Quotes about addiction

A collection of quotes on the topic of addiction, drug, people, likeness.

Quotes about addiction

“Stories of perfect people who have never failed don't inspire me, in fact, those stories make me bored and sleepy. I'm fascinated and addicted to stories of people who have failed and risen to become the world's best, those are the real heroes. Failing doesn't define you, how you bounce back up is what makes you”

Cornelius Keagon (1996) Liberian humanitarian aid worker

Perfection, People, World

“A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is "sensitive"; or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture — in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Speech at Queen's College, City University of New York (March 12, 1975). "The Sexual Politics of Fear and Courage", ch. 5, published in Our Blood (1976).

Life, People, Art, Literature

“I'm addicted to perfection. Problem with my life is I was always also addicted to chaos. Perfect chaos.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.details.com/culture-trends/news-and-politics/201008/interview-boxing-mike-tyson
On himself

Life, Problem, Perfection

“My mom and I lived at Hollywood and Western, a drug-dealer and prostitute corner. It was pretty terrifying. I got beat up a lot. I saw people have sex in the alleys. I remember I was five years old, and this guy with a trench coat, needles and crack cornered me. Early on, seeing the devastation on my block, seeing heroin addicts, made me think twice about ever getting involved in drugs. It's evil. Once you take that step and experiment, drugs can take over your life. You are not yourself anymore. That's something I never wanted. I didn't have a lot of friends growing up. It was kind of just me and my parents. But because of them, the neighborhood did not have a bad effect on me. My dad introduced me to artists, and every few months we'd go to some hippie doo-dah parade as Mudmen in our underwear, carrying sticks and covered in mud. My mother did everything to get me into the best schools she could find.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Life, People, School, Sex

“Don't let these tattoos fool you. I'm straight edge. I'm a man of great discipline; I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs… my addiction is wrestling - my obsession is competition. Discipline. My name is C…M…Punk.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Extreme Championship Wrestling. July 4th, 2006.
This was Punk's debut on ECW television.
Extreme Championship Wrestling

Fools, Drink, Tattoo

“Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is. They are addicts, and they are guilty and they do lie and cheat and steal — like all junkies.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Better than Sex (22 August 1994)
1990s
Context: Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is. They are addicts, and they are guilty and they do lie and cheat and steal — like all junkies. And when they get in a frenzy, they will sacrifice anything and anybody to feed their cruel and stupid habit, and there is no cure for it. That is addictive thinking. That is politics — especially in presidential campaigns. That is when the addicts seize the high ground. They care about nothing else. They are salmon, and they must spawn. They are addicts.

Lie, Idea, Cheating

“Lust hidden under the cloak of the secretly forbidden, is explosive and addictive.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1981

“Then, there is the secret life.
There, alone and in our own realm;
Here, we fantasize about sex, romance,
and being wealthy. No one knows.
Except, when we cross over
and violate societal mores. We betray,
experience relationships that would be scorned
in the other two lives. And to the extent we deviate
from the norms, the greater amount of time
is expended for clandestine pursuits.
And we stay here, because it’s addictive.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

2003
From the poem, "The Addictive Life.”

Sex, Secret, Time, Life

“She had her addictions and one of them was reading.”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

Reading

“I never met an addict who came from a nice home. I've met addicts that came from families that had money and nice houses. But never from a nice home.”

Sara Gran (1971) American writer

Source: Dope

Money, Family, Home, Housing

“The alcoholic and the drug addict harm only themselves by their behavior; the person who violates the rules of morality governing mans life in society harms not only himself, but everyone.”

Ludwig von Mises book Liberalism

Source: Liberalism

Life, Alcohol, Behavior, Personality

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Fate, Books, Disease

“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Alcohol

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

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (1960) Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former trader and risk analyst

“Music is an addiction.”

Miles Davis (1926–1991) American jazz musician

Music

“Addictions - Run to Jesus instead of running to your addiction.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

“The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.”

Chris Hedges (1956) American journalist

War

“[On Sid Vicious] Yes I can take on England, but I couldn't take on one heroin addict.”

John Lydon (1956) English singer, songwriter, and musician

The Filth and the Fury (2000)

“Ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen.”

Emil M. Cioran book History and Utopia

History and Utopia (1960)

“Americans need bullshit the way koala bears need eucalyptus leaves. They’ve become totally addicted to it. They get so much of it back home that they can’t survive without it.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Source: Short fiction, London Bone (1997), p. 423

Way, Home

“I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Quoted in Library of Living Philosophers: The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell (1944)
1940s

“Serenity is the first thing people with addiction issues are instructed to request: God, grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change, Courage to change the things I can, And the wisdom to know the difference.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)

Wisdom, God, People, Courage

“Voices were blended and intermingled in a tumultuous swirl around which eddied laughter, shouts, the squeaking of doors and windows, piano and accordion music, rollicking handclaps, a policeman's bark, braying, grunts, coughs of hashish addicts and screams of drunkards, anonymous calls for help, raps of a stick, and singing by individuals and groups.”

Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) Egyptian writer

Mahfouz (1957) Palace of Desire Part II; Cited in Matt Schudel " Leading Arab Novelist Gave Streets a Voice http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/30/AR2006083000475.html" in: Washington Post, August 31, 2006

Music, Laughter, Singing, Help

“I'm like a junky without an addiction.”

Ozzy Osbourne (1948) English heavy metal vocalist and songwriter

I Don't Wanna Stop, written by Ozzy Osbourne, Zakk Wylde and Kevin Churko.
Song lyrics, Black Rain (2007)

“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.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

Love, People, Alcohol, Way

“MALCOLM X: Freedom, justice and equality are our principal ambitions. And to faithfully serve and follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the guiding goal of every Muslim. Mr. Muhammad teaches us the knowledge of our own selves, and of our own people. He cleans us up--morally, mentally and spiritually--and he reforms us of the vices that have blinded us here in the Western society. He stops black men from getting drunk, stops their dope addiction if they had it, stops nicotine, gambling, stealing, lying, cheating, fornication, adultery, prostitution, juvenile delinquency. I think of this whenever somebody talks about someone investigating us. Why investigate the Honorable Elijah Muhammad? They should subsidize him. He's cleaning up the mess that white men have made. He's saving the Government millions of dollars, taking black men off of welfare, showing them how to do something for themselves. And Mr. Muhammad teaches us love for our own kind. The white man has taught the black people in this country to hate themselves as inferior, to hate each other, to be divided against each other. Messenger Muhammad restores our love for our own kind, which enables us to work together in unity and harmony. He shows us how to pool our financial resources and our talents, then to work together toward a common objective. Among other things, we have small businesses in most major cities in this country, and we want to create many more. We are taught by Mr. Muhammad that it is very important to improve the black man's economy, and his thrift. But to do this, we must have land of our own. The brainwashed black man can never learn to stand on his own two feet until he is on his own. We must learn to become our own producers, manufacturers and traders; we must have industry of our own, to employ our own. The white man resists this because he wants to keep the black man under his thumb and jurisdiction in white society. He wants to keep the black man always dependent and begging--for jobs, food, clothes, shelter, education. The white man doesn't want to lose somebody to be supreme over. He wants to keep the black man where he can be watched and retarded.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Mr. Muhammad teaches that as soon as we separate from the white man, we will learn that we can do without the white man just as he can do without us. The white man knows that once black men get off to themselves and learn they can do for themselves, the black man's full potential will explode and he will surpass the white man.
Playboy interview, regarding the ambition of the Black Muslims
Attributed

Love, Men, Hate, People

“All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.”

W. H. Auden (1907–1973) Anglo-American poet

"Hell"
A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970)

“In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.”

Ivan Illich book Tools for Conviviality

Tools for Conviviality (1973), Ch. 3

Envy

“Recently, while I was in the street, my eye was caught by a poulterer's shop; I stared unthinkingly at his piled-up wares, neatly and appetizingly laid out, when I became aware of a man at the side busily plucking a hen, while another man was just putting his hand in a cage, where he seized a live hen and tore its head off. The hideous scream of the animal, and the pitiful, weaker sounds of complaint that it made while being overpowered transfixed my soul with horror. Ever since then I have been unable to rid myself of this impression, although I had experienced it often before. It is dreadful to see how our lives—which, on the whole, remain addicted to pleasure—rest upon such a bottomless pit of the cruellest misery! This has been so self-evident to me from the very beginning, and has become even more central to my thinking as my sensibility has increased … I have observed the way in which I am drawn in the [direction of empathy for misery] with a force that inspires me with sympathy, and that everything touches me deeply only insofar as it arouses fellow-feeling in me, i. e. fellow-suffering. I see in this fellow-suffering the most salient feature of my moral being, and presumably it is this that is the well-spring of my art.”

Richard Wagner (1813–1883) German composer, conductor

Selected Letters of Richard Wagner, translated by Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1987), pp. 422-424 http://www.animal-rights-library.com/texts-c/wagner02.htm

Pleasure, Art, Way, Feeling

“Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Cold Turkey (2004)

Truth, Thinking

“Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. (What are the two?) There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable. Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagata (the Perfect One) has realized the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to Nibbana. And what is that Middle Path realized by the Tathagata? … It is the Noble Eightfold Path, and nothing else, namely: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.011.piya.html, as translated by Piyadassi Maha Thera (1999) <br class="br">Unclassified

Life, Pain, People, Pleasure

“You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in the other direction. Junk wins by default.”

William S. Burroughs book Junkie

Prologue
Junkie (1953)
Context: The questions, of course, could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in the other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a matter of curiosity.

Motivation, Strong

“My quarrel with the Catholic church is personal. You drug addicts, don’t harm bishops and cardinals because they are not involved in the political ruckus.”

Rodrigo Duterte (1945) Filipino politician and the 16th President of the Philippines

Original: (tl) ‘Yang aming away ko sa Katoliko amin lang yan personal. Kayong mga adik, ‘wag ninyong totohanin ‘yong pukpokin yung bishop at kardinal, hindi sila kasali sa political ruckus.<br><br> About-face: Duterte now says ‘Don’t kill bishops, priests’ https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1089736/about-face-duterte-now-says-dont-kill-bishops-priests(February 25, 2019)

Personality

“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.”

Nick Hornby book How to Be Good

Variant: 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.
Source: How to Be Good

Love

“Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted. Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution.”

Susan Sontag book On Photography

Source: On Photography

Reality

“Hope is something really tough and tenacious you have to give up. It’s an addiction to break.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Damned

Source: Damned

Hope

“If the last to know he’s an addict is the addict, then maybe the last to know when a man means what he says is the man himself, he reflected.”

Philip K. Dick book A Scanner Darkly

Source: A Scanner Darkly

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

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Reading

“You've recognised a fundamental feature of an addict's life. Maintaining your habit is so important you've no real interest in anything else.”

Marian Keyes (1963) Irish writer

Source: Rachel's Holiday

Life

“I’m obsessed and addicted and ripped-down-raw in love with Jericho Barrons.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Burned

Love

“Historians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to heroin-addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market.”

Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British academic historian and Marxist historiographer

“Writing, at its heart, is a solitary pursuit, designed to make people depressoids, drug addicts, misanthropes, and antisocial weirdos.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

People, Heart

“In a dream I cannot see
tangled abstract phallacy
random turmoil builds in me
i'm a addicted to chaos
-Megadeth, Addicted to Chaos”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

Dreams

“Trying to reason with an addict was like trying to blow out a lightbulb.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

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

Irvine Welsh book Trainspotting

Source: Trainspotting

“I had someone at the Houston police station shoot me with heroin so I could do a story about it. The experience was a special kind of hell. I came out understanding full well how one could be addicted to 'smack,' and quickly.”

Dan Rather (1931) Journalist, Anchor

Hell, Understanding

“Every habit he's ever had is still there in his body, lying dormant like flowers in the desert. Given the right conditions, all his old addictions would burst into full and luxuriant bloom.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Flowers, Lying

“Kids are like heroin, a little heroin addiction. When it’s bad, you’ve never been so miserable, but when it’s good you’ve never been so high.”

Dan Savage (1964) American sex advice columnist and gay rights campaigner

“Rose, I'm an addict with no work ethic who is likely going to go insane. I'm not like you. I'm not a super-hero."
"Not yet," I said.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

“That it is statistically easier for low-IQ people to kick an addiction than it is for high-IQ people… That boring activities become, perversely, much less boring if you concentrate intently on them.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

People

“Anyone who said power was not addictive had never really experienced it.”

Dan Brown book Deception Point

Source: Deception Point

“It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to undervalue them.”

Henry James book Hawthorne

Hawthorne, ch. VI: England and Italy.

People, World, Thinking

“A person susceptible to "wanderlust" is not so much addicted to movement as committed to transformation.”

Pico Iyer (1957) British writer

Personality

“I wish we didn't live so far apart… You're kind of addicting.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

“Money doesn’t mind if we say it’s evil, it goes from strength to strength. It’s a fiction, an addiction, and a tacit conspiracy.”

Martin Amis book Money

Novelists in Interview (1985) edited by John Haffenden
Source: Money

Money, Evil

“Among our egocentric sad-sacks, despair is as addictive as heroin and more popular than sex, for the single reason that when one is unhappy one gets to pay a lot of attention to oneself. Misery becomes a kind of emotional masturbation.”

Tom Robbins book Wild Ducks Flying Backward

Source: Wild Ducks Flying Backward

Sadness, Sex, Despair

“The fact is that being seductive is an addiction that can never be satisfied.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Strange Pilgrims

Source: Strange Pilgrims

“Death,
I need my little addiction to you.
need that tiny voice who,
even as I rise from the sea,
all woman, all there,
says kill me, kill me.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

"Letters to Dr. Y."
Words for Dr. Y (1978)

Death, Sea

“We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.”

Margaret Atwood book Dancing Girls

Source: Dancing Girls

Love

“He hadn't wanted to leave Emma, but at the same time he'd thought it would help. Like an addict getting away from the source of his addiction.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

Time, Help

“Boy poison - a boy's kisses were like a poison, which infected you and after you were exposed you craved more, like an addict.”

Susan Minot (1956) American author and screenwriter

Source: Rapture

Boy, Kiss

“I can't go long without you either, Eva. You're an addiction… my obsession…”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Variant: You're an addiction... my obsession...
Source: Bared to You

“If only it were that easy. You forget: I have an addictive personality. I'm addicted to you. Somehow I think you could do all sorts of bad things to me, and I'd still come back to you.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Thinking, Personality, Forgetting

“Once I was seated, I couldn't help people-watching. I'll admit it, I'm an addict from way back.”

James Patterson book Sundays at Tiffany's

Source: Sundays at Tiffany's

People, Way, Help

“Some people bring out the worst in you, others bring out the best, and then there are those remarkably rare, addictive ones who just bring out the most. Of everything.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

People

“Help me give up my addiction to Hope.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Damned

Source: Damned

Hope, Help

“Perfectionism is a self destructive and addictive belief system that fuels this primary thought: If I look perfect, and do everything perfectly, I can avoid or minimize the painful feelings of shame, judgment, and blame.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Source: The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You're Supposed to Be and Embrace Who You Are

Pain, Feeling, Perfection

“The hero surviving his own murder, his own suicide, his own addiction, surviving his own disappearance from the scene”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Source: The Fall of America: Poems of These States 1965-1971

Suicide

“Her eyes winded. "I'm becoming addicted to you?."
He raised an eyebrow. "You say it like it's a bad thing.”

Michelle Rowen (1971) Canadian writer

Source: The Demon in Me

“Anyone who has lived through it, or those who are now living through it, knows that caring about an addict is as complex and fraught and debilitating as addiction itself.”

David Sheff Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

Source: Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

“Good habits are as addictive as bad habits, and a lot more rewarding.”

Harvey Mackay (1932) American businessman and journalist

“… most Substance-addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

People, Thinking

“Shame was an emotion he had abandoned years earlier. Addicts know no shame. You disgrace yourself so many times you become immune to it.”

John Grisham book The Testament

Source: The Testament

Time

“This must be what an addict feels like, I think,
trying to fight the pull of one last, quick read. My fingers itch toward the binding, and finally, with a sigh of regret, I just grab the book and open it, hungrily reading the story.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

Books, Feeling, Thinking, Reading

“I wanted him to feel what I felt when I was with him: that incredible combination of comfort, decadence, and wonder; the knowledge that, with just a single taste of him, I was addicted.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Feeling, Knowledge

“I am obsessed with you, angel. Addicted to you. You're everything i've ever wanted or needed, everything i've dreamed of. You're everything. I live and breathe you. For you.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Variant: I'm obsessed with you, angel. Addicted to you. You're everything I've ever wanted or needed, everything I've ever dreamed of. You're everything. I live and breathe you. For you.
Source: Reflected in You

Dreams, Angels

“Addicts, as a group, generally score far above average o intelligence tests.
Why?
You tell me.
I guess maybe we're smart enough to have figured out how shitty things are and we decide addiction is the only way to deal with it.”

James Frey book A Million Little Pieces

Source: A Million Little Pieces

Way, Intelligence

“What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

Time

“She didn't love him and he didn't love her; she was like an addiction, and what they were doing had a darkness to it, a weight.”

Kim Edwards book The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Love

“Owning a dog is slightly less expensive than being addicted to crack.”

Jen Lancaster (1967) American writer

Source: Bitter Is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smartass, Or, Why You Should Never Carry A Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office

Dogs

“faith without doubt is addiction”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

Faith

“There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away. (107)”

Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Pain, Way

“I am more than just a Serious basketball fan. I am a life-long Addict. I was addicted from birth, in fact, because I was born in Kentucky.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Life, Birth

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

David Sheff Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

Source: Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

Alcohol, Lie, Help

“Success is both an addiction and an enslavement…”

Paulo Coelho book The Winner Stands Alone

Source: The Winner Stands Alone

Success

“Meetings are an addictive, highly self-indulgent activity that corporations and other large organizations habitually engage in only because they cannot actually masturbate.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

“If you trade your authenticity for safety, you may experience the following: anxiety, depression, eating disorders, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, and inexplicable grief.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Rage

“Now you know how I justify my addictions—if I can pay less for it than I would at Wal-Mart, I get to have it.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

“I wanted to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you. When your whole life breaks down. That's the moment when you have to somehow choose what your life is going to be about.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Life, Truth

“Fiction Is My Addiction”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

“He remained heartbroken, which meant one of two things: either his love was pure and true and earthshakingly significant; or he was addicted to feeling forlorn, he liked being heartbroken.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Marriage Plot

Source: The Marriage Plot

Love, Feeling

“There is nothing an addict likes more, or that serves as better pretext for continuing his present way of life, than to place the weight of responsibility for his situation somewhere other than on his own decisions.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Addicted to Addicts http://www.city-journal.org/html/9_1_sndgs01.html (Winter 1999). <br class="br">City Journal (1998 - 2008)

Life, Way, Decision

“Here is the real domino theory: Gay man to gay man, bisexual man to straight woman, addict mother to newborn baby, they all fall down and someday it will come to you.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

The dangers of an AIDS epidemic. The New York Times, sect. A, p. 31 (December 9, 1993).

Baby

“The major obstacle and most difficult challenge in pursuit of a genuinely loving and caring relationship is to overcome the seductive powers and the addiction to the content approach to entering, creating, and maintaining it. The elusive golden thread of understanding lies in the how, and not the what. Specifically, as gender polarization in a relationship decreases, the experience of it improves. Without that rebalancing, even the most perfect content will unravel increasingly. Once the process is balanced, the magic of having ideal content is no longer necessary. The rebalancing process which creates a relationship free of polarizing gender defenses is clearly difficult and threatening initially in the same way that giving up an addiction seems to be. Once achieved however, a relationship free of distortion, false illusions, resentment, and hopelessness truly becomes possible.”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

What Men Still Don't Know About Transforming Their Relationships, pp. 194–198
What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love (2007)

Love, Way, Understanding, Perfection

“I'd like to dedicate this song real quick, and I'm not going to say anything offensive so that we can make it on TV. This song isn't dedicated to drinking or drug addiction […]. It's basically about a walk in the park. This is something called 'Nightrain.”

Slash (musician) (1965) British-American musician and songwriter

During a show at the Ritz, NY in 1988. Guns N' Roses - "Nightrain" - Live at the Ritz http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=-Gu3gDhESRY 2 February 1988

Drink

“I am concerned that many young people in the Hemisphere seem to envision the United States as a nation intoxicated by power, addicted to warfare, controlled by a military-industrial complex, and determined to preserve the status quo, that we are against rapid economic and social growth.”

Luis A. Ferré (1904–2003) American politician

1971 National Governors Association Annual Meeting NGA http://www.nga.org/portal/site/nga/menuitem.f3e4d086ac6dda968a278110501010a0/?vgnextoid=abd0a75a0f58b010VgnVCM1000001a01010aRCRD

People