Forgetting And Substances

How Not To Forget What Matters

Henrik & Johanna Karlsson | Escaping Flatland | 22nd June 2026

To offset “stultitia” or “the tendency to lose track of what matters in the cacophony of things that attract our attention”, the Romans had a notetaking system called hypomnēmata. The writer would store quotes from books. Each day, they would open their notebook and look for a passage relevant to what they were struggling with, and meditate on it. Over time, insight becomes character (3,100 words)

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Writers And Substance Abuse

Rosa Montero & Lindsey Ford | Literary Hub | 4th June 2026

Voltaire drank fifty coffees a day. Nietzsche was addicted to chloral hydrate. Opium was popular with Shelley, Wordsworth, Byron, Keats, De Quincey and Coleridge. Freud and R.L. Stevenson used cocaine. Truman Capote took barbiturates and Philip Dick took amphetamines. But the number of writers who were alcoholics is legion. “Alcohol is the great plague of writers, especially during the 20th century” (2,200 words)