Leo Tolstoy was an uncompromising hard-ass when it came to confronting reality. He therefore had a predictably dour view of intoxicant use. In his 1890 essay, “Why Do Men Stupefy Themselves?,” he declares that “the cause of the worldwide consumption of hashish, opium, wine and tobacco lies not in the taste, nor in any pleasure, recreation, or mirth they afford, but simply in man’s need to hide from himself the demands of conscience.” Ouch.
