Drinking & Drunkeness

1. The Lesson
2. God and Hollywood
3. The Disease
4. A Frank and Honest Man
5. Noah's Vineyard
6. Committed to Intemperance
 

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The Lesson

          Allan Emery, had an experience which made a deep impression upon him. His father received a call saying a well-known Christian had been found at a certain place drunk on the sidewalk. Immediately his father sent his chauffeured limousine to pick the man up, while his mother prepared the best guest room. My friend watched wide-eyed, as the beautiful coverlets were turned down on the exquisite, old, four poster bed, revealing the monogrammed sheets.
   "But, mother," he protested, "he's drunk. He might even get sick."
   "I know," his mother replied kindly, "but this man has slipped and fallen. When he comes to, he will be so ashamed. He will need all the loving encouragement we can give him."
   It was a lesson the son never forgot.
 

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God and Hollywood

   God and Hollywood -- "Alcoholics Anonymous" is a lot like religion. and at the present moment, this religion is sweeping Hollywood. There are more than 2,000 AA meetings per week in Los Angeles, many of them jammed with people in the entertainment business.
   "If AA has put God on their minds, then it's fairly clear that God will soon appear on big and little screens -- the wheel is coming full circle. As the habits of the sixties make life unworkable, AA offers a way out. Religion, laughed out of town in the sixties and seventies, is making a comeback via the inevitable flight from the same forces that drove it out in the first place. This is going to shape mass culture, I suspect, in a big way."

   -- Benjamin J. Stein, Newsweek.

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The Disease

       If alcoholism is a disease,

 * It is the only disease that is bottled and sold;
 * It is the only disease that is contracted by the will of man;
 * It is the only disease that requires a license to propagate it;
 * It is the only disease that requires outlets to spread it.

   If alcoholism is a disease,

 * It is the only disease that produces revenue for the government;
 * It is the only disease that provokes crime;
 * It is the only disease that is habit forming;
 * It is the only disease that brings violent death on the highways;
 * It is the only disease that is spread by advertising;
 * It is the only disease without a germ or virus cause.
 
   It just might be that it's not a disease at all.

   -- Author unknown
 

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A Frank and Honest Man

       Do you think you will ever see a testimonial advertisement like this in your evening paper?

   "Friends and neighbors, I am grateful for past favors and have supplied my store with a fine line of choice liquors. I must inform you that I shall continue to make drunkards, paupers, and beggars for the respectable people of the community to support. My products will incite riot, robbery, and bloodshed. They will diminish your comfort, increase your expenses, shorten your life, and multiply fatal accidents and incurable diseases. They will deprive some of life, others of reason, many of character, and all of peace. I will thus, however, accommodate you, the public. I must face the reality that I have a family to support, that the business pays, and that your attendance encourages it. I have paid my license, and the traffic is lawful! If I don't sell it, someone else will. Please give me your patronage, for as you can see, I am a frank and honest man."
 
 

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Noah's Vineyard

      According to legend when Noah entered the ark he took along a vine. He had been a gardener before he built the ark, and when he settled again on the land after the deluge, he planted the vine once more and returned to his old occupation.
   As he worked in the garden, Satan came to him and said:
   "If you will let me help you, I can show you how to make grapes grow on the vine tomorrow."
   "That," said Noah, "is something worth seeing."
   Satan helped Noah plant the vine. Then Satan took a lamb, a lion, a monkey and a pig and watered the plant with their blood.
   That is why, after the first glass of wine, one becomes gentle as a lamb; after the second glass of wine, as daring as a lion; after the third glass one is apt to make a monkey of himself; and after the fourth glass of wine, a man becomes drunk and behaves like a pig.

   -- Lore of the Old Testament
 

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On the Water

      William Jennings Bryan, on a visit to Japan, attended a banquet in honor of a Japanese admiral.  To drink a toast the guests lifted their champagne glasses, but the American raised a glass of water.  As guests gasped, someone grabbed the statesman's arm and whispered that such a toast was considered an insult.  Equal to the situation, the American replied, turning to the admiral, "You have won victories on the water, so I drink your health in water.  Whenever you win on champagne, I shall drink your health in champagne."
 

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Committed To Intemperance

      In 1841 a thirty-three-year-old Englishman was walking to a temperance meeting some fifteen miles away.  He read a newspaper account of plans to open a railroad line in the same direction and reasoned that perhaps the railroad could be enticed to give reduced fares for groups of people who planned to travel together to the same destination.  The outcome was a special round-trip fare for the normal one-way rate.  The man's name was Thomas Cook who, virtually uncontested, remained the only travel agency of any size for the next fifty years.  Though Cook began as a temperance leader, not a travel agent, cynics might have assumed that the prosperity of his business would have weakened his primary interest - temperance.  But during his half-century in business, almost all of his earnings went to combat intemperance.
 

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