Chapter XXXIX

by Jack London

　　Of course, no personal tale is complete without bringing thenarrative of the person down to the last moment. But mine is notale of a reformed drunkard. I was never a drunkard, and I havenot reformed.

　　It chanced, some time ago, that I made a voyage of one hundred andforty-eight days in a windjammer around the Horn. I took noprivate supply of alcohol along, and, though there was no day ofthose one hundred and forty-eight days that I could not have got adrink from the captain, I did not take a drink. I did not take adrink because I did not desire a drink. No one else drank onboard. The atmosphere for drinking was not present, and in mysystem there was no organic need for alcohol. My chemistry didnot demand alcohol.

　　So there arose before me a problem, a clear and simple problem:This is so easy, why not keep it up when you get back on land? Iweighed this problem carefully. I weighed it for five months, ina state of absolute non-contact with alcohol. And out of the dataof past experience, I reached certain conclusions.

　　In the first place, I am convinced that not one man in tenthousand or in a hundred thousand is a genuine, chemicaldipsomaniac. Drinking, as I deem it, is practically entirely ahabit of mind. It is unlike tobacco, or cocaine, or morphine, orall the rest of the long list of drugs. The desire for alcohol isquite peculiarly mental in its origin. It is a matter of mentaltraining and growth, and it is cultivated in social soil. Not onedrinker in a million began drinking alone. All drinkers beginsocially, and this drinking is accompanied by a thousand socialconnotations such as I have described out of my own experience inthe first part of this narrative. These social connotations arethe stuff of which the drink habit is largely composed. The partthat alcohol itself plays is inconsiderable when compared with thepart played by the social atmosphere in which it is drunk. Thehuman is rarely born these days, who, without long training in thesocial associations of drinking, feels the irresistible chemicalpropulsion of his system toward alcohol. I do assume that suchrare individuals are born, but I have never encountered one.

　　On this long, five-months' voyage, I found that among all mybodily needs not the slightest shred of a bodily need for alcoholexisted. But this I did find: my need was mental and social.When I thought of alcohol, the connotation was fellowship. When Ithought of fellowship, the connotation was alcohol. Fellowshipand alcohol were Siamese twins. They always occurred linkedtogether.

　　Thus, when reading in my deck chair or when talking with others,practically any mention of any part of the world I knew instantlyaroused the connotation of drinking and good fellows. Big nightsand days and moments, all purple passages and freedoms, throngedmy memory. "Venice" stares at me from the printed page, and Iremember the cafe tables on the sidewalks. "The Battle ofSantiago," some one says, and I answer, "Yes, I've been over theground." But I do not see the ground, nor Kettle Hill, nor thePeace Tree. What I see is the Cafe Venus, on the plaza ofSantiago, where one hot night I drank and talked with a dyingconsumptive.

　　The East End of London, I read, or some one says; and first ofall, under my eyelids, leap the visions of the shining pubs, andin my ears echo the calls for "two of bitter" and "three ofScotch." The Latin Quarter--at once I am in the student cabarets,bright faces and keen spirits around me, sipping cool, well-dripped absinthe while our voices mount and soar in Latin fashionas we settle God and art and democracy and the rest of the simpleproblems of existence.

　　In a pampero off the River Plate we speculate, if we are disabled,of running in to Buenos Ayres, the "Paris of America," and I havevisions of bright congregating places of men, of the jollity ofraised glasses, and of song and cheer and the hum of genialvoices. When we have picked up the North-east Trades in thePacific we try to persuade our dying captain to run for Honolulu,and while I persuade I see myself again drinking cocktails on thecool lanais and fizzes out at Waikiki where the surf rolls in.Some one mentions the way wild ducks are cooked in the restaurantsof San Francisco, and at once I am transported to the light andclatter of many tables, where I gaze at old friends across thegolden brims of long-stemmed Rhine-wine glasses.

　　And so I pondered my problem. I should not care to revisit allthese fair places of the world except in the fashion I visitedthem before. Glass in hand! There is a magic in the phrase. Itmeans more than all the words in the dictionary can be made tomean. It is a habit of mind to which I have been trained all mylife. It is now part of the stuff that composes me. I like thebubbling play of wit, the chesty laughs, the resonant voices ofmen, when, glass in hand, they shut the grey world outside andprod their brains with the fun and folly of an accelerated pulse.

　　No, I decided; I shall take my drink on occasion. With all thebooks on my shelves, with all the thoughts of the thinkers shadedby my particular temperament, I decided coolly and deliberatelythat I should continue to do what I had been trained to want todo. I would drink--but oh, more skilfully, more discreetly, thanever before. Never again would I be a peripatetic conflagration.Never again would I invoke the White Logic. I had learned how notto invoke him.

　　The White Logic now lies decently buried alongside the LongSickness. Neither will afflict me again. It is many a year sinceI laid the Long Sickness away; his sleep is sound. And just assound is the sleep of the White Logic. And yet, in conclusion, Ican well say that I wish my forefathers had banished JohnBarleycorn before my time. I regret that John Barleycornflourished everywhere in the system of society in which I wasborn, else I should not have made his acquaintance, and I was longtrained in his acquaintance.