Creative writing perils—Alcohol and other addictions

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemmingway together in 1925 Paris, both heavy drinkers

Here The Muse of Language Arts outlines the nature of alcoholism and assesses its impact on the aesthetic and technical capacities of creative writers to produce quality work.

The Muse also looks at past and recent creative writers addicted with alcoholism or drugs, as well as those suffering from chronic excessive biological, emotional and psychological stresses and diseases.

The Muse evaluates and debunks the merits of the theory that addiction is a writer's asset, one that can inspire competent or great creative writing. The Muse also tries but fails to corroborate the claim that creative writers are prone to suffer from addiction far more than other, less creative types of people. The Muse further suggests steps addicted writers can take to rid themselves of this scourge.

what is creative writing?

Creative writers are people who write creatively and who produce writing that's creative:

To write creatively—To write a creative literary work is to evolve from one's own thought or imagination original ideas or insights, subjects, modes of expression, or points of view; it's to devise and apply new and different literary concepts, features, or techniques. Writing creatively is to depart from the commonplace and mundane and to put words on paper like they've never been put before.

Creative writing—From a procedural point of view, creative writing is writing that expresses an author's creative imagination and originality of thought or expression. Writing creatively is the process or act of setting down text that results in literary works that exhibit creativity.

• What makes writing creative? What makes creative writers creative? Explore creative writing and the creative writing process at greater length. Visit The Muse Of Language Arts feature titled Welcome To The World Of Creative Writing: tap or click here.

about creative Writers Who Struggle With Addiction

Addiction is the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something else that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, such as alcohol or narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.

Alcoholism is among the most damaging and ascendant of these addictions suffered by writers working in the modern world. It's a chronic physiological and biological medical disorder characterized by dependence on alcohol, repeated excessive use of alcoholic beverages, morbidity that may include cirrhosis of the liver, and decreased ability to function socially and vocationally. Alcoholics undergo withdrawal symptoms when attempting to reduce or cease intake, many that are severe.

People who suffer from extreme and chronic alcoholism endure one or more major mental disorders of the central nervous system of the kind associated with or caused by organic brain injury; examples include delirium tremens and hallucinations. They experience such atypical traumatic behavior as abnormal eye movements, incoordination, confusion, and impaired memory and learning functions.

Clearly, alcoholism can result in a severe set of physical and mental handicaps; it's a fundamental challenge for a writer, especially for those who write creatively, who need to be at the top of their form if they are to produce competent, superior creative works.

Writing creative literature is so challenging a task, requiring such great precision and technical skill, that it's astonishing to think that so many of our most beloved creative authors have been able to succeed while struggling with alcohol addiction, mental illness, emotional and lifestyle problems such as gambling, or other serious but non-addictive debilitating physical illnesses.

Alcoholism ranks as one of the worst and most widespread of these addictions. It can be so debilitating, it's remarkable that some creative writers who suffer from the disease can write at all, let alone write well. Yet some of our greatest writers have generated some of our greatest creative literature.

• Explore technical difficulties and challenges posed by the task of producing creative literature at The Muse Of Literature's feature titled Welcome To Technical Aspects Of Literature: tap or click here.
• Explore what it means to be a great creative writer at The Muse Of Language Arts feature titled Be Or Become A Great Creative Writer: tap or click here.

Is alcohol addiction anything new?

Alcoholism is nothing new; it's been traced as back as far back as the beginning of recorded history, and no doubt was prevalent long before that.

Ancient creative writers were no exception to this curse. The tendency for them to abuse alcohol goes back millennia, at least as far (if not farther) than the poetic and dramatic competitions sponsored by playwright and literary fraternities in Classical Antiquity and literary writers of Third Century China.

Samples like these could be drawn from many places and periods down through history. Frenzied and debauched drinking bouts and alcoholic orgies not only were accepted and expected, they were encouraged. At later times, it became common practice—even fashionable—for individuals or small writing groups to drink heavily or to mix alcohol with drugs. So too, was alcohol or drug abuse aggravated by biological, emotional and psychological stresses and diseases; they became synergistic and reinforcing. Together or alone, all these synergistic negative factors stultified the creative climates in which authors worked.

Here are a few relevantly recent writers from the last four centuries listed in chronological order. They illustrate that these ancient illnesses and addictive tendencies have persisted among writers for a long time and that they are still at work today:

• Thomas De Quincy, the 17th and 18th English essayist, is best known for his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. Many scholars suggest that this work inaugurated the tradition of addiction literature in the Western World.
   
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the great 18th and 19th English poet, is a literary critic and philosopher. With Wordsworth he founded the Romantic Movement in England. He's best known for composing The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan.
  
  Coleridge suffered from crippling bouts of anxiety and depression. Some have speculated that he suffered from bipolar disorder, a condition not identified during his lifetime. His generally poor health may have stemmed from a bout of rheumatic fever and other childhood illnesses. He was treated for these concerns with laudanum, which fostered his lifelong addiction to opium.
   
• Edgar Allen Poe, the American author, poet, editor, and literary critic, is best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He is the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
  
  He began to drink heavily under the stress of his wife's tuberculosis and became increasingly unstable; his drinking and erratic behavior grew worse. Poe's death is commonly believed to be due to alcoholism, or at least alcohol contributed to it.
  Poe was not a drug addict.
   
• Aldous Huxley, the great 19th and 2Oth century English essayist and fiction writer, is best known for his novels Brave New World and The Doors of Perception. He investigated and wrote about psychedelic drugs by taking them.
   
• Ezra Pound, American poet and critic, was incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital in 1945 for over 12 years.
   
• Truman Capote, popular and successful American author, screenwriter and playwright, began writing in the 1940s and remained prominent until the 1980s. His drinking and the damage it caused was progressive. In his later years he was unable to overcome his reliance upon drugs and liquor and became reclusive. He experienced hallucinations that continued unabated, and medical scans eventually revealed that his brain mass had perceptibly shrunk. He died of liver disease complicated by phlebitis and multiple drug intoxication.

• Explore some of the reasons why ancient and modern writers have drunk and drugged so deeply. Visit the article in the guardian web site called Why Do Writers Drink: tap or click here.

The list of past or present authors plagued by alcoholic and other addictions is a long one. It happens to so many creative writers that some people have speculated that the creative writing temperament is particularly prone to these sorts of addictions in addition to other mental and emotional health struggles; it has even been suggested that these kinds of problems can be the very source of creativity itself.

how Is alcoholism different today?

Although ethyl alcohol abuse and addiction have subsisted within the writing community for a long time, what's new and different today is that the practice of abusing alcohol has recently become particularly prominent. It's no longer something to hide.

When we talk about modern day authors of this stature who drink heavily, we do not just mean those who might enjoy the sparkle of champagne along with some idle conversation at a literary event. We mean authors who imbibe strong drink and plenty of it—while they work, before they work, and afterward. We mean authors whose struggle with addiction have been immortalized in diaries, biographies and interviews. We mean authors who seem to be driven by addiction, whose creativity is so closely entangled with their substance abuse that it seems to them and to some of their readers as if giving up drugs or booze would mean giving up writing.

Group and solitary drinking by highly creative authors and cultural icons such as Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hunter S. Thompson, Dylan Thomas, Brendan Behan, Dashiell Hammett, John Huston, James Agee, John Cheever, Patricia Highsmith, and others are famous for it. Many additional prominent writers like these are famous for their excessive enjoyment of alcohol or other addictive substances, as well. Most of them led disheveled and/or debauched lifestyles in a number of different ways. As in the past, inebriation can become a mixed blessing for modern creative writers like these, one that helps them create while simultaneously tearing them apart.

Yes, it's true that alcoholism has served (and still serves) as an organic part of some writers' personal creative process and inspiration. It's even served as an integral part of their subject matter. Hunter S. Thompson gives us a good look at how this admixture can occur; his career as a creative writer is a paradigm for it. This triple role for alcohol—personal alcoholism, inspiration, and subject matter—played an integral part in his life and work; and it was an inherent element of the self-styled writing genre he devised for himself, which he dubbed Gonzo Journalism.

• Thompson's 1971 novel titled Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas affords an outstanding example of how alcoholism can play a role in a writer's personal life and serve as a creative inspiration, while concurrently performing as a subject of his work. Visit The Muse Of Literature's feature called Novel Novels to explore the nature of this aggregation: tap or click here

But at base the idea that alcohol inspires writers is preposterous. And further, it has a very unfortunate affect on other writers; it influences writers who aspire to write creativity. Although far from unique, Thompson is central among those noted modern creative writers who have promulgated the idea that consuming alcohol inspires.

Unfortunately, he and other influential alcohol proponents like Hemmingway and John Cheever encouraged other writers to indulge in alcohol (and other drugs) with the false hope that drinking would inspire them to genius. Their verbal attestations and lifestyles set up models for other authors to follow.

There might be some justification for fostering alcohol consumption in this fashion if writing well really worked that way, but their contention doesn't match the facts. Strange as it may seem, the desire to find a simple chemical formula like CH3CH2OH as the justification for what makes people create great works of literature has made many great creative writers attribute far more inspiration to drugs such as alcohol than they actually deserve.

• Explore stories about what life is like if you're a really heavy drinker who writes professionally. See one that features John Cheever, writer of The Wapshot Chronicle and Bullet Park, as well as other drinkers. Visit the macmillan Publishers web site article by Olivia Laing titled The Trip To Echo Spring/On Writers and Drinking: tap or click here.

The notion that alcohol acts like a muse to inspire writers is extremely dangerous because it's put forward by so many famous and successful modern writers; and seemingly they ought to know right from wrong. The quality of their creative writing has been models for others to strive to replicate, but their allegations that to alcohol was the cause have been wrong. Their claim that their addictions fueled their creativity resulted from a mistaken premise that no objective scientific evidence confirms.

Well into his career Ernest Hemmingway was one of those who deluded himself into believing that alcohol helped him write better. But later he woke up to the price he'd paid. Here's a letter from him to F. Scott Fitzgerald that illustrates what life as an author who's a heavy drinker can be like:

In the long run, alcohol consumption exacts a toll. In point of fact, there's plenty of evidence supporting the view that writers inevitably suffer for their own alcoholic overindulgence, even if at first they profit from it. False claims like these are cruel and damaging because they wrongly influence newbie writers and wannabes to reject the idea that they should summon the courage to quit drinking or drug taking if they already overindulge, or to avoid these dangerous behaviors if they haven't yet begin them. This is especially the case if new or established writers experience a lift from drinking.

Doubly harmful, this kind of encouragement from successful creative authors who are habitual drinkers may make the idea of giving up addictions more daunting for creative authors than for other kinds of professionals. Even after they fall ill from drinking and realize that they're being damaged by it, this conviction persuades them that they need crutches like alcohol abuse to continue writing; it's a cost they must pay. They accept the notion that they are doomed to sacrifice their health for their art.

How is alcoholism different today for writers than in previous generations and centuries? The Muse suggests this answer: The most significant way in which modern alcoholism differs from the past is that today well-trained medical personnel and sophisticated treatments are available. Getting help for this illness is easier and more effective now than ever before.

• Explore some of the kinds of treatment, detoxification, and other resources available to writers and those seeking rehabilitation from addiction. Visit the Centers.org web site web site: tap or click here.

the myth exposed

knock, knock, Who's there?

A long list of examples could be given to describe the role that drink and drugs have played in the modern literary world. Some of our best-known contemporary or recent writers have lived lives of addictive excess. Without objective proof, many have contested that alcohol and drugs played a major role in boosting their imaginations or courage as they sat before a blank page waiting for an inspiration.

Their detailed personal accounts of their own lives differ from one another, but their stories all seem to agree on one point: What unites many of today's addicted writers is that they were often well established authors by the time their drinking or drug use became a problem, and their work stagnated or suffered once they became addicts.

Here are some examples:

• Ernest Hemingway—Drinking was part of his manly image, and he did it to excess.
• F. Scott Fitzgerald—An author who lived the high-life he described in his writing. Fitzgerald later wrote a piece describing how he felt his creativity decline in later life, an experience that many of his heavy-drinking fellow writers also seem to have suffered.
• Patricia Highsmith—A hard-drinking writer and author of over twenty novels, managed to be surprisingly prolific despite her addiction.
  • See the W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. web site for a list of her published books: tap or click here.
• Hunter S. Thompson—A writer who has spoken publicly about his use of drugs and alcohol, claiming that they have helped him to work.
• Dorothy Parker—A writer known for her intelligent quips and for enjoying a drink alone or with associates.
• John Cheever—Cheever was one of the few famous authors to have actually faced his addiction. After he was stopped by the police as a vagrant following a heavy drinking session, he sobered up in rehab.
  Bibliography
• Dylan Thomas—Author of great poems such as Do not go gentle into that good night and And death shall have no dominion. His personal relationships were defined by alcoholism and were mutually destructive.

Explore Further

Explore further the careers and lifestyles of contemporary (and recent) severe drinkers, authors who write (or wrote) prodigiously and brilliantly despite (or because of) their alcoholic predispositions. To read about them and their drinking behavior, tap or click these links:

1. The New Yorker on Writers and Rum.

2. The Guardian explores Why do writers drink?

3. Review of The Thirsty Muse and Alcohol and the Writer, in The Eugene O'Neill Review.

4. Ernest Hemingway's Biography from the Nobel Prize Foundation.

5. A Brief Life of Fitzgerald from the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society5. F Scott Fitzgerald writes about The Crack-Up in Esquire.

6. Patricia Highsmith, Hiding in Plain Site in the New York Times.

7. Hunter S. Thompson interviewed by the Paris Review.

8. Dorothy Parker's biography from the Academy of American Poets.

9. John Cheever interviewed in the Paris Review.

10. When Novelists Sober Up in The Economist's Intelligent Life.

11. Top 15 Great Alcoholic Writers at the Listverse web site.

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