10 Writers Who Wrote Famous Works While Wasted

Plagued by ill health for most of his life, Robert Louis Stevenson, one of literature’s most celebrated writers, crossed the length and breadth of the world searching for an environment that would ease his weak chest and allow him the freedom to live without pain.

It’s remarkable then, that his most famous work was created in Bournemouth while in the throes of a heroic week-long cocaine bender, prescribed to him precisely because of that ailment.

Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr. Hyde came to Stevenson during the night, when his cries of fear woke his wife Fanny: when she roused him, he claimed that he’d been dreaming “a fine bogey tale”. Apparently he’d been in the midst of Henry Jekyll’s first transformation into his demonic alter ego Edward Hyde.

Still possessed of a cocaine-induced frenzy, Stevenson wrote the novella’s entire first draft in one three-day stint. Fanny, however, was not a fan: his main test-reader, she delivered her criticisms at once and at length. History is unclear as to whether it was Stevenson or Fanny herself who did it, but the first manuscript went into the fire, and Stevenson began all over again.

Incredibly, the second draft only took Stevenson another frenetic three days of cocaine psychosis to complete from scratch. This met with much more substantial approval, and the work was published the following year.

It was a phenomenon, making Stevenson’s name and taking him from penury to affluence at a stroke… but don’t try it at home, kids. Just say no.