It must not be overlooked, however, that it is the pride of the curable alcoholic which makes him difficult to reach. To try to help such a man when it is too late is a pitiably usual experience, for not until it is too late does the pride of such a man allow him to apply for help. The man who says, “I will not drink to-day,” and finds himself compelled to; who promises himself, but cannot keep his promise, is the man who most deserves help, and is most likely to yield some sort of good return on an investment made in him. Indeed, it is the rare alcoholic, curable or incurable, who of his own initiative submits himself to treatment. Friends must assist; but while the importance of such friendly service cannot be overestimated, it must be of the right kind or it will be worse than useless. Friends of alcoholics too often either sentimentalize or bully when they go about the task of helping, or they allow too little time for the accomplishment of the reform. Successful business men are specially likely to act childishly when dealing with the mighty problem of assisting alcoholics to their feet. They are likely to affirm that there is no excuse for any man who yields to drink. If they have given help before, they are prone to call attention to the fact that their beneficiary has not recompensed their kindness by reforming, and declare, for instance, that they will pay his board another week, but that will be the end of their endeavor. This spirit—and it is the usual spirit—can accomplish nothing; and the money spent in this and other ill-considered and half-hearted efforts to save men has not decreased, but has increased, the dissipation it has sought to stop. Even relatives and intimate friends are likely to become weary of a case which shipment to some private institution, deportation to a ranch, or embarkation on a sailing-vessel for a long voyage has failed permanently to help.
Such treatment works no reforms, or almost none. Until the cause of drinking is removed, travel from one place to another in an effort to obtain reform by breaking up old associations will be of no avail, but will, instead, repeat the experience of the old woman in the fairy-tale who was bothered by a goblin. When she uprooted herself from her old home and sought another, the goblin, hidden in a churn, went with her. It was the old woman, not the cottage, he was haunting; it is the man, not his environment, in which the alcoholic habit finds its stronghold. When a patient by intelligent treatment has been put into a receptive state of mind, he should be told to look up his old associates and to them declare himself upon the liquor question. If they are friends, they will congratulate him; if they are not, he will have gained by making certain of it. And there is very little danger that, after he has seen them, he will wish again to make intimates of them; that after, in his sober senses, he has examined the surroundings which they frequent, he will be willing to return to them. Being himself normal, he will wish for normal men as friends; being far more fastidious than he was when he was alcoholic, the old haunts will fill him with disgust. This declaration of himself the man must himself make. Good friends may help him otherwise, and chiefly by refraining from the slightest thing which may by any chance tend to decrease his self-respect and his confidence in his own power to stay reclaimed. What a man needs is a new mind on the subject.
CHAPTER VII
CLASSIFICATION OF ALCOHOLICS
Alcoholics are more easily classified than drug-takers. With few exceptions, alcohol-users have their beginnings in social drinking. Not a few women and boys have had their first taste of alcohol, and may even have acquired a definite alcoholic habit, through the small quantities administered as stimulants by physicians; but in a general way it is as easy and just to absolve the physician from responsibility in the matter of alcoholism as it is easy and just to put a heavy responsibility upon him in the case of the use of drugs.
THE DEMAND FOR STIMULANTS
In these days all mankind searches for exhilaration. The instinctive demand for it is an inevitable result of the artificial social system which we have built up. We work beyond our strength, and naturally feel the need of stimulants; we play beyond our strength, and as naturally need whips for our vitiated energies. The greatest social disaster of all the ages occurred when first alcoholic stimulation, which is only one step in advance of alcoholic intoxication and narcotization, found its place as an adjunct of good-fellowship. All humanity turns in one way or another to artificial stimulants, and while alcohol and narcotics are the worst among these, we cannot slur the fact that many who would shun these agents as they would a pestilence, turn freely to milder, but not altogether harmless, stimulants, such as tea, coffee, and tobacco.
I do not purpose to go into a long dissertation upon the chemical peculiarities of alcohol; I do not purpose to discuss the value or peril of alcohol as food; there are plenty of published chapters telling exactly what alcohol is. I feel that it is my mission to do none of these things, but to endeavor to reveal to the student the most effective way of dealing with a patient who has drifted into a definite alcoholic addiction.