| But
not so with us in those last days of heavy drinking. The old
pleasures
were gone. They were but memories. Never could we recapture
the great
moments of the past. There was an insistent yearning to enjoy
life as
we once did and a heartbreaking obsession that some new miracle of
control would enable us to do it. There was always one more
attempt---and one more failure. The
less people tolerated us, the more we withdrew from society, and from
life itself. As we became subjects of King Alcohol,
shivering
denizens of his mad realm, the chilling vapor that is loneliness
settled
down. It thickened, ever becoming blacker. |