Drug And Alcohol Use For Creative Means?

Drugs and alcohol are everywhere in society.  People use them for social interaction and for fun, but for creative means?  That is the question I'm posing in this blog post.  As an English major, I've read/heard work by authors who claimed that alcohol helped their work, from beat writers to Edgar Allan Poe, but does it work?  There are other authors I know who would dispute the claim, but it's not just limited toward literature.  In music, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and others used drugs when writing music, while film directors like Martin Scorcese made Raging Bull when he was on cocaine.  So does it really work?  I don't know since I've never touched drugs and alcohol in my life, but I wonder what you all think.  Do drugs and alcohol help the mind creatively?