Is it Wrong?

Is it wrong to medicate? No doubt among whoever is reading this there will be two firmly embedded camps.

But is it wrong? If humanity had been sober since the Dawn of Time would there ever have been an Oscar Wilde, a Toulouse Lautrec, a Van Gogh?

You may not know it, but Stephen King (and he'll freely admit it) made most of his early fortune completely pumped on coke. Writing day and night. For YEARS! Snorting day and night.

Did

You

Know

That?

Fucking Ernest Hemingway was pretty much 90% half in the bag. Do you understand my words? WHEN HE WROTE HIS "MASTERPIECES" THAT ARE TAUGHT AT COLLEGES HE WAS PRACTICALLY SO FUCKED UP he probably couldn't see his typewriter.

Ian Fleming was the same. Pretty much fucked up ALL DAY, EVERY DAY. Richard Burton: fucked up ALL DAY EVERY DAY on amounts of alcohol you and I can only just imagine. Elizabeth Taylor: even worse: arrived at work in the morning with an enormous flask of "juice" which was really straight vodka on ice. Oh, okay, you go to work like this? But THEY DO AND THEY DID.

Dylan Thomas was so fucked up 99% of the time that it's amazing anything arrived on the page.

And I have it on personal knowledge that dear, dear, Nick auf der Maur, gods rest his sweet, sweet soul, loved his liquor when it was thicker. God, I loved him. You just can't IMAGINE how much I raced to read his columns in the Gazette. Fuck, Nick, why did you check out anyway? There is no equal.

But I digress, as Brian Kappler, AKA Doug Camilli likes to say in the Gazette (sorry, I should be providing links to this stuff but I'm too lazy here on this Saturday morning rant).

I know I've written most of my best stories on cocaine and alcohol so I guess I'm just JOINING THE HALLOWED PANTHEON.