Booze and the written word

A funny story from an otherwise uninteresting post:

For almost 50 years Elaine Kaufman has attracted writers to her restaurant as though she were giving away royalty checks. And though not all of them turned me on, there were a few who, when they walked through the door, had me jonesing like a street junkie. Late one night Hunter S. Thompson sat by himself at a back table lighting shots of Bacardi 151 rum with his Zippo and firing them down the hatch. I don’t remember how many flaming shots he drank — but I do remember the last one. Something had gone horribly wrong with his technique. When I looked back at him he was on fire. Only the quick thinking of Carlo the waiter, who snatched a nearby tablecloth and used it to smother the blue flames, saved Dr. Thompson from escalating into a three-alarm blaze.

Writing under the influence: who’s done it? Better question: Who hasn’t done it?