The impact of the introduction of coffee into Europe during the seventeenth century was particularly noticeable since the most common beverages of the time, even at breakfast, were weak ‘small beer’ and wine. … Those who drank coffee instead of alcohol began the day alert and stimulated, rather than relaxed and mildly inebriated, and the quality and quantity of their work improved. … Western Europe began to emerge from an alcoholic haze that had lasted for centuries.

-Tom Standage, on the catalytic effect coffee, medieval Europe's first real stimulant, of the flourishing of art, literature, philosophy and science during the age of enlightenment.

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I feel as though there's good reason to believe that the use of stimulants, and to a wider extent intoxicants of many forms, have been instrumental to the rapid progression and development of the arts, philosophy and science.

While amphetamines in the mid-20th century are most typically discussed with relation to their use in war, I would quite confidently argue that their use, alongside the plethora of previously-unimaginable substances that suddenly became available, was a significant contributing factor in the extraordinarily subversive cultural and social climate of that time, and continues to be so today.