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Addicted: Notes from the Belly of the Beast (Greystone $22.95)
In her contribution to Addicted: Notes from the Belly of the Beast (Greystone $22.95), Sheri-D Wilson describes how partying fulfilled her desire to avoid the life of the ladylike housewife, to smash stereotypes that a woman couldn't keep up with a man, and to swim in the exotic seas of Kerouacian reverence. She wanted to be a poet. Wilson did poetry readings in Vancouver for a small fee and an unlimited bar tab, assuming this was the way poets were supposed to act. She figured the more she drank, the more money she was making. Only hours after insulting nearly all the guests at an engagement party with her 'swish frankness,' Wilson sucker-punches an unwanted houseguest before abandoning him in a gas station and driving off in a drunken fit. Somewhere along that road from Romantic Artist to Ruthless Thug, she starts to wake up.
Booze and drugs can hit anyone, anywhere-in fact, addiction can be seen as one of the great unifiers of modern life. The world of art and writing, however, is unique in its romanticism of drunken rants and wild jazzy binges.
Edited by Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane, the ten essays in Addicted also expose some of the other private addictions from within Canada's writing community-compulsive candy eating (Evelyn Lau) to morphine (Stephen Reid) to smoking (Peter Gzowski)-but mostly it's demon alcohol that's the problem. Patterns of abuse, self-destruction and procrastination for these ten writers are exposed, but they're also intent upon exploring why the condition of 'creating' seems to so often lead to drug and alcohol abuse. For starters, the bohemian lifestyle practically requires a little dabbling in pot or wine.
Novelist David Adams Richards considers a childhood where drinking was everywhere. "It lay in the burdocks and pissed its pants, or came at me zigzagging up walkways, answering to the names of forgotten cousins and family members...It blossomed at weddings, got sentimental at baptisms; it carried the weight of a sagged paunch, had a sad grin or light whimsical eyes at forty...So before I ever drank or sang an Irish rebel song or shouted out in joy and rebellion, drink was part of me.";
[BCBW SUMMER 2002]
Booze and drugs can hit anyone, anywhere-in fact, addiction can be seen as one of the great unifiers of modern life. The world of art and writing, however, is unique in its romanticism of drunken rants and wild jazzy binges.
Edited by Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane, the ten essays in Addicted also expose some of the other private addictions from within Canada's writing community-compulsive candy eating (Evelyn Lau) to morphine (Stephen Reid) to smoking (Peter Gzowski)-but mostly it's demon alcohol that's the problem. Patterns of abuse, self-destruction and procrastination for these ten writers are exposed, but they're also intent upon exploring why the condition of 'creating' seems to so often lead to drug and alcohol abuse. For starters, the bohemian lifestyle practically requires a little dabbling in pot or wine.
Novelist David Adams Richards considers a childhood where drinking was everywhere. "It lay in the burdocks and pissed its pants, or came at me zigzagging up walkways, answering to the names of forgotten cousins and family members...It blossomed at weddings, got sentimental at baptisms; it carried the weight of a sagged paunch, had a sad grin or light whimsical eyes at forty...So before I ever drank or sang an Irish rebel song or shouted out in joy and rebellion, drink was part of me.";
[BCBW SUMMER 2002]
Submitted on June 12, 2003 in By David.
