Edward Albee (post 3): He says writers have “closely controlled” multiple personality, and drinking brought out his own “Evil Twin, doppelgänger, other self”

In some people, “alcohol blackouts” may be the periods of time that an alternate personality who drinks was in control. The following is from a biography of Edward Albee:

“Heavy drinking started in the 1950s…In the 1960s, there was a change: Occasionally Albee would drink so much that he would black out…

“Trying to trace when the actual impairment began, Albee looked back to Tiny Alice. He remembered writing three or four sentences and not knowing what they meant…It was as if someone else, another Edward, had sneaked in and put those lines into his play…

“Especially in London in the early 1960s, Albee woke up in strange beds in strange places and wondered how he got there…

“As Claire does in A Delicate Balance, [Albee] makes a careful distinction between drunks and alcoholics: …[In alcoholics] ‘one becomes a different person.’ In his own case, there were those blackouts. ‘I couldn’t remember what I had done. And I kept waking up in places and didn’t know how I got there…’ ”

Albee could become extremely insulting when he drank. “Years later, trying to explain his outrageous behavior, he said, ‘Something happens in the minds of certain people when they drink. That click, that twist, and you become the Evil Twin…’ ”

In a letter, Albee said: “There is no veritas in vino for me…I do not become merely an unpleasant drunk, or an ugly self-destructive drunk, but I become entirely another person. I have always held…that writers have…a kind of closely controlled schizophrenia [he means multiple personality]. With some of us, though, doppelganger is an overpowering monster when uncontrolled…It mortifies me—tears me apart—and more than ever because I know it is not…me…the person I became at your house was not an extension of Edward Albee, but his demented other self” (1, pp. 298-306).

Search “blackouts” to see past posts on this recurring topic.

1. Mel Gussow. Edward Albee: A Singular Journey. New York, Applause Theatre Books, 2001.