Happy.

Doctors begged him to cut back from his average of three bottles per day. Hemingway agreed to compromise, reducing his intake to a detox diet of absinthe, whiskey, vodka, wine, gin, tequila, champagne, and beer for breakfast, according to numerous biographies. (You haven't tasted Cinnamon Toast Crunch until you've doused it with Guinness Extra Stout.) Papa even refused to shower, revealed his friend A.E. Hotchner in the memoir "Papa Hemingway," instead demanding "alcohol sponge-baths."

These physical and psychological maladies suggest that imbibing is a bad thing -- with negative consequences -- but Hemingway told us in "The Sun Also Rises": "It seemed out of place to think of consequences during the fiesta." Alcohol takes years off your life, but he told us in "A Farewell to Arms," it "always makes you happy," like a well-marbled steak drenched with blood and butter. (And with bourbon.)

Read the rest here and here.

Thank you, Christi(ne).