I will only drink after i am done playing of course. this is mostly during payed gigs and such. Drumming sober is so far the best thing i do so i am always a 100% and learning new things. Then i will have a drink and party it up.

Hey man you can express your opinion around here anytime. As a matter of fact thats how we all learn. Sharing Ideas and thoughts. Thanks Bro!

I'm surrounded by substance partakers all the time, while simultaneously having to stay straight since I'm a school teacher who needs the full bright eyed and bushy tailed version of me each and every day. It's a good reason to use for my always saying "no" and they respect that. I do believe the rest of the guys play better, longer, and with more positive vibe when they stay straight. However, up to this point the other guys are better players than me, so I they get no complaints from me.
Of course if I were ever to pass their abilities, my time with them would probably shorten substantially.  

Anyway, I can't stand confessionals where everyone's "me too-ing", but yep,, it's odd to be on the other side of the substance fence. Yet have respect for their abilities.

I used to smoke a lot of weed when I was a lot younger. From my experience:
1) You may think you sound better than you really do. And blocking things out doesn't work on the bandstand when you have to be totally aware of everything happening around you. My experience is that cannabis (for all it's charms) is lousy for that awareness.
2) I would never ever ever ever ever want to be working in a machine shop stoned or near stoned people.

Everyone's different, but that's my experience. Once I gave up smoking, it was like someone lifted a heavy blanket off my head and gave me back a lot of my brainpower.

agreed 563

I played stoned for the first time this past friday...

And I must say that I was impressed, I was with friends and I just started to play a beat, very simple, that sounds like "We will Rock you" and then we improvied for around 20mins around that beat.

It was just crasy, I never felt as much into the music, the guitarist also, he didn't do anything super hard to make but everything sounded so well, everything fitted and we both understood eachother so good, I made fills exactly at time same time that he changed riffs, it was just unbelievable.

I would never play a full gig stoned but to get new ideas/jamming for fun, maybe that sometimes, not always, a little "enhancement" can help. We didn't take a lot, only around .7G for 2...

But anyway, it was crasy

I've been on both sides of this. I used to drink and play on gigs all the time. Over the years I've virtually stopped drinking, so now I play sober 99% of the time. There is no question that for me, drinking screws up my timing and makes me get louder in proportion to the amount I drink.

A story - I still remember a night fifteen years ago when a singer (a good singer) in a local band got drunk on stage during the course of a gig. It was his birthday and everybody kept buying him shots, and God bless him, he kept drinking them.

He started out the night sounding fine. As the evening wore on, he got loud and flat, and by the last set he was just yelling, and gyrating around the stage like a transsexual Steve Tyler. It was embarrassing. He thought he was doing great, too. But he sucked SO BAD - well, I still remember it fifteen years later, that's how bad he sucked.

I look at it this way - if I went to hear chamber music and the violinist was half-bombed, I'd be pissed off. And we drummers use our LEGS, too. Violinists just stand there.

Don't you hate violinists?

Well, he's going to be the guy before or after you anyway, drunk, stoned or sober, if you're in the same audition line!!
 

Stephen

Drugs I don't do... about alcohol...
I personally never tried to play after drinking....Someone suggested it to me once , but from what I know alcohol affects coordination and coordination is oe of the main things you ned to play drums....So how alcohol improve your performance if it actually affects one of the main things needed for it...
I dunno maybe I'll try it once though....before practicing...

Funny how this thread keeps resurfacing.

I can play on pot, booze, straight- whatever.  Doesn't make any difference to me.  It's still me playing.  I used to think I'll always play better cold sober- well, that hasn't always been the case.  Same with doping or boozing it up- I used to think I would always play not as well as being sober.  That has not always been the case.

If I knew how to get into the perfect head space to play my best everytime I would smoke a pound of pot to get there or drink a fifth, meditate for a week, pray to mary and 7 holy saints, whatever- I would.

But I can't figure out my brain.  Some nights I play awesome and some I don't.  It really doesn't matter what I do *barring self mutilation, destruction* my playing is consistently mediocre.