Novelist William Styron describes a relationship between alcohol and depression that, for him, stretched across decades: Alcohol was a central factor, to the best of my knowledge, in my depression. I believe that many people who are by nature depressive, or have a depressive bent, use alcohol throughout most of their lives to, paradoxically, alleviate the depression. . . . You use alcohol as a kind of medication to keep your demons at arm’s length. But all of a sudden I was unable to drink. I developed a severe intolerance to alcohol. . . . In the absence of this mood bath, as I call it, that
...more
