HOW ALCOHOL CAUSES MENTAL AND MORAL CHANGES.

February 12th, 2010 by author

The remodeling power or alcohol is marvelous, and often appalling. It appears to open a approach of entrance into the soul for all classes of foolish, insane or malignant spirits, who, thus long because it remains in reality with the brain, are in a position to carry possession. Men of the kindest nature when sober, act often like fiends when drunk. Crimes and outrages are committed, which shock and shame the perpetrators when the thrill of inebriation has passed away. Referring to the present subject, Dr. Henry Munroe says:

“It appears from the expertise of Mr. Fletcher, who has paid a lot of attention to the cases of drunkards, from the remarks of Mr. Dunn, in his ‘Medical Psychology,’ and from observations of my very own, that there’s some analogy between our physical and psychical natures; for, as the physical half folks, when its power is at a low ebb, becomes susceptible of morbid influences that, in full vigor, would pass over it without effect, thus when the psychical (synonymous with the ethical ) half of the brain has its healthy operate disturbed and deranged by the introduction of a morbid poison like alcohol, the individual so circumstanced sinks in depravity, and “becomes the helpless subject of the forces of evil, “which are powerless against a nature free from the morbid influences of alcohol.”

Completely different persons are affected in several ways that by the same poison. Indulgence in alcoholic drinks might act upon one or more of the cerebral organs; and, as its necessary consequence, the manifestations of purposeful disturbance will follow in such of the mental powers as these organs subserve. If the indulgence be continued, then, either from deranged nutrition or organic lesion, manifestations formerly developed solely during a fit of intoxication may become permanent , and terminate in insanity or dypso-mania. M. Flourens first pointed out the actual fact that sure morbific agents, when introduced into the current of the circulation, tend to act primarily and specially on one nervous centre in preference to that of another, by virtue of some special elective affinity between such morbific agents and sure ganglia. So, within the tottering gait of the tipsy man, we have a tendency to see the influence of alcohol upon the functions of the cerebellum within the impairment of its power of co-ordinating the muscles.

Certain writers on diseases of the mind make especial allusion to that kind of insanity termed ‘dypsomania’, in that an individual has an unquenchable thirst for alcoholic drinks a bent as decidedly maniacal as that of homicidal mania ; or the uncontrollable need to burn, termed pyromania ; or to steal, called kleptomania.

Homicidal mania.
—————

The different tendencies of homicidal mania in numerous individuals are often solely nursed into action when this of the blood has been poisoned with alcohol. I had a case of a one who, whenever his brain was so excited, told me that he experienced a most uncontrollable want to kill or injure some one; thus abundant so, that he might at times hardly restrain himself from the action, and was obliged to refrain from all stimulants, lest, in an unlucky moment, he would possibly commit himself. Townley, who murdered the young woman of his affections, for that he was sentenced to be imprisoned in a very lunatic asylum for keeps, poisoned his brain with brandy and soda-water before he committed the rash act. The brandy stimulated into action certain portions of the brain, that acquired such a power on subjugate his will, and hurry him to the performance of a frightful deed, opposed alike to his better judgment and his ordinary desires.

As to pyromania , some years ago I knew a laboring man in an exceedingly country village, who, whenever he had had a few glasses of ale at the public-house, would chuckle with delight at the thought of firing certain gentlemen’s stacks. Nevertheless, when his brain was free from the poison, a quieter, higher-disposed man may not be. Unfortunately, he became enthusiastic about habits of intoxication; and, one night, below alcoholic excitement, fired some stacks belonging to his employers, for that, he was sentenced for fifteen years to a penal settlement, where his brain would never again be alcoholically excited.

Kleptomania.
———–

Next, I can give an example of kleptomania . I knew, several years ago, a very clever, industrious and gifted young man, who told me that whenever he had been drinking, he could hardly stand up to, the temptation of stealing something that came in his way; however that these feelings never troubled him at alternative times. One afternoon, when he had been indulging together with his fellow-workmen in drink, his can, sadly, was overpowered, and he took from the mansion where he was working some articles of value, for that he was accused, and afterwards sentenced to a term of imprisonment. When set at liberty he had the good fortune to be placed among some kind-hearted persons, vulgarly called teetotallers ; and, from conscientious motives, signed the PLEDGE, currently on top of twenty years ago. From that point to the present moment he has never experienced the overmastering need which thus usually beset him in his drinking days to require that that wasn’t his own. Moreover, no pretext on earth may currently entice him to style of any liquor containing alcohol, feeling that, beneath its influence, he would possibly once more fall its victim. He holds an influential position in the city where he resides.

I have known some ladies of excellent position in society, who, after a dinner or supper-party, and when having taken sundry glasses of wine, might not face up to the temptation of taking home any very little article not their own, when the chance offered; and who, in their sober moments, have came back them, as if taken by mistake. We have a tendency to have many instances recorded in our police reports of gentlemen of position, underneath the influence of drink, committing thefts of the most paltry articles, afterwards came to the homeowners by their friends, that will only be accounted for, psychologically, by the actual fact {that the} can had been for the time fully overpowered by the subtle influence of alcohol.

Loss of mental clearness.
————————

Alcohol, whether or not taken in giant or little doses, immediately disturbs the natural functions of the mind and body, is now conceded by the most eminent physiologists. Dr. Brinton says: ‘Mental acuteness, accuracy of conception, and delicacy of the senses, are all therefore way opposed by the action of alcohol, as that the utmost efforts of every are incompatible with the ingestion of any moderate quantity of fermented liquid. Indeed, there’s scarcely any calling which demands skillful and precise effort of mind and body, or that requires the balanced exercise of many colleges, that doesn’t illustrate this rule. The mathematician, the gambler, the metaphysician, the billiard-player, the author, the artist, the physician, would, if they could analyze their expertise aright, typically concur within the statement, that a single glass can typically suffice to require , therefore to talk, the edge off each mind and body , and to reduce their capability to one thing below what’s relatively their perfection of work.

A train was driven carelessly into one of the principal London stations, running into another train, killing, by the collision, six or seven persons, and injuring several others. From the proof at the inquest, it appeared {that the} guard was reckoned sober, only he had had two glasses of ale with an exponent at a previous station. Currently, reasoning psychologically, these 2 glasses of ale had in all probability been instrumental in taking off the sting from his perceptions and prudence, and manufacturing a carelessness or boldness of action which wouldn’t have occurred beneath the cooling, temperate influence of a beverage free from alcohol. Many persons have admitted to me that they were not the same after taking even one glass of ale or wine that they were before, and could not thoroughly trust themselves when they’d taken this single glass.

Impairment of memory.
———————

An impairment of the memory is among the early symptoms of alcoholic derangement.

“This,” says Dr. Richardson, “extends even to forgetfulness of the most typical things; to names of familiar persons, to dates, to duties of daily life. Unusually, too,” he adds, “this failure, like that that indicates, in the aged, the era of second childishness and mere oblivion, does not extend to the things of the past, but is confined to events that are passing. On old memories the mind retains its power; on new ones it requires constant prompting and sustainment.”

In this failure of memory nature offers a solemn warning that imminent peril is at hand. Well for the habitual drinker if he heed the warning. Ought to he not do so, symptoms of a additional serious character can, in time, develop themselves, as the brain becomes additional and a lot of diseased, ending, it may be, in permanent insanity.

Mental and moral diseases.
————————–

Of the mental and ethical diseases which too typically follow the regular drinking of alcohol, we have painful records in asylum reports, in medical testimony and in our daily observation and experience. These are therefore full and varied, and thrust therefore constantly on our attention, {that the} wonder is that men are not afraid to run the terrible risks involved even in what is known as the moderate use of alcoholic beverages.

In 1872, a select committee of the House of Commons, appointed “to contemplate the most effective plan for the management and management of habitual drunkards,” known as upon a number of the foremost eminent medical men in Great Britain to relinquish their testimony in answer to a giant number of queries, embracing each topic inside the vary of inquiry, from the pathology of inebriation to the practical usefulness of prohibitory laws. In this testimony much was said regarding the result of alcoholic stimulation on the mental condition and ethical character. One physician, Dr. James Crichton Brown, who, in ten years’ expertise as superintendent of lunatic asylums, has paid special attention to the relations of habitual drunkenness to insanity, having fastidiously examined 5 hundred cases, testified that alcohol, taken in excess, produced totally different types of mental disease, of which he mentioned four classes: 1. Mania a potu , or alcoholic mania. 2. The monomania of suspicion. 3. Chronic alcoholism, characterized by failure of the memory and power of judgment, with partial paralysis generally ending fatally. 4. Dypsomania, or an irresistible looking for alcoholic stimulants, occuring terribly frequently, paroxysmally, and with constant liability to periodical exacerbations, when the craving becomes altogether uncontrollable. Of this latter kind of disease, he says: “This can be invariably related to a bound impairment of the intellect, and of the affections and therefore the moral powers .”

Dr. Alexander Peddie, a physician of over thirty-seven years’ follow in Edinburgh, gave, in his evidence, several remarkable instances of the ethical perversions that followed continued drinking.

Relation between insanity and drunkenness.
—————————————–

Dr. John Nugent said that his expertise of twenty-six years among lunatics, led him to believe that there’s a terribly shut relation between the results of the abuse of alcohol and insanity. The population of Ireland had decreased, he said, 2 millions in twenty-five years, however there was the same quantity of insanity currently that there was before. He attributed this, in a nice measure, to indulgence in drink.

Dr. Arthur Mitchell, Commissioner of Lunacy for Scotland, testified {that the} excessive use of alcohol caused a giant amount of the lunacy, crime and pauperism of that country. In some men, he said, habitual drinking ends up in different diseases than insanity, as a result of the impact is always within the direction of the proclivity, however it is bound that there are various in whom there’s a transparent proclivity to insanity, who would escape that dreadful consummation except for drinking; excessive drinking in several persons determining the insanity to which they’re, at any rate, predisposed . The kids of drunkards, he additional said, are in a very larger proportion idiotic than other youngsters, and in a larger proportion become themselves drunkards; they are also in a very larger proportion vulnerable to the ordinary forms of acquired insanity.

Dr. Winslow Forbes believed that in the habitual drunkard the whole nervous structure, and also the brain particularly, became poisoned by alcohol. All the mental symptoms which you see accompanying ordinary intoxication, he remarks, result from the poisonous effects of alcohol on the brain. It is the brain which is especially effected. In temporary drunkenness, the brain becomes in an abnormal state of alimentation, and if this habit is persisted in for years, the nervous tissue itself becomes permeated with alcohol, and organic changes take place in the nervous tissues of the brain, manufacturing that frightful and dreadful chronic insanity that we see in lunatic asylums, traceable entirely to habits of intoxication . A large percentage of frightful mental and brain disturbances will, he declared, be traced to the drunkenness of parents.

Dr. D.G. Dodge, late of the New York State Inebriate Asylum, who, with. Dr. Joseph Parrish, gave testimony before the committee of the House of Commons, said, in one in every of his answers: “With the excessive use of alcohol, practical disorder can invariably appear, and no organ will be additional seriously affected, and presumably impaired, than the brain. This is shown within the inebriate by a weakened intellect, a general debility of the mental colleges , a partial or total loss of self-respect, and a departure of the ability of self-command; all of which, acting along, place the victim susceptible to a depraved and morbid appetite, and create him utterly powerless, by his own unaided efforts, to secure his recovery from the disease that is destroying him.” And he adds: “I’m of opinion that there’s a “great similarity between inebriety and insanity.

“I’m decidedly of opinion that the previous has taken its place in the family of diseases as prominently as its twin-brother insanity; and, individually, the day is not far distant when the pathology of the previous will be as absolutely understood and as successfully treated because the latter, and even additional successfully, since it’s a lot of at intervals the reach and bounds of human control, which, wisely exercised and scientifically administered, may prevent curable inebriation from verging into possible incurable insanity.”

General impairment of the faculties.
———————————–

Dr. Richardson, speaking of the action of alcohol on the mind, provides the subsequent unhappy image of its ravages:

“An analysis of the condition of the mind induced and maintained by the free daily use of alcohol as a drink, reveals a singular order of facts. The manifestation fails altogether to reveal the exaltation of any reasoning power in a useful or satisfactory direction. I have never met with an instance in that such a claim for alcohol has been made. On the contrary, confirmed alcoholics constantly say that for this or that work, requiring thought and a spotlight, it’s necessary to forego some of the standard potations in order to have a cool head for exhausting work.

“On the other facet, the experience is overwhelmingly in favor of the observation that the utilization of “alcohol sells the reasoning powers, “create weak men and ladies the easy prey of the wicked and strong, and leads men and ladies who ought to recognize higher into every grade of misery and vice. If, then, alcohol enfeebles the explanation, what part of the mental constitution does it exalt and excite? It excites and exalts those animal, organic, emotional centres of mind that, in the dual nature of man, thus usually cross and oppose that pure and abstract reasoning nature which lifts man above the lower animals, and rightly exercised, little lower than the angels.

It excites man’s worst passions.
——————————–

Exciting these animal centres, it lets loose all the passions, and offers them additional or less of unlicensed dominion over the man. It excites anger, and when it does not lead to this extreme, it keeps the mind fretful, irritable, dissatisfied and captious…. And if I were to take you thru all the passions, love, hate, lust, envy, avarice and pride, I should however show you that alcohol ministers to all of them; that, paralyzing the rationale, it takes from off these passions that fine adjustment of reason, which places man above the lower animals. From the start to the top of its influence it subdues reason and sets the passions free. The analogies, physical and mental, are perfect. That which loosens the strain of the vessels that feed the body with due order and precision, and, thereby, lets loose the heart to violent excess and unbridled motion, loosens, conjointly, the rationale and lets loose the passion. In both instances, heart and head are, for a time, out of harmony; their balance broken. The person descends nearer and nearer to the lower animals. From the angels he glides farther and farther away.

A unhappy and terrible picture.
—————————

The destructive effects of alcohol on the human mind gift, finally, the saddest picture of its influence. The foremost aesthetic artist will realize no angel here. All is animal, and animal of the worst type. Memory irretrievably lost, words and terribly components of speech forgotten or words displaced to have no meaning in them. Rage and anger persistent and mischievous, or remittent and impotent. Fear at every corner of life, distrust on each side, grief merged into blank despair, hopelessness into permanent melancholy. Surely no Pandemonium that ever poet dreamt of could equal that that would exist if all the drunkards of the planet were driven into one mortal sphere.

As I have moved among those who are physically stricken with alcohol, and have detected under the varied disguises of name the fatal diseases, the pains and penalties it imposes on the body, the picture has been sufficiently cruel. But even that picture pales, as I conjure up, while not any stretch of imagination, the devastations that the same agent inflicts on the mind. Forty per cent., the learned Superintendent of Colney Hatch, Dr. Sheppard, tells us, of those that were brought into that asylum in 1876, were thus brought because of the direct or indirect effects of alcohol. If the facts of all the asylums were collected with equal care, the identical tale would, I worry, be told. What would like we any to point out the damaging action on the human mind? The Pandemonium of drunkards; the grand transformation scene of that pantomime of drink which commences with, moderation! Let it never additional be forgotten by people who love their fellow-men until, through their efforts, it’s closed forever.”

[Sponsored] Bryan Seawell is the proud owner of this article and he owns a site called: “green tea purity review“. See how he can help you with his site: “green tea purity review” and allow him to share with you his best known secrets here at his exclusive site, “green tea purity review“. Thank you for your trust and belief in Bryan. Hope it will benefit you and others. Have a wonderful day ahead. [Sponsored]