Dr. Tom drove me to drink. That's the one thing I'm so indebted to him for.

As we await learned Floyd County Health Department instruction as to the proper amount of head for crowning a draft beer, here is a consideration of why writers drink. I've always thought it's because the absence of vice renders life (and art) unacceptably banal -- as in Mitt Romney.

Why do writers drink?, by Blake Morrison (Guardian)

... Does it help writers to drink? Do they drink any more heavily than any other social group – doctors, lawyers, shop assistants or (see Mad Men) advertising executives? A famous drinker himself, (Kingsley) Amis considers this question in his Memoirs, and – comparing writers to actors – suggests "displaced stage fright as a cause of literary alcoholism. A writer's audience is and remains invisible to him, but if he is any good he is acutely and continuously aware of it, and never more so while it waits for him to come on, to begin p.1. Alcohol not only makes you less self-critical, it reduces fear." According to Amis, a large glass can supply "that final burst of energy at the end of the day" but should be avoided any earlier: "The writer who writes his books on, rather than between, whisky is a lousy writer. He is probably American anyway."