7. Robert Louis Stevenson (1850 - 1894)
Wikipedia
Drug of Choice: Cocaine The Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer who penned children's favourite Treasure Island, began taking cocaine to alleviate the symptoms of a respiratory illness that often left him confined to his sickbed. The author subsequently found the drug had a benefit to his writing, leading him to write his most famous book, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, during a six-day cocaine binge. Stevenson's inspiration for the gothic tale of a man with a split personality emerged during a cocaine-induced sleep to help him recover from a haemorrhage. While dreaming, he had a nightmare from which some of the scenes later included in the book appeared to him. His wife, Fanny Stevenson, heard him screaming and woke him from his slumber. She told her husband's biographer 'In the small hours of one morning, [...]I was awakened by cries of horror from Louis. Thinking he had a nightmare, I awakened him. He said angrily: "Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale." I had awakened him at the first transformation scene.' Discussing the story, Fanny added 'That an invalid in my husband's condition of health should have been able to perform the manual labour alone of putting 60,000 words on paper in six days, seems almost incredible.'