a little bit of morphine, plus some dexedrine later on to keep me going, because it was all in one long sitting. From a Saturday morn to a Sunday night.  From issue no. 37 (Spring 1966) INTERVIEW The Art of Fiction No. 69 Gabriel García Márquez GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ Bad readers have asked me if I was drugged when I wrote some of my works. But that illustrates that they don't know anything about literature or drugs. To be a good writer you have to be absolutely lucid at every moment of writing, and in good health. I'm very much against the romantic concept of writing which maintains that the act of writing is a sacrifice, and that the worse the economic conditions or the emotional state, the better the writing. I think you have to be in a very good emotional and physical state. Literary creation for me requires good health, and the Lost Generation understood this. They were people who loved life.  From issue no. 82 (Winter 1981) To read more from our archive by Allen Ginsberg and Gabriel García Márquez, why not subscribe? You'll receive four print issues a year plus unlimited digital access to our seventy-one-year archive. Copyright © 2025 The Paris Review. All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website. Our mailing address is: The Paris Review 544 West 27th Street 3rd Floor New York, New York 10001 Add us to your address book Want to change how you receive these emails? You can update your preferences or unsubscribe, if you must.