TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3882, 7 August 1928, Page 10

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

(Published by arrangement with United Temperance Reform Council.) “Alcohol greases the skids of every path that leads to perdition.”—Dr M'Keedy, Melbourne. THE APPROACH TO THE ADOLESCENT. By the Rev. Courtenay C. Weeks, M.R.C.S.. L.R.C.P. 11. As th< adolescent emerges from the dependence and tutelage of home into the independence and trusteeship of possible parenthood, he or she is often only dimly conscious of sex as such; consequently, they need the most careful guidance and help. Do not embark on sex teaching unless you feel very specially called to it; and w».en you do, always remember that the sex instincts are reallv among the most beautifully glorious things in life unless they be degraded. So much of tne sex thought of to-day is coloured by the tragedy -and demoralisation of life that it is locked upon as something essentially unsavoury. Novels and the stage frequently deal with sex perversion—much of the pathology of Freud has been appjiec both crudely and ignorantly to healthy conditions—so that only too often the whole influence of sex i B considered the ally of moral disease and death, rather than what it should be, the ally and handmaid of much that is most beautiful in life.

HOW ALCOHOL MAY AFFECT HUMAN CHARACTERISTICS.

~ I; Growth and Development. Alcoholic indulgence inhibits growth and normal development. One does not hesitate to claim that practically evl»j-v v one who has a right to speak on this subject is agreed that, whatever we may say about alcohol for adults, alcohol is both unnecessary and certainly detrimental in the growing period of life. Japan, tor example, with her great financial ana national aspirations in the East, is seeking at this moment, by legislation, to prevent alcohol being given to any young person under 25 years. The reason for total abstinence in the growing period is pre-eminently the fact that alcohol has a special selective action on the brain cells. Every child born into the world is born with a finite stock of brain cells. These are provided with fibres which connect with other brain cells, and one main fibre for the entry or exit of impulses to other parts. The brain cells are permanent structures, and if destroyed there ie no reproduction, and the damage is permanent. The fine fibres, or “ dendrites ” as they are called, by their growth and interconnection form the physical background of mental efficiency. During adolescence there is a marked growth of these (largely under influence from sex glands), especially in the upper arid higher part of the brain, which is the instrument of attention, judgment, self-criticism, and self-control. These are the last parts of the brain to form, the dendrites being like the tendrils of a plant, which give the promise of later fruit and flower—alcohol, like a frost, nips them only too easily. There is another reason. Mental efficiency depends not only on growth, but upon the inborn strength or durability of the cells. Alcohol in excess in a parent may result in lessened durability in the brain-cells of his or her child. If the durability fails, then there is an adolescent nervous breakdown. None of us knows what is the breaking-point of our nervous system, and alcohol in the adolescent may be just the last straw which causes a break under the strain and stress of the period, even in an otherwise normal brain.

ll.—The Adaptation of Self-consciosuness to the Demands of Life. Self-consciousness usually dawns somewhere about the third year. The “I ” of the individual is dimly recognised and fradually finds expression. We are all amiliar in family life with the way in which the child up till about the third year expresses herself and speaks of herself in the third person: “Mary” wants so-and-so; and then one day, “I ” want so-and-so. From that" time onwards the nascent self-consciousness is shaped, moulded, and profoundly influenced by the environment of home and school. Here, for example, is a child—she is, perhaps (poor kiddie!) an only child—pretty and engaging, and is adored and cared for by an indulgent mother, a maiden aunt, or a nurse. How easily this may be a trinity of evil for the child! Wbe- of us has not met the spoilt child? Lvt the admiration be unwise, unbalanced, and the child will develop what Hadfield and others have termed a “ fantasy of selfdisplay.” Let such a child dominate, as many do, the home, and it becomes a fantasy of self-importance. On the other hand, there is the child of a vicious home—cuffed and neglected until it, too, develops a fantasy of self-inferiority. Now, with these fantasies fixed in the mind, thrust such a child into the hurlyburly of life, call it to face the hard, often grim, realities of a not over-kind or indulgent, commercial, industrial or even social life. What does it find? It finds how difficult it is to reconcile the fantasy which has become almost a second nature with the actualities of existence. The young adolescent, with deepening urge of a growing self-consciousness, no longer the centre of attraction, no longer able to dominate his little world, has to fend for himself or herself; the demand is too great, adaption fails, reality is too hard to face, and only too often the young adult becomes a neurotic. Then comes the danger; alcohol is taken, the sensitive, smarting consciousness of well-being—the individual takes flight from the conflict with reality in the illusion of narcosis. There are to-day a number of men and women in the grip of alcohol simply as a result of their flight from the realities of a world for which they were unprepared. (To be continued.)