The Sunday Times described Hitchens as “Usually armed with a glass of Scotch and an untipped Rothmans cigarette.” In late 2007 he briefly gave up smoking, although resumed during the writing of his memoir and continued until his cancer diagnosis. Hitchens admitted to drinking heavily; in 2003 he wrote that his daily intake of alcohol was enough “to kill or stun the average mule”, arguing that many great writers “did some of their finest work when blotto, smashed, polluted, shitfaced, squiffy, whiffled, and three sheets to the wind.”
George Galloway notably accused Hitchens of being a “drink-sodden ex-Trotskyist popinjay”,[161] to which Hitchens replied, “only some of which is true.”[162] Hitchens later elaborated: “He says that I am an ex-Trotskyist (true), a ‘popinjay’ (true enough, since the word’s original Webster’s definition is a target for arrows and shots), and that I cannot hold a drink (here I must protest).”[163] Hitchens’ wife Carol Blue described him as “obviously an alcoholic, he functions at a really high level and he doesn’t act like a drunk, so the only reason it’s a bad thing is it’s taking out his liver, presumably. It would be a drag for Henry Kissinger to live to a hundred and Christopher to keel over next year.”[164] His profile in The New Yorker described him as drinking “like a Hemingway character: continually and to no apparent effect.”[164]
Oliver Burkeman writes, “Since the parting of ways on Iraq … Hitchens claims to have detected a new, personalised nastiness in the attacks on him, especially over his fabled consumption of alcohol. He welcomes being attacked as a drinker ‘because I always think it’s a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem.’ He drank, he said, ‘because it makes other people less boring. I have a great terror of being bored. But I can work with or without it. It takes quite a lot to get me to slur.'”[165]
In his 2010 memoir Hitch-22, Hitchens wrote: “There was a time when I could reckon to outperform all but the most hardened imbibers, but I now drink relatively carefully.” He described his then-current drinking routine on working-days as follows: “At about half past midday, a decent slug of Mr. Walker’s amber restorative, cut with Perrier water (an ideal delivery system) and no ice. At luncheon, perhaps half a bottle of red wine: not always more but never less. Then back to the desk, and ready to repeat the treatment at the evening meal. No ‘after dinner drinks’—most especially nothing sweet and never, ever any brandy. ‘Nightcaps’ depend on how well the day went, but always the mixture as before. No mixing: no messing around with a gin here and a vodka there.”[166]
Reflecting on the lifestyle that supported his career as a writer he said:
I always knew there was a risk in the bohemian lifestyle … I decided to take it because it helped my concentration, it stopped me being bored—it stopped other people being boring. It would make me want to prolong the conversation and enhance the moment. If you ask: would I do it again? I would probably say yes. But I would have quit earlier hoping to get away with the whole thing. I decided all of life is a wager and I’m going to wager on this bit … In a strange way I don’t regret it. It’s just impossible for me to picture life without wine, and other things, fueling the company, keeping me reading, energising me. It worked for me. It really did.[167]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_hitchens
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