Earnest Hemmingway isn't read much today. Too masculine I am told. But I grew up on his work and loved it. . He normally started drinking at 4:30 am when he began writing and worked at it all day. While covering WWII from the front lines, he kept his canteen filled with gin and personally liberated (with the help of his private army) the Cambon Bar of Paris’ Ritz Hotel. On a typical evening he started out with absinthe, drank a bottle of good red wine with dinner, shifted to vodka then battened it down with whiskeys and sodas until 3am.
I remember his suicide. Sobriety killed him. He pulled the trigger after three months of forced abstinence. In lieu of alcohol, he was force-fed a steady diet of shock treatments and promises he would never be allowed to drink again. Hem’s son wrote, “He might have survived with alcohol, but could not live when deprived of it.” What a man.
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