“Addictions come from shortages in infancy. People try to compensate this way. Alcoholism is generally produced from a shortage in mother's milk. And heroin addiction is usually due to a lack of being, the absence of recognition; the drug fills the emptiness of not being loved.”

“Having seen the destruction of alcoholism and heroin addiction in my own family that makes me pretty intolerant of people who are willing to destroy the people around them to indulge themselves.”

“An alcoholic will steal your wallet and lie to you. A drug addict will steal your wallet and then help you look for it.”

“What is on the other side of any addiction? Something you are desperate to avoid. You stay addicted and you can't let go because letting go means falling back into what you are desperate to avoid… such as a feeling of being unsafe, isolation, lack of belonging, loneliness, emptiness.”

“It seems to me now that the plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone; you don't need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity. You just have to love someone.”

“People who are given opiates after operations — sometimes for days — do not become addicts in the sense that I’m talking about. Moreover, it’s been shown that heroin addicts have to make considerable efforts — in other words to be determined — to become addicts, and addicted; and on average it takes them about a year or so. In other words, heroin does not hook them, they hook heroin. And this, I think should suggest, is a typical example of the way that when we think about social problems, or the way many of us think about social problems, we ascribe agency not to agents but to inanimate objects and substances, and forces.”

“Much like addictive drugs, power uses ready-made reward circuitries in the brain, producing extreme pleasure.”

“Now there is apparently a causal link between heroin addiction and vegetarianism.”

“The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.”

“The torturing and testing of parents, is followed by shortage (of sustenance), and being driven towards belittlement and humiliation.”