During the last twenty years of his life, Hemingway got himself into the habit of consuming a quart of whiskey a day, indicating full-blown alcoholism. Hemingway liked to drink and possessed the ability to drink large amounts without showing the effects. Towards the end of his life when his health began to deteriorate and his doctors told him to lay off the alcohol, he did, but only temporarily. Whenever he felt the urge, he would pick up the bottle again. It wasn't the alcohol though that killed Hemingway in the end. It was a shotgun to the head. Hemingway was passionate about so many things in his life, alcohol just happened to be one of them. He carried this passion with him wherever he went. Alcohol truly was his motivation.
Ernest Hemingway did suffer from depression, mostly in the last years of his life. His depression was so bad, in fact, that he was admitted to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota in December of 1960. There he got a series of electroshock treatments, which did more harm than good.
Hemingway's drinking had started early when he was a young reporter, and could tolerate a lot of alcohol. For a long time, drinking did not affect his writing. In the late 1940s he started to hear voices in his head, he was overweight, his blood pressure was high, and he had clear signs of cirrhosis of the liver. Hemingway revealed his ignorance of the dangers of liquor when he taught his 12-year-old son Patrick to drink. The same happened with his brothers. Patrick had problems with alcohol later in life, like his father. Gregory, who was a transvestite, used drugs and died at the age of 69 in a women's prison in Florida.
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