Back in the day, there was a saying about hallucinogens, and I would argue that it applies to any recreational drug, that what they do to you, depends on what you do to them.  That is, things like that don’t give you courage, don’t make you more creative, don’t give you profound insights into the Cosmic All, don’t in short, make you anything you’re already not.  They just bring things out of you, that were always there to begin with.

I’m thinking about this in relation to this post Andrew Sullivan linked to today, by Pieter Dorsman.  I think Dorsman needs to rethink this a tad…

As we ‘re inundated with quotes from Robert Draper’s revealing book on Bush, I kind of enjoyed this one, on drinking:

Discussing his past battles with alcohol, he says he would never be able to make decision on war if he was still drinking.

“Exercise helps. And I think prayer helps,” he says. “I wouldn’t be President if I kept drinking. You can get sloppy, can’t make decisions. It clouds your reason, absolutely.”

Wasn’t the War on Terror modeled after the struggle against Nazism? And didn’t Sir Winston Churchill make a resounding re-entry in the daily lexicon after the events of 9/11? What would the world have looked like if Sir Winston had applied the same rigor to his alcohol consumption as GWB? Here’s a clue:

His drinking habits were admirably fetishistic – preferably Pol Roger, served at precisely the right temperature (he was delighted when the gift of a refrigerator from Beaverbrook in 1926 obviated the need to dilute it with ice) and interspersed with much brandy and port.

The papers of Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s lend-lease administrator, contain several good examples of the war leader’s zealous interest in his own consumption. For instance, Hopkins describes finding Churchill in January 1943 ‘in bed in his customary pink robe, and having, of all things, a bottle of wine for breakfast’. Viscount Alanbrooke made the same observation, and Eden’s diary mentions Churchill taking a ’stiff whiskey and soda, at 8.45 a.m’.

A Foreign Office official described a dinner with Churchill as ,a varied and noble procession of wines with which I could not keep pace – champagne, port, brandy, Cointreau: Winston drank a good deal of all, and ended with two glasses of whisky and soda.’

As one of his commenters noted, if drinking heavily was all that it takes to win a war, the Russians would have won the cold war because the Kremlin alone probably consumed enough vodka to float a battleship.

I like to think that my Baptist upbringing, combined with Dad’s side of the family’s cheerful hedonism, gave me a sensibility toward the pleasures of the flesh that isn’t so much neurotic, as reasonable.  But my friends would probably disagree.  I was a very inhibited little dweeb growing up, but by the time I was out of college I could let my hair down a bit and enjoy getting all stoned and silly with my friends and, as John Steinbeck said in Travels With Charlie, take my hangovers as a consequence and not as punishment.  But my comfort zone with alcohol exists only to the degree that I feel I don’t really Need it in order to enjoy myself.  It’s when I find myself feeling like I need a drink, that I absolutely won’t touch it. 

There’s a practical, as well as self-righteous side to that: if I’m already miserable, then getting high will only make my misery grow to exalted proportions and I don’t need that when I’m having major life problems.  Also, no matter how high I get, some part of my brain, probably the Baptist part, never stops nagging me about whatever it is that’s making me miserable, that I need to take care of.  So I might as well fix whatever the problem is first, before I can even think about letting my hair down and enjoying myself.  In Vino Veritas…and the truth is that drink can’t make you anything that you’re already not.  The only thing that comes out of a bottle, is you.

And the thing is, a stinking drunken crawling on the floor blasted Winston Churchill is still Winston Churchill and drunk or sober Bush is still Bush.  And given my druthers I’d rather be completely wasted in company with Churchill and Grant and Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken and Ben Franklin any of dozens of famous historical drinkers then in the company of a stone cold sober George Bush, even if I had a big bottle of Kahlua to take refuge in.  There is no salvation in drink.  It does not make life better.  It does not improve morons.  It does not unblock a blockhead.  It sure as shit won’t put a conscience in an empty hole, let alone grow someone a brain.