100 Quotes About Addiction

I understand addiction now. I never did before, you know. How could a man (or a woman) do something so self-destructive, knowing that they’re hurting not only themselves, but the people they love? It seemed that it would be so incredibly easy for them to just not take that next drink. Just stop. It’s so simple, really. But as so often happens with me, my arrogance kept me from seeing the truth of the matter. I see it now though. Every day, I tell myself it will be the last. Every night, as I’m falling asleep in his bed, I tell myself that tomorrow I’ll book a flight to Paris, or Hawaii, or maybe New York. It doesn’t matter where I go, as long as it’s not here. I need to get away from Phoenix–away from him–before this goes even one step further. And then he touches me again, and my convictions disappear like smoke in the wind. This cannot end well. That’s the crux of the matter, Sweets. I’ve been down this road before–you know I have–and there’s only heartache at the end. There’s no happy ending waiting for me like there was for you and Matt. If I stay here with him, I will become restless and angry. It’s happening already, and I cannot stop it. I’m becoming bitter and terribly resentful. Before long, I will be intolerable, and eventually, he’ll leave me. But if I do what I have to do, what my very nature compels me to do, and move on, the end is no better. One way or another, he’ll be gone. Is it not wiser to end it now, Sweets, before it gets to that point? Is it not better to accept that this happiness I have is destined to self-destruct? Tomorrow I will leave. Tomorrow I will stop delaying the inevitable. Tomorrow I will quit lying to myself, and to him. Tomorrow.What about today, you ask? Today it’s already too late. He’ll be home soon, and I have dinner on the stove, and wine chilling in the fridge. And he will smile at me when he comes through the door, and I will pretend like this fragile, dangerous thing we have created between us can last forever. Just one last time, Sweets. Just one last fix. That’s all I need. And that is why I now understand addiction. Marie Sexton

Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shield and picking up your life. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it's often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis. Unknown

Amy [Winehouse] increasingly became defined by her addiction. Our media though is more interested in tragedy than talent, so the ink began to defect from praising her gift to chronicling her downfall. The destructive personal relationships, the blood soaked ballet slippers, the aborted shows, that YouTube madness with the baby mice. In the public perception this ephemeral tittle-tattle replaced her timeless talent. This and her manner in our occasional meetings brought home to me the severity of her condition. Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions, or death. Russell Brand

It’s easier for me to make sense of it that way than it is for me to face the other way–reality. And yet, those evil spirits that were unleashed–be they fake entities from a stupid carnival ride, or cruel malevolencies from dark spiritual chasms of our universe–have stayed with me all these years Tim Cummings

Listen, we’ll come visit you. Okay? I’ll dress up as William Shakespeare, Lucent as Emily Dickinson, and beautiful ‘Ray’ as someone dashing and manly like Jules Verne or Ernest Hemingway...and we’ll write on your white-room walls. We’ll write you out of your supposed insanity. I love you, Micky Affias.-James (from "Descendants of the Eminent") Tim Cummings

I leave the kitchen table to bathe, and to dress for church. If only my closet held on its shelves an array of faces I could wear rather than dresses, I would know which face to put on today. As for the dresses, I haven't a clue. Tim Cummings

This diary is my kief, hashish and opium pipe. This is my drug and my vice. Unknown

To have the beginning of a truly great story, you need to have a character you're completely and utterly obsessed with. Without obsession, to the point of a maddening addiction, there's no point to continue. Jennifer Salaiz

He was lovable the way a child is lovable, and he was capable of returning love with a childlike purity. If love is nevertheless excluded from his work, it's because he never quite felt that he deserved to receive it. He was a lifelong prisoner on the island of himself. What looked like gentle contours from a distance were in fact sheer cliffs. Sometimes only a little of him was crazy, sometimes nearly all of him, but, as an adult, he was never entirely not crazy. What he'd seen of his id while trying to escape his island prison by way of drugs and alcohol, only to find himself even more imprisoned by addiction, seems never to have ceased to be corrosive of his belief in his lovability. Even after he got clean, even decades after his late-adolescent suicide attempt, even after his slow and heroic construction of a life for himself, he felt undeserving. And this feeling was intertwined, ultimately to the point of indistinguishability, with the thought of suicide, which was the one sure way out of his imprisonment; surer than addiction, surer than fiction, and surer, finally, than love. Jonathan Franzen

Why, then, ' answered the squire, 'I am very sorry you have given him so much learning; for, if he cannot get his living by that, it will rather spoil him for anything else; and your other son, who can hardly write his name, will do more at ploughing and sowing, and is in a better condition, than he.' And indeed so it proved; for the poor lad, not finding friends to maintain him in his learning, as he had expected, and being unwilling to work, fell to drinking, though he was a very sober lad before; and in a short time, partly with grief, and partly with good liquor, fell into a consumption, and died. Henry Fielding

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

We all have those things that help us carry on through life. It is important that these things upon which we depend for daily strength are healthy for our character rather than harmful. We must ask ourselves whether the comforts we reach for each day are vices or virtues? Do they feed the best parts of us or do they rob us of them? Even when we are at our most fatigued and are tempted to reach for self-destructive things, we must try to seek out and take solace in those things that will lead to our eventual renewal; rather than those things that will only serve to bring us lower. L.M. Browning

God made you for His pleasure. And He made you intrinsically needy and dependent on His unspeakable joy. If you are struggling with sin our addiction, don’t try to kill your appetite for pleasure. It is impossible. Just direct it to the source of all pleasure. You will be amazed to find that He has perfectly and supernaturally designed you to have all your deepest needs met in Him John Crowder

Darkness always causes fear and chaos inside us. We are always scared of losing ourselves somewhere inside there. But some of us get so much used to it that we start feeling peaceful in there and we start spending more time in it. One weird thing about darkness is, we meet ourselves there. Who are very different from what we are. And once we start speaking with them we become addicted to that kind of conversations. We fall in love with the same thing that we tried to run away from out whole life. . Akshay Vasu

A POCKET-SIZED GIRLHe keeps me in his pocket for a rainy day; he swears I'm not an object as he yo-yo's me away. A friend is what we'll call it, but my friend, he does not know, each time it rains I love him– so to his pocket, I must go. He thinks he's being clever, but I am not a fool;his love ain't worth a penny, so to my heart I must be cruel. Coco J. Ginger

MY MOONI'll always wonder what time it is there; if you're dreaming, or awake. My moon is your sun; my darkness, your light. I'm in the future, you'd jokingly say. And I know where you are, because I'm watching you from the past. Coco J. Ginger

7amThey said that I’d forget you, and I knew it wasn’t true. But sometimes I wake up now, and my heart’s no longer blue. I press the Keurig button, dancing across the room– Sometimes it’s nearly seven, before I’ve thought of you. And though we sleep together, all night side by side, one day I’ll have my coffeewithout you in my mind. Coco J. Ginger

WORTHYIf you ever decide to feel– feel this: I love you. I always have. I always will. Not because you're charming, beautiful or lovable. But because I choose you. Everyday I wake up and I choose you– again, and again, and again. But if you cannot feel, and if you never feel this, then know: I do not love you. I never have. I never will. Because you're not worth my love.( Come back my love, I am drowning.). Coco J. Ginger

What makes people tick? Life can be a trap of ennui, but imagery may be a redemptive escape from dullness. The iconic power and exuberance of images generate an inexorable addiction that needs to be gratified without respite. Here and now! ("Give me more images") Erik Pevernagie

In the beginning war looks and feels like love. But unlike love it gives nothing in return but an ever-deepening dependence, like all narcotics, on the road to self-destruction. It does not affirm but places upon us greater and greater demands. It destroys the outside world until it is hard to live outside war's grip. It takes a higher and higher dose to achieve any thrill. Finally, one ingests war only to remain numb. Chris Hedges

I do not think the long-range bullets I fire provide the mark of a man; I am only dimly aware that they are dehumanising me. They are my opium tto see me through my time here. But with each hit they give, they only provide a feeling respite from the past I cannot escape from and thre present I have chosen to mire myself in. And, grounded as I am in the reality of this hill, I do not yet fully appreciate how this addiction is infecting my future with malediction. With this clinical, psychopathically detached behaviour considered as normal, proper and expected on this hall, I cannot yet stop to think - because I cannot allow myself to here - of how hese respites may be blackening my soul in all the time I will have left on my own back Home - should I even live through the remainder of my months here, in some other corner of this Hell of a country. Jake Wood

There is a yearning that is as spiritual as it is sensual. Even when it degenerates into addiction, there is something salvageable from the original impulse that can only be described as sacred. Something in the person (dare we call it a soul?) wants to be free, and it seeks its freedom any way it can.... There is a drive for transcendence that is implicit in even the most sensual of desires. Mark Epstein

I think Amy Winehouse's decision not to go to rehab was a bad one. In fact, I think it was the worst idea since Dodi Al Fayed said to Princess Diana, "Ooh, look! A tunnel! Whack that seat belt off and let's have a fuck. Robert Clark

Poor women suffer terrible sexual violence that goes unreported. Because of their social class, these women do not have access to therapy or other methods of healing. Their repeated abuse ultimately eats away at their self-esteem, driving them to drugs, prostitution, AIDS, and in many cases, death. Eve Ensler

It is strange, is it not, how an accident of a millimeter here, a millimeter there, makes one face so important. Think about it Elliot, She has two eyes, a nose, a mouth, just like everyone else. It, s all in tiny degrees of placement, such small area of magic to make such a big difference. For me, Elliot, I must tell you it is a hard thing to understand- why these things, these millimeters, are so crucial to you, you of all men. . Judith Krantz

The Bible does not deny that we were various things–addicts, homosexuals, hateful, prideful, pornographic masturbators–but that is what we were (past tense) (1 Cor. 6:9-11; Titus 3:3-5). The emphasis in Scripture is on what we are and what we are called to be. The Christian does not say, Hello, my name is _____ and I am an X Y or Z.” The Christian says I was dead, but now I am alive. The Christian says I am a struggling sinner, yet I am a saint. The Christians says I am a new creation; I am transformed. Paul OBrien

We are all hungry for genuine connection and caring, and we will not get this unless we find our Soul's tribe. If we don't find this, we'll kill ourselves, either by finding an addiction to mask the pain or by ignoring what we need to stay healthy. Christiane Northrup

A lot of people here some South in your mouth, and they automatically think you're dumb. They think if you talk funny, you are funny. — Lloyd Hand David Pietrusza

Reading is an addiction that I adore. Vianka Van Bokkem

I'd rather have a book, but in a pinch I'll settle for a set of Water Pik instructions. Anne Fadiman

He read because it gave him instant gratification in a way nothing else did, and as was the case with all addicts, gratification was the important thing. Jeet Thayil

Reading is an addiction, much like living and breathing is an addiction. Jeffrey Michael

Addiction to reading... There are worse things in the world to be Addicted to. I admire your hobby choice it's mine as well. Christy A. Mair

I loved books, even as I loved the similar way opium had of transporting a mind elsewhere Karina Cooper

Be careful not to appear obsessively intellectual. When intelligence fills up, it overflows a parody. Criss Jami

Jesus came to bring life more abundantly. He came to save the soulsick, to deliver those bound up in sin, to break the chains of bondage and addiction. He came to heal the hurting, and comfort and restore the used, abused, bruised, battered, and broken. He came to forgive the worst sinner and to bring life to the lifeless. He came to reconcile us with God so we can have relationship with our Father. Teresa Schultz

I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom. Edgar Allan Poe

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

One of the greatest evils is the foolishness of a good man. For the giving man to withhold helping someone in order to first assure personal fortification is not selfish, but to elude needless self-destruction; martyrdom is only practical when the thought is to die, else a good man faces the consequence of digging a hole from which he cannot escape, and truly helps no one in the long run. Mike Norton

Something they seem to omit to mention in Boston AA when you're new and out of your skull with desperation and ready to eliminate your map and they tell you how it'll all get better and better as you abstain and recover: they somehow omit to mention that the way it gets better and you get better is through pain. Not around pain, or in spite of it. David Foster Wallace

Men are a compilation of every experience and relationship they have ever lived through. Some experiences have bettered your man while others have battered him. The man standing before you is the result of a lifetime of surviving. Dave Samples

My fear of abandonment is exceeded only by my terror of intimacy. Ethlie Ann Vare

Just because something is addictive doesn't mean that you will get addicted to it. But . if your stomach ties up in knots while you count the seconds waiting for a phone call from that special someone . . if you hear a loud buzzing in your ears when you see a certain person's car (or one just like it) . if your eyes burn when you hear a random love song or see a couple holding hands . if you suffer the twin agonies of craving for and withdrawing from a series of unrequited crushes or toxic relationships . . if you always feel like you're clutching at someone's ankle and dragged across the floor as they try to leave the room . welcome to the club. Ethlie Ann Vare

Addiction brings apathy. Break the apathy, and you break the addiction. Mango Wodzak

It's hard to get enough of something that almost works. Vincent Felitti

No one wants to admit we're addicted to music. That's just not possible. No one's addicted to music and television and radio. We just need more of it, more channels, a larger screen, more volume. We can't bear to be without it, but no, nobody's addicted. We could turn it off anytime we wanted. I fit a window frame into a brick wall. With a little brush, the size for fingernail polish, I glue it. The window is the size of a fingernail. The glue smells like hair spray. The smell tastes like oranges and gasoline. Chuck Palahniuk

Music gives you a certain high that any drug in the world cannot. Vineet Goel

I used to have a drug problem, now I make enough money. David Lee Roth

When we practise self-compassion, we look after ourselves just as though we are nurturing a small child. In fact, a major part of grieving our original pain work (so that we can heal and be emotionally liberated) is to re-parent ourselves and reconnect with our inner child. This is what the author, John Bradshaw, meant by ‘reclaiming our inner child’. In recovery, we can begin to nurture our inner child and connect deeply with our heart and spirit. . Christopher Dines

People don't care about being duped as long as they're happy, which is the shortest form of happiness; hence 'self-duprication' becomes a habit. Criss Jami

It is only the Creator that can set thy soul free from every struggle. Lailah Gifty Akita

I think of drug dealers like I think of my father– never really there when you want them to be. Kris Kidd

Always make your familial environment a safe and inviting place. Asa Don Brown

I know that my grandmother certainly did nothing to warrant my mother stealing all of her jewelry that my grandfather had given her as gifts over the years, just so she could peddle it for heroin on the street. Those were precious metals and gems that could never be replaced, and each one had a story behind it. A love story between my grandparents, that my mother flushed down a proverbial toilet so that she could shoot up, throw up and pass out. Ashly Lorenzana

Bookworms are the most precious worms in the world when they are humans, feeding upon the paper's body with their starving minds. Munia Khan

In the beginning, the taste of power is sweet, savored on the tongue, like fine wine. It whispers promises in your ear and pretends to be your friend. It is easy to become addicted to this feeling. Rahma Krambo

Consumption can be a remedy against boredom and may convey a sense of fictitious power and supremacy, by standing out from the crowd through the extravagance of the expenditure. As it becomes an addiction, however, it might be cured, if the right medication is administered : humbleness and mindful discovery of the others. (“Buying now, dying later”) Erik Pevernagie

Powerlessness implies inactivity, like an appliance that is not plugged into its electrical current. Empowerment is about plugging into responsible choices and then acting upon them to your fullest capacity. David Kipper

Competition works best in sports, but humans get addicted to stuff. Criss Jami

While we are curling down in our comfort zone, the perverted talents of connectivity-designers drive us surreptitiously into a blind alley of addiction. If, however, we succeed in impeding mobiles' unlimited rule, we may be able to relish the fragrance of the ‘moment’ but also sense the vital spark and spirit of “otherness”. ("Even if the world goes down, my mobile will save me") Erik Pevernagie

The attempt to escape from pain, is what creates more pain. Unknown

Reality was dawning on him and he hated reality. If you were him, so would you. Carla H. Krueger

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

I am not your victim because you are not a predator any more than a bottle of scotch stalks an alcoholic. Sue William Silverman

I'm not crying out for help, but I am sharing my experience in the hopes that readers will get something out of it. I'm not the one who gets to decide what that is, if anything. I'm just starting the "journey" if you will, so I can't possibly know yet what the "message" of my life really is. I only know what has happened so far, and how I've felt up until this moment. I agree that reading about the pain of others is concerning when they are still hurting and in the same situation as when they wrote about it. But what can you do? You can reach out, ask how you can help and be there to listen. You can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved. You can't love someone who doesn't love themselves enough to take care of themselves and stay out of bad situations. Believe me, I know this. Ashly Lorenzana

I think it's better to be comfortable in your skin than to be miserable being who you are. Sure, the meth is horrible. It ruins people from the inside out. It's a waiting game --- it's not a matter of if it destroys you, but rather a matter of when it will. I've made it this far. I'm not sending a message that it's "cool" to be on drugs and tell everyone about it. I don't sum myself up as a drug addict and a hooker. That's not what I am. Those are juts things I do, they don't define me. Jobs and addictions do not make us who we are. . Ashly Lorenzana

My desire to self-destruct is a one-night standon Groundhog Day.Fucking repetitive. Repetitively fucking. Kris Kidd

I talk too much, but there's a lot unsaid. I've slept in a lot of beds. Kris Kidd

You grow bored of these shrines, and you abandon thembecause you know for a fact that you will worshipanything you kneel before. Like God.Like cock. Like porcelain. Kris Kidd

I have a very addictive personality. If it isn’t women, it’s money. If it isn’t money, it’s speeding. And if it isn’t speeding, it’s women. I also like expensive video consoles where I can punch, kick, screw, shoot and drive legally all night anywhere I fucking well want to. Carla H. Krueger

That first drunk, first high, first sexual encounter, those feelings of first are the most intense, the best remembered, always impossible to attain again. Justin Donner

Sex had nothing to do with feeling good, everything to do with superficialities, and was always accompanied by a masochistic agenda to feel anything but dead inside. Justin Donner

Don't ever think you're better than a drug addict, because your brain works the same as theirs. You have the same circuits. And drugs would affect your brain in the same way it affects theirs. The same thought process that makes them screw up over and over again would make you screw up over and over as well, if you were in their shoes. You probably already are doing it, just not with heroin or crack, but with food or cigarettes, or something else you shouldn't be doing. Oliver Markus

The initial journey towards sobriety is a delicate balance between insight into one's desire for escape and abstinence from one's addiction. Debra L. Kaplan

Fireworks. Snowflakes. Sunstroke and frostbite. It was all that I could ask for and completely unexpected. I expected demands. He gifted me with tenderness. I expected ego. He let me experiment. I expected disrespect. He called me beautiful. I expected him to expect perfection. He taught me all I needed to know. Ellen Hopkins

The events that occur in my life are workout situations. They are there for my benefit so I can become strong and gain wisdom and information by working my way through those situations. Chris Prentiss