When Christian Science found me I was on the verge of taking my own life. I had been a drinking man for more than twenty years, the habit growing stronger year by year until it had ruled me with a rod of iron for the last five years previous to my being healed through Christian Science. The last two years previous to my healing, I seldom knew what it was to be free from the influence of intoxicants. I had gotten so that I could scarcely retain anything I ate. My mind, and more particularly my memory, was practically destroyed. My home was anything but pleasant, rendered so wholly by my drinking. I at last came to the point where I realized I could do nothing more. The habit controlled me absolutely, and I thought, rather than disgrace my wife and child, and my relatives and friends, the sensible thing to do was to get my business in as good shape as possible and end my life of failure in Lake Michigan.
Words cannot describe, nor tongue tell, the suffering that a man who is addicted to the drink habit entails upon himself. So-called diseases, I am sure, even in their most aggravated forms, are nothing to be compared to the suffering of mind and soul that a bard drinking man goes through with. The last five years I have wanted to stop drinking, and honestly have done all I knew how or what to do in order that I might be delivered, but all to no avail.
For the past few years I had gotten so that I literally hated almost all men with whom I had any business dealings, and more particularly did I abhor the salesmen who worked for me. I despised them because I thought each one wanted to beat me out of money, and it was a rare occurrence when one did not beat me.
