"Get Drunk," in elders quorum today

• Bob, I appreciated your comments. It brought to my mind memories of watching colleagues getting themselves humiliatingly drunk, of a classmate stepping in and saving me from having to decline an alcoholic beverage by simply saying, "No, Glenn doesn't drink," of tasting some apple cider that my wife's ancient grandmother had left on the porch more than a bit too long.

• why this book

⁃ When I returned from Utah this past Christmas, I found that one of my friends had slipped into the depths and pains of alcoholism. He has been fighting depression and addiction to cigarettes for a while too, so his situation fits unfortunately well with this Reuters report .
⁃ I want so much to help him, offering myself as a lifeline to call whenever he gets a bad craving. But despite my desire and willingness to be there for him and my attempts at empathy, he knows that I just don't understand and there's only so much I can do. But he also knows that I really care, and that no matter what, even if he continues to fail, I will truly and always care.
⁃ A day or two after finding out about my friend's new vice, I stumbled across this book as I was searching Librivox.org for a new audiobook to listen to. And while I still don't understand what it fells like to be drunk and to lose my inhibitions (a different friend in vet school said that was his favorite part of alcohol), I believe I understand a little better how someone could find himself in the company of John Barleycorn.

• a little bit of insight into what drives people to alcohol

⁃ I wonder how many other chapters, besides the ones about the "white logic" were written while "jingled"
⁃ this book highlights the power of peer pressure, and how so many people drink, or at least start out drinking because of social expectation, not because it "tastes great" or is "less filling." Jack London claims to drink not because he craves it, but just because it's there: "John Barleycorn is with me because in all the unwitting days of my youth John Barleycorn was accessible, calling to me and inviting me on every corner and on every street between the corners." I think that is a lame excuse. It was accessible to everone else during his time, I would assume, yet not everyone else became blinded by the white logic.

• He says that he could quit whenever he wants, that he is a social drinker and that he is not one that is physiologically addicted to alcohol.

⁃ "On this long, five-months' voyage, I found that among all my bodily pneeds not the slightest shred of a bodily need for alcohol existed. But this I did find: my need was mental and social. When I thought of alcohol, the connotation was fellowship. When I thought of fellowship, the connotation was alcohol. Fellowship and alcohol were Siamese twins. They always occurred linked together."
⁃ I think he is telling us the truth, but he is not telling himself the truth. In other words, he has convinced himself that he is the master of John Barleycorn and he is telling us honestly what he himself believes. But in reality he has gained a great dependence on alcohol. He even says that he cannot enjoy life without it. "I should not care to revisit all these fair places of the world except in the fashion I visited them before. GLASS IN HAND!"

• what are your thoughts about prohibition?

⁃ "The way to stop drinking is to stop it. The way China stopped the general use of opium was by stopping the cultivation and importation of opium. The philosophers, priests, and doctors of China could have preached themselves breathless against opium for a thousand years, and the use of opium, so long as opium was ever accessible and obtainable, therefore the vote for women's sufferage."

• In elders quorum today, the instructor read a poem entitled "Get Drunk" that talked about being passionate about like. And while I agree that it can be refreshing, and even empowering to drink deeply from any number of good things (work, music, literature, nature), one doesn't want to drink so much that one becomes a workaholic, or any other kind of -aholic. It seems evident that Jack London had an intense personality. He didn't do anything in a small way; consider how he drank and how he threw himself into his studies.

• One last thing, the Church has its own 12-step program that it has modeled off of AA and other addiction recovery programs. I went with my friend to a class and learned quite a bit. During step 3 we talked about agency. My thought during that discussion was how Satan does whatever he can from keeping us from turning our will over to Heavenly Father. By getting us addicted to any of a number of things, he takes away ones ability to choose, thereby preventing the individual from yielding his/her heart to God. My friend is continuing to attend the Church's addition recovery class and is making progress. I have thought that I might benefit from continuing to attend the class also. A family member of mine that went through this program said that she learned so much about the atonement from it. In a way, any repeated sin might be considered addiction.