Both of these men know very well that only a small percentage of drug-takers have begun the practice in consequence of a serious ailment, and that even this small percentage might have been decreased by proper medical treatment directed at the cause rather than at its symptom, pain. An opiate, of course, never removes the cause of any physical trouble, but merely blunts the pain due to it; and it does this by tying up the functions of the body. It is perhaps a conservative estimate that only ten per cent. of the entire drug consumption in this country is applied to the purpose of blunting incurable pain. Thus ninety per cent. of the opiates used are, strictly speaking, unnecessary. In the innumerable cases that have come under my observation, seventy-five per cent. of the habitual users became such without reasonable excuse. Beginning with small occasional doses, they realized within a few weeks that they had lost self-control and could not discontinue the use of the drug. FORMING THE HABIT A very common source of this habit lies in the continued administration of an opiate in regular medical treatment without the patient's knowledge or consent, or in the persistent use of a patent medicine, or of a headache or catarrh powder that contains such a drug. The man who takes an opiate consciously or unconsciously, and receives from it a soothing or stimulating or pleasant effect, naturally turns to it again in case of the same need. The time soon arrives when the pleasurable part of the effect--if it was ever present--ceases to be obtained; and in order to get the soothing or stimulating effect, the dose must be constantly increased as tolerance increases. With those who take a drug to blunt a pain which can be removed in no other way, it is fulfilling its legitimate and supreme mission and admits of no substitute. Where it was ever physically necessary, and that necessity still continues, an opiate would seem inevitable. But the percentage of such sufferers, as I have said, is small. The rest are impelled simply by craving--that intolerable craving which arises from deprivation of the drug. But whether a man has acquired the habit knowingly or unknowingly, its action is always the same. No matter how conscientiously he wishes to discharge his affairs, the drug at once begins to loosen his sense of moral obligation, until in the end it brings about absolute irresponsibility. Avoidance and neglect of customary duties, evasion of new ones, extraordinary resourcefulness in the discovery of the line of least resistance, and finally amazing cunning and treachery--this is the inevitable history.