Drinking and writing

Interesting read, at least if you are a writer and a practicing or recovered alcoholic (the later for me).

Nothing slows the flywheel, nothing treats the node of unease on the ribs, like a drink—you don’t have to be an alcoholic to know that. And for writers, there might even be a fragile biochemical moment when the drinking helps[…]

[…]Let’s tread warily, because there’s mystery here. If Mank doesn’t leave the Algonquin, and all of its bladed quips, and go to vulgar soul-swallowing Hollywood, there’s no Citizen Kane. If Thomas doesn’t launch himself repeatedly and self-destructively at America, and into the inferno of American adulation, there’s no Under Milk Wood[…] The disaster of their drinking, we might say, was part of their negotiation with the unattainable. Their muses, their demons, were quite merciless. Their standards were impossibly high. Would either man, as a writer, have had it any other way?

James Parker, What Drives Writers to Drink?

Edits and emphasis in the except are mine. Full text: https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/12/dylan-thomas-herman-mankiewicz-and-the-writer-as-drinker/617463/