“Is there any doubt that drug addiction is an escape from an unbearable inner state - from a reality that one cannot deal with - from an atrophying mind one can never fully destroy? If Apollonian reason were unnatural to man, and Dionysian intuition brought him closer to nature and truth, the apostles of irrationality would not have to resort to drugs. Happy, self-confident men do not seek to get stoned. Drug addiction is the attempt to obliterate one's consciousness, the quest for a deliberately-induced insanity. As such, it is so obscene and evil that any doubt about the moral character of its practitioners is itself an obscenity.”
Apollo and Dionysus (1969)
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Ayn Rand 322
Russian-American novelist and philosopher 1905–1982Related quotes

“What theology that would have been, a god self-worshipping, a drug addicted to itself.”
Source: Embassytown (2011), Chapter 18 (p. 239)

Miller Newton (1981). ‘’Gone Way Down: Teenage Drug-Use is a Disease,’’ American Studies Press, Tampa, FL, pg 30.
On Teenage Drug Use
Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Source: Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, 2011, pp. 126-127

“Wouldn't you rather your kid be a drug dealer than a drug addict?”
From 6/28/2010 Colbert Report
“I blossomed into a healthy young drug addict.”
On tapes for Ciao! Manhattan
Edie : American Girl (1982)
Context: I'm a little nervous about saying anything about "the Artist" because it kind of sticks him right between the eyes, but he deserves it. Warhol really fucked up a great many people's - young people's - lives. My introduction to heavy drugs came through the Factory. I liked the introduction to drugs I received. I was a good target for the scene; I blossomed into a healthy young drug addict.

"Dreaming of War," The Nation (15 October 2001)
Context: For a decade Americans have been steeped in the rhetoric of "zero tolerance" and the faith that virtually all problems from drug addiction to lousy teaching can be solved by pouring on the punishment. Even without a Commander in Chief who pledges to rid the world of evildoers, smoke them out of their holes and the like, we would be vulnerable to the temptation to brush aside frustrating complexities and relieve intolerable fear (at least for the moment) by settling on one or more scapegoats to crush. To imagine that trauma casts out fantasy is a dangerous mistake.

“I'm a reading addict. I can't live without it, like someone who is addicted to drugs.”

“Expressing oneself is like a drug. I’m so addicted to it.”
2000-09, The Bold and the Beautiful, 2009