Habits that Handicap: The Menace of Opium, Alcohol, and Tobacco, and the Remedy

by Charles Barnes Towns

HOW IT AFFECTS DIFFERENT MEN

Alcohol is classed here as a narcotic and not a stimulant, because we shall see later that alcohol is rather a paralyzer of functions, even when it seems to stimulate, than a producer of increased output from any organ. The time honored idea that alcohol is a stimulant and that, if used in moderation, it is a tonic, is so ingrained in the average mind that it is with the greatest difficulty that men can be made to realize that even in what seems moderate doses it may injure them. This is especially true as one sees men who all their lives have indulged moderately in alcoholic beverages from which seemingly no harm has resulted. The truth, perhaps, is best summed up by the old adage that what is one man’s meat is another man’s poison, and there is no question that the effects of alcohol in small or moderate doses is vastly different from its effects in large doses, or in long continued, excessive use. Different human beings react differently to similar amounts of alcohol, and conversely, identical amounts of alcohol will affect different individuals in different ways, even when it poisons all of them. For instance, if alcohol sets different processes in motion which bring about damage to the individual, we find that in some persons it has injured the heart and arteries, in others it has affected the liver or stomach, leaving the brain and nervous tissues free from damage, while in still others the body in general seems to be untouched and the brain and nervous tissues suffer the injuries. It is not uncommon to see a man who has partaken freely of alcoholic beverages all his life with neither he nor his friends conscious that his intellect has suffered or deteriorated thereby, to find suddenly that his circulatory and digestive systems are seriously and permanently damaged. On the other hand, many a drunkard has become a burden to his family and the community, with his personality deteriorated, his intellect rendered useless, while his circulation and digestion remain unimpaired, and he lives long years a nuisance and a burden to his environment.

Since I have made the distinction between moderation and excess in the use of alcohol, it will be well to define what is regarded as excess, and what moderation, in order that the effects of both may be considered. Physiologic excess, it seems to me, has been best defined by a brilliant Frenchman named Duclaux, who says that any one has drunken alcohol to excess who one hour after he has taken it is conscious in any way of having done so. If after a drink of any alcoholic beverage has been taken, wine, whiskey, or whatever it may be, an hour later we feel ourselves flushed, tongue loosened, or if we are heavy and drowsy, or, if we find our natural reserve slightly in abeyance, if the judgment is not as sternly accurate as before partaking of the beverage, if the imagination is unusually active and close consecutive reasoning not as easy as before, if we think we do our work much better, but next morning realize we haven’t accomplished quite as much or done it as well as we expected, then we have shown a physiologic excessive intake of alcohol, and an amount which if continued will produce damage somewhere in the body. Moderation in the use of alcohol means that it be taken in amounts of which one remains unconscious. This may seem a narrow and hard line to draw, and may seem to confine the amount of alcohol that may be consumed to much less than many people wish to indulge in. How much in actual amount this should be with any given individual depends upon that individual alone, and no one can be a law to any other individual than himself. If a man be engaged in severe manual labor or muscular exercise, he can consume more alcohol without detriment than when leading a sedentary life, although the character of the work that he will do may not be as good as if no alcohol were taken.

THE MODERATE USE OF ALCOHOL

The above definition, however, must suffice. We must fix some standard between moderation and excess, and the more accurately we define moderation, the more narrowly do we confine it. Judge by the above standard, alcohol taken in moderate doses does not seem more than to stimulate the digestive processes of the stomach, increase the flow of blood through the heart, increase the circulation in the periphery and skin, dilate the capillaries, and make it easier for the circulation to complete its cycles. When absorbed into the body in such doses, it can act as a food, and, in fact, as much as is burnt up by the body does act as a food, although it differs from other foods in that it is never stored up. It can replace in energy-giving properties sugars or fats, and being burnt up by the body can give out the equivalent of sugar and fat in muscular energy, and heat generated and given out by the body. Its effect is similar to that obtained by sugar and fats which are taken up by the body when needed and in the amounts requisite to the body at the moment, and it seems to be treated as far as can be seen as other foods for fuel. But it is not an economical fuel because the human organism does not perform its work as well as when there is no alcohol in the ration. Simultaneously when being consumed as food it is exerting its drug action. In this process it is the more easily available, and thus the sugar and fats are stored up while the alcohol is burnt up; it spares the fat consumption, often causing an increase of bodily weight through the putting on of fat. To those who are accustomed to its use, it seems also to spare the protein consumption of the body, but to those unaccustomed to its use it has the opposite effect, increasing the destructive breaking down of proteins.

DANGER SIGNALS UNHEEDED

Moderate indulgence in alcoholic beverages adds to the pleasures of existence with a great many men, and while it seems to increase their pleasures and broaden the extent of their mental experiences, it cannot be said to increase their powers of accurate mental activity, though it temporarily increases the imaginative flow of ideas. It relieves the feeling of both body and mental fatigue for the time being, an effect which may be an advantage or may be a distinct disadvantage, for fatigue is Nature’s warning when to stop, and if we dull ourselves to this feeling and leave the warning unheeded, we may easily go on to harmful excesses of overwork and overexertion. It is doubtful if the moderate drinking of alcohol, as we have defined moderation, sets in motion processes which may so disturb the equilibrium of the body as to cause disease.

Broadly speaking, the excessive use of alcohol injures the body in two ways. It injures the functional cells of the different organs for alcohol is distinctly a cellular poison, and it further disturbs the nutrition of the organs by its injurious action on the blood vessels which supply nutrition to the various parts of the body. Whether to replace the destroyed cells or as a result of the congestion there is also an increase in the connective tissue framework of the various organs. The action of alcohol on the circulation is one of the earliest effects which is shown after it is taken into the body. The flushing of the skin is a beginning paralysis of the minute capillary blood vessels. If habitually indulged in, the effect is a continuous dilatation of the vessels, although it seems for a while in the early stages that there is a toning up of the circulation. Yet excessive indulgence brings with it always a lowering of the blood pressure and finally the chronic congestions in the internal viscera. The action of the heart at first is to make it beat fuller and stronger, but if continued, the effect is also one of paralysis of its muscle and a diminution of the output of work done, and finally it is a paralyzer of the heart’s action. In some persons, through its injury to the cardiac blood vessels and intrinsic muscle of the heart, it sets in motion those morbid processes which result in angina pectoris.

Beginning with the stomach, we find that when alcohol is taken in excess it not only disturbs the processes of digestion that are then going on, if it is taken in greater amount than five per cent. of the stomach content, but it also acts directly on the mucous membrane, producing an irritant action. We have formed here a chronic congestion of the mucous membrane which produces swollen cells, and the digestive glands of the stomach produce an excess of mucus which interferes with digestion, and the resulting congestion interferes with the gastric secretions. It ends in producing a swollen, inflamed mucous membrane, often with hemorrhages. These processes may go on to an atrophic form of gastritis, in which the mucous membrane may be so atrophied that it is unable to secret sufficient gastric juice. The acid of the gastric juice, combining with certain substances in the intestine, is one of the stimulants which causes the production of the pancreatic secretion. The pancreas not alone digests the meats and other proteids, but it changes starch into sugar, and also has a fat splitting ferment. Thus we see that pancreatic digestion is a most important function, and does much more in the digestive work than the stomach. When therefore the acids of the gastric juice are lacking, there is an insufficient stimulus to the pancreas to pour out its complex juices and complete digestion.

THE ATTACK UPON THE LIVER