(2 of 2)
The Alcoholic. Asa Griggs Candler Jr. was rich. In 1886, when he was only six years old, his druggist father secured the soft-drink formula on which he built the Coca-Cola fortune. But, says Asa Candler, "prosperity and affluence present hazards of their own. My story was the old familiar one of falling in with the wrong crowd." He became a drunk.
For three years, though he continued to attend church and pray vigorously, Candler sank deeper & deeper into alcoholism. Then two things happened. In his private zoo, a Bengal tiger which "had killed two or three trainers and handlers" was scheduled to be shot. Candler asked that the beast be turned over to him and set out to tame him by himself. "I came to the conclusion that his rage was due to fear ... It seemed to me that only one power was great enough to tame him, to drive out his fear—the power of kindness. I spent long hours with him day after day. I fed him and spoke softly to him, never with the angry voice others had used." Within six months he could play with the tiger like a kitten.
"Naturally," Candler reports, "I thought a lot about this. It dawned on me that God was similarly trying to get past my fear to me."
One afternoon, as his chauffeur was driving him home "about three-quarters drunk," Candler heard a voice "just as clearly as I ever heard anyone . . . The voice said to me, 'You must get rid of your self; you must renounce your self; you must reject your self.' These were surprising words. I should not have been surprised if the voice had commanded me to stop drinking. But this was not the message at all ... My self was my trouble—my love of myself, my fear of anything that might frustrate my wishes . . . False pride had erected a barrier between my soul and God. This pride had to go—in one way or another. I am grateful now that it was taken away—even through alcoholism."