LOSS OF SELF-CONTROL

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue X, 7 September 1895, Page 310

LOSS OF SELF-CONTROL

Some persons have naturally weak wills. As the common saying is, they are easily influenced. Their only safety lies in freedom from temptation. Others have will enough, but it is enlisted on the wrong side, and strengthens itself for evil. There are other persons whose wills, however strong they may have been originally, are now the slaves of passion, or have become paralysed by the use of strong drink or drugs. The helplessness of their case is not due merely to the power of a wrong habit, but to induced cerebral degeneration—the atrophy of important cells of the brain. Their condition is like that of the incurably insane. An article in the Quarterly Journal of Inebriety strongly emphasizes this latter fact. According to it many drunkards are utterly beyond cure, because the brain cells have become atrophied. In cases where the malady has not reached this hopeless condition, much may be done by restoring the functions of the brain and body to a normal tone. The craving set up by the use of opium is one of the most persistent and intense, and of course one of the most difficult to resist. It has no remission nor periodicity. The dose has to be increased until the amount is such ss to impair the nutrition of the brain, disturb the whole alimentary system, and ultimately to destroy the power of natural sleep. The habit is most injurious to the higher mental faculties, and especially impairs the will. Chloral differs from other drugs for which there is a craving in that it is in no degree a stimulant. It simply produces forgetfulness and sleep. A craving for it is a strange and abnormal thing, and is to be explained only by the effects of the drug on the substance of the brain. Cocaine is the most absolute destroyer of the moral sense that we yet know. The craving for it becomes intense, and all self-control is lost. The dose has to be increased faster than that of any other drug. The immediate effects are transient, but not so the craving when once it is created.