Something I wish someone had told me about sooner is 'John Barleycorn: An
Alcoholic Memoir' by Jack London. This relatively short account of the
development of his alcohol dependency is by far the best thing of its kind I
have ever read. It was published in 1913 when London was 43 years old, and was
a best seller. London argues for female suffrage on the basis that voting
women will indubitably vote to prohibit alcohol as a first order of business.
And he believes that will be a very good thing indeed. It is a peculiar
sensation to view with the perspective of hindsight the ardent prelude to the
Great Experiment - Prohibition.
 
Jack London was a literary genius, and writes of the subjective experience of
progressive alcoholism as only a literary genius can. I found this little book
quite by accident in a collection of his writings published by Barnes & Noble.
The title, 'John Barleycorn,' was of course what caught my eye. My expectation
was that the book would be a more or less maudlin cautionary tale of a
distinctly Victorian flavor. That was not the way it worked out - at least in
my reading of the work.
 
Reading 'John Barleycorn' is like listening to Jack London tell his story at
an AA meeting. It is an experience I am grateful to have had. As a not
inconsiderable side benefit, one is reminded that London was a complex and
conflicted man, much more interesting than the Walt Disney image people tend
to have who are only familiar with his works as they are, ironically,
presented for children.
 
Like many who have had first hand experience with the disease of alcoholism,
London personifies the Adversary as an independent, deceitful and deadly
force, an entity whispering ceaselessly in his ear, deluding his mind,
ravaging his life. But he is no reformed drunkard, announcing at the end of
his memoir that he was in fact never a drunkard, and certainly not reformed.
He plans to drink more carefully!
 
Jack London was at special pains to point out that he was no dipsomaniac by
birth. He allows that there are such, but believes they are a tiny and
insignifcant minority. From the standpoint of his manly, chesty, Nietzschean
grandeur, he regards such hopeless gutter drunkards as weaklings. Yet at one
point he expresses some sympathy and understanding for them - when he realizes
how 'cunning, baffling, and powerful' his alcoholic demon is.
 
London attributes his alcoholism to socialization in the ways of saloons. He
claims that years of habituation and association with the ways of strong
drink, woven inextricably into the path of adventure and manhood he so
strongly sought, laid the foundation for the development in his later years of
a craving for drink. Close the saloons and ban the booze, he wrote, and you
will spare future generations of young men -he does not mention women
alcoholics- the ruin and despair of habitual drunkenness.
 
His account of the development of the compulsion to drink, the obsession with
alcohol, and the sneaking and doubling of drinks, morning drinking,
rationalized and medicinal drinking, and much more that is familiar to us,
really ought not to be missed by anyone interested in this sort of thing.