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    EDGAR ALLAN POE

    Most people don’t think of celebrated author and spooky weirdo Edgar Allan Poe as a hardcore party dude, but the little guy put booze away by the boatload. He repeatedly attempted to join the army but kept showing up at the recruitment office drunk; when he finally sobered up enough to get into West Point, he was eventually booted out for being too hungover to go to class (although some believe this was a deliberate move on his part to be court-martialed out of the army).

    His preferred poison was absinthe, a liqueur mixed with a mildly hallucinogenic herb that led to brain damage over time, making it the drink of choice for the self-destructive and also possibly explaining why Poe married his thirteen-year-old cousin. Poe’s death at forty was unexplained at the time, but was chalked up to “brain congestion,” a typical euphemism for “getting fatally smashed.”