Winston Churchill: Do you really never drink any wine at all?

Shaw: I am hard enough to keep in order as it is

- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950). Format adapted. In Winston Churchill, "George Bernard Shaw," Great Contemporaries, 1937  

This is why I don’t drink much. It doesn't feel to me that something like alcohol will make my life better in any way, because I always feel that my mental state is so finely balanced, that even something small, like a drink or a drug, is likely to upset it. From this moment, I will then spiral outward, either ending up crashing and burning because I acted out too much, or ending up super depressed and quiet because I have no idea what to do with myself. I think that many people drink because they feel that drinking is a social activity, and if I ever do drink, then it is for this purpose - to fit in. However, because I know that I will spiral, I am also aware that to ‘fit in’, is often the same as ‘giving in to peer pressure’, and that that never ends well, because I am liable to eventually explode if pressed too hard. In that sense, taking a drink seems to be a positive in that you can hang out with people, but also a negative, because it makes it even harder for you to hang out with people in a sane fashion. There are folk who are fine living like this and really just want to expand themselves and their lives, but I do not feel comfortable or more importantly, safe, doing so. This comes from my awareness of myself. Even if a drink did make things easier, I also know that the effects of drinking never last - we will wake up with a hangover at some point. We don’t want to end up relying on the drink, because taking a drink - is taking the easy way out. It is relying on a crutch, and one which is made of wine, not wood. It is not strong and stable, and we need something strong and stable in our lives, lest we cascade into failure. 

Churchill was famous for being, if not a functioning alcoholic, at least being someone who drank very regularly. His strength was in loquaciousness, Shaw, on the other hand, is a famous playwright. It appears to me very likely that a playwright needs greater control over his own thoughts than a politician does. A politician, like Churchill, needs the ability to talk regularly, to make people feel comfortable, and to be able to explain complex ideas in a simple manner. It requires a strong brain to do so well, but it does not, perhaps, require a psychically intense one, merely one which can live most comfortably in daily life. On the other hand, a playwright, especially one who wishes to write deep and meaningful plays that speak truths of the human spirit, is going down a long and lonely road through his own mind, to much darker places, on a regular basis. Certainly he converses with people, but the greater part of his work, and his stress, is found in the recesses of his own mind. He cannot work and think out loud, or cover a minute of confusion with some fast talk. No, he is revealed in his plays, in the way all his characters fit together and not in a single speech. Churchill directed himself to achieve an act, while Shaw directed himself to realize a creation. Certainly there have been great writers who drank much, but I do feel that such a way of life is a very dangerous one for them especially, and that is what this quote is trying to say.  

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