t takes eighteen months for a man to get the
alcohol entirely out of his system--provided, of course, he has been a
reasonably consistent consumer of it for a period of years. I think that
is correct. Of course he did not mean--nor do I--that the alcohol
actually remains in one's system, but that the sub-acute effects
remain--that the system is not entirely reorganized on the new basis
before that time; that the renovation is not complete.

I do not know exactly how to phrase it; but, as nearly as I can express
it, the condition amounts to this: After a man has been a reasonably
steady drinker for a period of years, and quits drinking, there remain
within him mental and some physical alcoholic tendencies. These are
acute for the earlier stages, and gradually come to be almost
subconscious--that is, though there is no physical alcoholization of his
body, the mental alcoholization has not departed. I do not mean that his
mind or mental powers are in any way affected to their detriment. What I
do mean is that there remains in every man a remembrance, the ghost of a
desire, the haunting thoughts of how good a certain kind of a drink
would taste, and a regret for joys of companionship with one's fellows
in the old way and in the old game, which takes time--and a good deal of
time--to eradicate.

It becomes a sort of state of mind. The body does not crave liquor. All
that is past. There is no actual desire for it. Indeed, the thought of
again taking a drink may be physically repugnant; but there is a sort of
phantom of renounced good times that hangs round and worries and
obtrudes in blue hours and lonesome hours and letdown hours--a
persistent, insistent sort of ghost-thought that flits across the mind
from time to time and stimulates the what's-the-use portion of a man's
thinking apparatus into active, personal inquiry, based on the _dum
vivimus_, _vivamus_ proposition.

I know this will be disputed by many men who have quit drinking and who
beat themselves on the chests and boast: "I never think of it! Never, I
assure you! I quit; and after a few days the thought of drinking never
entered my mind." I have only one reply for these persons; and, phrasing
it as politely as I can, I say to them that they are all liars.
Moreover, they are the worst sort of liars, for they not only lie to
others but commit the useless folly of lying to themselves. They may
think they do not lie; but they do.

There is not one of them--not on