“Over and over again, medical writers liken withdrawal [from heroin], at worst, to a dose of flu. … Let me ask the reader this: if you were given a choice between suffering a bout of flu in the above sense, or avoiding it by robbing someone in the street or breaking into a house and stealing its contents, which would you choose?”

— Theodore Dalrymple

Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy (2006)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Over and over again, medical writers liken withdrawal [from heroin], at worst, to a dose of flu. … Let me ask the reade…" by Theodore Dalrymple?

Theodore Dalrymple 96

English doctor and writer 1949

Related quotes

“To be depressed or neurotic is passive. It happened to us; we are its victim, and we have no control over it. This use of nouns and adjectives makes it logical for us to believe that we can do nothing for ourselves…but you are capable of choosing something better. If it is a choice, it follows that you are responsible for making it. With verbs, you are not a victim of mental illness; you are either the beneficiary of your own good choices or the victim of your own bad choices. You are not ill in the usual sense of having the flu or food poisoning. A choice theory world is a tough responsible world; you cannot use grammar to escape responsibility for what you are doing.”

William Glasser (1925–2013) American psychiatrist

Source: Choice Theory (1997), p. 75

“There will be many choices before you, some of which you’ll welcome and celebrate, and then there will be some over which you will anguish. Some choices will choose you.”

Dana Reeve (1961–2006) Actress, singer, activist

Middlebury College Address (2004)
Context: There will be many choices before you, some of which you’ll welcome and celebrate, and then there will be some over which you will anguish. Some choices will choose you. How you face these choices, these turns in the road, with what kind of attitude, more than the choices themselves, is what will define the context of your life.

“…she would fall in love with me again, just like she had a long time ago. And that's the most wonderful feeling in the world. How many people are ever given that chance? To have someone you love fall in love with you over and over?”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Noah Calhoun, Chapter 1, p. 25
2000s, The Wedding (2003)

“My first teachers were street players, guys who would hustle you, get in your head, break you down mentally before they did it over the board.”

Josh Waitzkin (1976) Chess player

Sonshi interview

“So I would choose to be with you,
That's if the choice were mine to make,
But you can make decisions too,
And you can have this heart to break”

Billy Joel (1949) American singer-songwriter and pianist

“I am not going to allow the little flu to knock me down.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Said about the Covid-19 pandemic, as quoted in "Bolsonaro Denies that He Called Covid-19 A "Little Flu" https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/scienceandhealth/2020/11/bolsonaro-denies-that-he-called-covid-19-a-little-flu.shtml, Folha de S.Paulo (March 2020)
2020