When It Came To drinking, I Was Damn Good At It
August 29, 2023 3:58 PM Subscribe
The subject of all great literature is either about redemption or its loss. Soteriology—that is the branch of theology that concerns itself with salvation—is the only worthy topic of prose, poetry, or drama. Whether you take any of that God stuff literally or not is irrelevant to this discussion. Noble, heroic, and good people corrupted or degenerated; sinful and wicked men made whole—either/or—those are the narratives which should concern any genuine art, because the turmoil within an individual mind, the canker and possible curing of the soul, is the only drama commensurate with the broken, flawed, limited, damning, painful, horrible, and beautiful experience of being trapped in a human body and a human life. from Darkness Visible [Ungated] [CW: alcoholism]
ohhhhh I want to write like this… but then again, I too am an addict in recovery who has not yet understood that my pretensions only have power over me if I hold onto them
posted by infinitewindow at 5:07 PM on August 29, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by infinitewindow at 5:07 PM on August 29, 2023 [7 favorites]
The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking by Olivia Laing
posted by ovvl at 5:10 PM on August 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by ovvl at 5:10 PM on August 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
I have spent most of my adult life studying literature, and if literature has a truly glaring flaw, it's that so much of it is and has been used to try to spin the most elaborate and self-serving justifications for why it's anything other than awful and banal to be a drunk.
This guy spent most of his adult life puking in a puddle or wondering where he'd been the night before, losing opportunities, friends, relationships, a shit-ton of money, his health... and even years later, fully aware of what he's done, supposedly experiencing his "hard-won sobriety", he's still absolutely enamored of his shitty, toxic behavior and thinks there's something there that makes his life a better story. I'm not 100% sure what the AA term is for it, but someone who's ostensibly in recovery but is still glorifying their drunk days is not really in recovery.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:11 PM on August 29, 2023 [21 favorites]
This guy spent most of his adult life puking in a puddle or wondering where he'd been the night before, losing opportunities, friends, relationships, a shit-ton of money, his health... and even years later, fully aware of what he's done, supposedly experiencing his "hard-won sobriety", he's still absolutely enamored of his shitty, toxic behavior and thinks there's something there that makes his life a better story. I'm not 100% sure what the AA term is for it, but someone who's ostensibly in recovery but is still glorifying their drunk days is not really in recovery.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 5:11 PM on August 29, 2023 [21 favorites]
"And, even with several years of hard-fought sobriety (which has immeasurably improved my life), I can still say with a dark measure of pride that when it came to drinking, I was damn good at it."
posted by Earthtopus at 5:19 PM on August 29, 2023 [18 favorites]
posted by Earthtopus at 5:19 PM on August 29, 2023 [18 favorites]
Earthtopus i love that.
Also, Olivia Lang writes in THE TRIP TO ECHO SORING about F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver, all notoriously soused and I believe all from a part of a century in the USA when to be a white writer of a certain class was to wear a tie and be pretty continuously drunk.
posted by Peach at 5:25 PM on August 29, 2023 [6 favorites]
Also, Olivia Lang writes in THE TRIP TO ECHO SORING about F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver, all notoriously soused and I believe all from a part of a century in the USA when to be a white writer of a certain class was to wear a tie and be pretty continuously drunk.
posted by Peach at 5:25 PM on August 29, 2023 [6 favorites]
Metafilter: Hot, sweaty, drunk, and watched over by the spirit of a dead clown
posted by credulous at 5:51 PM on August 29, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by credulous at 5:51 PM on August 29, 2023 [7 favorites]
An addict often has only the intensity of their experience to draw on for narrative power in their life. Almost everything in their life is based around or is shaped by their addiction, which creates tremendous tension for the addict and they think that we can and should understand. We do, but their dramatic tension was just tension and drama for us. We don't want to think about it, we have already spent too much energy dealing with it; it ceased being compelling for us a long time ago.
posted by Ignorantsavage at 5:55 PM on August 29, 2023 [18 favorites]
posted by Ignorantsavage at 5:55 PM on August 29, 2023 [18 favorites]
I only stopped drinking when I admitted to myself I really enjoyed it. Everyone has their own journey to recovery but I had no problem getting sober but I’d spend a month sober and be incredibly bored. I found minimizing my feelings towards alcohol was insulting at best and a lot of addicts will tell you that yeah being sober is boring. I went out to bars and made people laugh, made friends, slept with girls, got into fun adventures and when I dried up I got angry and resentful people told me it was just being drunk but it was still my memories and yeah it was fun. Once I admitted that being sober isn’t as fun because you’re not doing lines with someone who has an interesting life story in the bathroom (regardless if it is true) it helped me personally break that cycle. Yeah reading a book on a Thursday isn’t as fun as going out and partying and I’m not romanticizing it but there’s a reason it is difficult for people to quit.
On that note I also have a problem with a lot addiction stories on the internet. Like a lot of internet things people try to one up each other on how bad they were or how hard it was to quit. Again if that helps people get themselves on the right path great, but I spent too long thinking well I’m not that bad so I can continue. That’s again just me and if it helps people great.
posted by geoff. at 7:08 PM on August 29, 2023 [19 favorites]
On that note I also have a problem with a lot addiction stories on the internet. Like a lot of internet things people try to one up each other on how bad they were or how hard it was to quit. Again if that helps people get themselves on the right path great, but I spent too long thinking well I’m not that bad so I can continue. That’s again just me and if it helps people great.
posted by geoff. at 7:08 PM on August 29, 2023 [19 favorites]
To cite my own personal experience, I started writing shortly after I started drinking seriously. I think the alcohol silenced my internal critic long enough for me to get words down on the page, instead of my previous practice of writing a few paragraphs then deleting them in disgust. And I think alcohol, when you start to abuse it, triggers neurons to fire in odd ways that can be creative and inspirational.
But alcohol takes away as readily as it gives, and I started to receive feedback that my writing was becoming more and more disjointed, wandering around with some neat ideas that never formed into a whole.
I can't write a lick now, since I'm committed to my sobriety. My writing talent, in whatever amount I have it, is linked inextricably to intoxication, and that is no way to live. I can understand how some writers find tragedy and grandiosity in their "suffering for their art." But I realize now that it's just "the brain on drugs" and not something deeply meaningful or insightful. It's just how the meat between my ears works.
posted by SPrintF at 7:14 PM on August 29, 2023 [9 favorites]
But alcohol takes away as readily as it gives, and I started to receive feedback that my writing was becoming more and more disjointed, wandering around with some neat ideas that never formed into a whole.
I can't write a lick now, since I'm committed to my sobriety. My writing talent, in whatever amount I have it, is linked inextricably to intoxication, and that is no way to live. I can understand how some writers find tragedy and grandiosity in their "suffering for their art." But I realize now that it's just "the brain on drugs" and not something deeply meaningful or insightful. It's just how the meat between my ears works.
posted by SPrintF at 7:14 PM on August 29, 2023 [9 favorites]
Everything good I’ve written has been after I stopped drinking. It takes time to get your brain back.
posted by Peach at 7:31 PM on August 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Peach at 7:31 PM on August 29, 2023 [3 favorites]
That Onion piece is the perfect encapsulation of the drunkalogue, the bête noire of the AA speaker's meeting--the recovering alcoholic who romanticizes some aspect of their disease, whether it's how much they drank, various allegedly wacky antics performed while drunk, or (in the case of those who were also/more into drugs) being the biggest meth dealer in East Bumfuck, Iowa. I go to meetings in part to remind myself (and testify to others) how truly shitty it was, and how easy it would be to slip back into that.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:53 PM on August 29, 2023 [13 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:53 PM on August 29, 2023 [13 favorites]
Stories about redemption, sin, and/or salvation hold no interest for me, and I can't think of any example of what I consider great literature that revolves around it. It might be my lack of familiarity with religion and addiction or the concept of 'salvation', of course, but his insistence on their centrality seems a bit navel-gazey.
posted by signal at 8:17 PM on August 29, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by signal at 8:17 PM on August 29, 2023 [5 favorites]
"It turns out that the greatest story humankind can possibly tell, indeed the only story worth making art about at all, is my own."
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:43 PM on August 29, 2023 [23 favorites]
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:43 PM on August 29, 2023 [23 favorites]
MetaFilter: an insufferably posh toff.
posted by y2karl at 10:53 PM on August 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 10:53 PM on August 29, 2023 [2 favorites]
The idea of alcoholism as the partner of creativity goes back a long way - all those absinthe-quaffing poets like Verlaine, for example, or a composer like Moussorgsky whose portrait shows him visibly having a really bad hangover. You can argue that alcohol increases the perceived salience of immediate experience, which an artist might value: or maybe alcoholism was just the first disability to be reimagined as a superpower.
posted by Phanx at 12:57 AM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Phanx at 12:57 AM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
That was good. Well written, thorough. Enjoyable, mostly. Reading it I kept thinking, "I'm so glad I'm not drinking anymore." And then realised that more profoundly, I'm so glad I don't look fondly upon drinking, anymore.
Drinking is fun but it is a world/world-view that only includes itself, and for me that got really boring.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:45 AM on August 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
Drinking is fun but it is a world/world-view that only includes itself, and for me that got really boring.
posted by From Bklyn at 1:45 AM on August 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
infinite window: ohhhhh I want to write like this… but then again, I too am an addict in recovery
Do it to get it out of your system, but I don't want to read it and hope that writing for fun helps you move on to health.
The concept is broken, tbh, because a story told is most often a sole narrator's arc and not a collective voicing of the many people involved in a story. A single person doesn't fight their demons, we collectively must create shame for those things marked demonic, then we must isolate that person from the rest of society. That creates extra suffering and isn't very civilised -- AA/NA creates collective places to support each other dealing with the consequences without additional shame.
posted by k3ninho at 4:23 AM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
Do it to get it out of your system, but I don't want to read it and hope that writing for fun helps you move on to health.
The concept is broken, tbh, because a story told is most often a sole narrator's arc and not a collective voicing of the many people involved in a story. A single person doesn't fight their demons, we collectively must create shame for those things marked demonic, then we must isolate that person from the rest of society. That creates extra suffering and isn't very civilised -- AA/NA creates collective places to support each other dealing with the consequences without additional shame.
posted by k3ninho at 4:23 AM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
I thought this was a beautiful piece (it helps that I'll always read about Milton), but I'm not in recovery and I don't have drinking stories that I can spin out into something that feels so grand (most of mine just end with me eating something I feel tremendously guilty about, sleeping poorly and wondering why on earth I had a third glass of wine). I come from a lot of writers, drinkers and pompous assholes. I've heard some real bullshit. This was, even if a flavor of bullshit, I thought pretty good stuff. I pre-ordered his book.
posted by thivaia at 5:34 AM on August 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by thivaia at 5:34 AM on August 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
I can't write a lick now, since I'm committed to my sobriety. My writing talent, in whatever amount I have it, is linked inextricably to intoxication, and that is no way to live.
I knew someone some years ago who lost their ability to act when they got sober. I was kind of stricken by that, having had a naive idea that anything you can do while intoxicated you can do while sober, and also that, if you have a creative outlet, that's maybe the most important thing in your life. But they said the trade-off was more than worth it, and that was the beginning of me learning some useful and not-easy truths about life.
posted by Well I never at 5:40 AM on August 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
I knew someone some years ago who lost their ability to act when they got sober. I was kind of stricken by that, having had a naive idea that anything you can do while intoxicated you can do while sober, and also that, if you have a creative outlet, that's maybe the most important thing in your life. But they said the trade-off was more than worth it, and that was the beginning of me learning some useful and not-easy truths about life.
posted by Well I never at 5:40 AM on August 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
Thank you for sharing this, chavenet, and for linking to the ungated version.
As a lit crit scholar with training and practice in a closely related field (the long 18th century) this had many resonances.
Nice to see the Chronicle publishing some comic book style art.
posted by doctornemo at 6:55 AM on August 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
As a lit crit scholar with training and practice in a closely related field (the long 18th century) this had many resonances.
Nice to see the Chronicle publishing some comic book style art.
posted by doctornemo at 6:55 AM on August 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Ed Simon is executive director of Belt Media Collaborative and editor of Belt Magazine
So he exited the Milton world.
posted by doctornemo at 6:56 AM on August 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
So he exited the Milton world.
posted by doctornemo at 6:56 AM on August 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
There but for the grace of god go I...not into alcoholism, but into academia, which seems to me an equally if not MORE terrifying fate.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:06 AM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:06 AM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
I can assure this guy you don't need be to an academic to be a thoughtful self-obsessed alcoholic. Ask me how I know.
posted by Kitteh at 7:21 AM on August 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by Kitteh at 7:21 AM on August 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
Leslie Jemison, herself a recovering alcoholic, wrote about this in The Recovering. Her contention is that writers think they need alcohol as a stimulant to produce great writing, but looking at their life it seems to be a false promise.
She based this book, I think, on her PhD thesis, where she got access to many alcoholic writers' papers and quotes those extensively.
posted by indianbadger1 at 7:26 AM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
She based this book, I think, on her PhD thesis, where she got access to many alcoholic writers' papers and quotes those extensively.
posted by indianbadger1 at 7:26 AM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
I'm not 100% sure what the AA term is for it, but someone who's ostensibly in recovery but is still glorifying their drunk days is not really in recovery.
Dry drunk. Recovery is a journey, though, and we can be on it even if it's not always going so great.
posted by teh_boy at 7:31 AM on August 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
Dry drunk. Recovery is a journey, though, and we can be on it even if it's not always going so great.
posted by teh_boy at 7:31 AM on August 30, 2023 [5 favorites]
supposedly experiencing his "hard-won sobriety",
Seems kind of bogus to imply that he isn't sober because he isn't the kind of sober person you like.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:38 AM on August 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
Seems kind of bogus to imply that he isn't sober because he isn't the kind of sober person you like.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 7:38 AM on August 30, 2023 [6 favorites]
Stephen King also goes into the chemically-altered creative myth in On Writing, as well as in various other writings and interviews.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:12 AM on August 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:12 AM on August 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Kind of seems like a lot of people use drinking as self medication and looking back fondly at times when you were at blacking out underlying problems with fondness is understandable. But I guess that really means they're not recovered because they don't live in shame of their past.
posted by Ferreous at 8:41 AM on August 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Ferreous at 8:41 AM on August 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Relationships with alcohol, sobriety, and recovery are rarely unique but they are always individual.
I think it's unhealthy to look for the solution rather than a solution.
Which is all to say, I thoroughly enjoyed this and don't think it's offering the former, but rather talking about the latter.
posted by slimepuppy at 8:57 AM on August 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
I think it's unhealthy to look for the solution rather than a solution.
Which is all to say, I thoroughly enjoyed this and don't think it's offering the former, but rather talking about the latter.
posted by slimepuppy at 8:57 AM on August 30, 2023 [4 favorites]
Anyone who has no nostalgia for some aspects of whatever form of self-destruction they indulged in in their younger days has led an extraordinarily well-ordered life, well beyond me. People do these things for a reason, even if it doesn't actually solve (and often worsens) their problems. I've never been a substance addict of any kind, but "it took all the coke in town/to bring down Dennis Brown/on the day my lung collapses/we'll see just how much it takes" still strikes a chord. Now, it's exhausting to subject your loved ones to this talk, especially if they were collateral damage in your self-destruction, but I see nothing wrong with turning it into an essay.
(Also, given that the toff was an adult and not somehow dependent on the author, it is not actually clear to me that the author did anything wrong. That time. I'm sure the anecdote is a stand-in for worse behavior.)
posted by praemunire at 12:00 PM on August 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
(Also, given that the toff was an adult and not somehow dependent on the author, it is not actually clear to me that the author did anything wrong. That time. I'm sure the anecdote is a stand-in for worse behavior.)
posted by praemunire at 12:00 PM on August 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
At university, placed a placard on my door:
The Ray Milland Suite.
posted by clavdivs at 12:45 PM on August 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
The Ray Milland Suite.
posted by clavdivs at 12:45 PM on August 30, 2023 [1 favorite]
Always with the Panic in the Year Zero, eh, clavdivs? Always the life of the party!
posted by y2karl at 1:07 PM on August 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 1:07 PM on August 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Seems kind of bogus to imply that he isn't sober because he isn't the kind of sober person you like.
Well, I don't like him, not at all, but that's not why I'm implying he's not sober. I'm doing it because though supposedly sober, he's spending a great deal of time/text trying to persuade us that drunk him was anything other than awful and banal.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 3:52 PM on August 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
Well, I don't like him, not at all, but that's not why I'm implying he's not sober. I'm doing it because though supposedly sober, he's spending a great deal of time/text trying to persuade us that drunk him was anything other than awful and banal.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 3:52 PM on August 30, 2023 [2 favorites]
If he's not drinking, he's sober.
posted by Ferreous at 7:01 PM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by Ferreous at 7:01 PM on August 30, 2023 [3 favorites]
I've been thinking why this rubbed me the wrong way so intensely:
The subject of all great literature is either about redemption or its loss…is the only worthy topic of prose, poetry, or drama. … sinful and wicked men made whole… those are the narratives which should concern any genuine art
I think there's a special kind of privilege at play in the assumption that the only story worth telling is about whether or not people that look like you and don't seem to face any real problems except the ones they chose, feel good about themselves or not.
This part is especially egregious: sinful and wicked men made whole, seems to be based on the idea that no matter what harm you do to others, if you end up feeling OK with yourself it's all good. I dispute this with all my heart—the only true sin, harming others, cannot be undone or attoned for unless you somehow manage to undo the harm itself, which in most cases is not possible. Whether or not you feel like you've been "made whole" is irrelevant.
Off the top of my head, I'm much more interested in subjects such as:
The subject of all great literature is either about redemption or its loss…is the only worthy topic of prose, poetry, or drama. … sinful and wicked men made whole… those are the narratives which should concern any genuine art
I think there's a special kind of privilege at play in the assumption that the only story worth telling is about whether or not people that look like you and don't seem to face any real problems except the ones they chose, feel good about themselves or not.
This part is especially egregious: sinful and wicked men made whole, seems to be based on the idea that no matter what harm you do to others, if you end up feeling OK with yourself it's all good. I dispute this with all my heart—the only true sin, harming others, cannot be undone or attoned for unless you somehow manage to undo the harm itself, which in most cases is not possible. Whether or not you feel like you've been "made whole" is irrelevant.
Off the top of my head, I'm much more interested in subjects such as:
- People surviving despite the actions of others, especially those with power over them.
- People fighting against fascism and similar monsters.
- People cast out of their family or community because of their gender, sex, skin, etc, finding and forging new families and communities that empower them.
- People exploring different cultures and being changed.
- People forced to travel to a different land and deal with the prejudice of the people who lived there before them.
Neither of those links worked for me (Mac/Catalina/Safari), this appeared to.
posted by epo at 1:00 PM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by epo at 1:00 PM on September 1, 2023 [1 favorite]
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I will confess to enjoying Paradise Lost because it’s so much awful fun though.
posted by Peach at 4:50 PM on August 29, 2023 [6 favorites]