On an ordinary afternoon in 1949—the same year Eisenhower quit smoking—the physicist Richard Feynman was going about his business when he felt the pull to have a drink. Not an intense craving by any means, but it was a disconcerting desire for alcohol, completely divorced from the pleasure one earns as a reward for hard work. On the spot, Feynman gave up drinking right then and there. Nothing, he felt, should have that kind of power over him.
