THE DELUSION OF ALCOHOL.

Otago Witness, Volume 14, Issue 2648, 14 December 1904, Page 14

THE DELUSION OF ALCOHOL.

By K. R. E.

Apart from psychology, the cause ot drunkenness will never be understood. Neglect this study, and the word " cure " applied to the inebriate remains a cruel cheat. Despite medicine and the discovered " specifics," the drunkard is still a victim to alcohol. Retreats do not hide him ; nor does the parental discipline of Government reformatories control him. Alas, even in a prohibition district the heroine of " nolicense " prays her God for deliverance from the matrimonial yoke of a drunken husband. In the Church or in heathendom, on the judicial bench or at the prisoner's bar, in the parliament of peace and order, or on the field- of war and anarchy, wherever the observant traveller seeks, there the deluded victim of alcohol is found.

A Government report on homes for inebriates defines drunkenness as a disease of volition that can only be cured by the exercise of the subject's will. It (the report) says : "To make the exercise of the volition a possibility, .the best means is to enforce abstinence, to put the patient under healthy conditions, to make him lead a quiet, regular life, to provide him with wholesome- food, and to do the utmost to secure him a regular employment in the open air, always stopping short of bodily exhaustion and fatigue." But; according to another official report, one of tho subjects to this treatment has developed the potency of hi 3 " diseased " volition to such a degree that, despite the wills of the staff of the Orokonui Home, he has on several occasions escaped for the purpose of drunkenness. Instead of drunkenness being a disease of volition (i.e., a weak will), the truth is probably the opposite^ — that law and repute, dear ones and all else, are sacrificed to the imperious desire of the will to drink.

What, then, may be asked, is the psychology of drunkenness? Evidently the will of the individual to live on the plane of sensation. Let me explain. I, an individual, may live — (1) on the plane of sensation; (2) on the plane of thought; (3) on the plane of sublimal consciousness. On the plane of sensation my will excludes all desire to know the laws of cause and effect, as well as all intuitive consciousness from the plane of sublimal life. I want to feel, I want ,to hear, I want to see, I want to smell, I want to taste ; but I desire neither study nor spiritual consciousness. My will excludes the world of thought and rejects all moral monitions I desire only to express myself in physical existence. With friends, I feel sociable; I hear the names and qualities of different drinks ; I SEE the liquid light of alcohol scintillating in its glassy vessel; I smell its fiery breath, and, to taste its flavours, I drink. Thus impelled by my will for sensation, I sink Down into the dark abyss, Into the eternal abyss, Prom which no plummet or rope Ever drew up the silver sand of hope.

On the plane of thought, under the impulse of will, I study the rules of logic, and reason on things and their relations. But my ideas "are eternally linked to matter." In skilled dialectics, I may argue on the merits of beverages. My thoughtful studies inform me that alcohol is a hydro-carbon — a food and heat producer. Sensibly, other food satisfies my appetite, yet despite all reasoning my appetite increases as alcohol is consumed. But on the thought plane, ideas dominate the senses. I "think alcohol is a medicine, a stimulant, or a tonic. But again, despite my thoughts, alcohol makes me as "sick as a dog." Instead of stimulating my wits, the drink makes me talk like a fool and act like an idiot. Instead of steadying my nerves, alcohol gives me the delirium tremens. Yes, whilst I will only to think, I am dominated by my opinions — old falsehoods that smoulder and smoulder, And yearly by many hundred hands Are carried aw.iy in the zeal of youth, And sown like tares in the field of truth, To blossom and ripen in other lands'.

On ihe plane of sublimal consciousness my being intuitively awakes to the monitions of faith, hope, and conscience. The "1" is gradually forgotten. With promptings to duty, the desires are silenced, and the will to want and think is replaced by the divine consciousness of love and light. Far across the desolate land of woe, O'er whose burning sands I was forced to go, A wind from heaven began to blow ; And all my being trembled and sliQolr

As the leaves. of the tree, or the grass of tlio field ; And I was healed, as the sick are healed, When fanned by the leaves of tho Holy Book.