Renowned Ghanaian Hiplife artiste, Okyeame Kwame, has provided insights into the causes of substance usage among artists and creatives.
Speaking in an interview with Accra-based Joy Prime, Okyeame Kwame said that most creatives gravitate to drugs because they don’t want to think critically about their problems.
According to him, many creatives use drugs, drink, and sex to shut out these kinds of thoughts.
“If you close your eyes and sit down for 10 seconds, immediately, all the problems you have in life will come into your brain. Because your brain is so smart that it’s always trying to solve your problem. So immediately you keep quiet, all your problems come up.
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“That is why people are always trying to watch a movie, always trying to read a book, trying to talk to somebody, trying to have sex, trying to drink alcohol, and trying to smoke something to divert their brains from dealing with their problems.
“And that is the time when artistes are not willing to sit down quietly for their thoughts to punish them. But immediately they feel the problems come up, they take it, and then all the problems will go away because they have numbed their pain receptors…” he said.
Okyeame Kwame described his own struggle with depression and how he spent a year in meditation as a way to cope.
He claims that doing so gave him the opportunity to consider his ideas and ultimately produced his popular “Made in Ghana” album.
“Somebody else could have resorted to becoming a sex addict to fulfill the emptiness or becoming a drug addict to fulfill the emptiness. But I let it beat me up. I sat down quietly for one year. I didn’t make any music, I didn’t go anywhere, I didn’t pick up my phone calls. I took my phone away for one year.
“I stopped everything and I sat down quietly, and went into meditation. So it was immediately after that [period] that I made the ‘Made in Ghana’ album,” he said.
Okyeame Kwame counseled other artists to welcome the solutions that arise from such ideas rather than dismissing them.