I drink, therefore I am: alcohol and creativity

The medical view of drunkenness is a negative one. Heavy drinking is seen as a self-destructive activity that wreaks immense social and physical havoc. Individuals are exhorted to shun the attractions of alcohol and to lead a life of moderation. Clinicians who deal with the human consequences of excessive drinking-the broken homes, the victims of violence, the multiple physical and mental illsfeel justified in their condemnation of the drunkard. However, this view does not enjoy an untroubled consensus with the lay public1. In particular, many writers and artists take a quite different view. Here alcohol is prized for its ability to reveal new creative insights, and heroic drinking has long been part of the artistic persona. Rather than being seen as a sign of personal failing, alcoholism is taken as evidence of artistic integrity. This appreciative view of inebriation encompasses several variations. Intoxication can be seen as a route to mystical transport; it can be a means of epater les bourgeois; dissipation can be courted as a way of experiencing the extremities of the human condition; and lastly, drunkenness can be hailed as evidence of one's exquisite sensibility. What is most immediately striking about the subject is just how often alcohol has featured in the lives of creative people2. A brief survey reveals that amongst writers there are Malcolm Lowry, Dylan Thomas, Brendan Behan, James Joyce, Flann O'Brien, Hugh McDiarmid, Dorothy Parker, F Scott Fitzgerald, Eugene O'Neill, Ernest Hemingway, William Styron, John Cheever, Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski; of visual artists there are Francis Bacon, Edward Burra, Edvard Munch, Willem De Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Amedeo Modigliani; and of musicians there are Hank Williams and numerous country singers, Jimmy Reed and countless bluesmen, Bix Beiderbecke and many jazz players, and Jim Morrison and a massive supporting cast of rock musicians. Here we examine how alcoholic excess has been approached by writers and artists, both in terms of their personal experience and how they have subsequently portrayed it. The topic is obviously vast and this article does not claim to be exhaustive. Rather, by selectively examining a small number of creative people we hope to convey how medical and artistic attitudes to intoxication frequently diverge.