The Lessons of Lost Weekends; M. D. Barger

THE LESSONS OF LOST WEEKENDS IT'S FAIRLY AXIOMATIC nowadays that alcoholics cannot get well unless they fully accept the fact that recovery hinges on total abstinence. It is possible, of course, that future break-throughs in drug and therapy techniques may alter this flat rule. But at the present time few re sponsible people who know anything about it would dare dispute this point-for the alcoholic, one drink is always too many. As a recovered alcoholic with almost eleven years' continuous sobriety, I've made a lot of headway since I gave up the vain hope that I might be able to "handle a little beer now and then." Though an occasional drink seems to be a delightful beverage to the next man, it's poison for me, and I don't take it. I want to stay away from it for the same reasons I don't want to step over cliffs, walk in front of automobiles, or grab high tension wires. These would be exciting experiences, mo mentarily, but survival seems much more preferable.

Recovery from this distressing problem doesn't make Mr. Barger is Editor of The Flying A, company magazine of the Aeroquip Corporation at Jackson, Michigan. 188 THE LESSONS OF LOST WEEKENDS 189 a person immune to future folly of various kinds, but it does give one a· protective sort of wariness. Like a once-scalded cat who now fears anything resembling a teakettle, I search everything for hidden. booby traps. And it's along jump, but I've even been able to relate the lessons of my own "boom-and-bust" experiences to such matters as monetary inflation, deficit spending, for eign aid, and kindred ideas. I did not arbitrarily do this; the similarities just seemed to be immediately self evident. Here they are. By a stretch of the imagination, they might even be called "ideas on liberty." Monetary Inflation-It doesn't even take too much imagination to realize that here's the almost perfect parallel. Most alcoholics start out drinking with the idea of "taking only a few." Past disasters and the grim prospect of sickness· and hang-over don't seem to be an effective deterrent. Now, today we could, if we cared to look, see the long-run result of monetary inflation; we could see that runaway inflation, which always results in ruin, gets its start when we accept the first seemingly harmless doses of it. So far, our national inflation has been on a fairly moderate scale and we're confident that we can control it. But we may be hooked already. Many of us have a vested interest in inflation; we denounce it publicly, but enjoy it privately. We fail completely to profit by the· wretched experiences of other countries who have gone the full inflation route.

190 l\'fELVIN D. BARGER Deficit Sj)ending-There are fevv alcoholics now alive who could not list the perils of deficit spending. Govern ments do it by issuing more money, savings bonds, or creating bank deposits with notes. The alcoholic doesn't have access to the printing presses at the federal mints, and he's usually not able to swing much influence with the Federal Reserve. So his deficit money is of a cruder nature-usually I.O.U .'s plastered in the various bars where he's still able to get credit. This "fiat money" causes no end of trouble. For a short-term gain, he takes on long-term liabilities. Often,· these debts are never paid back. Foreign Aid-Social workers who have experience in the field will certainly agree that "economic evangelism" is almost a total failure in rehabilitating alcoholics. It is easy to be misled on this point. Many alcoholics have monstrous financial problems, and this causes them no end of worry and grief. But money problems are not the cause of drinking, nor will money stop it. Real recovery begins when the alcoholic changes his thinking. After that, he will most likely earn his own way.

What does this have to do with foreign aid? Well, it may be that we're trying to solve, with money, problems which lie much deeper-problems which stem from basic attitudes and philosophies of living. We may even be doing much harm without realizing it. We have vastly overrated the power of money, and underestimated the power of individual responsibility. Certain ingredients must be present before economic growth can occur. Are THE LESSONS OF LOST WEEKENDS 191 we sure that we are not asking other countries to suc ceed in spite of themselves, and in spite of governments that stamp out every promising bud of economic growth? Hidden InflationI learned about -this from Japanese bootleggers in late 1945. One of my first happy dis coveries in occupied Japan was the availability of "sake," the country's excellent rice wine. The Japanese drink it in an almost ritualistic manner, often heating it in small vaselike containers. Ignoring local custom, I guzzled it by the jugful. One thing did puzzle me: on some days, I could demolish with ease the contents of three jugs. On other days, even one jug placed me high on a cloud over Mt. Fujiyama. Later I learned that an alcoholic tends to obtain an amazingly constant amount of actual alcohol per spree. Hence, the three-jug days didn't indicate a greater capacity for alcohol; they only meant that the bootleggers had been especially bold in "watering their stock." It was simply the working-out of natural economic laws, and in this case the seller chose to deceive the customer rather than to pass along his own costs through higher prices. Since· then, I've seen "hidden inflation" at work in our own consumer prod uctsfield; 5-cent candy bars have shrunk, lunchroom size milk cartons are smaller, and much furniture has been cheapened where it doesn't show. We still get only what we pay for when the free market operates.

Wage and Price Controls-I once heard a fantastic tale about a very afHuent alcoholic who hired bodyguards 192 MELVIN D. BARGER to keep him from taking a drink. This "save-me-from myself" experiment soon failed, because the bodyguards could not keep the man from doing something he really wanted to do. Many forms of government control seem to be along the same order. The very people who advo cate wage and price controls are likely to be the ones who also cheat on their own procedure. They are trying to enlist bodyguards to keep themselves and others from "sinning." This point gained, they then work with equal zeal to outwit the bodyguards! Subsidies and Taxation-"Setting up one on the house" has long been established as congenial barroom etiquette in states where it is not against the law. It is possible that few beneficiaries of this occasional largess ever fully realize that they, the customers, actually pay for this generosity. They do not realize that the "house" could not hand out free drinks unless it had received revenues from themselves or previous customers. Toward the end of my mottled career with the bottle, I was beginning to recognize the "house" favors for what they really were: subsidized handouts. I don't resent the custom, but I am at war with the notion that people, collectively, can receive anything that they don't pay for in the first place.

The Threat of Economic Collapse-There seems to be a lot of nonsense in the air nowadays about our depres sion-proof economy, and its various "automatic stabil izers" such as unemployment insurance and wage scales. It sounds to me a lot like schemes for going on a binge THE LESSONS OF LOST WEEKENDS 193 without suffering the effects of a hang-over. Competent economic historians warn us that economic collapses inevitably follow inflationary booms (or binges). The resulting collapse is nothing but Nature's way of warn ing us that we were doing things the wrong way . . . just as a hang-over and other troubles warn the alcoholic that he's not living correctly. But a series of good head splitting, belly-curdling, throat-scalding hang-overs were good, since they made him want to stop. Perhaps we have to suffer our economic hang-overs, too, until we decide to find out just what it is that's hurting us and do something about it.

It would, of course, be a costly lesson-but it would be cheap at thrice the price if it taught us how to estab lish our economy on foundations of rock instead of sand. The real danger would not be in the collapse; it would be in a blindly stubborn refusal to accept the truth about it, and to realize the nature of the errors that produced it. Blame the Sellers-Lately I've read several books which indict the marketing approach of our economy, blaming almost everything from juvenile delinquency to mental breakdowns on the nation's advertisers and marketers. The arguments seem to imply that selfish, irresponsible interests are causing us to do things we don't want to do. We should harness these oily rogues before they've destroyed the last remnants of our social values. This is nonsense. It's simply a variation of the old pattern I practiced often myself: blaming my hang-over on the bartenders. It is true, of course, that our country 194 MELVIN D. BARGER has a lot of delinquency and neurosis, but the fault doesn't lie with our marketing systems, anymore than it does in the stars. The fault is still in ourselves.

This completes my random list of observations. I like to think that they have a "horse sense" sound, and that they aren't too unreasonable. They are relatively "un biased," because they developed during years when I paid little attention at all to any of the competing forms of economic and political thought. I was almost outraged to learn that my ideas stamp me as a "conservative" in stead of a "liberal." But, I've learned to live with that stigma! It is curious that when I cross verbal swords with "liberals," they frequently accuse me of not dealing with reality, of living in a dream world. This. is odd, because their ideas were mostly mine when I was in a world that was mostly dreams, mostly unreality.