04/03/2024
Interesting
Stephen Edwin King, the American novelist, is one of the world’s most recognized and successful horror authors of all time. Throughout his journey to fame and during his career, King battled with alcohol abuse and drug addiction. He wasn’t the first writer or artist to be tormented by addiction.
Over a span of 35 years, King wrote a total of 63 novels; his stories, including ”Carrie,” ”The Shining,” ”IT,” ”Misery,” and ”The Green Mile,” quickly became bestsellers and turned into Hollywood and television films. Although King is very successful and is estimated to have a net worth of 400 million dollars to date, the author has had his ups and downs along the way.
The American author, often described as the King of Horror, struggled with alcoholism and drug abuse during the 1970s before friends and family staged an intervention. King sought help and has remained sober since.
In his biography, King reveals that during the 1980s, he spent most of his time binging on drugs and alcohol. So much so, King claims to have no recollection of writing some of his novels during that period. During King’s middle-of-the-night writing marathons, he supplemented the gallons of beer he consumed with co***ne.
He did so much co***ne that sticking cotton up his nose was the only way to stop blood from dripping on his typewriter.
“I think every alcoholic has a story comparable to that... where you actually hit rock bottom.”
“I didn’t go to bars much. One drunken as***le was all I could handle and that was me. I wrote. I don’t remember a lot of it.”
Speaking to the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby as part of BBC Radio 4’s The Archbishop Interviews series, he addressed the impact of his faith.
”Well, I don’t talk a lot about my experiences with drugs and alcohol because I’m part of a program that’s supposed to maintain anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films, but I’ve been sober for 33 years, and it has become part of my life.
”And it certainly allowed me to live a more spiritual life in many ways. It makes it easier to live a moral life. Because when you do something that’s rather sh*tty, you know that you’ve done it, and you have to talk about it a little bit.”