Ernest demonstrates one of the difficult psychological aspects of alcoholism--extreme suspicion of the loved ones around us.Feeling the pressure to get wasted when it’s really not your faves? Or, for those of us that aren’t complete lames, sick of being the last one to leave a party, and also why do your friends insist on doing “interventions” and reusing cliché phrases such as “your drinking is becoming a problem” and “you smelled like a Dubra factory in The History of Scientific Thought from The Ancient Greeks to the Enlightenment this morning which was a Tuesday’?”
Fear not. There were plenty of historical figures that chose to lay off the sauce, but also tons who boozed like champions. Whatever your cup of tea (Earl Grey or Grey Goose), you’re in good/well-known company.
DRINKERS
1. Tiberius
In The Twelve Caesars, Suetonius writes that this emperor of Rome drank so much that instead of Tiberius Claudius Nero, people called him “ ‘Biberius Caldius Mero’—meaning: ‘drinker of hot wine with no water added’.” [1]
2. Ernest Hemingway— This friend of the site has been described as having “a relentless appetite for long drinks and pretty women.”[2] His favorite drink was Gordon’s gin[3] , and everyone knows that gin is for serious drinkers. A Hemingway biographer described Ernest’s fishing boat as “kind of a floating whorehouse and rum factory.”[4] So basically Hemingway invented the Booze Cruise, and for that we salute him.
3. Edgar Allen Poe—Unlike most alcoholics, Poe didn’t drink all the time. In fact, one writer makes sure to point out that “Poe was not an alcoholic,” but then goes on to say, “Poe was an impulsive binge drinker who, once he started drinking, could not stop until he was out of money or passed out.”[5] Spoiler alert: most historians agree that alcohol lead to his death. He was drinking with friends, and then was found in a gutter unconscious six days later, and he died soon after. If he had died in the era of Facebook, how many groups do you think would be made after his death called “Nevermore?”
4. Early (better) Eric Clapton.
In Wonderful Tonight, Patty Boyd writes about being married to both George Harrison and Eric Clapton (both!!!!!!!!), and describes Clapton lurching around their house blackout basically all day, coming to bed with a drink and pouring himself another as soon as he woke up. Obviously our friend Slowhand is still awesome, but I was hoping for lovable wild and crazy drunk, not drive away your friends drunk.
(See also: Johnny Cash, Patsy Cline, every cool musician ever)
NOT DRINKERS
1. Julius Caesar
It was said "Caesar was the only sober man who ever tried to wreck the Constitution.” [6]
2. Augustus
The first Emperor of Rome “was also a habitually abstemious drinker. During the siege of Mutina, according to Cornelius Nepos, he never took more than three drinks of wine-and-water at dinner. In later life his limit was a pint; if he ever exceeded this he would deliberately vomit. ”[7] Augustus is thus the first recorded practitioner of the boot and rally.
3. Late (not as good) Eric Clapton
After their divorce and Clapton’s end of alcohol abuse, Boyd writes “I was amazed at the difference in him. He was sober…in the old days, time had been of no consequence. Now, everything was precise and organized.”
5. All the people that were into the Temperance movement.
Clearly the not drinkers seems a little less, how shall we say, fun, but they also seem a little less to have ruined relationships with the people they love or drank themselves to death. But my mom always says the best people are in hell, and if this hell is just a place where I get to drink with Clapton and Poe, put my name down and booze me up.
[1] Tiberius 42
[2] http://observer.guardian.co.uk/foodmonthly/story/0,,1013324,00.html
[3] http://www.ernest.hemingway.com/oldman.htm
[4] http://www.ernest.hemingway.com/oldman.htm
[5] http://www.usna.edu/EnglishDept/poeperplex/alcoholp.htm
[6] Julius Caesar 53
[7] Augustus 77
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