Connection is the Key

May 16, 2025

https://mulhollanddistilling.com/connection-is-the-key/

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Back in prohibition times, drinking (and being drunk) was fun! Nobody was ever called the vulgar “drunk,” but by merry new nicknames: squiffy, pie eyed, lubricated, smashed, loaded, ossified, blotto or three sheets to the wind. It was sophisticated, it was new, it was creative, it cast off fetters.

In the literary world, drinking to what we now call excess was your passport, your literary bonafides; Who would read the words of the sober?! Not that this was new. The poet Horace had observed, “since Backus enlisted frenzied poets among his Satyrs and Fauns, the Dulcet Muses have usually smelled of drink first thing in the morning.”

But the 20th century breathed fresh life into the tradition. Following playwright Eugene O’Neill and the sodden Jack London of early years, Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, Edmund Wilson, Sherwood Anderson, Thomas Wolfe, Hart Crane, James Agee, Malcolm Lowry, Robert Lowell and John O’Hara led the way with prodigious feats, generating wonderful publicity, followed closely by the lesser luminaries in the lighter veins like Benchley and Parker and Cole Porter.

Thorne Smith wrote hugely popular books like Topper in which the hero, trapped inside the boring ordinary life, is led by a lovely lady into the transcendent joys of drinking and drinking and drinking. Dylan Thomas set the final seal of approval, writing glorious poetry and actually dying of drink, every young poet’s new goal. For writers long after repeal, like the scandalous Truman Capote, the bottle became as essential as the typewriter.

Artist too. The eerie glow of the green fairy, Absinthe, had shed its inspirational light on earlier painters, the wicked temptress leading them into modern masterpieces. It is wildly popular and much praised by Byron, Oscar Wilde, Magnet, Degas, Modigliani, Picasso and its arch hero, Toulouse Lautrec.

Nostalgically, our artists may do: Robert Rauschenberg, died at 83 having survived finishing off a quart and a half of Jack Daniels every day of his life while establishing himself as America’s iconic modern painter. Great art calls for strong drink.

Perhaps great statesmanship does too. The inspiring voice of World War II, its rousing leader Winston Churchill began each day with a whiskey and soda for breakfast and was said to have slipped through the war on a tidal wave of champagne and Brandy, while handily whipping the teetotaler Adolf Hitler. Then he took to his bed with some bottles of Brandy and wrote all those engrossing history books, stopping for many a restorative nip and won the Nobel Prize in literature. Strong words feast on strong drink.” 

Excerpt from “The Joys of Drinking,” by Barbara Holland.

If you ever get the opportunity to read Barbara Holland’s book, “The Joy of Drinking,” it is a fun treatise on the history and joys of imbibing throughout cultures and centuries. It so clearly points out that the keys to longevity in life are not just environment, exercise, diet and genetics. Arguably the most important contributor of a long and fulfilling life is the presence and love of our family and our friends and joyful pursuit of living!

Study after study, book after book, culture after culture, reinforces the necessity of social connection to lead a happy life. Connection makes us who we are. And yes, you can be social at the gym, or in your yoga class, or painting class or on a bike ride or taking a hike. Absolutely wonderful. But, at the end of a very long week of struggle and stress, is there anything more suiting to the soul then sharing a fine beverage with family and friends.

That being said, I am painfully aware (and personally acquainted) with the evils of addiction and with those among us who are unable to partake for a variety of reasons. To them, I applaud the courage their sobriety takes and the strength of character, every day, to maintain their path in the face of the challenges of this thing called, “life.”

And, so, to us all…a toast of whatever you have in your glass…to friends, family, joy and love.

Cheers, Slainte, Proost, Kanpai, Salud, CinCin, Skal…and on and on…

Connection is the Key

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