304 THE HUMAN MECHANISM 



to a drink; the friend wishes to return the compliment and 

 so they drink again; the person with deficient self-control 

 and what little he has now lessened insists upon a third, 

 and so on, perhaps to intoxication. This, of course, does 

 not always happen; thousands are strong and escape the 

 danger, but thousands are weak or do not know better, and 

 many a week's wages has gone in this way, leaving behind 

 poverty and misery and impaired capacity before the close 

 of Saturday night. 



21. Concluding remarks on the use of alcoholic beverages. 

 In the foregoing pages we have stated the salient facts 

 concerning the physiological action of alcohol and alcoholic 

 drinks. It only remains to point out for the student the 

 obvious conclusions to be drawn from them and from the 

 long and, on the whole, very sad experience of the race with 

 alcoholic drinks. The first is that except in sickness and 

 under the advice of a physician, alcoholic drinks are wholly 

 unnecessary and much more likely to prove harmful than 

 beneficial. The second is that their frequent and especially 

 their constant use is attended with the gravest danger to 

 the user, no matter how strong or self-controlled he may be. 



It is true that history and romance and poetry contain 

 many attractive allusions to wine and other alcoholic drinks, 

 and it may also be true that such drinks, by loosening 

 tongues and breaking down social, political, or other barriers 

 (removing inhibitions), may tend towards conviviality and 

 good-fellowship ; but it is no less true that the path of his- 

 tory is strewn with human wreckage directly due to alcohol; 

 that many a promising career has been drowned in wine; 

 and that indescribable misery follows in the trail of drunken- 

 ness. The only absolutely safe attitude toward alcoholic 

 drinks is that of total abstinence from their use as beverages. 



22. Opium, morphine, and the opium habit. The danger 

 of the use of drugs as a regular habit of life is perhaps 

 most painfully illustrated by what is known as the opium 



