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The Active Ingredient In Dr. Jekyll’s Strange Potion May Shock You
Then again, maybe it won’t
When Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his fiction classic “The Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde” in 1886, he spelled it all out for us.
The message was hiding in plain sight.
He even includes the key ingredient of the “potion” that transformed the well-respected doctor into the malevolent Mr. Hyde.
Booze.
Page 51 says that the potion included “blood-red liquor.” Did the good doctor need any other ingredients?
I never needed bat wings or the eye of a newt to become Mr. Hyde.
Blood red, golden brown, or clear as a bell — liquor did nicely all by itself.
By definition, being under the influence of alcohol turns you into a different person. That’s what being under the influence means.
The doctor didn’t like who he became when he drank the potion — but eventually, he couldn’t help himself. He kept returning to it, and inevitably, he no longer needed it to transform into Mr. Hyde.
He just became Mr. Hyde.
That sounds like alcohol to me.
The hardest part of my drinking past was accepting all of the things I did while under the influence.
I’ve been arrested multiple times, wrecked a couple of cars, and ended up in jail — without immediately remembering how I got there.
But those Hyde-esque events aren’t the things that I truly regret. I can live with all of them.
The hardest part to process (I’m still working on it) are the things I said and did to other people that can’t be repaired.
These were people I cared about (and some I still do), but they wanted no part of me. Not even an…
