32. Author Jack London's denial was self-destructive

By Tom O'Connell

Nearly a century ago, author Jack London, who wrote the book "John Barleycorn" about his own craving for alcohol, provided more than just a classic book. He also provided a classic description of how alcoholic denial works.

"I was five years old the first time I got drunk," he writes. "My condition was like that of one who had gone through a battle with poison. In truth, I had been poisoned." At age seven he got drunk again. "I was sick for days afterward....very clear was my resolution never to touch liquor again." But the attraction continued throughout his life.

Earnestly he says, "Men do not knowingly drink for the effect alcohol produces on the body. What they drink for is the brain-effect; and if it must come through the body, so much the worse for the body." And alcohol lures him. "The saloon's doors were ever open. And always and everywhere I found saloons...The liquor worked its will on me."

He drank with the men on the waterfront. "I was beginning to grasp the meaning of life...All the world was mine, all its paths were under my feet, and John Barleycorn, tricking my fancy, enabled me to anticipate the life of adventure for which I yearned."

London went on to experience adventure as a seaman in the Pacific, a hobo, a Gold Rush explorer, a war correspondent in Japan, and as a world famous traveler and author. And always, except for brief periods of abstinence, he was obsessed with alcohol.

Describing "devotees of John Barleycorn," he writes with vivid clarity: "When good fortune comes, they drink. When they have no fortune they drink to the hope of good fortune. If fortune be ill, they drink to forget it. If they meet a friend, they drink. If they quarrel with a friend and lose him, they drink. If their love-making be crowned with success, they are so happy they needs must drink. If they be jilted, they drink for the contrary reason. And if they haven't anything to do at all, why they take a drink...When they are sober they want to drink; and when they have drunk they want to drink more."

At one point he confesses, "I drank for the sole purpose of getting drunk, of getting hopelessly, helplessly drunk." Later he becomes "a wiser, a more skillful drinker." Insisting he's a "non-alcoholic," he drinks to be sociable. "I drank because the men I was with drank, and because my nature was such that I could not permit myself to be less of a man than other men at their favorite pastime....I drank when others drank, and with them, as a social act. And I had so little choice in the matter that I drank whatever they drank."

Toward the end, after suffering many bodily illnesses, he writes, "I achieved a condition in which my body was never free from alcohol...I had the craving at last, and it was mastering me." This describes alcoholism, yet he still claims to be a "non-alcoholic."

Calling alcohol "soul-poison," he says, "All that leaves me alive today on the planet is my unmerited luck." But he still thinks he's not a real alcoholic. "Mine is no tale of a reformed drunkard. I was never a drunkard, and I have not reformed."

Even after nearly destroying himself, he says, "I decided; I shall take my drink on occasion....I would drink, but, oh, more skillfully, more discreetly, than ever before."

Jack London died at the age of forty, still believing he was a "non-alcoholic."

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