The daily life of one of the steady drunkards is like this: upon
getting up in the morning, after a heavy, restless, drunkard's sleep,
he is miserable beyond expression, and almost helpless. In very bad
cases, he will see double, and his hands will tremble so that he cannot
lift to his lips the glass for which he has a desire amounting to
mania. Two or three stiff glasses of spirituous liquor will restore him
so far that he can control his muscles, and get about without betraying
his condition. After being up an hour, and drinking every ten or
fifteen minutes, he will usually be able to eat a pretty good
breakfast, which, with the aid of coffee, tobacco, and a comparatively
small quantity of liquor, he will be able to digest. After breakfast,
for some hours he will generally be able to transact routine business,
and associate with his fellows without exciting their pity or contempt.
As dinner-time draws near he feels the necessity of creating an
appetite; which he often accomplishes by drinking some of those
infernal compounds which are advertised on the eternal rocks and
mountain-sides as Bitters,--a mixture of bad drugs with worse spirits.
These bitters do lash the torpid powers into a momentary, morbid,
fierce activity, which enables the victim to eat even a superabundant
dinner. The false excitement subsides, but the dinner remains, and it
has to be digested. This calls for an occasional drink for three or
four hours, after which the system is exhausted, and the man feels dull
and languid. He is exhausted, but he is not tranquil; he craves a
continuation of the stimulant with a craving which human nature, so
abused and perverted, never resists. By this time it is evening, when
all the apparatus of temptation is in the fullest activity, and all the
loose population of the town is abroad. He now begins his evening
debauch, and keeps up a steady drinking until he can drink no more,
when he stumbles home to sleep off the stupefying fumes, and awake to
the horror and decrepitude of a drunkard's morning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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