Best 1307 quotes in «addiction quotes» category

the media, at least in the U.S., tends to focus on pain pill use, abuse, and addiction by people who do not have chronic pain. Even if these stories offhandedly mention that these pills are used to treat pain in people whose physical pain does not go away, however, the stories of those who use pain medicine responsibly -- or, worse, accused of drug-seeking behavior because they need certain types of pills for chronic pain -- are usually overshadowed by the “How can we prevent pain pill addiction?” concern, instead of asking, “How can we treat chronic pain more effectively?

The mentality, thought system and relationships that got you into addiction will keep you there unless you disentangle yourself from them.

The more we have, the more we realize can be taken from us, and that’s when our lives border on insanity. We live in fear of losing what we think we possess. Once we let go and let God, then we gain a peace that surpasses understanding.

The next day we were all shooting up. "Jeez. Look at the size of the cotton he just threw in the spoon." "Yea. What are you trying to prove?" They had a good laugh at my expense.

The notion of freedom could make even peace and order seem oppressive, generate the suspicion of some hidden purpose, some vast deceit, some unspecified crime being perpetrated beyond human ken. That was a generous way of looking at it; the alternative was to acknowledge that humans were intrinsically conflicted, cursed with acquisitive addictions of the spirit.

The Power to redefine your life and purpose is in your hands, use it effectively like a wise person.

The process of recovering from addictiveness happens at a deeper level of consciousness and through feeling our pain without using old addictive fixes. There is no escaping that getting in touch with our original pain is the touchstone to mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing.

The psyche cannot tolerate a vacuum of love. In the severely abused or deprived child, pain, dis-ease, and violance rush in to fill the void. In the average person in our culture, who has been only "normally" deprived of touch, anxiety and an insatiable hunger for posessions replace the missing eros. The child lacking a sense of welcome, joyous belonging, gratuitous security, will learn to hoard the limited supply of affection. According to the law of psychic compensation, not being held leads to holding on, grasping, addiction, posessiveness. Gradually, things replace people as a source of pleasure and security. When the gift of belonging with is denied, the child learns that love means belongin to. To the degree we are arrested at this stage of development, the needy child will dominate our motivations. Other people and things (and there is fundamentally no difference) will be seen as existing solely for the purpose of "my" survival and satisfaction. "Mine" will become the most important word.

The punishment approach and bad consequences approach to treatment is the kind of thinking that is prevalent in every residential substance abuse treatment center in the United States of which I'm aware.

The reader! You, dogged, uninsultable, print-oriented bastard, it's you I'm addressing, who else, from inside this monstrous fiction. You've read me this far, then? Even this far? For what discreditable motive? How is it you don't go to a movie, watch TV, stare at a wall, play tennis with a friend, make amorous advances to the person who comes to your mind when I speak of amorous advances? Can nothing surfeit, saturate you, turn you off? Where's your shame?

There are a lot of times the heart burrows deeper, goes tunnelling into itself for reasons only the heart itself seems to know.They are times of isolation, of hibernation, sometimes of desolation. There is a bareness that spreads out over the interior landscape of the self, a bareness like tundra, with no sign of life in any direction, no sign of anything beneath the frozen crust of ground, no sign that spring ever intends to come again.

There are few things ever dreamed of, smoked or injected that have as addictive an effect on our brains as technology. This is how our devices keep us captive and always coming back for more. The definitive Internet act of our times is a perfect metaphor for the promise of reward: we search. And we search. And we search some more, clicking that mouse like – well, like a rat in a cage seeking another “hit”, looking for the elusive reward that will finally feel like enough.

The moment sex ceases to be a servant it becomes a tyrant.

The more my brain was fed, the hungrier it became.

The most powerful energy on earth is the power of creation. Create a new life is you want to truly leave the old one behind.

The only way to truly help most drug addicts and most alcoholics is to—instead of them—change reality.

The past does not define me, it ignites me. The past is not a piece of me, it has placed me

The phone is about the same size as a cigarette pack. It's no surprise to me that the traditional cigarette lighter in many cars has turned into the space we use to recharge our phones. They are kin. The phone, like the cigarette, let's the texter/former smoker drop out of any social interaction for a second to get a break and make a little love to the beautiful object. We need something, people. We can't live propless.

There are a lot of victims when it comes to addiction. I know there's an overdose epidemic. We see those faces. But then I see these other faces - the ones who commit suicide because they can't handle the pain. Those faces mean just as much to me.

There are no restrictions or barriers for preventing someone from becoming an addict to a technological device.

There are people who are addicted to sadness the way others are addicted to coffee or cigarettes.

There is good weird and good strange and bad weird and bad strange. Your Daddy is good weird and good strange.

There are casualties in war. Those who don’t make it back to a place of sound hopes and dreams. Some take on their demons alone. They are deceived into fearlessness and trampled by the hooves of their oppressor. Besides intervention, there is little justice for the thousands-upon-thousands hacked to pieces all around us. How dare we try to take life to the next level. Instead of merely protecting ourselves or scrounging up our next meal, we have the audacity to hope for something more—a witness for our lives who will survive alongside us.

There is a fine line between what’s the disease’s fault and what’s the drinker’s fault.

There is hope for the alcoholic: God is able to deliver from this as well as any other addiction.

There is no addiction stronger than the addiction of a person... No rehab works...!

There is no cell culture for depression. You can't see it on a bone scan or an x-ray. Not everyone with depression will show the same behavioral symptoms.

There is no pillow, no comforter, no room for the night at rock bottom. Once you hit there, get up and get out!

THE RELIABLE WAY OUT OF OBESITY IS VIA PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY. This point has been lost on the hundreds of folks who have railed against my arguments for food addiction in periodicals, so I"m eager to make it here: No one but me put the food in my mouth. Even if I had grown up imprisoned in a crawl space under the basement stairs (I wasn't), even if tragedy has befallen me every 15 minutes since (it hasn't), I"m still responsible for what I eat. If my food is out of control (it was), then I'm responsible for finding, requesting, and accepting the help I need.

There’s a saying that goes something like: ‘We are all one drink or pill away from addiction,’ and I know this is meant to destigmatize what addicts go through, but I feel like I’ve been seeing variations on this ‘common knowledge’ more and more lately being used (on social media) as a cudgel to remind patients to not overdo it,” Anna says, speaking to the dual-edged sword of awareness. A motto designed to humanize the experience of addiction has been turned into a weapon that targets people who rely on opioids for pain management, and that translates to real-world stigma.

There is nothing more courageous than change, it requires all you've got to give, that's why they say, "Courage to change.

There’s irony in a beautiful curl slowly turning into a tangled mess, beyond resurrection, in a matter of minutes.

There should never be any blame or shame in being homeless.

There is no such thing as 'just one last cigarette' – except the last cigarette that you've already had.

...there was one thing she would think about when she was high, one thing she would feel: that she was transparent, not invisible, but transparent. But this was the thing: she wasn’t see- through, she wasn’t transparent to light like glass or air, she was transparent to the dark. She said that’s what heroin did, it brought her down to the seafloor, the floor of an ocean trench. Relieved of the need to see, relieved of the need to breathe, she belonged to the darkness completely. It possessed her, moved through her unresisted, as though she herself were made of nothing more than water and darkness, as though she herself were nothing more than a place, a place where the current turned on itself a little and moved on...I said that was it, the big question she carried around in her, the question whether despair was the only way out, whether the only thing she could really make was her escape. That makes sense, she said, just as she said whenever she didn’t agree with my interpretation. But . . . there’s a frustration . . . I want to be clear, perfectly clear. You want to be free to stop hiding things. God, if that’s true, she said with sudden coldness, then all of this is just a load of shit. I knew then that I had overstepped and had ruined something, that I had spooked her and she would make her escape into an anodyne or trivial association. To my surprise, however, she countered and pushed ahead. You are wrong. It’s not that I want to stop hiding. It’s not that I want to come out and say the thing I have to say. Don’t you see? I want there to be nothing. Nothing to hide, and no place to put it. No things, no places. Do you see what I am saying? Can you understand that? Jesus, how could you?

The society is getting addicted to technology, especially social media, quite like one gets addicted to cocaine or pot. And it all works through the neurochemical process of reward and punishment. And furthermore, when a whole world starts functioning driven by this petty instinctual process of reward and punishment, things in existence begin to get really messed up, like it has already started.

The treatment must fit the malady and the malady is not alcoholism or addiction, or addictive drugs and alcohol. Once the correct cause is diagnosed, healing will take place and hoped-for cure will come about.

The slick concrete reflected the facades of the work weary - grey, cracked and old, but more importantly, trodden upon.

...the true test of the perversity of a pleasure is that it occupies a disproportionate amount of the attention.

The silver flask called to him. Blue Coyote Motel

The ultimate computer game would be a 'total addiction' - a game that shapes itself to the elements you most like to play in such a manner that it totally satisfies you. You never want to stop playing. However, any self-configuring activity always has such risks inherent in it. Will we see one day the goverment insisting that games have time limiters the way that some motor vehicles have speed limiters?

The world actually is a mirror, and as you change, you will see everything around you changing as well as mirroring your changes.

The weaker the desire to change, the further away from now is the moment from which we plan on changing.

They sit and stare and stare and sit Until they're hypnoti[z]ed by it, Until they're absolutely drunk With all that shocking ghastly junk. Oh yes, we know it keep them still, They don't climb out the window sill, They never fight or kick or punch, They leave you free to cook the lunch And wash the dishes in the sink- But did you ever stop to think, To wonder just exactly what This does to your beloved tot? It rots the senses in the head! It kills imagination dead! It clogs and clutters up the mind! It makes a child so dull and blind He can no longer understand A fantasy, a fairyland! His brain becomes as soft as cheese! His powers of thinking rust and freeze! He cannot think-he only sees! 'All right' you'll cry. 'All right' you'll say, 'But if we take the set away, What shall we do to entertain Our darling children? Please explain!' We'll answer this by asking you, 'How used they keep themselves contented Before this monster was invented?' Have you forgotten? Don't you know? We'll say it very loud and slow: They... used ... to... read! They'd read and read, And read and read, and then proceed To read some more, Great Scott! Gadzooks! One half their lives was reading books!... Oh books, what books they used to know, Those children living long ago! So please, oh please, we beg, we pray, Go throw your TV set away, And in its place you can install A lovely bookshelf on the wall... ...They'll now begin to feel the need Of having something good to read. And once they start-oh boy, oh boy! You watch the slowly growing joy That fills their hearts. They'll grow so keen They'll wonder what they'd ever seen In that ridiculous machine, That nauseating, foul, unclean, Repulsive television screen! And later, each and every kid Will love you more for what you did...

They say you can’t build Rome in a day, but I’m pretty sure you could destroy it in even less.

--Thing is though, Spud, whin yir intae skag, that's it. That's aw yuv goat tae worry aboot. Ken Billy, ma brar, likes? He's jist signed up tae go back intae the fuckin army. He's gaun tae fucking Belfast, the stupid cunt. Ah always knew that the fucker wis tapped. Fuckin imperialist lackey. Ken whit the daft cunt turned roond n sais tae us? He goes: Ah cannae fuckin stick civvy street. Bein in the army, it's like being a junky. The only difference is thit ye dinnae git shot at sae often bein a junky. Besides, it's usually you that does the shootin. --That, eh, likesay, seems a bit eh, fucked up like man. Ken? --Naw but, listen the now. You jist think aboot it. In the army they dae everything fir they daft cunts. Feed thum, gie the cunts cheap bevvy in scabby camp clubs tae keep thum fae gaun intae toon n lowerin the fuckin tone, upsetting the locals n that. Whin they git intae civvy street, thuv goat tae dae it aw fir thumsells. --Yeah, but likesay, it's different though, cause . . . Spud tries to cut in, but Renton is in full flight. A bottle in the face is the only thing that could shut him up at this point; even then only for a few seconds. --Uh, uh . . . wait a minute, mate. Hear us oot. Listen tae whit ah've goat tae say here . . . what the fuck wis ah sayin . . . aye! Right. Whin yir oan junk, aw ye worry aboot is scorin. Oaf the gear, ye worry aboot loads ay things. Nae money, cannae git pished. Goat money, drinkin too much. Cannae git a burd, nae chance ay a ride. Git a burd, too much hassle, cannae breathe withoot her gittin oan yir case. Either that, or ye blow it, and feel aw guilty. Ye worry aboot bills, food, bailiffs, these Jambo Nazi scum beatin us, aw the things that ye couldnae gie a fuck aboot whin yuv goat a real junk habit. Yuv just goat one thing tae worry aboot. The simplicity ay it aw. Ken whit ah mean?

Things are at their worst when the addict’s hardest job is manipulating the people around them.

Things you don't need in your life targets you the most.

The trick here is, while the actual pleasure begins to recede and blur, we simultaneously bring the imagined pleasure more fully into focus. And when we do, even the memory of the pleasure becomes more and more heightened and imagined, thus anticipation is increased. This kind of anticipation is the spiritual equivalent of a Cheeto and we want them to eat the whole bag.

Thinking about your problem is like watering your house plant. You only make it grow.