What are some notable intellectual achievements of teetotalers?

Frederick Douglass contributed heavily to the American abolitionist movement as a writer, orator, and newspaper editor.

Mahatma Gandhi helped lead India to independence and inspired civil rights movements worldwide.

Nelson Mandela was a central figure in the South African apartheid resistance and later presided over the reconciliation process during his presidency.

Thomas Edison invented countless things, including the phonograph, the direct current method of distributing electricity, and the first commercially viable light bulb.

Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke wrote some some of the most influential works of science fiction and are still commonly referenced today.

There’s a whole list of teetotalers here.

I’m a bit confused. Your question addresses people who don’t touch alcohol, but your details address those who do.

The impatience of the women in the American temperance movement of the late 19th century finally arrived at the desperate point where they realized that they weren’t going to get a damn thing out of the government as long as women didn’t have the vote. This caused a push for the women’s vote like never seen before and women not associated with the movenment, many of whom imbibed, enlisted. Their stars had finally lined up.

They finally got it when, on August 18, 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified. You might say that teatalers gave the effort to give women the vote the push it needed to be taken seriously by other women, thus driving up the numbers to the point that our representatives in Washington could no longer ignore.

William Wilberforce, a member of the British Parliament, consumptive and sufferer of colitis, abolitionist and teatotaling, born-again Evangelical Christian, pushed the British Parliament for 27 years to outlaw slavery in their colonies. He finally got some of what he wanted in the Slave Trade Act of 1807, just days before his death. The act abolished the slave trade in the British Empire, in particular the Atlantic slave trade, and also encouraged British action to press other European states to abolish their slave trades, but it did not abolish slavery itself. Many of the Bill’s supporters thought the Act would lead to the death of slavery, but it was not until 26 years later, in 1831, that slavery itself was actually abolished.

That was 34 years earlier than the US, for which we had to fight a Civil War at the cost of 620,000 soldiers on both sides, twice that many civilians through starvation and disease, and the economic devastation of the rebel states, the recovery of which didn’t entirely happen for another hundred years.

Stephen Hawking doesn’t drink alcohol.

Here’s one for the moderates: Einstein drank very seldom, on an occasion such as a marriage or bar/badmitzvah, etc. His wife wouldn’t let him and it is doubtful if he ever had any real interest in alcohol. He smoked cigar and pipe despite the fact that his wife Elsa and his doctors forbade him to smoke. Tobacco smoke displaces O2 in the brain and therefore affects brain function.

Thanks, SF & EC, that’s what I was looking for.

EC, about my details, my thinking was, the study says alcohol impairs brain function, so we should expect teetotalers to have greater intellectual achievements than drinkers, so we should be able to name some examples. But I couldn’t think of any specific examples offhand, so I asked the question.

I see that the wording of my question might be unclear in another way. I said ”. . . who do/did not drink. . .” , meaning current and past teetotalers. I see that people might misread this, thinking I meant ”. . . who do/do not drink . . .”, and mistakenly think that I was asking for a comparison of achievements of drinkers and non-drinkers. For the sake of clarity and readability I should have written ”. . . who do not/did not . . .”, even though the extra not wouldn’t have changed the meaning.

I think any of the scientists I knew of are listed already. There are plenty of other successful people too. A few that come to mind are Warren Buffett, Tyra Banks, Lawrence O’Donnell, Gene Simmons, oh, and who could forget Donald Trump. I’m pretty sure all of them never drank, and then there is also a long list of people who are sober for many years after having been drinkers, I didn’t think that would count for the Q though.

Definitional question:

If someone was a drinker, perhaps even an alcoholic, but has dried out – is that person a teetotaler?

Take me – I was never a big drinker, even in college. But I really haven’t seen a need to drink in 35 years. Where do I fall in the spectrum?

Well…..offhand @elbanditoroso , I would guess that you are somewhere east of Foster Brooks, but west of Carrie Nation…..

It was a teetotaller who first discovered alcohol.

Not sure how to deal with former drinkers who dried out before making their noteworthy intellectual achievements. I guess for purposes of this question, if they were dry when they made their mark, they count.

I notice that the examples given lean heavily towards achievements in the practical and artistic spheres rather than the theoretical (maybe SF writing overlaps the artistic and theoretic).

Einstein never drank. As far as I know.