Who Are Writers?

Writers are people who read too much. To enjoy their reading they need quiet, and to secure it absent themselves from the ruckus of society. In due time, surreptitiously, this causes them to develop a melancholy character because without knowing it they have committed a serious crime--they have negated and nullified their essence as a social animal. In due time, if they stay immersed in print, they move into the Temple of Negativity, and once inside discover, in more than a few cases, there is no way out.

Then they begin to write.

Hemingway tends to be an exception to this rule, his protags and narrators often having a positive outlook and inclined to notice what is "fine" about the environments in which they find themselves, imparting good will to the people around them--until they are destroyed in his signature catastrophic endings.

As to substance abuse among serious writers, it is clearly mandatory, a fact the hallowed universities tend to minimize or overlook, decade after decade designing curricula grounded on the worldview of (gifted) drunks.

Suicide, on the other hand, is optional.