.

One morning, at eleven-thirty, before I got into the hammock, I took a
cocktail. I repeated this on subsequent mornings, of course, taking
another cocktail just before I ate at twelve-thirty. Soon I found
myself, seated at my desk in the midst of my thousand words, looking
forward to that eleven-thirty cocktail.

At last, now, I was thoroughly conscious that I desired alcohol. But
what of it? I wasn't afraid of John Barleycorn. I had associated with
him too long. I was wise in the matter of drink. I was discreet. Never
again would I drink to excess. I knew the dangers and the pitfalls of
John Barleycorn, the various ways by which he had tried to kill me in the
past. But all that was past, long past. Never again would I drink
myself to stupefaction. Never again would I get drunk. All I wanted,
and all I would take, was just enough to glow and warm me, to kick
geniality alive in me and put laughter in my throat and stir the maggots
of imagination slightly in my brain. Oh, I was thoroughly master of
myself, and of John Barleycorn.

CHAPTER XXXI

But the same stimulus to the human organism will not continue to produce
the same response. By and by I discovered there was no kick at all in
one cocktail. One cocktail left me dead. There was no glow, no laughter
tickle. Two or three cocktails were required to produce the original
effect of one. And I wanted that effect. I drank my first cocktail at
eleven-thirty when I took the morning's mail into the hammock, and I
drank my second cocktail an hour later just before I ate. I got into the
habit of crawling out of the hammock ten minutes earlier so as to find
time and decency for two more cocktails ere I ate. This became
schedule--three cocktails in the hour that intervened between my desk and
dinner. And these are two of the deadliest drinking habits: regular
drinking and solitary drinking.

I was always willing to drink when any one was around. I drank by myself
when no one was around. Then I made another step. When I had for guest
a man of limited drinking calibre, I took two drinks to his one--one
drink with him, the other drink without him and of which he did not know.
I STOLE that other drink, and, worse than that, I began the habit of
drinking alone when there was a guest, a man, a comrade, with whom I
could have drunk. But John Barleycorn furnished the extenuation. It was
a wrong thing to trip a guest up with excess of hospitality