How Well Can You Listen to Yourself?

THEY say Hitler heard voices--without benefit of alcohol. For better or for worse, many voice-invested visionaries have influenced history. I have heard voices with benefit of alcohol. My voices had no influence on anybody except me. During my twenty-five years of excessive drinking this lack of power was most frustrating. My ego-engendered will would have placed me in the vanguard of the history makers. My failure to be in it was a blow to my overdeveloped ambition; the shame of it could be washed away only in a solution of alcohol.