Addiction
Quotes - Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision
“What
we call the personality is often a jumble of genuine traits and adopted coping
styles that do not reflect our true self at all but the loss of it.”
―
Gabor Maté, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction
“Fine.
Such a stupid word really. It feels empty and weightless. It’s the kind of word
you use to hide the truth.”
―
Krista Ritchie, Ricochet
“When
you are secure in yourself, know what turns you on, and enjoy watching your
partner watch you experience sexual pleasure, you have a highly novel
relationship grounded in love. The experience of seeing and being seen fuels
lust and desire. This is exactly the way you integrate healthy lust and love
into your sex life. It’s relational sex, not the old pornographic sex of past
addictions.”
―
Alexandra Katehakis, Erotic Intelligence: Igniting Hot, Healthy Sex While in
Recovery from Sex Addiction
“This
has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what
they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing
in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed--run over,
maimed, destroyed--but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very
happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and
playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was
beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For example,
while I was writing this I learned that the person on whom the character Jerry
Fabin is based killed himself. My friend on whom I based the character Ernie
Luckman died before I began the novel. For a while I myself was one of these
children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play
instead of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is
a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each.
Drug
misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in
front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in
judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error,a
life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is "Be happy now
because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and
the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of
the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is
only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years.
"Take the cash and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460. But
that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime.
There
is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say they were wrong
to play when they should have toiled;it just tells what the consequences were.
In Greek drama they were beginning, as a society, to discover science, which
means causal law. Here in this novel there is Nemesis: not fate, because any
one of us could have chosen to stop playing in the street, but, as I narrate
from the deepest part of my life and heart, a dreadful Nemesis for those who
kept on playing. I myself,I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel.
So, though, was our entire nation at this time. This novel is about more people
than I knew personally. Some we all read about in the newspapers. It was, this
sitting around with our buddies and bullshitting while making tape recordings,
the bad decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out of the
establishment. And nature cracked down on us. We were forced to stop by things
dreadful.
If
there was any "sin," it was that these people wanted to keep on
having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel
that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only
in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial
cause-and-effect. I loved them all. Here is the list, to whom I dedicate my
love:
To
Gaylene deceased
To
Ray deceased
To
Francy permanent psychosis
To
Kathy permanent brain damage
To
Jim deceased
To
Val massive permanent brain damage
To
Nancy permanent psychosis
To
Joanne permanent brain damage
To
Maren deceased
To
Nick deceased
To
Terry deceased
To
Dennis deceased
To
Phil permanent pancreatic damage
To
Sue permanent vascular damage
To
Jerri permanent psychosis and vascular damage
.
. . and so forth.
In
Memoriam.
These
were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the
enemy will never be forgiven. The "enemy" was their mistake in
playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy.”
―
Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly
“[H]ere
was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many
ages, at once discovered: happiness might now be bought for a penny, and
carried in the waistcoat pocket; portable ecstacies might be had corked up in a
pint bottle, and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the
mail-coach.”
―
Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater
“This
is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been
bestowed upon us . . . to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves,
to act in such a way that some part of us lives on. This is our purpose: to
make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us . . .
to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves, to act in such a way
that some part of us lives on.”
―
Oswald Spengler
“We
love the things that destroy us, because in that destruction we truly feel
alive.”
―
Robert Pobi, Bloodman
“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, Between the Lines
“Every
day I ran to that book like it was a bottle of whiskey and crawled inside
because it was a world that I had at least some control over, and slowly, in
time, it began to take shape.”
―
Craig Ferguson, American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely
Patriot
“I
urge you to find a way to immerse yourself fully in the life that you’ve been
given. To stop running from whatever you’re trying to escape, and instead to
stop, and turn, and face whatever it is. Then I dare you to walk toward it. In
this way, the world may reveal itself to you as something magical and
awe-inspiring that does not require escape. Instead, the world may become
something worth paying attention to. The rewards of finding and maintaining
balance are neither immediate nor permanent. They require patience and
maintenance. We must be willing to move forward despite being uncertain of what
lies ahead. We must have faith that actions today that seem to have no impact
in the present moment are in fact accumulating in a positive direction, which
will be revealed to us only at some unknown time in the future. Healthy
practices happen day by day. My patient Maria said to me, “Recovery is like
that scene in Harry Potter when Dumbledore walks down a darkened alley lighting
lampposts along the way. Only when he gets to the end of the alley and stops to
look back does he see the whole alley illuminated, the light of his progress.”
―
Anna Lembke, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
“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, Rachel's Holiday
“This
is how we bring about our own damnation, you know-by ignoring the voice that
begs us to stop. To stop while there's still time.”
―
Stephen King, Revival
“My
throat tightened, but I held back the tears and reminded myself that
withdrawing from a woman is no different than kicking a drug; you feel shaky
and you want it, but eventually the need passes, and you feel restored.”
―
Keith Ablow, Denial
