The Who2 Blog

Famous Literary Drunks and Addicts

Photo of Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway (center, in white shirt) with his wife Mary, actor Spencer Tracy, and others at La Florida, Havana, Cuba, circa 1955. 

LIFE magazine has this terrific gallery of Famous Literary Drunks and Addicts — and it holds a few (though not many) surprises.

By far “alcohol” is the most popular form of addiction here (although for Ernest Hemingway they call it “booze”).

But you’ll also find heroin (William S. Burroughs) and speed (Ayn Rand) and opium (Louisa May Alcott) and cocaine (Stephen King??).

And, for Hunter S. Thompson, they say “Everything.”

(Photo from the Ernest Hemingway Photograph Collection, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston.)

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