When I attended graduate school for writing in the midwestern USA in the mid and late 1990s, all the best classes and writing workshops were held in bars, pubs, and-or saloons. A slight exaggeration, but only slightly. It was the tail end of an era when drinking and writing, at least in the USA, were still seen by many as activities that go hand in hand. And hand in hand with drinking goes smoking, so most of the drinking writers in the writing workshops were also smokers too, either heavy, medium, or light. The second-hand smoke that was consumed along with the first-hand smoke along with the beers along with the shots of whisky while writing was being discussed in the writing workshops that were happening in the bars, makes me not wonder why I already have Stage One Emphysema nor why I’ve already had a stroke. I’m healthy as a horse otherwise (yes this is possible) and I’ve already done what you need to do to slow emphysema down which is quit smoking. I stopped drinking twenty-one years ago and there is no doubt that I would be dead now if I had not stopped drinking. Three of my writing teachers from those days are dead from drinking and smoking even though, if alive, they would not yet be 80 years old. All three of them died from some combination of chain-smoking cigarettes and alcoholism, the functional, working variety of it, that is. These men never stopped working. But they also never stopped drinking or smoking. And it put them in an early grave, just as it promises to do for almost everyone who goes too far with any of these activities. My fellow students in the writing programs were also alcoholics. One of them I almost married, except that she turned out to be an even bigger alcoholic than I was. It’s sad to see a brilliant brain slowly bludgeon itself into submission right in front of your eyes when you yourself have already done the necessary work that is required to save yourself from a similar fate. Keith Richards quit heroin in the 1970s before it killed him and his girlfriend refused to do so which is why he had to tell her sayonara, beautiful lady.
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