Booth's Mental health

[L Verge]

At some point over the past few days, someone on this thread asked if I would contact Terry Alford for his feelings on Booth's proclivity to drink. Here's his response:

"You know, there are grades to that problem, and I don't have a scale, but it seems to me he drank to cover a bit of depression. Unfortunately, when he drank, he didn't get silly or sleepy. Drink "seemed to bring out the bandit" [the desperado] in him, said his friend John McCullough. "

I think Terry chose his words carefully and is right on target by realizing that "there are grades to that problem [alcoholism]" and also that "I [we] don't have a scale."

I do know that I researched the history of alcoholism/depression/and anxiety attacks in my own father's family. In a family of four boys and one girl, every boy was an alcoholic except one, my aunt and her two daughters suffered from both panic attacks and depression, and I spent two years fighting a chemical imbalance in my 30s - no alcoholism involved, but anti-depressants were needed to solve the problem. Maybe my family's history has made me more sympathetic -- and more selective in branding someone an alcoholic.