The Old Game Part 1

The Old Game.

by Samuel G. Blythe.

_I: Introductory_

In a few minutes it will be three years and a half since I have taken a drink. In six years, six months, and a few minutes it will be ten years.

Then I shall begin to feel I have some standing among the chaps who have quit. Three years and a half seems quite a period of abstinence to me, but I am constantly running across men who have been on the wagon for five and ten and twelve and twenty years; and I know, when it comes to merely not taking any, I am a piker as yet. However, I have well-grounded hopes. The fact is, a drink could not be put into me except with the aid of an anesthetic and a funnel; but, for all that, I am no bigot.

I look at this non-drinking determination of mine as a purely individual proposition. Let me get the stage set properly at the beginning of my remarks. I have no advice to offer and no counsel to give. Most of my best friends drink and I never have said and never shall say them nay.

It is up to them--not up to me. I have no prejudices in the matter. If my friends want to drink I am for that--for them.

These things are mentioned to establish my status in the premises. I have no sermon to preach--no warning to convey. I have no desire to impress my convictions on the subject of drinking liquor on any person whatever. That is not my mission. So far as I am concerned, all persons are hereby given full and free permission to eat, drink and be merry to such extent as they may prescribe for themselves. I set no limit, suggest no reforms, urge no cutting down or cutting out. Go to it--and peace be with you! And for an absolute teetotaler I reckon I buy as many drinks for others as any one in my cla.s.s.

Pardon me for inserting these puny details in what I have to say.

Triflingly personal as they are they seem necessary in order to establish my viewpoint. So far as drinking is concerned I look at it with a mind that is open and tolerant--except in one instance. That one instance concerns myself personally and individually. My mind is closed and intolerant in my own case. I have quit--and quit forever; but that does not make me go round urging others to quit, or preaching at them, or trying to reform them. They can reform or not, as they dad-blamed please. To be sure I have my own interior ideas on what some of them should do; but I never have and never shall do anything with those ideas but keep them closely to myself.

Therefore, to resume: In a few minutes it will be three years and a half since I have taken a drink. There is no more alcohol in my system than there is in a gla.s.s of spring water. The thought of putting alcohol into my system is as absent from my mind as is the thought of putting benzine into it, or gasoline, or taking a swig of shoe-polish. It never occurs to me. The whole thing is out of my psychology. My palate has forgotten how it tastes. My stomach has forgotten how it feels. My head has forgotten how it exhilarates. The next-morning fur has forsaken my tongue. It is all over!

_II: A Backward Glance from a Hillock of Abstinence_

Looking back at the old game from this hillock of abstinence--it is not an eminence like those occupied by the twelve and fifteen year boys--looking back at the old game from this slight elevation, it is perhaps excusable for a man who put in twenty years at the old game to set the old game off against the new game and make up a debit and credit account just for the fun of it.

Just for the fun of it! My kind of drinking was always for the fun of it--for the fun that came with it and out of it and was in it--and for no other reason. I was no sot and no souse. All the drinks I took were for convivial purposes solely, except on occasional mornings when a too convivial evening demanded a next morning conniver in the way of a c.o.c.ktail or a frappe, or a brandy-and-soda, for purposes of encouragement and to help get the sand out of the wheels.

Wherefore, what have I personally gained by quitting and what have I personally lost? How does the account stand? Is it worth while or not?

Is there anything in convivial drinking that is too precious and too pleasant to be sacrificed for whatever pleasures or rewards there are in abstinence? What are the big equations? These are questions that naturally occur in a consideration of the subject; and these are the questions I shall try to answer, answering them entirely from my own experience and judging them from my own viewpoint, leaving the application of my conclusions to those who care to apply them to their own individual cases.

It takes two years for a man who has been a convivial drinker to get any sort of proper perspective on both sides of the proposition. Three years is better, and five years, I should say, about right. Still, after three years and a half I think I can draw some conclusions that may have a certain general application--though, as I have said, I make no pretense of applying them generally. So far as I am able to judge, a man who has been a more or less sincere drinker for twenty years does not arrive at a point before two years of abstinence where he can take an impartial and non-alcoholic survey.

At first he is imbued with the spirit of the new convert, fired with zeal and considerable of a Pharisee. Also, he is inhabited by the lingering thoughts of what he has renounced--the fun and the frolic of it; and he has set himself aside, in a good measure, from the friends he has made in the twenty years of joyousness.

_III: Getting the Alcohol Out of One's System_

A scientist who has made a study of the subject told me, early in my water-wagoning, that it takes eighteen months for a man to get the alcohol entirely out of his system--provided, of course, he has been a reasonably consistent consumer of it for a period of years. I think that is correct. Of course he did not mean--nor do I--that the alcohol actually remains in one's system, but that the sub-acute effects remain--that the system is not entirely reorganized on the new basis before that time; that the renovation is not complete.

I do not know exactly how to phrase it; but, as nearly as I can express it, the condition amounts to this: After a man has been a reasonably steady drinker for a period of years, and quits drinking, there remain within him mental and some physical alcoholic tendencies. These are acute for the earlier stages, and gradually come to be almost subconscious--that is, though there is no physical alcoholization of his body, the mental alcoholization has not departed. I do not mean that his mind or mental powers are in any way affected to their detriment. What I do mean is that there remains in every man a remembrance, the ghost of a desire, the haunting thoughts of how good a certain kind of a drink would taste, and a regret for joys of companions.h.i.+p with one's fellows in the old way and in the old game, which takes time--and a good deal of time--to eradicate.

It becomes a sort of state of mind. The body does not crave liquor. All that is past. There is no actual desire for it. Indeed, the thought of again taking a drink may be physically repugnant; but there is a sort of phantom of renounced good times that hangs round and worries and obtrudes in blue hours and lonesome hours and letdown hours--a persistent, insistent sort of ghost-thought that flits across the mind from time to time and stimulates the what's-the-use portion of a man's thinking apparatus into active, personal inquiry, based on the _dum vivimus_, _vivamus_ proposition.

I know this will be disputed by many men who have quit drinking and who beat themselves on the chests and boast: "I never think of it! Never, I a.s.sure you! I quit; and after a few days the thought of drinking never entered my mind." I have only one reply for these persons; and, phrasing it as politely as I can, I say to them that they are all liars.

Moreover, they are the worst sort of liars, for they not only lie to others but commit the useless folly of lying to themselves. They may think they do not lie; but they do.

There is not one of them--not one--who is not visited by the ghost of good times, the wraith of former fun, now and then; or one who does not wonder whether it is worth the struggle and speculate on what the harm would be if he took a few for old time's sake. The mental yearn comes back occasionally long after the physical yearn has vanished. My compliments to you strong-minded and iron-willed citizens who quit and forget--but you don't! You may quit, but it is months and months before you forget.

The ghost appears and reappears; but gradually, as time goes on, the visits are less frequent--and finally they cease. The ghost has given you up for a bad job. If any man has quit and has stuck it out for two years he can be reasonably sure he will not be haunted much after he enters his third year.

Mental impressions and desires last far longer than physical ones, and by that time the mind has been reorganized along the new lines. Then comes the sure knowledge that it is all right; and after that time any man who has fought his fight and falls can be cla.s.sed only as an idiot.

What, in the name of Bacchus, is there to compensate a man in drinking again--after he has won his fight--for all the troubles and rigors of the battle from which he has emerged victorious? If he had nerve enough to go through his novitiate and get his degree, why should he deliberately return to the position he voluntarily abandoned? What has he been fighting for? Why did he begin?

_IV: Those Who Have Suffered in Vain_

Owing to a worldwide acquaintance among men who drink my personal determination to quit still excites the patronizing inquiry, "Still on the wagon?" when I meet old friends. That used to make me angry, but it does not any more. I say, "Yes!" take my mineral water and pa.s.s on to other things. But the position of those who quit and go back to it, and seek to excuse the return by saying, "Oh, I only stopped to see whether I could. I found it was easy; so I began again!"--now is that not the sublimation of piffle? The fact that any man who salves himself with this sort of statement--and hundreds do--did go back does not prove that he could quit, but that he could not!

I can understand why a man, having tried both sides of the game, should conclude that the rigors and restraints of not drinking overbalance the compensations and take up the practice again; but I cannot understand why a man should be so great a hypocrite with himself as to a.s.sign a reason like that for his renewal of the habit. No man quits just to see whether he can quit. Every man quits because he personally thinks he ought to quit--for whatever his personal reason may be. And he begins again because he concludes the game is not worth playing, which means that he is not able to play it--not that it lacks merit.

When you come to sum it all up general reasons for drinking are as absurd as general reasons for not drinking. It is entirely an individual proposition. I concluded it was a bad thing for me to drink. I know now I was right. But--and here is the point--it may be a good thing for my neighbor to drink. He must judge of that himself. Personally I cannot see that it is a good thing for any man to drink; but I am no judge. I am influenced in my conclusions, not by a broad view of the situation as it applies to my fellows but by an intensely narrow view as it applies to myself. Hence what I have concluded in the matter may be uncharitable--may smack of Puritanism and may not be supported by general facts; but I am writing about my own experiences, not those of any other person whatever.

My occupation takes me to all parts of the world and has for twenty-five years. It has caused me to make friends with all sorts of people in all sorts of places and in all sorts of circ.u.mstances. I early discovered that, as I was a gregarious person and intent on doing the best for myself that I possibly could, it was necessary for me to cultivate the friends.h.i.+p of men of affairs; and it became apparent to me that many men of affairs take an occasional drink. Naturally I took an occasional drink with them, having no prejudices in the matter and being of open mind. I am big and husky, and mix well; and the result was I acquired as extensive a line of convivial acquaintances, across this country and across Europe, as any person of your acquaintance. To some extent my friends.h.i.+p with these men was predicated on having a few drinks with them. I fell in with their ways or they fell in with mine; and as my a.s.sociation in almost every city, among the men with whom I worked and the men I met, is based largely on entertainment of one kind or another--generally with some alcohol in it--my life was ordered that way for two decades. And I had a heap of fun. There was no sottishness about it, no solitary drinking, no drinking for drink's sake, no drunkenness.

It was all jollity and really innocent enough--a case of good fellows having a good time together.

However, there was a good deal of rum consumed one way and another. Then three and a half years ago, after a long caucus with myself, I quit. I decided I had played that game long enough and would begin to play another. It may be I did not know or figure out as concretely as I have figured out since just what I was doing when I quit. It may be! Still, that has nothing to do with the case. I quit and I have stayed quit--and I have quit forever. So all that is coming to me in the premises is based on my own determination, as all has been that has come, and I have no complaints to make; and if I made any I should expect to get a punch in the eye for making them--and deserve one.

Pa.s.sing over the physical and mental sides of the fight--which, I may a.s.sure you, were annoying enough to suit the most exacting advocate of the old policy of mortifying the flesh and disciplining the mind--there came eventually the necessity of learning how to keep in the game on a water basis--or, rather, of learning how to keep in such portions of the game as seemed worth while on a soft-drink schedule. I was too old to form many new ties. I had acc.u.mulated a farflung line of drinking men as friends. They were mostly the men with whom a.s.sociation was a pleasure--as in politics the villains are always the good fellows--and I did not want to lose them, however willing they were to lose me.

There came, however, with my mineral-water view, a discriminatory sense that was not enjoyed in the highball period--that is to say, I found, observed with the cold and mayhap critical eye of abstinence, that a number of those with whom I was wont to a.s.sociate needed the softening glow radiated by the liquor in me to make them as good as I had previously thought they were. There were some I found I did not miss, and more came to the same conclusion about me. They were all right--fine!--when seen or heard through ears and eyes that had been affected by the genial charitableness of a couple or three c.o.c.ktails; but when seen or heard with no advent.i.tious appliances on my part save ginger ale they were rather depressing--and I am quite sure they held the same views about me.

_V: A Thirsty Nation's Need_

So I sloughed off a good many and a good many sloughed off me; and a working basis was secured. At first I tried to keep along with all the old crowd, but that was impossible in two ways. I never realized until after I was on the water-wagon what extremes in piffle I used to think was witty conversation, and they discovered speedily that my non-alcoholic communications fitted in neither with the spirit nor the spirits of the occasion.

The crying need of the society of this country is a non-alcoholic beverage that can be drunk in quant.i.ties similar to the quant.i.ties in which highb.a.l.l.s can be drunk. A man who is a good, handy drinker can lap up half a dozen highb.a.l.l.s in the course of an evening--and many lap up considerably more than that number and hold them comfortably; but the man does not exist who can drink half of that bulk of water or ginger ale, or of any of the first-aids-to-the-non-drinkers, and not be both flooded and foundered. The human stomach will easily accommodate numerous seidels of beer, poured in at regular or irregular intervals; but the human stomach cannot and will not take care of a similar number of seidels of water, or of any other liquid that comes in the guise of stuff that neither cheers nor inebriates. I have never looked up the scientific reason for this. I state it as a fact, proved by my own attempts to accomplish with water what I used easily to do with highb.a.l.l.s, Pilsner and other naughty substances.

The reformer boys will tell you there is no special need for such a drink; that water is all-sufficient. Of course everybody knows the reformer boys think the world is going to h.e.l.l in a hanging basket unless each person in it comports himself and herself as the reformer boy dictates! But it is not so. And it is so that the social intercourse, the interchange of ideas between man and man, both in this country and in every other country, is often predicated on drinking as a concomitant.

We may bewail this, but we cannot dodge it. Hence any man who has been used to the normal society of his fellows along the lines by which I became used to that society, and along the lines by which ninety per cent of the men in this country become used to that society, must make a bluff at drinking something now and then. If he is not a partaker of alcohol he has his troubles in finding a medium for his imbibing, unless he goes the entire limit and cuts out the society of all friends who drink, which leaves him in a rather sequestrated and senseless position--not, of course, that there are not plenty of interesting men who do not drink, but that so many interesting men do.

So the problem of a non-drinker resolves itself to this: How can he continue in the companions.h.i.+p of the men he likes, and who possibly like him, and not drink? How can he remain a social animal, with the fellows.h.i.+p of his kind, and stay on the water-wagon? Well, it is a difficult problem, especially for persons situated as I was, who had spent twenty years acc.u.mulating a large a.s.sortment of acquaintances who used the stuff in moderation, but with added social zest to their goings and comings.

When a man first stops drinking he is likely to become censorious. That starts him badly. Also he is likely to become serious. That marks him down fifteen points out of a possible thirty. He flocks by himself, thinking high thoughts about his purity of purpose, his vast wisdom, his acute realization of the dangers that formerly beset his path and now beset the path of all those who are not walking side by side and in close communion with him. He pins medals all over himself, pats himself on the chest, and is much better than his kind.

Then he wakes up--unless he is a chump and a Pharisee. If he is one or both of those he never wakes up, but soon pa.s.ses beyond the pale. When he wakes up--a.s.suming he has intelligence enough to do that--he gets an acute realization that if he holds off in that manner much longer even the elevator boys will not speak to him; and he comes to a point where he finds out that the wisest of the wise saws is that a man who is in Rome should do as the Romans do, with such modifications as his personal circ.u.mstances may demand. Personally I found the most advantageous course to pursue was to drop the highfalutin air of extreme virtue that oppressed me and depressed my friends for the first few months and consider the whole thing as a joke.