- Home
- Help Yourself Addiction Tools
- Self Management Tool Box
- Problems To Change
- Alcohol
- The Common Sense of Drinking (1930)
The Common Sense of Drinking (1930)
- By Misc Author
- Published 01/2/2007
- Alcohol
-
Rating:
Such influences as I have mentioned are usually accompanied by an attitude of mind, which more than any other factor changes the individual from a hard drinker into a true alcoholic.
While this transition is often so gradual as to be scarcely noticed, I think, as I have said, that the decisive moment comes when a man finds out that a drink the next morning is soothing nerve medicine for the excesses of the night before.
I recall the case of a man who in his college days was faced with the problem of having to go to a lecture in an extremely nervous condition due to his drinking on many previous evenings.
A graduate who happened to be in his club at the time asked him if he had had anything to drink that morning. When told, "No," he evinced surprise that the boy should be willing to suffer "unnecessarily," and suggested to him that what he needed was a stiff drink of brandy to remove any unpleasant feelings of nervousness that he might experience during the lecture.
This was a distasteful idea to the younger man, as it had never occurred to him before to drink medicinally. But rather than put up with his nerves any longer he gulped down what was offered to him.
In the course of a few minutes alcohol had its narcotic effect and the lecture presented no difficulties whatsoever. That drink was the beginning of the end for him, although he did not realize it until several years later.
As he expressed it to me, "The handwriting was on the wall from that moment on, though of course I didn't realize it at the time." Then and there he conceived the idea that he could drink all he wanted to in the evening and take care of the resulting nervousness with a stiff
bracer the next morning.
For a year or two he stuck to his one drink in the morning after nights of excessive indulgence. But as he grew older, and his nerves were progressively weakened, additional drinks throughout the day became "necessary," until he was having one every two or three hours.
In a few more years he had reached the final stage of disintegration, where he would remain in an intoxicated condition for several days following a "party."
He invariably thought that he was tapering off, but in reality he was gathering headway faster and faster, until he was drunk a large part of the time.
Respites unfortunately only resulted in a physical recuperation that gave him the needed strength to repeat the performance. After a period of sobriety the alcoholic wants his first drink for the same reason that his more moderate friends do -- that is, to escape from reality.
But in most cases he does not really want to continue drinking for the sole reason that prompted him to start in the beginning.
Or perhaps it might be better to say that, while the same reason may be functioning to some extent, it is completely overshadowed by a greater one.
He invariably claims that he is "easing" himself out of his condition, until he is entirely under the influence of drink again, and he is speaking the truth as far as his desires are concerned no matter how much his conduct and appearance may belie his statement.
But he simply cannot stand the emotional disorganization that even a limited indulgence has created, and, although he realizes in the bottom of his heart that each drink is making matters worse, he postpones the ordeal of a hangover as long as he possibly can.
Are we to conclude from this that there is no such thing as the purely vicious alcoholic, that they one and all sincerely wish to recover from their habit?
If we disregard the few moral delinquents whose mentality is practically psychotic, -- that is, insane, -- and those whose failure in life has been so glaring that they are willing slowly to commit suicide, I think we might answer the question in the positive; the reason being that the genuine alcoholic, however he may twist and turn, is undergoing a very unhappy experience most of the time.
His ethics may be nil, but he is getting so little out of life except downright suffering that he casts longing looks, not at abstinence to be sure, but at a successful career of hard but controlled drinking.
While this transition is often so gradual as to be scarcely noticed, I think, as I have said, that the decisive moment comes when a man finds out that a drink the next morning is soothing nerve medicine for the excesses of the night before.
I recall the case of a man who in his college days was faced with the problem of having to go to a lecture in an extremely nervous condition due to his drinking on many previous evenings.
A graduate who happened to be in his club at the time asked him if he had had anything to drink that morning. When told, "No," he evinced surprise that the boy should be willing to suffer "unnecessarily," and suggested to him that what he needed was a stiff drink of brandy to remove any unpleasant feelings of nervousness that he might experience during the lecture.
This was a distasteful idea to the younger man, as it had never occurred to him before to drink medicinally. But rather than put up with his nerves any longer he gulped down what was offered to him.
In the course of a few minutes alcohol had its narcotic effect and the lecture presented no difficulties whatsoever. That drink was the beginning of the end for him, although he did not realize it until several years later.
As he expressed it to me, "The handwriting was on the wall from that moment on, though of course I didn't realize it at the time." Then and there he conceived the idea that he could drink all he wanted to in the evening and take care of the resulting nervousness with a stiff
bracer the next morning.
For a year or two he stuck to his one drink in the morning after nights of excessive indulgence. But as he grew older, and his nerves were progressively weakened, additional drinks throughout the day became "necessary," until he was having one every two or three hours.
In a few more years he had reached the final stage of disintegration, where he would remain in an intoxicated condition for several days following a "party."
He invariably thought that he was tapering off, but in reality he was gathering headway faster and faster, until he was drunk a large part of the time.
Respites unfortunately only resulted in a physical recuperation that gave him the needed strength to repeat the performance. After a period of sobriety the alcoholic wants his first drink for the same reason that his more moderate friends do -- that is, to escape from reality.
But in most cases he does not really want to continue drinking for the sole reason that prompted him to start in the beginning.
Or perhaps it might be better to say that, while the same reason may be functioning to some extent, it is completely overshadowed by a greater one.
He invariably claims that he is "easing" himself out of his condition, until he is entirely under the influence of drink again, and he is speaking the truth as far as his desires are concerned no matter how much his conduct and appearance may belie his statement.
But he simply cannot stand the emotional disorganization that even a limited indulgence has created, and, although he realizes in the bottom of his heart that each drink is making matters worse, he postpones the ordeal of a hangover as long as he possibly can.
Are we to conclude from this that there is no such thing as the purely vicious alcoholic, that they one and all sincerely wish to recover from their habit?
If we disregard the few moral delinquents whose mentality is practically psychotic, -- that is, insane, -- and those whose failure in life has been so glaring that they are willing slowly to commit suicide, I think we might answer the question in the positive; the reason being that the genuine alcoholic, however he may twist and turn, is undergoing a very unhappy experience most of the time.
His ethics may be nil, but he is getting so little out of life except downright suffering that he casts longing looks, not at abstinence to be sure, but at a successful career of hard but controlled drinking.
As he can never attain this state again, whatever he may have been able to do in the past and no matter how hard he may try, and as he is unable even to visualize a life free from alcohol, he prefers what in his fatuousness he considers to be the lesser of two evils.
To this extent only I think we may say that some drunkards wish to remain in their condition and refuse all offers of assistance which might show them a way out of it.
