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 Ihad 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,Iam 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.Itook 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 Iexalted 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 Ipossess too much vitality?I don't know why I drank.I cannot answer,though I can voice the suspicion that ever grows in me.Ihad 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?
