Aside from being a great statesman and a writer and a painter, Winston Churchill, whom I mentioned in my last post, was a boozer. So were dozens of famous writers and artists. Among them are Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning (right), Mark Rothko, Robert Rauschenberg, Francis Bacon.
How did they manage to produce under the influence? Did alcohol grease the wheels of their creativity?
An intriguing article in the current issue of Prospect Magazine (published in Britain) sheds some light on the questions –first quoting Churchill saying that drinking was critical to his writing of “The World Crisis,” his six-volume memoir: “Always remember that I have taken more out of alcohol than it has taken out of me.”
The article describes what it calls the “Churchill gene,” which allows those who have it “to remain healthy and brilliant despite consumption [of alcohol] that would kill others.”
Then it cites a scientific study, conducted at the University of Colorado, that tested the presence of a “G-variant” in some people in relation to alcohol. In those that have the variant, alcohol created stronger feelings of elation and happiness, followed by a longer period of relaxation, than it did in those who don’t have it. About 15 percent of Caucasians have the G-variant, and are presumably like Churchill.
The Colorado study did not address causation. That is left for future studies. But it may explain why so many creative people are able to drink heavily and still produce.
You can read the article here.
UPDATE: It’s 1 p.m., and two readers have written comments — using “Contact Me.” They are posted there. If they would post the comments again on this item, I’d publish them here so that they are connected to this post.