The great American writer and journalist Hunter S Thompson once said, "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me." He wasn't the only wordsmith to have penned his most popular and critically acclaimed works while dabbling with illegal substances. History has revealed that many of the Western world's greatest loved literary works were scribbled or typed by authors who were out of their minds on their drug of choice. Long before hippies were spreading the word about LSD, some of the brightest poetic and philosophical minds at work in the Victorian era were helped and hindered by addictions, their appetites for gaining and sharing knowledge equalled by their lust for drugs. Then came the 20th Century with bestselling authors snorting, smoking and munching their way through full books, and sometimes whole decades. But as anyone who has done drugs to excess will know, you can't get away with it long without something going awry. These authors experienced everything from be able to write 10,000 words a day while bingeing on cocaine, to transcendental visions on LSD, to overdoses, and even death, by opium. Here are 10 writers who followed the White Rabbit as far as it would go.