Cheers to that! Moderate drinking is good for creativity as it loosens the brain's controlling instincts and makes you spontaneous

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If you are looking for a flash of inspiration, it might be at the bottom of a pint of beer.

A study has found a drink can help us think more creatively, by freeing up the brain to think in a different way.

It does not require industrial strength quantities, such as those enjoyed by the great poet Dylan Thomas or novelist Marguerite Duras.

But the equivalent of a pint of beer or a small glass of wine was found by Austrian scientists to help people unleash their creative side.

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The equivalent of a pint of beer or a small glass of wine was found by Austrian scientists to help people unleash their creative side (stock image)

Lead author Dr Mathias Benedek, from the University of Graz in Austria, said: ‘We wanted to do this study because alcohol is so linked with creativity, and great writers like Ernest Hemingway. Previous research has found almost half of the great writers had a history of drinking.

‘We found that a small drink can indeed help with certain aspects of creativity, although it may make hard, focused work more difficult. 

'So it might well work for someone who is sitting down to do creative writing or brainstorming ideas in a boardroom.’ 

The researchers gave 70 people a drink of either beer or non-alcohol beer, which they were unable to distinguish between.

They were then asked to do a word association task, such as determining the word linking the three words Swiss, blue and cake.

The answer is ‘cheese’ and those who had drunk alcohol before being tested were more likely to get it right. 

They also did slightly better in a creative thinking task, where an answer to what a tyre could be used for was creative if it was ‘a lampshade’ but graded as less creative if someone said ‘a swing’.

However the authors stressed the finding for the second task was not statistically significant.

Dylan Thomas is regarded as one of the most influential poets of the 21st century - and was also an alcoholic - although researchers believe that excessive consumption does not help creativity

The study found that people had less ‘cognitive control’ and focus in a third test, asking them to follow a list of letters. 

This was the case even with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.03 per cent, which is the equivalent of slightly less than a pint of beer or a small glass of wine for men and half that amount for women.

However the pay-off was the boost in creative thinking, according to the study published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition.

It does not require industrial strength quantities, such as those enjoyed by the great poet Dylan Thomas or novelist Marguerite Duras (pictured) 

Dr Benedek said: ‘There are two theories for how this works, the first being that when you are really focusing on solving a problem, you can become fixated so that your mind gets stuck on one way of addressing it.

‘Alcohol makes it more difficult to keep all the parameters of the task in mind, but that can also help you come at it from another direction.

‘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.’

The new findings follow a study which found last month that drinking alcohol after revising could help to remember the facts. 

The University of Exeter said alcohol may block the brain from learning new things, leaving it free to store the recently learned information in the long-term memory.

Tennessee Williams was a major American playwright of the 20th century, best known for Cat On A Hot Tin Roof. He suffered from mental instability and alcoholism throughout life. Some of the greatest writers, artists and musicians over the centuries have been partial to drink