I have to agree with the "introvert-extravert" personality as being real. I've taken the Myers-Briggs test quite a few times through employment agencies and it's different every time but always REALLY close to the other result.

I really do need to be social sometimes and totally not social at others. Sometimes socialness recharges me and then after that I have to be completely alone to recharge. Sometimes I recharge in the middle of a social situation and suddenly turn off and withdraw internally even though I was really enjoying hanging with my friends. And if I don't do enough of either, I suffer and my art suffers.

But isn't everyone like that to some degree? Even introverts have friends... I do know more extraverts who have a fear of being alone than I know introverts who have a fear of not being alone.

Perhaps introversion and extraversion relate to art in that certain arts are more suited to certain temperaments.

Drug use is often a matter of emotional wounding though, or of undiagnosed biological mental health issues that keep on inflicting wounds greater than the psyche can handle. If you haven't had emotional support to deal with the pressures of fame and certain temptations, you're going to crack up under those pressures - but only if you also have an internal vaccuum.

A lot of people involved in art don't realize that kind of drug use degrades the quality of the art drastically. There's a culture of "use this to be better, faster, more loved" which is frankly counter-productive. But that culture is in every human endeavour, art is not alone in that.

Why is it that some make it and some crack? Perhaps it is that the tools they have available to maintain emotional health are only pills or powders and are not their own attitudes and beliefs.

Because yes, it's painful to aim for the stars and always fall short... as an artist, the internal vision is always so much better than the created result. You can get closer, you can enjoy the process of crafting something closer to the original aim each time... but as humans we will always fall short of the truly divine. That is the tragedy of art itself, of humanity itself. It must be accepted as not being a personal failure.

It is our nature to fail to be truly divine, and the struggle against that, even while failing, is what makes greatness.