Life of Johnson: Wine

Without thinking about it, I started drinking late, have only drunk too much a handful of times, and on the whole prefer not drinking, nor has any stronger drug tempted me, even when offered. When people find out, usually while swapping drug stories, they hardly believe it is not from some excess of religion. I rarely explain, because it is somehow embarrassing to admit the sole reason, that thinking clearly makes me happy, and thinking muddily makes me unhappy, which is what Johnson, who for a few years drank too much, felt too:

[I left off drinking wine] because it is so much better for a man to be sure that he is never to be intoxicated, never to lose the power over himself. I shall not begin to drink wine again, till I grow old, and want it... It is a diminution of pleasure, to be sure; but I do not say a diminution of happiness. There is more happiness in being rational... Supposing we could have pleasure always, an intellectual man would not compound for it. The greatest part of men would compound, because the greatest part of men are gross.

(He was 69 when he said that; "till I grow old" must mean very great age. Also "to compound for" means "to settle for," so to exchange happiness for pleasure.) It is probably relevant that Johnson had a painful fear of madness, which I share; that fear is the fear of "losing the power over himself." He also greatly feared annihilation: "No rational man can die without uneasy apprehension" and "It is in the apprehension of it that the horror of annihilation consists." It does not create happiness, to pull the shades and dim the lights when daylight is so brief, twilight so gray, and night so empty.