Habits that Handicap: The Menace of Opium, Alcohol, and Tobacco, and the RemedyTowns, Charles Barnes
Science
Habits that Handicap: The Menace of Opium, Alcohol, and Tobacco, and the Remedy
Towns, Charles Barnes
Alcoholism; Opium abuse -- United States; Tobacco use
The victim of drugs psychologically differs very materially from the
victim of drink. Until his trouble has reached an acute stage, the
alcoholic feels little interest in any of the methods advertised as
remedial for alcoholism. Many men deny to their friends and even to
themselves that they are alcoholics until they have reached a point akin
to hopelessness in their friends' eyes and their own. The drug-user, on
the other hand, knows that he is a victim as soon as he becomes one; in
ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he is immediately filled with an
intense longing to be relieved of his habit. Thousands of alcoholics will
defend their vice. A library might be filled with books, fictional and
other, glorifying alcohol and the good-fellowship and conviviality that it
is supposed to promote. One might search a long time for a victim of any
drug habit who would speak with affection of the material which has
enthralled him. No poet has ever written any song glorifying morphine.
There is no drug-user in the world who would not hail with joy any
opportunity that might lead to his relief. The drug-victim investigates
every hint of hope with eager interest, reading, intelligently
questioning, experimenting. He shrinks from publicity with a horror that
is backed by an acute consciousness of his condition, while the victim of
alcohol becomes so mentally distorted or deadened that he takes no thought
of consequences, cares nothing for publicity, and finds himself unable to
avoid public exhibitions of a kind that put him into the hands of the
police. Public hospitals do not tempt the drug-user for, having
investigated them, he knows that they are not competent to give him real
relief.
EXPEDIENTS OF DRUG-TAKERS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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