But the same stimulus to the human organism will not continue to produce
the same response. By and by I discovered there was no kick at all in
one cocktail. One cocktail left me dead. There was no glow, no laughter
tickle. Two or three cocktails were required to produce the original
effect of one. And I wanted that effect. I drank my first cocktail at
eleven-thirty when I took the morning's mail into the hammock, and I
drank my second cocktail an hour later just before I ate. I got into the
habit of crawling out of the hammock ten minutes earlier so as to find
time and decency for two more cocktails ere I ate. This became
schedule--three cocktails in the hour that intervened between my desk and
dinner. And these are two of the deadliest drinking habits: regular
drinking and solitary drinking.
I was always willing to drink when any one was around. I drank by myself
when no one was around. Then I made another step. When I had for guest
a man of limited drinking calibre, I took two drinks to his one--one
drink with him, the other drink without him and of which he did not know.
I STOLE that other drink, and, worse than that, I began the habit of
drinking alone when there was a guest, a man, a comrade, with whom I
could have drunk. But John Barleycorn furnished the extenuation. It was
a wrong thing to trip a guest up with excess of hospitality and get him
drunk. If I persuaded him, with his limited calibre, into drinking up
with me, I'd surely get him drunk. What could I do but steal that every
second drink, or else deny myself the kick equivalent to what he got out
of half the number?
Please remember, as I recite this development of my drinking, that I am
no fool, no weakling. As the world measures such things, I am a
success--I dare to say a success more conspicuous than the success of the
average successful man, and a success that required a pretty fair amount
of brains and will power. My body is a strong body. It has survived
where weaklings died like flies. And yet these things which I am
relating happened to my body and to me. I am a fact. My drinking is a
fact. My drinking is a thing that has happened, and is no theory nor
speculation; and, as I see it, it but lays the emphasis on the power of
John Barleycorn--a savagery that we still permit to exist, a deadly
institution that lingers from the mad old brutal days and that takes its
heavy toll of youth and strength, and high spirit, and of very much of
all of the best we breed.
To return. After a boisterous afternoon in the swimming pool, followed
by a glorious ride on horseback over the mountains or up or down the
Valley of the Moon, I found myself so keyed and splendid that I desired
to be more highly keyed, to feel more splendid. I knew the way. A
cocktail before supper was not the way. Two or three, at the very least,
was what was needed. I took them. Why not? It was living. I had always
dearly loved to live. This also became part of the daily schedule.
Then, too, I was perpetually finding excuses for extra cocktails. It
might be the assembling of a particularly jolly crowd; a touch of anger
against my architect or against a thieving stone-mason working on my
barn; the death of my favourite horse in a barbed wire fence; or news of
good fortune in the morning mail from my dealings with editors and
publishers. It was immaterial what the excuse might be, once the desire
had germinated in me. The thing was: I WANTED alcohol. At last, after a
score and more of years of dallying and of not wanting, now I wanted it.
And my strength was my weakness. I required two, three, or four drinks
to get an effect commensurate with the effect the average man got out of
one drink.
One rule I observed. I never took a drink until my day's work of writing
a thousand words was done. And, when done, the cocktails reared a wall
of inhibition in my brain between the day's work done and the rest of the
day of fun to come. My work ceased from my consciousness. No thought of
it flickered in my brain till next morning at nine o'clock when I sat at
my desk and began my next thousand words. This was a desirable condition
of mind to achieve. I conserved my energy by means of this alcoholic
inhibition. John Barleycorn was not so black as he was painted. He did
a fellow many a good turn, and this was one of them.
And I turned out work that was healthful, and wholesome, and sincere. It
was never pessimistic. The way to life I had learned in my long
sickness. I knew the illusions were right, and I exalted the illusions.
Oh, I still turn out the same sort of work, stuff that is clean, alive,
optimistic, and that makes toward life. And I am always assured by the
critics of my super-abundant and abounding vitality, and of how
thoroughly I am deluded by these very illusions I exploit.
And while on this digression, let me repeat the question I have repeated
to myself ten thousand times. WHY DID I DRINK? What need was there for
it? I was happy. Was it because I was too happy? I was strong. Was it
because I was too strong? Did I possess too much vitality? I don't know
why I drank. I cannot answer, though I can voice the suspicion that ever
grows in me. I had been in too-familiar contact with John Barleycorn
through too many years. A left-handed man, by long practice, can become
a right-handed man. Had I, a non-alcoholic, by long practice become an
alcoholic?
I was so happy. I had won through my long sickness to the satisfying
love of woman. I earned more money with less endeavour. I glowed with
health. I slept like a babe. I continued to write successful books, and
in sociological controversy I saw my opponents confuted with the facts of
the times that daily reared new buttresses to my intellectual position.
From day's end to day's end I never knew sorrow, disappointment, nor
regret. I was happy all the time. Life was one unending song. I
begrudged the very hours of blessed sleep because by that much was I
robbed of the joy that would have been mine had I remained awake. And
yet I drank. And John Barleycorn, all unguessed by me, was setting the
stage for a sickness all his own.
The more I drank the more I was required to drink to get an equivalent
effect. When I left the Valley of the Moon, and went to the city, and
dined out, a cocktail served at table was a wan and worthless thing.
There was no pre-dinner kick in it. On my way to dinner I was compelled
to accumulate the kick--two cocktails, three, and, if I met some fellows,
four or five, or six, it didn't matter within several. Once, I was in a
rush. I had no time decently to accumulate the several drinks. A
brilliant idea came to me. I told the barkeeper to mix me a double
cocktail. Thereafter, whenever I was in a hurry, I ordered double
cocktails. It saved time.
One result of this regular heavy drinking was to jade me. My mind grew
so accustomed to spring and liven by artificial means that without
artificial means it refused to spring and liven. Alcohol became more and
more imperative in order to meet people, in order to become sociably fit.
I had to get the kick and the hit of the stuff, the crawl of the maggots,
the genial brain glow, the laughter tickle, the touch of devilishness and
sting, the smile over the face of things, ere I could join my fellows and
make one with them.
Another result was that John Barleycorn was beginning to trip me up. He
was thrusting my long sickness back upon me, inveigling me into again
pursuing Truth and snatching her veils away from her, tricking me into
looking reality stark in the face. But this came on gradually. My
thoughts were growing harsh again, though they grew harsh slowly.
Sometimes warning thoughts crossed my mind. Where was this steady
drinking leading? But trust John Barleycorn to silence such questions.
"Come on and have a drink and I'll tell you all about it," is his way.
And it works. For instance, the following is a case in point, and one
which John Barleycorn never wearied of reminding me:
I had suffered an accident which required a ticklish operation. One
morning, a week after I had come off the table, I lay on my hospital bed,
weak and weary. The sunburn of my face, what little of it could be seen
through a scraggly growth of beard, had faded to a sickly yellow. My
doctor stood at my bedside on the verge of departure. He glared
disapprovingly at the cigarette I was smoking.
"That's what you ought to quit," he lectured. "It will get you in the
end. Look at me."
I looked. He was about my own age, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, eyes
sparkling, and ruddy-cheeked with health. A finer specimen of manhood
one would not ask.
"I used to smoke," he went on. "Cigars. But I gave even them up. And
look at me."
The man was arrogant, and rightly arrogant, with conscious well-being.
And within a month he was dead. It was no accident. Half a dozen
different bugs of long scientific names had attacked and destroyed him.
The complications were astonishing and painful, and for days before he
died the screams of agony of that splendid manhood could be heard for a
block around. He died screaming.
"You see," said John Barleycorn. "He took care of himself. He even
stopped smoking cigars. And that's what he got for it. Pretty rotten,
eh? But the bugs will jump. There's no forefending them. Your
magnificent doctor took every precaution, yet they got him. When the bug
jumps you can't tell where it will land. It may be you. Look what he
missed. Will you miss all I can give you, only to have a bug jump on you
and drag you down? There is no equity in life. It's all a lottery. But
I put the lying smile on the face of life and laugh at the facts. Smile
with me and laugh. You'll get yours in the end, but in the meantime
laugh. It's a pretty dark world. I illuminate it for you. It's a
rotten world, when things can happen such as happened to your doctor.
There's only one thing to do: take another drink and forget it."
And, of course, I took another drink for the inhibition that accompanied
it. I took another drink every time John Barleycorn reminded me of what
had happened. Yet I drank rationally, intelligently. I saw to it that
the quality of the stuff was of the best. I sought the kick and the
inhibition, and avoided the penalties of poor quality and of drunkenness.
It is to be remarked, in passing, that when a man begins to drink
rationally and intelligently that he betrays a grave symptom of how far
along the road he has travelled.
But I continued to observe my rule of never taking my first drink of the
day until the last word of my thousand words was written. On occasion,
however, I took a day's vacation from my writing. At such times, since
it was no violation of my rule, I didn't mind how early in the day I took
that first drink. And persons who have never been through the drinking
game wonder how the drinking habit grows!