On Drinking And Writing

I drink when I write not because I believe it makes the writing better.

It just makes it happen.

And it makes it true.

Shooting reality through the whiskey-prism releases inhibitions, self-consciousness, and the reluctance to call a spade a spade. After a couple of gin and tonics, I stop giving a fuck what other people think and focus on what I think, unfiltered.

When I wrote a weekly newspaper column in the late-90’s, I met other writers and found most of them were quiet and reserved, so much so they needed a release, something that allowed who they were down inside, somewhere, to have a voice. I would see them in hotel bars, almost always alone and staring straight ahead. Sometimes sitting next to another suffering soul but saying nothing. But when they did say something, it was usually to share their disappointment, sometimes contempt, for the human race, not in an animated or mean-spirited way, but just as a matter of fact.

Writers and others who rely on their imaginations for their daily bread were, and are, different than most drunks who drink in packs, like wild dogs - eager, vicious, stupid, using booze to avoid, rather than see, the utter worthlessness of their lives, a way to forget the opportunities they were given, but passed on, becoming the failures they are. Drinking in groups is nothing more than a collective lie agreed upon, mutual masturbation, a cheap way to get an insincere complement - “You’re smart, you’re funny, and I am, too, right?” “Oh yeah, buddy, you’re a regular riot!”

I knew a novelist who got a healthy advance from a major publisher and wrote a couple of books that sold. Not bestsellers but books that paid his rent and bought a car for his wife who called him a “drunk,” mostly because he was. He was a mean and dirty drunk, too. He would lock himself in a room with a dozen cats and write for a week without coming out. He would only appear when the case of whiskey he took in was gone. And he’d have a book. And his publisher was amazed.

Then, without notice, he stopped drinking. A friend took him to AA and he quit. He just quit.

But he kept writing, or tried to. It was shit. But he didn’t know it. Finally, his publisher told him to take a hike and he started self-publishing. And no one read his books anymore. No one. Not anymore.

I asked him if he ever thought about drinking again.

And he replied, “Everyday.”

Hmmm.

This little missive is not a endorsement of drinking. It is a habit worse than meth, if only because booze is legal, cheap, and available. You can buy generic vodka for the same price as fancy water without the risk of a junkie putting a knife four inches into your chest because you’re four dollars short. But booze will ruin your life, your relationships, and kill you if you do it long enough.

Regrettable, because sometimes there is no substitute.

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