For purposes of comprehensive record I have divided the various stages of my waterwagoning into these parts: the obsession stage; the caramel stage; the pharisaical stage, and the safe-and-sane stage. I drank my Scotch highball and went over to the club. The crowd was there; I sat down at a table and when somebody asked me what I’d have I took a glass of water. Several of my friends looked inquiringly at me and one asked: “On the wagon?” This attracted the attention of the entire group to my glass of water. I came in for a good deal of banter, mostly along the line that it was time I went on the wagon. This was varied with predictions that I would stay on from an hour to a day or so. I didn’t like that talk, but I bluffed it out weakly, to be sure. I said I had decided it wouldn’t do me any harm to cool out a bit.

Next day, along about first-drink time, I felt a craving for a highball. I didn’t take it. That evening I went over to the club again. The crowd was there. I was asked to have a drink. This time I rather defiantly ordered a glass of water. The same jests were made, but I drank my water. On the third day I was a bit shaky sort of nervous. I didn’t feel like work. I couldn’t concentrate my mind on anything. I kept thinking of various kinds of drinks and how good they would taste. I tried out the club. I may have imagined it, but I thought my old friends lacked interest in my advent at the table. One of them said: “Oh, for Heaven’s sake, take a drink! You’ve got a terrible grouch on.” I backed out.

I did have a grouch. I was sore at everybody in the world. Also, I kept thinking how much I would like to have a drink. That was natural. I had accustomed my system to digest a certain amount of alcohol every day. I wasn’t supplying that alcohol. My system needed it and howled for it. I knew a man who had been a drunkard but who had quit and who hadn’t taken a drink for twelve years. I discussed the problem with him. He told me an eminent specialist had told him it takes eighteen months for a man who has been a heavy drinker or a steady drinker to get all the alcohol out of his system. I hadn’t been a heavy drinker, but I had been a steady drinker; and that information gave me a cold chill. I thought if I were to have this craving for a drink every day for eighteen months, surely I had let myself in for a lovely task!

I stuck for a week for two weeks for three weeks. At the end of that time my friends had grown accustomed to this idiosyncrasy and were making bets on how long I would last. I didn’t go round where they were much. I was as lonesome as a stray dog in a strange alley. I had carefully cultivated a large line of drinking acquaintances and I hardly knew a congenial person who didn’t drink. That was the hardest part of the game. I wasn’t fit company for man or beast. I don’t blame my friends not a bit. I was cross and ugly and hypercritical and generally nasty, and they passed me up. However, the craving for liquor decreased to some degree. There were some periods in the day when I didn’t think how good a drink would taste, and did devote myself to my work.

I discovered a few things. One was that, no matter how much fun I missed in the evening, I didn’t get up with a taste in my mouth. I had no katzenjammers. After a week or so I went to sleep easily and slept like a child. Then the caramel stage arrived. I acquired a sudden craving for candy. I had not eaten any candy for years, for men who drink regularly rarely take sweets. One day I looked in a confectioner’s window and was irresistibly attracted by a box of caramels. I went in and bought it, and ate half a dozen. They seemed to fill a long-felt want. The sugar in them supplied the stimulant that was lacking, I suppose. Anyhow, they tasted right good and were satisfactory; and I kept a box of caramels on my desk for several weeks and ate a few each day. Also I began to yell for ice cream and pie and other sweets with my meals.

Along about this time I developed the pharisaical stage. I looked with a great pity on my friends who persisted in drinking. I assumed some little airs of superiority and congratulated myself on my great will-power that had enabled me to quit drinking. They were steadily drinking themselves to death. I could see that plainly. There was nothing else to it. I was a fine sample of a full-blown prig. I went so far as to explain the case to one or two, and I got hooted at for my pains; so I lapsed into my condition of immense superiority and said: “Oh, well, if they won’t take advice from me, who knows, let them go along. Poor chaps, I am afraid they are lost!”

It’s a wonder somebody didn’t take an ax to me. I deserved it. After lamenting to myself the sad fates of my former companions and pluming myself on my noble course, I woke up one day and kicked myself round the park. “Here!” I said. “You chump, what business have you got putting on airs about your non-drinking and parading yourself round here as a giant example of self-restraint? Where do you get off as a preacher or a censor, or a reformer in this matter? Who appointed you as the apostle of non-drinking? Take a tumble to yourself and close up!”

That was the beginning of the safe-and-sane stage, which still persists. It came about the end of the second month. I had lost all desire for liquor; and, though there were times when I missed the sociability of drinking fearfully, I was as steady as a rock in my policy of abstaining from drinks of all kinds. Now it doesn’t bother me at all. I am riding jauntily on the wagon, without a chance of falling off.

At the time I decided it was up to me to stop this pharisaical foolishness, I took a new view of things; decided I wasn’t so much, after all; ceased reprobating my friends who wanted to drink; had no advice to offer, and stopped pointing to myself as a heroic young person who had accomplished a gigantic task.

Friends had tolerated me. I wondered that they had, for I was a sad affair. Surely it was up to me to be as tolerant as they had been, notwithstanding my new mode of life. So I stopped foreboding and tried to accustom my friends to my company on a strictly water basis. The attempt was not entirely successful. I dropped out of a good many gatherings where formerly I should have been one of the bright and shining lights. There are no two ways about it a man cannot drink water in a company where others are drinking highballs and get into the game with any effectiveness. Any person who quits drinking may as well accept that as a fact; and most persons will stop trying after a time and seek new diversions; or begin drinking again.