History's Most High-Functioning Alcoholics

"A man does not exist until he is drunk." Who said that?
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 30, 2015 3:37 PM CDT
History's Most High-Functioning Alcoholics
This is a Aug. 27, 1941 file photo of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill as he gives his famous " V for Victory Salute."   (AP Photo, File)

There are high-functioning alcoholics—then there are alcoholics who rule empires, write great novels, and become movie stars. Ozy lists "History's 10 Most Accomplished Drunks," with a few of their choice quotes:

  • The Queen Mother: Queen Elizabeth II's mom, Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes Lyon, kept up her royal duties until the age of 101 while supposedly downing a bottle of gin per day. Once, waiting for her gin and tonic, she is said to have asked one of her aides (who were mostly gay): "When one of you old queens has finished, can you bring this old queen a drink?"
  • WC Fields: This 1930s film star and comedian drank so heavily, he kept a martini flask on set that he called his "lemonade." Someone supposedly poured lemonade in it by mistake, and he quipped, "Who put lemonade in my lemonade?"
  • Dorothy Parker: The renowned American poet and writer was known to drink her male counterparts at New York's Algonquin Round Table under the table in the 1920s. She once said that "one more drink and I’d have been under the host."
  • Winston Churchill: The great British leader didn't hide his love for alcohol, and often had a whiskey glass ready on his desk. "I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me," he said.
  • Ernest Hemingway: A doctor once told him to cut down on booze, but the great American author couldn't even limit his pre-dinner drinking to three scotches. He was said to have embraced the motto, "A man does not exist until he is drunk."

Click for more accomplished drunks at Ozy. (More alcoholism stories.)

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