He is so
constituted that the action of alcohol on the brain is distasteful
rather than pleasing to him. In other cases it is variation in
controlling satisfaction of immediate pleasures for later greater good.
Some of the real inebriates have a strong will and a real desire to be
sober, but have a different mental make-up, vividly described by William
James:[19] "The craving for drink in real dipsomaniacs, or for opium and
chloral in those subjugated, is of a strength of which normal persons
can have no conception. 'Were a keg of rum in one corner of the room,
and were a cannon constantly discharging balls between me and it, I
could not refrain from passing before that cannon in order to get that
rum. If a bottle of brandy stood on one hand, and the pit of hell yawned
on the other, and I were convinced I should be pushed in as surely as I
took one glass, I could not refrain.' Such statements abound in
dipsomaniacs' mouths." Between this extreme, and the other of the man
who is sickened by a single glass of beer, there are all intermediates.
Now, given an abundant and accessible supply of alcohol to a race, what
happens? Those who are not tempted or have adequate control, do not
drink to excess; those who are so constituted as to crave the effects of
alcohol (once they have experienced them), and who lack the ability to
deny themselves the immediate pleasure for the sake of a future gain,
seek to renew these pleasures of intoxication at every opportunity; and
the well attested result is that they are likely to drink themselves to
a premature death.
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