Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 83.djvu/260

256 issue in excessive use and so lead to many unhappy and disagreeable consequences, such as drunkenness, disability for work, domestic trouble, poverty, crime and degeneracy of offspring.

We are thus brought finally face to face with the question, Why do men desire alcohol? The theories hitherto advanced in explanation of the alcohol motive have failed to take into account certain essential facts in regard to the problem and have therefore been incomplete. Among these facts are the following: The desire for alcohol is common both to civilized and uncivilized man. It tends to increase rather than to decrease with the advance of civilization in spite of vigorous and to some extent successful efforts to restrain it. It has reached an unparalleled degree of intensity at the present time in prosperous communities relatively rich in comforts and luxuries. It is strong, again, in industrial and manufacturing centers among plodding and underpaid laborers. It is somewhat stronger in northern progressive races than among the less progressive southern people. It is particularly characteristic of the adult male individual, the desire being decidedly less strong in women and children. It is not an appetite in the ordinary sense of the word, as it answers to no inner need of the body so far as is known. To these facts should be added those specially noted above, namely, that alcohol apparently adds nothing to either physical or mental efficiency, that it contributes nothing to health or longevity, and does not enhance social well-being.

Is it possible to explain the desire for alcohol on the ground of its immediate pleasurable mental effects? It deadens pain to some extent and drives away care. It produces a feeling of euphoria, of well-being, comfort, contentment, ease and inner harmony. Under the influence of alcohol many of the unpleasant feelings accompanying the daily drudgery of life temporarily disappear or are at least alleviated, such, for instance, as fatigue, apprehension, fear, worry, anxiety and to some extent physical pain. Selecting one from any number of illustrations which might be drawn from literature, we read in Gösta Berling:

Another author, picturing the hopeless grinding toil of the coal miner, his monotonous and unillumined life, his long work day, his hasty and insufficient supper and his hard bed, says that at the end of the week when a little respite comes, the "demand for joy" drives this coal miner to the saloon.

But this explanation, at first sight partially adequate, when more