Back on the ranch, in the Valley of the Moon, I resumed my steady
drinking. My programme was no drink in the morning; first drink-time
came with the completion of my thousand words. Then, between that and
the midday meal, were drinks numerous enough to develop a pleasant
jingle. Again, in the hour preceding the evening meal, I developed
another pleasant jingle. Nobody ever saw me drunk, for the simple reason
that I never was drunk. But I did get a jingle twice each day; and the
amount of alcohol I consumed every day, if loosed in the system of one
unaccustomed to drink, would have put such a one on his back and out.
It was the old proposition. The more I drank, the more I was compelled
to drink in order to get an effect. The time came when cocktails were
inadequate. I had neither the time in which to drink them nor the space
to accommodate them. Whisky had a more powerful jolt. It gave quicker
action with less quantity. Bourbon or rye, or cunningly aged blends,
constituted the pre-midday drinking. In the late afternoon it was Scotch
and soda.
My sleep, always excellent, now became not quite so excellent. I had
been accustomed to read myself back asleep when I chanced to awake. But
now this began to fail me. When I had read two or three of the small
hours away and was as wide awake as ever, I found that a drink furnished
the soporific effect. Sometimes two or three drinks were required.
So short a period of sleep then intervened before early morning rising
that my system did not have time to work off the alcohol. As a result I
awoke with mouth parched and dry, with a slight heaviness of head, and
with a mild nervous palpitation in the stomach. In fact I did not feel
good. I was suffering from the morning sickness of the steady, heavy
drinker. What I needed was a pick-me-up, a bracer. Trust John
Barleycorn, once he has broken down a man's defences! So it was a drink
before breakfast to put me right for breakfast--the old poison of the
snake that has bitten one! Another custom begun at this time was that of
the pitcher of water by the bedside to furnish relief to my scorched and
sizzling membranes.
I achieved a condition in which my body was never free from alcohol. Nor
did I permit myself to be away from alcohol. If I travelled to
out-of-the-way places, I declined to run the risk of finding them dry. I
took a quart, or several quarts, along in my grip. In the past I had
been amazed by other men guilty of this practice. Now I did it myself
unblushingly. And when I got out with the fellows, I cast all rules by
the board. I drank when they drank, what they drank, and in the same way
they drank.
I was carrying a beautiful alcoholic conflagration around with me. The
thing fed on its own heat and flamed the fiercer. There was no time, in
all my waking time, that I didn't want a drink. I began to anticipate
the completion of my daily thousand words by taking a drink when only
five hundred words were written. It was not long until I prefaced the
beginning of the thousand words with a drink.
The gravity of this I realised too well. I made new rules. Resolutely I
would refrain from drinking until my work was done. But a new and most
diabolical complication arose. The work refused to be done without
drinking. It just couldn't be done. I had to drink in order to do it.
I was beginning to fight now. I had the craving at last, and it was
mastering me. I would sit at my desk and dally with pad and pen, but
words refused to flow. My brain could not think the proper thoughts
because continually it was obsessed with the one thought that across the
room in the liquor cabinet stood John Barleycorn. When, in despair, I
took my drink, at once my brain loosened up and began to roll off the
thousand words.
In my town house, in Oakland, I finished the stock of liquor and wilfully
refused to purchase more. It was no use, because, unfortunately, there
remained in the bottom of the liquor cabinet a case of beer. In vain I
tried to write. Now beer is a poor substitute for strong waters:
besides, I didn't like beer, yet all I could think of was that beer so
singularly accessible in the bottom of the cabinet. Not until I had
drunk a pint of it did the words begin to reel off, and the thousand were
reeled off to the tune of numerous pints. The worst of it was that the
beer caused me severe heart-burn; but despite the discomfort I soon
finished off the case.
The liquor cabinet was now bare. I did not replenish it. By truly
heroic perseverance I finally forced myself to write the daily thousand
words without the spur of John Barleycorn. But all the time I wrote I
was keenly aware of the craving for a drink. And as soon as the
morning's work was done, I was out of the house and away down-town to get
my first drink. Merciful goodness!--if John Barleycorn could get such
sway over me, a non-alcoholic, what must be the sufferings of the true
alcoholic, battling against the organic demands of his chemistry while
those closest to him sympathise little, understand less, and despise and
deride him!