For many years, numerous highly-acclaimed artists, scientists, writers, musicians, and creative people of all sorts have claimed that marijuana holds enormous potential to enhance creativity and inspire the imagination.

Now, new scientific studies are beginning to confirm these claims, and researchers are starting to understand the psychological mechanisms behind how cannabis can improve the creative process. There's a common myth, perpetuated by the mainstream media, that people often mistakenly think that they're brilliant and creative while under the influence of cannabis, only to find that their creations are worthless, or that their insights are meaningless nonsense, upon returning to normal everyday consciousness.

Let's dispel this pervasive myth about cannabis right now, by taking the many anecdotal reports to heart, and looking at what the scientific studies have to say. From Charles Baudelaire to George Carlin, Shakespeare to Carl Sagan, Louis Armstrong to Paul McCartney, Norman Mailer to Jack Nicholson, the list of accomplished creative people who have claimed a positive influence from their use of cannabis is truly impressive.

I've personally spoken with many accomplished people who made claims about how essential cannabis was for their creative process. For example, when I interviewed the late comedian George Carlin, he told me: "Pot...changed my thinking. It fostered offbeat thinking...Then it changed my comedy....I became more myself. The comedy became more personal, therefore more political, and therefore more successful...So, suddenly, I also became materially successful. People started buying albums. I had four Gold albums in a row."

Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys said to Rolling Stone magazine that "marijuana helped" him "write Pet Sounds," which was ranked by the magazine as the second greatest album of all time.

Anecdotes about cannabis and creativity abound, but what does the scientific research say?

The Beckley Foundation--a nonprofit organization in England that supports pioneering, multidisciplinary research with cannabis and psychedelic drugs--is presently funding a two-part study on cannabis and creativity, that is being conducted by neuroscience researchers Valerie Curran and Celia Morgan at the University College London. Curran and Morgan are currently testing the effects of cannabis use on creativity in 400 subjects, and are then using neuroimaging technology to observe the neurobiological changes in the participants that are associated with creativity, while they are under the influence of cannabis.