  A new physical mechanism is suggested to explain the universal depletion of
high meson excitations. It takes into account the appearance of holes inside
the string world sheet due to $q\bar{q}$ pair creation when the length of the
string exceeds the critical value $R_1 \simeq 1.4$ fm. It is argued that a
delicate balance between large $N_c$ loop suppression and a favorable gain in
the action, produced by holes, creates a new metastable (predecay) stage with a
renormalized string tension which now depends on the separation r. This results
in smaller values of the slope of the radial Regge trajectories, in good
agreement with the analysis of experimental data in [Ref.3]
