In the Alamo thread Doug Bowe linked Cecil’s column.
So we can assume liquor was involved in the decision process. Not surprising considering the breakfast through nightcap liquor consumption in former times. I wonder how much history would change if the actors were all sober. What rash decisions would not have been made?
I doubt the Alamo outcome would have been different had they all been sober. Do you have an example of a situation where a crucial decision was made or not made due to drunkeness?
Probably every decision Churchill made during WWII.
If I recall correctly, U.S. Grant wasn’t promoted for a long time due to alcoholism. So if he hadn’t drank so much, the North might have had a proper general sooner.
No idea what effect that would have had. It’s conceivable that having the war extend so long is what kept there from being further uprisings. Who can say.
Sticking around the Alamo when they knew Santa Ana was coming was one of those things that might have gone differently after a good night’s sleep and a pot of coffee. Churchill knew his limitations, though he was slow to acknowledge them, and could be talked out of his dumber ideas. However, I don’t know any specific incidents but, considering the dawn-to-dusk buzz most people in Europe and the Americas maintained until quite recently, what decisions can you think of that appear to have been influenced by that permanent haze?
Those also influenced by machismo and stupidity, like the Alamo defense and, for that matter, attack, are also fair game.
His reputation as a drunk came from his times on lonely Western outposts away from his wife. He drank because he was horny and bored. During the Civil War he kept Julia close at hand and was very busy so most reports have him drinking less than the guys around him.
LINCOLN (ON BEING TOLD GENERAL GRANT DRINKS): Tell me what brand he drinks, and I will send a barrel to each of my other generals!
Incidentally, Grant liked Old Crow. It is still available, and rather cheaply, if you want to fortify your own courage.
I found a book that might be interesting and is probably more to the core of your premise.
The Secret History of Alcoholism: The Story of Famous Alcoholoics and Their Destructive Behavior by James Graham.
From Booklist
Graham’s central assertion is that alcoholism causes egomania, displayed in such behaviors as denial, lying, overachievement, ethical deterioration, false accusations, rejection of friends, grandiosity, aggressive sexual behavior, multiple marriages, unreasonable resentments, and superficial emotions. Based on their biographies and on alcoholism research, he then “diagnoses” alcoholism in historical figures ranging from Beethoven to Jeffrey Dahmer. Reversing the usual question–Why do so many authors have alcohol problems?–he argues that writing is a profession with particular appeal for self-centered alcoholics. (The same is true of acting.) Traitors, serial killers, business executives, and politicians draw similar attention; for Graham, Hitler’s alcoholic father and Stalin, whom he labels “supreme alcoholic,” are responsible for this century’s most mind-boggling abuses of power. Certainly this is not an essential purchase, and Graham’s methods are questionable, but his study will no doubt appeal to readers with a personal interest in–or experience with–alcoholism. Mary Carroll
Was he drunk? I could consume alcohol all day (though not to the level that he did, and surely not every day) and through proper pacing of drinks not let this consumption interfere with my intellectual abilities nor my professional judgment.
Churchill was seldom seen visibly intoxicated, just as seldom as he was seen without any alcohol in his system at all.
We would never have had these great quotes:
“Always remember that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me.” - Winston Churchill
“I feel sorry for people who don’t drink. When they wake up in the morning, that’s as good as they’re going to feel all day.” - Frank Sinatra
“The problem with some people is that when they aren’t drunk, they’re sober.” - William Butler Yeats
“Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” - Ernest Hemingway
“A woman drove me to drink and I didn’t even have the decency to thank her.” - W.C. Fields
“Work is the curse of the drinking classes.” - Oscar Wilde
“When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.” - Henny Youngman
“When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to heaven. So, let’s all get drunk, and go to heaven.” - Brian O’Rourke
“He was a wise man who invented beer.” - Plato
“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” - Benjamin Franklin
“If you ever reach total enlightenment while drinking beer, I bet it makes beer shoot out your nose.” - Jack Handy
“You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline. It helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” - Frank Zappa
“Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the world.” - Kaiser Wilhelm II
“Malt does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to man” - A.E. Housman
“I drink to make other people interesting.” - George Jean Nathan
“I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.” - Abraham Lincoln
“It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can’t remember if it’s the thirteenth or the fourteenth.” - George Burns
“It’s like gambling somehow. You go out for a night of drinking and you don’t know where you’re going to end up the next day. It could work out good or it could be disastrous. It’s like the throw of the dice.” - Jim Morrison
“Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough.” - Mark Twain
“I envy people who drink - at least they know what to blame everything on.” - Oscar Levant
“When you stop drinking, you have to deal with this marvelous personality that started you drinking in the first place.” - Jimmy Breslin
“Not drunk is he who from the floor
Can rise alone and still drink more;
But drunk is they, who prostrate lies,
Without the power to drink or rise”
“The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year’s Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you’re married to.” - P.J. O’Rourke
“Beer is not a good cocktail-party drink, especially in a home where you don’t know where the bathroom is.” - Billy Carter
“Something has been said for sobriety but very little.” - John Berryman
“For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
“When men drink, then they are rich and successful and win lawsuits and are happy and help their friends. Quickly, bring me a beaker of wine, so that I may wet my mind and say something clever.” - Aristophanes
“To alcohol: the cause of - and solution to - all of life’s problems.” - Homer J. Simpson
How would Russian history have gone if Boris Yeltsin were a teetotaler?
PAT: Mike, why do ye drink so much?!
MIKE: Booze killed me father! And booze killed me mother! I’m drinkin’ for revenge!
What is sobriety? Are we referring specifically to alcohol?
The industrial revolution was born from intoxication on a different drug, coffee. What many consider sober is actually a very tweeked out state brought on by a powerful upper.
Amusingly, Grant was probably the better man for his drinking problem. He never entirely overcame it, but the perspective it gave him was extremely useful. He never looked down on his men (like many number of generals, North and especially South did) from a lofty perch. He knew what it was like to face disgrace and defeat, where seemingly-better men (caugh McClellan cough) were afraid to lose.
Is it entirely urban legend that holiday partying by the Hessians played a role in Washington’s success at the battle of Trenton. If nothing else, ISTR the Brit commander was informed of danger while at dinner, but couldn’t be troubled to respond.
And ISTR reading about incidents where Americans intentionally provided Indians liquor the day before either attacking or treating with them.
Maybe not directly on point re: the OP, but the best I’ve got.
Paradox Press’ The Big Book of Vice claims that most of the battles of Medieval Europe (and later) were “fought drunk”. I’d love to know where they got the idea, or how it’s substantiated, and I don’t really believe it. But, if true, it would completelt revamp our picture of why the world is the way it is.
John Keegan made this same assertion, as has the (less respected) David Howarth. In his book about the Charge of the Light Brigade, Hell Riders, Terry Brighton quotes from the memoirs of a trooper who was in confinement for drunkeness at the time of the charge, escaped when he heard the bugle to form up, quickly found some booze and got drunk again and then joined the brigade in time for the charge.
Off the top of my head, the most memorable incident of SUI (statecraft under the influence) was “Who will rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
You look up the daily alcohol ration that was issued to sailors in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic war and you’ll realize that pretty much every naval battle over a twenty year period was fought by a bunch of semi-drunken men. One naval historian said that the way rum was rationed out on a schedule ensured that most of the crew, while functional in their work, had a buzz on for months at a time. Nowadays, you have to join a fraternity to get the same effect
That’s assuming that the rum wasn’t diluted by extreme margins.
Anyone know whether it was or not?