As it takes a flame and wick to set off a powder charge, so do alcoholics suffer syndromes which start them drinking. They find themselves in a situation where a combination of elements sets up a deadly desire.

With me it was usually a lonely hotel room after a hard day’s work. No one would see me, and my family wouldn’t know.

Such a chain of elements was created when I checked in at the Savery Hotel in downtown Des Moines one night after a series of hectic business meetings. Before leaving my room to go to a restaurant for dinner, I thought I’d relax for a moment.

I had picked up a copy of the evening newspaper and was scanning the pages when I suddenly felt the urge. By that time, I had not touched alcohol for over a year, and though there had been many urges I had been able to overcome them. However, my longtime habit of an evening drink coupled with being alone in a hotel room generated a powerful force deep within me. I wanted a drink. I needed it. I had to have it.

Desperately I battled. I turned back to the paper and tried to read. Drumming incessantly within me, however, was the demand for a drink.

I stood up, the paper falling to the floor. Suddenly, I felt like two different people, the new and the old Harold Hughes. The urge became overpowering. I knew that in a very few moments I would be going to dinner at a downtown restaurant. To reach it I would pass an old drinking spot. And I knew as well as I stood in that hotel room that I would go into my old haunt for a drink. I could already savor its delicious burning strength. I felt lost, defeated…

I grabbed my coat from the back of the chair. This is it, I figured. Nobody’s going to know about my getting drunk. I’ll just get it out of my system.

In the exhilaration of decision, I pushed out the door and into the corridor of the hotel, heading for the elevators. But as I stood waiting for the elevator, something came over me. What was I doing?

I leaned against the wall and prayed. “Oh, God, please don’t let me do this.” The chime of the “down” elevator broke the spell and I headed for the open door. The lust for a drink was in charge again.

I strode through the hotel lobby out into a warm Iowa evening. The traffic hubbub did not distract me from the neon lights of the bar down the street.

One last spark of resistance flickered within and like a drowning man clawing, at a reed, I clutched a parking meter.

Above the rumble of traffic I heard my name being called.

I looked up and coming, toward me down the sidewalk was an old friend I hadn’t seen in years.

“Imagine that!” he exclaimed, pumping, my hand. “I step out of a cab and there you are. What are you doing for dinner?” he asked.

“I was on my way,” I managed to say.

“Well, come join me.”

As we walked together into a restaurant, I sensed a malevolent power leaving me.

We had a good dinner, chatting over old times, and as we paid our bills, I realized the desire was completely gone.

“Say,” said my friend, looking up at me, a toothpick in his mouth. “Wasn’t that a coincidence, our meeting like this?”

I thought of my feeble prayer at the elevator, and clapped him on the shoulder. “No, Sam, no… I don’t believe it was a coincidence at all!”

[Harold E. Hughes (with Dick Schneider), The Man from Ida Grove. (Chosen Books, 1979), pp. 114-116]