Chekhov's Scotch

"Has she been drinking excessively?" the veterinarian asked.
"You mean binge drinking?"

My cat, thank goodness, had not become a binge drinker. But someone else dear to me apparently has, I've recently learned, and I've been spending a lot of time thinking about that over the last couple of days. Suddenly it occurred to me that this doesn't only happen in the real world; it happens in literature too. Alcohol has been used by Updike, Hemingway, Carver and Cheever, to name a few, and it's there for a reason. What I realized is that one of my more important characters, Ryan, had become a binge drinker, but I've done nothing with this development as the novel progresses.

Anton Chekhov would no doubt criticize me for that. Guns and alcohol have a lot in common, after all; both, in my opinion, are dangerous vices. If you give a character a gun, it must go off. If you give a former tee-totaller a sizeable amount of alcohol, there has to be a reason for it, too. It's part of the character's inventory, as Ron Carlson might say.

Whoever thinks fiction is not truth is wrong. Truth begets fiction, and sometimes fiction begets truth. I need to figure out what will happen with Ryan's new love. I need to figure out what will happen with my loved one's new vice, too.