Distress Tolerance

The body broken by alcohol

Reading The Iliad and The Odyssey, it’s easy to get the idea that Homer might have been a bit of a lush, based on how adoringly he writes about booze. Throughout both texts, he repeatedly describes the sea as being “wine-dark.” To a random swineherd, Odysseus says, “It is the wine that leads me on, the wild wine that sets the wisest man to sing at the top of his lungs, laugh like a…