It must be clearly understood, however, that relaxation is the direct opposite rather than the counterpart of laziness and slouchiness. (The sporting columns of Mr. Grantland Rice have made much of relaxation as an all-important element in a successful athletic career.)

Relaxation is, in fact, the antithesis of laziness, in that by conservation of energy greater efficiency is promoted, and hence more successful work can be accomplished.

Catching a baseball is a good simile to illustrate the difference between the tense and relaxed attitude towards life. A novice holds out his hands rigidly: the ball strikes them, stings, and is probably muffed.

A trained player extends his hands to meet the ball, but brings them back at the moment of contact; there is no pain, and the ball has been caught, because relaxation has taken place at the proper moment.

To substantiate the theory I have described, quotations from Mr. Courtenay Baylor's book, Remaking a Man are pertinent. "I recognized," he writes, "that the taking of the tabooed drink was the physical expression of a certain temporary but recurrent mental condition which appeared to be a combination of wrong impulses and a wholly false, through plausible philosophy.

"Further, I believed that these strange periods were clue to a condition of the brain which seemed akin to a physical tension and which set up in the processes a peculiar shifting and distorting and imagining of values, and I have found that with a release of this 'tenseness' a normal coordination does come about, bringing proper impulses and rational thinking."

And again, "Underlying and apparently causing this mental state (fear, depression, or irritability), I have always found the brain condition which suggests actual physical tenseness. In this condition a brain never senses things as they really are. As the tenseness develops, new and imaginary values arise and existing values change their relative positions of importance and become illogical and irrational. Ideas at other times unnoticed or even scorned become, under tenseness, so insistent that they are converted into controlling impulses.

"False values and false thinking run side by side with the normal philosophy for a time; and then with the increasing tenseness the abnormal attitude gradually replaces the normal in control. This is true whether the particular question be one of drinking or of giving way to some other impulse: the same indecision, changeability, inconsistency, and lack of resistance mark the mental process. In fact, the person will behave like one or the other of two different individuals as he or she is not mentally tense."

We must not overlook one very important but little recognized stimulus to drinking. Emotional instability (tension) can be created by legitimate excitement (such as attending a football game where the home team is victorious or, for that matter, by any other form of pleasant emotional stimulation) just as surely as it can by worry and unhappiness.

In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that the alcoholic has to learn to withstand success just as assuredly as he does misfortune, strange as this statement may seem. Many drunkards claim that they do not use alcohol as a refuge but as a means of celebration, and they are probably right as far as their conscious minds are concerned.

Why a man under pleasant emotional stimulation seeks narcotic escape from reality in the same manner as he does from unpleasant emotions is an interesting question but difficult to answer.

My own theory is that a neurotic is unconsciously, and possibly consciously, afraid when his emotional equilibrium is disturbed, no matter what the quality of the disturbance may be. When he is in a state of euphoria (happiness) he evidently feels the need of a stabilizer to the same extent as he does in dysphoria (unhappiness.) Just as he is bored when he looks inward, so he is frightened when he looks outward, if the customary scene has changed even a little.

Stekel, the psychoanalyst, throws some light on this question when he writes in his volume The Beloved Ego: "There has always remained a bitter sediment in every secret fear that is the gods wish to destroy us, that happiness would be followed by misfortune, and that the contrast would make the inevitable misfortune appear all the greater, Is this the right form of teaching? Happiness should not make us reckless; but should our happiness be poisoned by the thought of its inevitable end?"

Is it not possible that this "bitter sediment" is overdeveloped in the alcoholic, even if it is entirely unconscious ?

Finally, we must remember that most people enjoy being emotional, and would like to express themselves in this instinctive manner much more often than is possible under normal living conditions, and the resistance to such expression for lack of opportunity is a contributing cause of tension. When men drink, the self-critical inhibitions are lowered and an emotional discharge easily takes place.

"Now of all the intellectual functions," says Professor McDougall, "that of self-criticism is the highest and latest developed, for in it are combined the functions of critical judgment and of self-consciousness, that self-knowledge which is essential to the supreme activity we call volition or the deliberative will. It is the blunting of this critical side of self-awareness by alcohol, and the consequent setting free of the emotions and their instinctive impulses from its habitual control, that give to the convivial drinker the aspect and the reality of a general excitement."

The individual under the influence of alcohol does what he wants to do, -- that is, in some way exercises his emotions -- , and he is happy doing anything so long as he can have this emotional outlet.

It matters very little from the point of view of a good time whether he laughs or cries, and, for that matter, whether he cries over the death of a friend or the blowing out of an automobile tire.

If tears and sobs are any indication of his grief, they both furnish the same amount of sorrow. In other words, alcohol not only permits an emotional discharge, but also it never fails to provide an instantaneous incitement to whatever new emotional form of expression comes to mind.

However ridiculous this incitement and its form of expression may be from the sober point of view, they are satisfying to the drinker. He has his "cause" and he is going to have his emotional spree about it.

(The word "emotion" is used in a wide sense in this particular paragraph. For instance, to be very serious-minded and persuasive about nothing at all would certainly be an emotional rather than an intellectual proceeding.)

While the release of the emotions through alcohol may be of benefit to the normal drinker who has an occasional "party," it in no sense releases the alcoholic, but on the contrary precipitates him into a worse mental condition than he was in at the beginning. The moment he regains sobriety a new series of depressive nervous thoughts are in attendance to take the place of the boredom or worry that was supposed to have been the cause of the first drink.

So the alcoholic must learn, not to eliminate or repress, but through relaxation to prevent the accumulation of emotional tension unaided by alcohol. There are certainly times when the emotions should be enjoyed to the limit, and the person who is always restrained and judicial is apt to be a dull pedant.

But once a legitimate emotional situation is over, a man must learn to revert willingly to the realm of reason until another normal moment for emotionalism presents itself. These occasions should not be prolonged or created on a whim by indulging in a drug which is too stimulating in the beginning and far too depressing for a long time thereafter. The results in the long run are as futile as they are when this same substance is used as a refuge from trouble.

As a matter of fact, one of the most interesting features to observe about drink, and the one that more than any other has made it an alluring social custom, is its apparent soothing and yet stimulating effects acting simultaneously.

These attributes seem to have a fatal fascination for those whose nervous systems are not suited to being stimulated or relaxed by an artificial medium. Coffee will stimulate and sleeping powders soothe, but neither of them creates a feeling of elation, whereas alcohol in its earliest stages seems to possess both the "desired" qualifications.

Of course these effects are only temporary. It is common knowledge that the stimulation resulting from liquor is so short-lived and so quickly turns to exhaustion that nobody contemplating, prolonged effort considers employing it as an aid.

Even more deceptive is the soothing quality, for, as has been stated, the continued drinking of unlimited quantities of alcohol results in delirium tremens, the very peak of physical and mental tension.

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Also see the AddictionInfo section on Stress and Relaxation.