Churchill got a doctor's note requiring him to drink at least 8 doubles a day "for convalescence"

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Well then, don’t mind if I join you.

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The name is Oetker. Dr. Oetker.

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I had honestly no idea the good Doctor made anything other than frozen pizza!

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the most surprising Oetker group division is imo this one:

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250 ml is eight doubles? I suspect you’re drinking at the wrong bar.

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Belligerence and racism have nothing to do with it. Power is sufficient to get booze when you want it, prohibition or no.

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Alcohol prescriptions are not really unusual, but that’s an unusually strong one. Usually it’s one drink with a meal once or twice a day.

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Perhaps the prescriptions were rather stronger during prohibition.

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I’m guessing that 250ml is of alcohol so that would require 625ml of normal strength whiskey or whatever.

Most of a bottle. I have no idea if that is eight doubles in the US. My vague memory of spirit measures there is that they tend to be rather large. Though sometimes exceeded in Spain.

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1 cc is 1 ml. A typical UK double is 50ml. So 250ml is about 5 double G&Ts or 4 Martinis[1]. Alternatively, a euro bottle of 40% abv gin is typically 70cl or 700ml so 250ml is about a 1/3 of a bottle of gin.

Sounds about right for a working lunch.

[1]Always count your Martinis, then punt. One’s just right. 2’s too many, 3’s not enough …

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It wasn’t for HIS health. It was for the health and safety of everyone around him.

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You make your martinis small, don’t you? Or you put a lot of vermouth in them…

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I do like them quite wet. Usually 50ml:10ml or 60ml:10ml Then you can drink them fast while they’re still laughing at you (and cold). IMHO, the best thing about a Martini is the rush. Sober to drunk in 3 gulps.

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Presumably he wouldn’t be eating alone, and therefore not drinking alone. Unless everyone he was eating and drinking with had their own prescriptions, he’d naturally share.

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Or you could use bribery or visit a speakeasy or brew your own, as so many did to get around the profoundly stupid law of Prohibition.

This is unusually prudish of you, Cory. I get that you see nothing good about Churchill, but here he was doing no more than many, many citizens of the US did at the time. And no more hypocritical than those in the States today who obtain, say, marijuana for daily use through circuitous means.

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I have seen with my own eyes a U.S. diplomatic passport (two actually, his-n-hers) stamped to certify that the bearers are alcoholics who require medicinal booze, for use in India back when Tamil Nadu was a dry state.

Sorry, no pictures. Also no names.

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Did you just call one of the most important figures of the Twentieth Century and Britain’s greatest national hero a powerful, belligerent, racist drunk? Really? You are going to judge Churchill through Twenty-first Century hipster eyes. Cory stick to Sci-fi (yes, I said Sci-fi, and proudly) and stay away from historical interpretation.
I would have gotten a prescription too if I could have, to avoid what we now know to have been a misguided, destructive and stupid law.

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Well, if the drunken racism fits… it doesn’t have to be one or the other. People are complicated.

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He was a powerful, belligerent, racist drunk. He also held the line against the even more powerful, more belligerent, more racist (but teetotal) Hitler long enough for the latter to make the mistakes of declaring war on the Soviet Union and the US.

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