Drinking and writing.

There's a lot of literature on the subject, but I can only tell you my own experiences.

Way back in the mid-70s, when I was struggling to write my first books, I was drinking fairly often. I used alcohol to get me going. I seemed to need it to loosen my creative juices and to still my doubts. I'd spend time in a drunken haze thinking up wild ideas. I used the promise of a few glasses of wine or beer to sit my butt in a chair and write.

It seemed to help. It seemed to me that I had insights and clarity, in vino veritas. I suspect those first books wouldn't have been written without alcohol.

In hindsight I can see the drawbacks. I can see that many of the dysfunctional habits I developed can be traced to being soused. The biggest problems I had were the constant changing of narrative in mid-stream, the incessant starting over, and the obsessive rewriting.

Then I married a teetotaler, bought a bookstore, had two stepkids. I needed to stay sharp during the day, I found myself losing my temper more often after I drank (strangely, not so much while I was drinking. I'm mostly a happy drunk.)

I didn't stop drinking overnight. I never felt that I had huge problems with drinking, it's just that the benefit/cost ratio changed. The benefit of feeling loose wasn't enough to overcome cost of sleep disruption, stomach upset, and psychological dislocation.

I never made a decision to stop drinking. I still haven't. I'll probably drink some night in the future and won't feel guilty about it. But the habit just sort of petered to a stop.

So after a 25 year hiatus, I came back to writing with a vengeance. I figured that drinking would be part of the process, but something different happened. The benefit/cost ratio proved to be way out of whack. I didn't seem to have many insights, it didn't seem to help me concentrate, and the damage done to my body and mind seemed excessive.

So then I thought I'd save alcohol for moments when I was stuck or undecided.

That didn't seem to work either.

Meanwhile, I wrote a bunch of books stone-cold sober. I proved that I could do it, and there didn't seem to be any drawback.

I still harbor a hope that one night I'll have an epiphany while soused that will elevate whatever I'm writing--but so far, that hasn't come close to happening, so I'm not going there.