John Barleycorn Quotes

“But behold! As soon as I went out on the adventure-path I met John Barleycorn again.”
― Jack London, John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs

“A cocktail or two, or several, I found, cheered me up for the foolishness of foolish people. A cocktail, or several, before dinner, enabled me to laugh whole-heartedly at things which had long since ceased being laughable. The cocktail was a prod, a spur, a kick, to my jaded mind and bored spirits.”
― Jack London, John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs

“In this matter I was normal in my generation. Alcohol was an acquired taste. It had been painfully acquired. Alcohol had been a dreadfully repugnant thing — more nauseous than any physic. Even now I did not like the taste of it. I drank it only for its “kick.” And from the age of five to that of twenty-five I had not learned to care for its kick. Twenty years of unwilling apprenticeship had been required to make my system rebelliously tolerant of alcohol, to make me, in the heart and the deeps of me, desirous of alcohol. I sketched my first contacts with alcohol, told of my first intoxications and revulsions, and pointed out always the one thing that in the end had won me over — namely, the accessibility of alcohol. Not only had it always been accessible, but every interest of my developing life had drawn me to it.”
― Jack London