EARLY STAGE OF INEBRIETY.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 658, 3 October 1884, Page 7

EARLY STAGE OF INEBRIETY.

There are found in all parts of the country men and women who use alcohol regularly and in limited quantities. To the casual ob server they go on for years in this state and are apparently no worse, and finally die at last of some common disease, leaving the reputation of having lived wliat the inebriate would call an “ ideal life ” of moderate drinking. Why they drink is cot clear. If they have any reasons, it is always sustained by their unbounded faith in the capacity to abstain at any time at will. These caseß are inebriates in every respect, except in the prominence and intensity of the symptoms. There is no difference between the chronic case of the lowest type, and the highly respectable moderate Irinker, except one of degree. Both are suffering from a positive physical disease. In one case the disorder is developed ; in the other it is in the incipient stage. In the latter, from some obscure reason, the case never goes on to full development, but is always on the “ boarder land ” awaiting the action of some exciting cause, which may or may not be applied. A repelling power exists which builds up and neutralises the injuries received from alcohol to a certain extent. It is not will power which makes the difference between the inebriate and moderate drinker. It is phisiological and pathological conditions of the brain and nervous system, which the possessor ascribes to will power. Alcohol cannot be used in moderation without graves injuries to the nervecentres.

The moderate drinker is always diseased, although to the non-expert there are no clear symptoms or coarse lesions that can be seen. A careful study will reveal physically an irritable condition of the heart, with stomach and digestive troubles, also changing and disordered functional activity of all the organs at times. Psychically the disposition, habits, temper, and mental state slowly and gradually degenerate and become more unstable. The higher mental forces drop down or give place to lower motives and ambitious. No matter what his position in life may be, or his objects or plans, the moderate use of alcohol will alter and break down both physical and psychical energy and precipitate destruction. Moderate users of alcohol always die from disease provoked and stimulated by this drug. They always transmit a legacy of defective cell enery and exhaustion, which most readily finds relief in any alcohol or narcotic. But only a small per cent, of moderate drinkers remain so until death. The disease goes on to full development in inebriety in a vast majority of cases. The boasted will power to stop at all times is powerless before its peculiar exciting cause. Those who never go beyond this moderate use have simply never been exposed to this peculiar exciting cause. The moderate use of spirits for a lifetime is a mere accident in the order of nature, and the ability to stop, resting in the will power, is a popular fallacy. A certain number of cases have signs of incipient phthisis, which may never burst out into the full disease.

A small number of cases exposed to smallpox, or any infectious disease, never take it ; but these are the rare exceptions, whose causes are unknown, from which no deduc tions can be drawn. Moderate drinking that does not go on to inebriety is also an exception. The chain of exciting causes that bring on these extreme stages may or may not be understood, but they always break out sooner or later in the history of the case. Practically the study of this early stage of inebriety is of the utmost value in the treatment. Here remedial measures can be made of the greatest avail in checking and preventing any farther progress of the disease. When inebriety is fully recognised as a diseased condition, requiring study and medical care, this prodromous period of moderate drinking will receive the attention it deserves.

In the meantime, as scientific men, we must continue to call attention to this early beginning of inebriety, so full of indications and hints of the march of disease, whose progress and termination can often be predicted with positive certainty.—Journal of Inebrity.