Struggling with a creative burnout? A glass of wine is the remedy

Mix pleasure with work, drink wine to perform better in creative tasks. Research shows that a small glass of wine or a pint of beer can help unleash creativity.

A glass of wine is all you need to get the creative juices flowing. Although many believe the left hemisphere is responsible for practical, logical and organized thought, and the right is where creativity comes from, it’s much more complex than that. A small glass of wine or a pint of beer helps unleash creativity, Austrian scientists have found.

Alcohol is linked to creativity as previous research has found almost half of the great writers had a history of drinking. A small drink can indeed help with certain aspects of creativity,” said lead author, Dr Mathias Benedek . “It might well work for someone who is sitting down to do creative writing or brainstorming ideas in a boardroom,” Benedek suggested.

Some participants were given a bottle of normal beer whilst others were given a non-alcoholic beer, which they weren’t able to distinguish between. They were subsequently given a series of word association tasks, for example, they were asked to link the “swiss”, “blue” and “cake”. Those who had drunk alcohol were more likely to correctly guess that cheese was the linking word.

The second theory is that alcohol, which is distracting from the central task, allows you to tap into your unconscious mind and find alternative solutions, explained Benedek. The study was published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition.

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