“There are no second acts in American lives,” said the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. This statement is both right and wrong if you apply it to Fitzgerald. The sad thing is, nowadays, he could have created his own second act.

Because in addition to being a talented writer, Fitzgerald struggled with alcohol abuse. In an article for The Daily Beast, Jimmy So calls Fitzgerald, “America’s drunkest writer.” Given some writers’ known fondness for alcohol, this is no small claim. But So says that Fitzgerald’s drinking problem was one factor in the writer’s decline from the promise and success of his early days.

Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda was also a talented writer as well as a painter. The Fitzgeralds were known for their intelligence, liveliness, and love of a good party. To many people past and present, Scott and Zelda epitomized the free-wheeling time of the roaring 1920s. The alcohol-fueled parties, Zelda’s mental illness, and Fitzgerald’s professional decline all led to a sad end for the couple.

As with other creative people whose creative powers decline due to substance use disorder, one wonders what might have been with Fitzgerald if he had not struggled with alcohol. Maybe he could have produced more work later in life, or have written at a higher quality, or have even developed new literary forms. At the very least, he probably could have lived longer.

If Zelda were around today, maybe she could have received better help for her own conditions. Maybe she and/or her husband had a dual diagnosis, which is a diagnosed mental condition along with a substance use disorder problem. While we are still constantly learning about mental illnesses and substance use disorder, we do know more today than we did in the Fitzgeralds’ time.

But since the Fitzgeralds lived in a time before such help, both struggled with problems and died when they were only in their forties. Their brilliant yet tragic lives may had only one act during their own brief lives, but their work and their stories continue.