For emphasis I repeat; It is of supreme importance that positive thinking be employed whenever the subject comes up until the cure is complete, and that negative thinking be restricted to that small amount which automatically occupies the mind before the attention is aroused to combat it.

Negative thoughts, given the chance, arise all too swiftly. As the individual's adult life has been built around alcohol, it naturally become an accompaniment to many of his instinctive urges -- particularly his ego or will to-power urge, as has already been pointed out.

It is his refuge in trouble and boredom as well as an apparent necessity at times of pleasurable excitement, because -- for the inebriate there is in reality little or no enjoyment without it.

As soon as his intellectual control is shaken at all, and it takes very little to shake it, his emotions immediately take charge, which is almost the same as saying that alcohol takes charge. if there is any available, While in this condition he wants happiness and relaxation (of which I shall come to speak) and he wants them as soon as he can get them.

When treatment is under way, the patient is less liable to give in to these emotional states, as he has been forewarned of their probable appearance and has received instructions in handling them.

Furthermore, he has taken a definite mental and a more matured emotional attitude toward them. This does not prevent, however, what are called conditioned reflexes -- or, better, conditioned responses -- from causing a certain amount of peculiar reactions until the mental processes are proof against them.

Sometimes these stimuli are perfectly obvious, as would be the case when an alcoholic attends a wedding or dance or any other occasion where formerly he was accustomed to drink.

But there are other unperceived stimulations which are connected in his mind with alcohol. When these are received by his senses, they may set in motion his former processes of thinking.

Under this head might come certain faces, places or sounds which are not consciously associated with dissipation although the relationship could be established if enough analytical association were employed.

The purpose of mentioning these conditioned responses is, first, to show why it is that a person who is trying his hardest to forget the subject of alcohol may so frequently think about it at unusual times and, secondly, to explain certain annoying character traits which may crop out for apparently no reason, and which the patient in his bewilderment may at times think are almost as bad as the habit itself if they are to become permanent.

These traits are moodiness, depression, and sometimes anger, which apparently are without reasonable provocation. The inebriate misses his accustomed refuge, and furthermore he does not like to surrender to the fact that he must forgo what his friends apparently can indulge in. Moreover, he has in sobriety a surplus energy which he has been in the habit of deadening rather than utilizing.

As nothing of a worth-while nature is at hand to which he can devote his attention the minute he sobers up, the same discontent that he felt between parties is carried over into sobriety, but because he is no longer drugging himself he is more conscious of it. There is a feeling of emptiness and lack of accomplishment even though he may be rather proud of his ability to resist his temptation.

Also, he is beginning to realize that this change might have been accomplished sooner, and that on the whole he has been stupid to insist on prolonging his excessive drinking until the last possible moment. Now these phenomena are sometimes entirely unconscious, and are activated to symbolic expression by seemingly irrelevant or insignificant events.

That does not prevent them, however, from being a motivating force in the destruction of mental peace and emotional equability. The alcoholic must understand that the initial period of treatment is a transitory state, but that when his creative instinct is satisfied and he has had time to form new associations of ideas his negative moods will pass.

Parenthetically I should like to add that, if the patient has a tendency to be disagreeable while drinking, this will be intensified should he suffer a relapse.

He will be conscious that he is doing something that he has taken very definite measures against, and that these measures were taken because his intellectual self had come to a realization that drinking for him was the height of inexpediency.

This being the case, the alcoholic hates himself for his stupidity in a manner that he never did before he declared himself formally against the habit, and so in drunkenness this self-hatred is almost sure to be projected on to others.

One alcoholic found himself unreasonably disagreeable on returning from football games which he attended sober. It was the first autumn in many years that he had gone without liquor, and football had formerly furnished a particularly suitable excuse for intoxication.

Apparently he thought little about his problem either during or after the games; in fact, he claimed to have enjoyed them almost as much as ever, and he could think of no reason to account for his ill nature.

Then he was shown that, inasmuch as he only began treatment in the middle of September, his old habit system, which he had not had time to eliminate, was still seeking its accustomed manner of expression.

He was repressing this desire into the unconscious, and it was vicariously seeking satisfaction in the form of a temper outburst when he returned to his home. When this displacement of affect was analyzed, the after-game tantrums vanished.

While we have justly stressed the direct control of thinking and shown its supreme importance, we must add that such action is often best approached and accomplished by a combination of the direct with the indirect.

The mind is never a vacuum -- it is contemplating something at all times. Hence the elimination of an undesirable system of thought cannot be achieved alone by dwelling, on the fact that such and such ideas (with their tendency to action) can be changed or kept out of the mind by concentration alone.

The surest, as well as the easiest, way to keep the mind in a healthy state is to have it filled with constructive and diverting thoughts which occupy it because of their intrinsic interest and appeal.

In other words, the sooner an alcoholic can become genuinely interested in some worth-while activity, the more of an outlet he will have for his creative urge, and hence the more easily he will rid himself of a bad habit without conscious effort.

I have known of cases where men have accomplished their purpose without becoming interested in other phases of life until much later; but when a new interest can go hand in hand with the treatment the results of the work are quicker, surer, and more pleasurable.

There is so much excitement attached to alcohol, whereby the stupidest things become vitally interesting, that in moments of temporary sobriety the drunkard is apt to feel that nothing is of any consequence without it.

He thinks that he has become so jaded that his power to enjoy simple pleasures, or even complicated ones, without artificial stimulation has gone forever.

But this is true only temporarily. Quite naturally, upon first sobering up, the inebriate finds nothing in his life of constructive interest. Though his over stimulated imagination will put a damper on every idea in the beginning, he should give anything which may have a spark of attraction for him an honest trial.

Time after time it has been shown that this interest achievement is no insurmountable task for a person of reasonable intelligence and the will to succeed.

For instance, in the matter of conversation, the alcoholic will find that the same "intense philosophications" with which he was wont to bore bartenders and taxi drivers while amusing himself can in sobriety be carried on with people of his own level of intelligence; only instead of nonsense repeated over and over again, they will become interesting and instructive exchanges of ideas.

Consider, for example, a young man whose chief interest in life was to become intoxicated and then discuss art, poetry, and literature with an equally drunken friend.

He thought liquor and criticism were indivisible because without the former the discussion seemed to lack stimulation. Knowing that he had not taken the treatment seriously and would therefore again succumb to temptation, I dropped the hint that a review written under the influence of liquor (a time when he thought his mind was working exceptionally well) might be illuminating.

The result was pathetic, in fact, so much so that I had difficulty in getting him to show it to me, although he was not as a rule a person who minded a laugh at his own expense. Then I persuaded him to do some literary work while sober, as he had a good mind and a keen critical sense.

One night he undertook to write a thesis for one of those athletes who are too busy to perform such work for themselves. He started at 10 P.M. and it was 4 A.M. before it was completed and he realized the lateness of the hour.

He said, "For the first time in many months I was really taken out of myself mentally; for the first time since I began drinking I got a thrill out of life sober." This was for him an epoch-making discovery.

Though very young, he was a real cynic; his cynicism was not a pose, as it is with so many young people. Therefore it was hard to convince him of the truth of anything that he had not himself experienced, and it was even harder to get him to experience anything in a state of sobriety.

The effect of this writing can well be imagined. There is in every man a disposition to create and this disposition has the force of a fundamental instinct; whether its expression takes the form of painting pictures or selling bonds makes little difference so long as it brings satisfaction.

When this creative through laziness or inner conflict, is suppressed, it is bound to break out in some form of abnormal behavior.

When a man is drunk, he somehow feels that he is expressing himself, regardless of how preposterous this feeling or its form of expression may be from the point of view of logic.

The psychoneuroses, of which alcoholism is one manifestation, are often unsatisfactory substitutes for doing nothing or for perpetually doing something that is distasteful. (An exception to this statement is a person who has been doing something to his taste, but has been grossly overdoing it. This form of causation is, however, very rare indeed.)

Thus it behooves the alcoholic who has been vividly demonstrating his discontent with life -- or perhaps it would be better to say with himself - to seek a field of self-expression in which he may utilize his superabundant energy, which heretofore he had been drugging to the point of oblivion.

Dr. William Healy writes: "Jung views the neurosis as the result of a lack of a positive goal or value in life and as really an attempt (unsuccessful) toward a new synthesis of life."

A debauch for the man who knows he cannot drink is nothing but an acute and vivid form of neurotic outbreak. While the satisfaction of this creative urge is most necessary for neurotics, it is particularly requisite for the alcoholic, because contrary to opinion, he has in the majority of cases an unusual capability if he will avoid rum long enough to become acquainted with his own mind.

If the energy and ingenuity that he has shown in becoming intoxicated are directed to toward some more legitimate activity, he is more apt than not in the long run to go further than his sober competitor.

In other words, his temperament is a powerful force for good or evil, it will take him far toward success and happiness, or it will consign him to hell.

The mind must be free of alcoholic doubts and conflicts, so that it can be devoted to the mature interests of life. There are different ways of freeing the mind, and it is important that the right one be selected.

It just been shown that an interest-diversion is most helpful in hastening and consolidating the cure, but the alcoholic must not become so absorbed in this interest that he forgets what actually is his main problem during the first year of treatment, a problem which before all else must be solved.

Where drink is forgotten too soon because of its unimportance relative to something else, -- a sound enough idea to be sure, -- it sooner or later returns to consciousness as such a negligible factor that one or two drinks cannot make any difference.

"Now that I have this new, interesting, and responsible position," says the pseudo-ex-alcoholic to himself, "I can handle the liquor problem in a normal manner. My energies are concentrated elsewhere and my former reasons for excessive indulgence no longer exist."

The only fault with this reasoning is that it does not result in either temperance or moderation, for when a drunkard resumes drinking it is never very long before alcohol again rules supreme.

Some years ago there lived a man who decided to give up drinking until he could make a million dollars, at which time he intended to drink in moderation. It took him five years -- of sobriety -- to make the million: then he began his "moderate" drinking. In two or three years he lost all his money and in another three he died of alcoholism.

The alcoholic, then. who is so fortunate to have an absorbing interest during his period of reorganization must find time to carry on the work that is prescribed, otherwise his "old" habit will appear to him as something so far away and incapable of returning that it really makes no difference whether he has a small cocktail or not.

So he invariably has one, and the results before long are in no way different than they were before he took up his new interest.