Drinks- Good and Bad

Water is the drink that God originally designed for man. It is the only drink, which will really satisfy thirst. Other things we drink are mostly of water; lemonade is lemon juice and water. Wine, beer, cider, and such liquids contain alcohol and many other things, mixed with water.

Why do we need water? Well our bodies are made of 75-80% water and it is used in every process or work the body does. If we wet a sponge and leave it, in a few hours it becomes dry, as the wa­ter evaporates into the air. Our bodies are losing water all the time, and we need to drink to keep our-selves from drying up.

Water is very necessary for many things the body does, digestion, making blood, and our brain function. Still another use for water is to dissolve and wash out waste through the sweat of the skin, and in urine. If the body does not have enough water— it can’t keep itself clean and running smoothly. The greatest single thing anyone can do for better health and a smarter mind is to drink more water.

Water that has a lot of minerals in it is called ‘hard water’ it is not so good for the body. The best water to drink is distilled water, which is pure soft water. But even hard water is better to drink than no water at all. What about juice and pop and stuff? How clean would your clothes get if you washed them in pop? Your body does best with pure, soft water.

 It is harmful to drink very cold water, especially when your body is hot, if that’s the only water you have, the bad ef­fects may be lessened by sipping it slowly.

Many people drink tea or coffee, and think that these drinks are good foods; but they are not foods at all. Tea, coffee and cola con­tain a poison called caffeine (caf-feen'), which, in a pure form, is very poisonous. Even a little is enough to kill a cat or a dog. This poison does much harm to those who drink tea, coffee or cola drinks.

Alcohol (al'-co-hol) All of you know something about alco­hol.  It will burn if we light it. It is clear and looks like water. The native American Indians, years ago, used to call it "firewater." Alcohol is not a food; It is not grown like fruits and grains; neither is it found in nature for our use, as air and water.

Where does it come from? When a baker makes bread he puts some yeast, a kind of fungus, in the dough to make it "rise," so the bread will be light. The yeast eats some of the sugar and starch in the flour and changes it into alcohol and gas. The gas bubbles up through the dough, and this is what makes the bread light. This is called fermentation (fer-men-ta'-tion). The small amount of alcohol made in the bread goes away as the bread is well baked.

Any liquid or moist substance, which con­tains sugar will ferment if yeast gets into it and it is kept in a warm place. You know that canned fruit sometimes spoils. This is because it ferments. Fermentation is a sort of decay. When the juice of grapes, apples, or other fruit is allowed to stand in a warm place, it "works," or ferments, and produces alcohol. Wine is fermented grape juice; hard cider is fer­mented apple juice.

Beer, ale, and similar drinks are made from grains. The grain is first moistened and allowed to sprout. In sprouting, the starch of the grain is changed to sugar. The grain is next dried and ground, and is then boiled with wa­ter. The water dissolves the sugar. The sweet liquid thus obtained is separated from the grain, and yeast is added to it. This causes it to ferment, which changes the sugar to alcohol. The grain does not contain alcohol in the first place, it is produced by fermentation.

All fermented liquids con­tain more or less alcohol, mixed with water and a good many other things. Rum, brandy, gin, whiskey, and pure alcohol are made by separating the alcohol from what it is in. This is done by a ‘still’ and is called distillation. This is how we get pure water also, but the water is good for us, and the alcohol is not.

To learn how a still separates alcohol, make a little experiment. When a kettle is boiling on the stove and the steam is coming out at the nozzle, take a dry glass and put some ice in it then, being careful not to burn yourself, hold it near the steam. Little drops of water will stick to the side of the glass. Alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water, so when they heat the stuff that has the alcohol in it, it quickly goes into the air and is caught in tubes and allowed to drip into bottles.  By distilling the liquid severed times the alcohol may be almost pure.

Strong alcohol has a deadly effect upon all living things. If you pour alcohol on a plant it will die very soon.

A man once made a cruel experiment. He put some minnows into a jar of water and then poured in a few teaspoonfuls of alcohol. The minnows tried very hard to get out, but they could not, and in a little while they were all dead, poisoned by the alcohol. Another man once gave alcohol to some pigs with their food. They soon got sick and died.

There are people who think alcohol is good for food because it is made from fruits and grains which are good for food. This is a serious mistake. A person can live on the fruits or grains from which alcohol is made, but no one can live on alcohol. If he tried, he would soon starve to death, if he weren’t poisoned first. People have often died when drinking whiskey in place of food or water.

People do not use alcohol as a food, but for the effects which it produces, which are not like a food, but a poison. It dulls their minds and makes them foolish and this feels good to them.

Some, who would not drink strong, distilled liquor, think it’s OK to use wine, beer, or cider. This is a great mistake. These liquids contain alcohol, as do all fermented drinks. A person will become drunk or intoxicated by drinking wine, beer, or cider- the same as rum or whiskey, they just drink more, and even a little alcohol harms the body.

Do you know what the word ‘intoxicated’ really means? Well people use it to mean drunk, but it really means poisoned! Alcoholic drinks make people unhealthy and shorten their lives, and they cause much poverty, crime, accidents, and misery.

People who drink alcohol are not as healthy as those who don’t; they do not live as long as they could if they did not drink alcohol. If a beer or liquor drinker gets sick, or has an accident, it is harder for his body to get well again. Alcohol also hurts your brain, and without a clear mind, we cannot get to know the truths that will allow Jesus to get us ready for heaven. We must put no poison into our body-temples!

Once a person gets the habit of drinking wine, cider, or other fermented drinks, he soon wants stronger drink, and starts to use whiskey or other strong liquors. It is not safe to use any alcoholic drinks, either fermented or distilled. The only safe plan is taste not- touch not! - =^..^=

Alcohol the Enemy!

If you put a little alcohol into your eye, your eye would become very red. When men take alcoholic drinks into their stomachs, the delicate membrane lining the stomach becomes red in the same way.

How do we know that alcohol has such an effect upon the stomach? Many years ago there lived in Michigan a man named Alexis St. Martin. One day he was, by accident, shot in such a way that a large opening was made right through the skin and flesh and into the stomach. The good doctor who attended him took such excellent care of him that he got well. But when he recovered, the hole in his stom­ach remained, so that the doctor could look in and see just what was going on. St. Martin sometimes drank whiskey, and when he did, the doctor often looked into his stomach to see what the effect was, and he noticed that the inside of his stomach looked very red and in­flamed.

If St. Martin continued to drink whiskey for several days, the lining of the stomach became very red and raw like a sore eye. A sore stomach cannot digest food well, and so the whole body becomes sick and weak.

What would you think of a man who would keep putting pepper or alcohol or some other irritating substance into his eyes every day, keeping them sore until he destroyed his eyesight? It is equally foolish and wrong to injure the stomach and destroy one's digestion by the use of alcoholic drinks! 

Alcohol, even when it is not very strong, not only hurts the lining of the stomach, but injures the gastric juice, so that it cannot digest the food well. The liver, as well as the stomach, is greatly dam­aged by the use of alcohol. You will recollect that nearly all the food digested and absorbed is filtered through the liver before it goes to the heart to be distributed to the rest of the body.

In trying to save the rest of the body from the bad effects of alcohol, the liver is badly burned by the fiery liquid, and sometimes becomes so shriveled up that it can no longer produce bile and perform its other duties. Even beer, ale, and wine, which do not contain as much alcohol as do rum, gin, and whiskey, have enough poison in them to do the liver a great deal of harm, and to injure many other organs of the body as well.

But alcohol does more than hurt your body; it also makes a fool and a slave out of those who use it! A man, who holds a very important office in the largest prison in the United States, told some interesting stories.

His special work is to interview prisoners as they come in. He asks them about their homes, their families, their work, their ed­ucation, and particularly what it was that led them to commit the crime that brought them into prison.

Do you know what most of these poor prisoners tell him? Can you guess?

You should know. Everybody should know. They say, "It was drink, sir."

You know what that means? It means that before they broke the law they had been taking alcoholic drinks such as beer, wine, or whisky. These things are known as “drink”.

Here comes a boy of fifteen —there are scores of them here as young as this. He has stolen somebody's car, and has been arrested and sent to prison.

"Well, son," says this kind friend of the prisoners, "why are you here?"

"We started drinking, sir, and—" The same old story.

Here comes a lad of eighteen. He has murdered an old woman, mistakenly expecting to find money in her house. "Why did you do it?"

"Drink, sir. Had a drop too much, I suppose, and didn't realize what I was doing."

Oh, the sad tragedy of it all! In his particular prison there were more than two thousand five hundred young men —their average age only twenty-four—who blame drink for their fall. Sometimes the prisoners are released on their promise to be good and lead a better life. All too many come back, and have to face their kindly interviewer again.

"Why are you here again," he asks, "after having been given your liberty?"

"Oh, sir," is the reply, "I went into a saloon. I couldn't help it. And then—"

Another slave! Just one of thousands upon thousands, in bondage to drink. None of us can take a wiser step than to promise before God, that with His help, we will never, never, NEVER taste a drop of the evil stuff. It is the only way to keep ourselves free from its clutches. Let's make the promise now-and keep it! =^..^=

The Legacy of Alcohol

Do you know what a legacy is? If your father should die and leave to you a fine house or farm, or money in the bank, or books, or automobiles, or any other thing to have for your own, it would be a legacy. When a person gets anything in this way from a parent we say that he inherits it.

We inherit a great many things besides houses and lands and other kinds of property. For instance, perhaps you have eyes and hair the same color as your mother's, and your nose and chin are like your father's. So you have in­herited the color of your hair and eyes from your mother and the shape of your chin and nose from your father.

The Alcohol Legacy- We in­herit our brains just as we do our faces. So, if a man spoils his brain with alcohol and gets an alcohol appetite, his children will likely have an appetite for alcohol also, and may become drunkards. What a dreadful kind of legacy to inherit!

If a mother drinks alcohol when she is expecting a baby that poor little one will be born already an alcoholic with its little brain already hurt and will go through the symptoms of DTs just like a grown person quitting alcohol may do. All its life it will have to live with the damage done by alcohol to its little unborn body. What a cruel thing alcohol is in our world!

There is good news though, if you are someone who has been damaged like this, talk to Jesus about it and give yourself completely to Him. He will give you power to beat the alcohol appetite and can restore and bless your mind and body if you trust in Him and choose to obey Him.

There is a promise in the Bible that says: “And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten…” Joel 2:25. This means that the harm that sin has done to us, our own or the sins of others, will be undone by a special blessing from Jesus, if we give our hearts to Him and trust in Him. =^..^=

What Alcohol Does to Brains & Nerves

Did you ever see someone who was drunk? How did they act? Perhaps they were noisy and silly. Perhaps they were angry and tried to pick a fight with someone.

What made them drunk? You say whiskey, wine, or beer that he drank. Anything that contains alcohol will make a person drunk, for it is the alcohol that causes the problem.

You can often tell when a person has been drinking, even when not yet drunk, by their flushed face and red eyes. When a man drinks just enough alco­hol to make his face blush a little, the extra amount of blood in the brain makes him think and talk more lively, and he can feel very cheerful and happy. This makes many people think that alcohol does them good. But if we notice what people say when under the influence of alcohol, we find that their remarks are very silly and careless. They say very unwise and foolish things, and feel sorry later when they become sober.

How does a drunken man walk? He staggers. Alcohol makes his brain and spinal cord become partly paralyzed, and not do their work properly, and when he tries to walk he reels and stumbles along, often falling down, and even hurting himself. The alcohol has put his spinal cord and brain in kind of a sleep so that he cannot make his legs do what he wants them to do. Now, if he drinks still more alcohol, he may become so drunk that he will "pass out" and look as if he is dead, that is why some say he is "dead drunk." It is very harmful to organs of your body to become dead drunk. Especially does it hurt the brain, destroying thousands of important brain cells that help us to think and function.

A small amount of alcohol does not make a man dead drunk, but it still poisons and paralyzes his brain and nerves just according to the amount he takes.

If a person holds a little alcohol in his mouth for a few moments, the tongue and cheeks feel numb. This is because the alcohol paralyzed them so that they cannot feel or taste. When taken into the stomach, it has the same kind of effect on the nerves of the whole body.

Alcohol is a Deceiver; a hungry man takes a drink of whiskey and numbs the nerves of his stomach so that he does not feel hungry. Alcohol puts to sleep the sentinels which Jesus, our Creator has placed in the body to warn us of danger. A man who is cold, drinks alcohol and feels warm, though he is really colder. He lies down in his false comfort and can freeze to death. A tired man takes his glass of strong drink, beer, or wine, and feels rested and strong, though he is re­ally weaker than before. A poor man gets drunk and feels so rich that he spends what little money he has. The alcohol steals away his good sense. Alcohol is always a cheat and a deceiver.

When a person drinks strong liquor regularly, they soon injure the brain and nerves, so that they are very irritated, and at night they cannot sleep well and have frightful dreams. They see all sorts of wild animals and horrid shapes in their dreams. Perhaps you have sometimes had nightmares from eating big late suppers or hard-to-digest food.

Did you ever have a dream when you were awake? If a man drinks a great deal he is likely to have a terrible disease known as delirium tremens, (DTs) in which he sees the same frightful things when he is wide awake that he dreams about when he is asleep. This is one of the terrible effects of alcohol upon the brain and nerves.

You have seen how a drunk staggers when he walks. Did you ever see a man who walked just as though he were drunk when he was really sober? This is because part of the brain or spinal cord has been permanently injured or paralyzed. Alcohol is not the only cause of this disease, and so you must not think every person who staggers is a drunkard; but alcohol can cause this problem.

When a man is under the influence of alcohol, is his character good or bad? Most men behave badly when they are drunk, and after they have been drunk a great many times they often behave badly all the time. A great many people who are shut up in prisons would not have been sent there if they had never learned to drink. Since Jesus wants us to have good characters, it is wise for us to avoid anything that will hurt us and cause us to do bad things. =^..^=

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