The Poetic Merits of Drug-Induced Writing

John Lundberg at the Huffington Post looks at the "great drug-induced poems," citing, firstly, Coleridge's "Kubla Khan." Lundberg writes:

Coleridge didn't think much of the work, writing, "The following fragment is here published as far as the author's own opinions are concerned, rather as a psychological curiosity, than on the grounds of any supposed poetic merits." But the poem is highly regarded (and anthologized) nonetheless, and it's perhaps best known for its lack of an ending. Coleridge never finished the poem. A person from the town of Porlock, who dragged the drug-addled poet out to handle some business, interrupted him. The episode has become something of a running joke in the literary world. Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges, Orhan Pamuk, Douglas Adams, and Arthur Conan Doyle have all referenced Coleridge's "person from Porlock" in their work.

Coleridge wasn't the only great poet to struggle with opium addiction. Fellow Romantic Percy Bysshe Shelley is known to have battled a laudanum (a form of liquid opium) addiction. And the great French poet Charles Baudelaire (who once wrote, "You have to be always drunk. That's all there is to it.") struggled with the drug as well. It's also widely believed that Arthur Rimbaud's long poem "A Season in Hell" was influenced by opium. Some critics suggest that Rimbaud's poem reflects the process of detoxification, which seems plausible based on this excerpt from the section "Night in Hell":

My guts are on fire. The power of the poison twists my arms and legs, cripples me, drives me to the ground. I die of thirst, I suffocate, I cannot cry.

Then, of course, there was the Beat Generation, which made no secret of its use of recreational drugs to aid in composition. The Poetry Foundation notes that Allen Ginsberg claimed "that some of his best poetry was written under the influence of drugs: the second part of Howl with peyote, Kaddish with amphetamines, and Wales--A Visitation with LSD. While I wouldn't recommend his methods, it's hard to argue with Ginsberg's results: his "angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night" are a part of the American literary canon.

Seriously, we'd like a writeup of some contemporary drug-induced poems. Maybe Coldfront or HTMLGIANT could do some detective work here!