Generally, I would say that some of my favorite writers have had drinking problems, Charles Bukowski being chief among them with Jack Kerouac being a close second. William Faulkner was said to have had a drinking problem as well as Oscar Wilde (absinthe was his bane). But there are plenty of well known famous writers who weren't alcoholics. I am thinking right this moment of Chester Himes, he wrote Cotton Comes To Harlem (which was made into one of my favorite movies that sort of follows the novel), Fyodor Dostoevsky the "Mad Russian" who wrote two of my all time favorite books Crime And Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, well he had a gambling problem and he suffered from hypergraphia. The point being you shouldn't develop a taste for alcohol just because someone famous couldn't help themselves when it came to the sauce. Brilliant people tend to be very eccentric and abnormal, there are plenty of exceptions and of course you can be pretty average and still be an exceptional this or that. I have found that addiction in particular drinking, doesn't necessarily aid you in your craft. If you lack a talent for it, alcohol isn't going to help to bring it out, Bukowski himself said as much. Charles Bukowski, the "Poet Laureate of Skid Row" would often reference drinking in many if not all of his works. Check out his bio on wikipedia:
Anyway, his best work in my opinion was Post Office, he was a poet and a novelist and coming off trying to read Jack Kerouac's other works outside of On The Road, he brought me back to the basics of what it truly to be "beat", the Beat Movement was basically contrived nonsense compared to the experiences of Bukowski, at least I got that feeling reading my first Bukowski novel Ham On Rye. There are those who would say that his work is vulgar and unrefined but there is not only beauty in the simplicity of language but if you can convey a sublime thought in common everyday language, you can not only reach more people, you have more than demonstrated your acumen as a writer. Certainly there has no writer like Bukowski, just as there won't be another Dostoevsky, Himes, Richard Wright or any other influential writer. So don't be an imitator. I say this having tried and failed at it. I am not so much a writer as I am a diarist. I basically write for my own benefit and I also have hypergraphia. Drinking isn't going to help you. There are famous writers who had drinking problems or if you're cynical like myself you can say that there were famous alcoholics with writing problems. What's more important is that you write because you enjoy it and that you find your own muse.
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