Samuel G. Blythe

“ You are busy all the time—but get nowhere. Work is the curse of the drinking classes.
Any man who has been accustomed to do the kind of drinking I did for twenty years, who likes the sociability and the companionship of it, will find that the sudden transition to a non-drinking life [Pg 60] will leave him with a pretty dull existence on his hands until he gets reorganized. This is the depressing part of it. You have nowhere to go and nothing to do. Still, though you may miss the fun of the evening, you have all your drinking friends lashed to the mast in the morning. ”

“ You have all known the man who says he quit drinking and never thought of drink again. He is a liar. He doesn't exist. No man in this world who had a daily habit of drinking ever quit and never thought of drinking again. Many men, because they habitually lie to themselves, think they have done this; but they haven't. The fact is, no man with a daily habit of drinking ever quit and thought of anything else than how good a drink would taste and feel for a time after he quit. ”

“ Most of these things radiate round the innate hypocrisy of the human being. All those that do not concern his hypocrisy concern his lying—which, I reckon, when you come to stack them up together, amounts to the same thing. ”

“ That is the reason drinking liquor gets so many people—either by wrecking their health or by fastening on them the habit they cannot stop. They fool themselves. They are perfectly well aware that their neighbors are drinking too much—but not themselves. Far be it from them not to have the will-power to stop when it is time to stop. They are smarter than their neighbors. ”

“ I find I have much more time that I can devote to my business; that I think more clearly, feel better, do not make any loose statements under the exhilaration [Pg 59] of alcohol, and keep my mind on my number constantly. The item of time is the surprising item. It is astonishing how much time you have to do things in that formerly you used to drink in, with the accompaniment of all the piffle that goes with drinking! When you are drinking you are never too busy to take a drink and never too busy not to stop. ”

“ I had a good lively tilt with John Barleycorn, ranging over twenty years. I know all about drinking. I figured it this way: I have about fifteen more good, productive years in me. After that I shall lose in efficiency, even if I keep my health. Being selfish and perhaps getting sensible, I desire the remaining productive years of my life to be years of the greatest efficiency. Looking back over my drinking years, I saw, if I was to attain and keep that greatest efficiency, [Pg 58] that was my job, and that it could not be complicated with any booze-fighting whatsoever. ”

“ This is the human-nature side of it, but the professional reformers know less about human nature, and care less, than about any other phase of life. Still, the fact remains that with any habit, and especially [Pg 28] with the liquor habit—probably because that is the most prevalent habit there is—nine-tenths of the subjects delude themselves about how much of a habit they have; and, second, that nine-tenths of those with the habit have a very clear idea of the extent to which the habit is fastened on others. They are fooled about themselves, but never about their neighbors! ”

“ Every man knows exactly how bogus he is and should admit it—to himself only. The man who, knowing his bogusness, refuses to admit it to himself—no matter what his attitude may be to the outside world—simply stores up trouble for himself, and discomfort and much else. ”

“ There are hundreds of thousands of men in all walks of life in this country who for twenty or thirty years have never lived a minute when there was not more or less alcohol in their systems, who cannot be said to have been strictly and entirely sober in all that time, but who do their work, perform all their social duties, make their careers and are fairly successful just the same. ”

“ A German I knew once told me the difference between Old-World drinking and American drinking was that the German, for example, drinks for the pleasure of the drink, while the American drinks for the alcohol in it. That may be so; but very few men who have any sense or any age set out deliberately to get drunk. Such drunkenness as there is among men of that sort usually comes more by accident than by design.
My definition of a drunkard has [Pg 30] always been this: A man is a drunkard when he drinks whisky or any other liquor before breakfast. ”

“ Why not quit and take a chance at a new mode of [Pg 38] living, especially when you know absolutely that every health reason, every future-prospect reason, every atom of good sense in you, tells you there is nothing to be gained by keeping at it, and that all may be lost? ”

“ They want other people to stop drinking because they want other people to stop. So they make laws that are violated, and get pledges that are broken and try to legislate or preach or coax or scare away a habit that must, in any successful outcome, be stopped by the individual, and not because of any law or threat or terror or cajolery. ”

“ The kind of drinking you do makes greatly for sociability, and you are a sociable person and like to be round with congenial people. You will miss a lot of fun, a lot of good, clever companionship, for you are too old to form a new line of friends. ”

“ So far, liquor hasn't done anything to you except cause you to waste some time that might have been otherwise employed; but it will get you, just as it has landed a lot of your friends, if you stay by it. Wouldn't it be better to miss some of this stuff you have come to think of as fun, and live longer? There is no novelty in drinking to you. You haven't an appetite that cannot be checked, but you will have if you stick to it much longer. ”

“ If you quit drinking, you will necessarily have to quit a lot of these friends, and quit their parties and company—for a man who doesn't drink is always a death's-head at a feast or merrymaking where drinking is going on. ”

“ Why make a hermit of yourself just because you think drinking may harm you? Cut it down. Take care of yourself. Don't be such a fool as to try to change your manner of living just when you have an opportunity to live as [Pg 37] you should and enjoy what is coming to you. ”

“ There are no two ways about it—a man cannot drink water in a company where others are drinking highballs and get into the game with any effectiveness. Any person who quits drinking may as well accept that as a fact; and most persons will stop trying after a time and seek new diversions; or begin drinking again. ”

“ There are many [Pg 24] phases of personal understanding of oneself that need not be put in the newspapers or proclaimed publicly. Still, for a man to gold-brick himself is a profitless undertaking, but prevalent notwithstanding. ”

“ Here is the way it totted up against quitting: Practically every friend you have in the United States—and you've got a lot of them—drinks more or less. You have not cultivated any other line of associates. ”

“ Both the deaths and the derangements had liquor as a contributing if not as a direct cause. Nobody said that, of course; but I knew it.
So I held a caucus with myself. I called myself into convention and discussed the proposition somewhat like this: [Pg 17]
"You are now over forty years of age. You are sound physically and you are no weaker mentally than you have always been, so far as can be discovered by the outside world. You have had a lot of fun, much of it complicated with the conviviality that comes with drinking and much of it not so complicated ”