The Jaywalker
Our behavior is as absurd and
incomprehensible with respect to the first drink as that of an individual with a
passion, say, for jay-walking. He gets a thrill out of skipping in front of
fast-moving vehicles. He enjoys himself for a few years in spite of friendly
warnings. Up to this point you would label him as a foolish chap having
queer ideas of fun. Luck then deserts him and he is slightly injured several
times in succession. You would expect him, if he were normal, to cut it out.
Presently he is hit again and this time has a fractured skull. Within a week
after leaving the hospital a fast-moving trolley car breaks his arm. He tells
you he has decided to stop jay-walking for good, but in a few weeks he breaks
both legs.
On through the years this conduct continues, accompanied by his continual
promises to be careful or to keep off the streets altogether. Finally, he can no
longer work, his wife gets a divorce and he is held up to ridicule. He tries
every known means to get the jay-walking idea out of his head. He shuts himself
up in an asylum, hoping to mend his ways. But the day he comes out he races in
front of a fire engine, which breaks his back. Such a man would be crazy,
wouldn't he?
You may think our illustration is too ridiculous. But is it? We, who have been
through the wringer, have to admit if we substituted alcoholism for jay-walking,
the illustration would fit us exactly. However intelligent we may have been in
other respects, where alcohol has been involved, we have been strangely insane.
It's strong language - but isn't it true?
Some of you are thinking: "Yes, what you
tell us is true, but it doesn't fully apply. We admit we have some of these
symptoms, but we have not gone to the extremes you fellows did, nor are we
likely to, for we understand ourselves so well after what you have told us that
such things cannot happen again. We have not lost everything in life through
drinking and we certainly do not intend to. Thanks for the information."
That may be true of certain nonalcoholic people who, though drinking foolishly
and heavily at the present time, are able to stop or moderate, because their
brains and bodies have not been damaged as ours were. But the actual or
potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception, will be absolutely unable to stop
drinking on the basis of self-knowledge. This is a point we wish to emphasize
and re-emphasize, to smash home upon our alcoholic readers as it has been
revealed to us out of bitter experience. Let us take another illustration.