Elaine -- If I can make what might be an obvious suggestion, I'd say you
might also think about drinking as metaphor for literary in"spir"ation,
particularly in the early 19th century Romantics.  Look again at "Ode to a
Nightingale" by Keats.  In America Emerson's the person to look at.
Nicholas Warner has a good essay in the journal _Mosaic_, 19:3 (1986), pp.
55-68, which includes a great anecdote about Bronson Alcott and Emerson,
walking past a saloon.  A third asked the two if they were going in to do
some drinking, and Alcott replied, "No, vulgar and ordinary stimulants are
not for us.  But if you can show us a place where we can drink Bacchus
himself, the soul of the inspiration of the poet and the seer, we shall be
your debtors forever."
 
And if you want to go all the way back, Socrates drinks big bowls of wine in
the Symposium, a dialogue which begins with Pausanias' question, "How can
we drink with least injury to ourselves?"  But I guess that's more about
Plato's than Socrates' literary production.
 
Jon Miller
University of Iowa