Counsels on Health - Ellen G. White

appetite is educated to crave something stronger
which will have a tendency to keep up and increase
the agreeable excitement, until indulgence becomes
habit, and there is a continual craving for stronger
stimuli, as tobacco, wines, and liquors. The more
the appetite is indulged, the more frequent will be
its demands and the more difficult of control. The
more debilitated the system becomes, and the less
able to do without unnatural stimulus, the more the
passion for these things increases, until the will is
overborne and there seems to be no power to deny
the unnatural craving for these indulgences.
The only safe course is to touch not, taste not,
handle not, tea, coffee, wines, tobacco, opium, and
alcoholic drinks. The necessity for the men of this
generation to call to their aid the power of the will
strengthened by the grace of God, in order to
withstand the temptations of Satan and resist the
least indulgence of perverted appetite, is twice as
great as it was several generations ago. But the
present generation have less power of self-control
than had those who lived then. Those who have
indulged the appetite for these stimulants have
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