If he knew..

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Lalwendë

I was interested to note how drinking was portrayed as a joyous pastime in the films. Where were the associated hangovers?

Clearly, Pippin's failure to master the Palantir is a direct consequence of his "over-indulgence" during the evening's celebrations.

[Rimbaud]

To answer your question Lal, in part: Tollers was perhaps of an era, or certainly from the background, where a drink was fun, and a few could be very fun, but people, homely respectable people much like Hobbits (even the younger ones), did not feel the contemporary urge to drink as much as possible in order to become paralysingly inebriated, to the point where a kebab seems like a good idea.

One imagines that the beer they are drinking is also fairly natural wholesome stuff, with not much in common with the watery additive-syrups posing as lagers today. A couple of beers from natural ingredients on a full stomach over a few hours of chat, is unlikely to give an adult male a headache.

Add to that that the small folk always drank on exceptionally full stomachs and had plenty of rest and a proper amount of sleep, as well as having healthy outdoor lives much of the time, and you begin to see how they managed to stay pretty sharp.

To be honest, if I had little to do all day but to wake late, rise later and go for walks and plan dinner, I imagine I would become somewhat inured to the 'morning after'.

[Bêthberry]

Well I think it is so typical of Tolkien to turn beer into a philological/mythological thing. Letter no. 75:

I was looking at the Kalevala the other day ... and I came across Runo XX, which I used to like: it deals largely with the origin of beer. When the fermentation was first managed, the beer was only in birch tubs and it foamed all over the place, and of course the heroes came and lapped it up, and got mightily drunk. Drunk was Ahti, drunk was Kauko, drunken was the ruddy rascal, with the ale of Osmo's daughter--Kirby's translation is funnier than the original. It was the bullfinch who then suggested to Osmo's daughter the notion of putting the stuff in oak casks with hoops of copper and storing it in a cellar. Thus was ale at first created... best of drinks for prudent people; Women soon it brings to laughter, Men it warms into good humour, but it brings fools to raving. Sound sentiments. Poor old Finns, and their queer language, they look like being scuppered. I wish I could have visited the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes before this war. Finnish nearly ruined my Hon. Mods, and was the original germ of the Silmarillion.

Now, doesn't that just douse your interest in drink.

[Eruanna]

Now, doesn't that just douse your interest in drink.

Well, I never was very fond of beer. But douse my interest in a nice drop of Australian red? Never

I just wanted to add something to the debate about tobacco or 'weed'. I knew that I had read something, somewhere, about Tolkien and his attitude to drugs. After digging around in my various bits and pieces I came up with an article on Tolkien that I cut from a Sunday paper just before the FotR was released:

' Some conjectured about the hobbits' taste for 'pipe-weed'; Tolkien was outraged by suggestions he had written the books under the influence of drugs; ."He would fizz with fury because, to him, drugs were abhorrent." His assistant Joy Hill recalled. "He would be hard pressed to take an aspirin. "

If that was the case then he would hardly have intended pipe-weed to be anything other than tobacco.