The drink swallowed at the bar braces you, does it? If you think you need a drink, you REALLY need sleep, or better nourishment, or you need to live more sensibly. Drink will not give you what you need. It may for a moment make your nerves cease tormenting you. It may do in your system for an hour what opium does in the Chinese for a whole day. But if it lifts you up high, it drops you down HARD.
And remember:
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS MODERATE DRINKING AT A BAR.
You THINK you can take your occasional drink safely and philosophize about the procession that passes the bartender.
But the bartender KNOWS that you are no different from the others. They all began as you are beginning. They all, in the early stages, despised their own forerunners.
They were once as you are, and the bartender KNOWS that the chances are all in favor of your being eventually like one of them.
Even like the poor, thin, nervous drinker of hard whiskey, who once wondered why men drink too much. ——
The bartender's procession is a sad one, and you who still think yourself safe are the saddest atom in the line, for you are there without sufficient excuse.
It is a long procession, and its end is far off.
It is born of the fact that life is dull, competition is keen, and ambition so often ends in sawdust failure.