Best 54 quotes in «substance abuse quotes» category

Addiction is the pleasure island of our lives. Only a long swim or rescue will help us.

Addiction does not cause partner abuse, and recovery from addiction does not “cure” partner abuse.

Anyone who takes opioids on a regular basis will become dependent upon them, meaning they will have to taper off gradually to avoid withdrawal symptoms. But very few chronic pain patients exhibit the compulsive drug-seeking behaviors of someone who is addicted.

and tonight we held each other, one last time, like a dance to a slow song on an empty floor, underneath a single disco ball in front of no one at all

Do not be blind in love and try not to suffer in silence. -Alba Castillo

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.

A man’s beliefs about the effects of the substance will largely be borne out. If he believes that alcohol can make him aggressive, it will, as research has shown. On the other hand, if he doesn’t attribute violence-causing powers to substances, he is unlikely to become aggressive even when severely intoxicated.

February falls on top of me like a cartoon piano. I reek of champagne, come, and CK One.

Honey, I usually get $300, but I like you, so I'll just take $200.

Even those who drink until blacking out, those who beat women, are not the exception, hopefully not the norm, trapped somewhere in society in a dark place nobody wants to talk about.

If I were to create a word that more accurately describes alcoholism and addiction, I would say it was dependencyism. Sounds silly, doesn't it? Yet it's no sillier than the word alcoholism. The reason alcoholism no longer sounds silly to you is because you're used to hearing it, reading it, and thinking about it.

If love is a form of substance abuse, I hope to die high.

If those underlying conditions aren't treated, the return of those symptoms may cause us so much discomfort that we'll go back to using addictive drugs or alcohol to obtain relief. That's the primary reason there is such a high rate of relapse among people who have become dependent of alcohol and addictive drugs. It has little to do with alcohol and addiction themselves and almost everything to do with the original causes that created the dependency.

In the debate over opioid addiction, there’s one group we aren’t hearing from: chronic pain patients, many of whom need to use the drugs on a long-term basis.

I'd never opened up the gas station if it had been someone else, but I know Tucker's fond of you. It's a shame you don't keep in touch with the old man.

He'd searched every corner of his mind looking for ways to avoid a rendezvous with Chico. In the last twenty years, Slade had come a long way from the ghetto orphanage where he'd grown up, but the only way he could help Maria was to get in touch with Chico. Slade remembered the last time he'd seen Chico as though it was yesterday.

I nod, then let the conversation drop. But secretly I'm wondering if Haymitch sobered up long enough to help Peeta and me because he thought we just might have the wits to survive. Maybe he wasn't always a drunk. Maybe, in the beginning, he tried to help the tributes. But then it got unbearable. It must be hell to mentor two kids and then watch them die. Year after year after year. I realize that if I get out of here, that will become my job. To mentor the girl from District 12. The idea is so repellent, I thrust it from my mind.

In the one-treatment-fits-all approach, clients sit in group meetings all day and all evening and listen to each other stories. At the end of the first week, everyone in the room knows everyone's story. That goes on for three more weeks, and then most people go home with the same problems they brought with them when they arrived.

I take opioids to treat chronic pain. Stigmatizing them will harm me.

I traded in my freedom for a needy, whiny and defiant four-year-old, a junky girlfriend, and a relationship riddled with someone else’s problems Now, I stare out of open windows like a wild mustang craving open fields I clench my crotch, where my balls used to be, and I hum a loathsome tune, like an out- of-work castrato who’s realized his dreams of someday having his own family are gone

It's the causes, not the dependent person, that must be corrected. That's why I see the United States' War on Drugs as being fought in an unrealistic manner. This war is focused on fighting drug dealers and the use of drugs here and abroad, when the effort should be primarily aimed at treating and curing that causes that compel people to reach for drugs.

It’s sad that burnt marshmallows make me think of methamphetamine, when they should bring back childhood memories of s’mores

Love is the best drug, bar none.

Maria, it sounds like he was insane. Rational people don't intentionally addict people. I feel sorry for those poor people who were unsuspecting victims.

Mom and dad probably told you I've been arrested. I'm innocent. I want you to know that.

I was in a race to see if I would die from the outside in or the inside out.

Must have a lot of male customers to let her dress like that. Nice view.

My slurred speech isn’t from one or nine drinks too many, it’s from my father.

I know an alcoholic is the worse, but sometimes I wonder if it's better to have a drinking father that lives at home, or a drinking father, that never comes around.

Procrastination has been a boon to my sobriety. I keep thinking I'd like to go out and get really trashed some night--but not tonight. It's really a variant of "One Step at a Time.

Now I’m sober and I realize, I didn’t drink to escape the world, I drank to escape myself

Someone who is trying to be sober is often trying to work out deeper emotional issues and is attempting to undo years of habitual behavior. When you reduce recovery to just abstinence, it simplifies what is really a much more complex issue.

One thing you must realize is that: you either kill your addiction or your addiction will eventually kill you.

Slade placed his pistol on the table next to his chair. "Sid down, Doll. This might take awhile," he said, as he took a deep breath. "I gots a proposition for ya'. Does 100 G's interest you? Sure might help keep them debt collectors you got at bay. Plus, might be able to finish up yer' master's degree without havin' to work your ass off to pay the bills.

The advertise their products in such a fashion as to make it seem wonderful to drink their ethanol products. It does not matter if they give their products fancy name like Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot Noir, or if they put bubbles in an ethanol product and call it champagne or beer- everyone is selling ethanol.

The bleak optimism has skewed the overall views of our societal perspectives on substance abuse.

The enabler will love the addict into darkness. The addict becomes a shadow of the person they once were. The enablers love is blind and selfish. Blind, because they cannot see the selfishness, when they cradle their own emotions over the addict’s recovery. It will always be tough love, support and lots of praying to keep an addict clean. The underlined reason for the substance abuse can only be found when the addict is thinking clearly.

The legal and judicial system view substance use as a criminal matter; while the mental health system has been fighting for generations to change that particular perspective.

Some things you jes' know Doll, and that's one I'd bet the farm on.

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

There's talk he's become emotionally unhinged.

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

They got drunk and high on a regular basis, but this is a vestige of youth that you either quit while you're young or you become an addict if you don't die. If you are the Old Guy In The Punk House, move out. You have a substance abuse problem.

This is the part they don’t tell you about in the movies. Or in On the Road. This is not rock ’n’ roll. You are not William Burroughs, and it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference if Kurt Cobain was slumped over in an alleyway in Seattle the day Bleach came out. There is no junkie chic. This is not Soho and you are not Sid Vicious. You are not a drugstore cowboy and you are not spotting trains. You are not a part of anything—no underground sect, no counter-culture movement, no music scene, nothing. You have just been released from jail and are walking down Mission Street, alternating between taking a hit off a cigarette and puking, looking for coins on the ground so you can catch a bus as you shit yourself.

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 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.

Under the influence, I am easily influenced. I try to keep my pants on, but some things are easier said than done.

We cannot incarcerate ourselves out of addiction. Addiction is a medical crisis that—when it comes to nonviolent offenders—warrants medical interventions, not incarceration. Decades later, data unequivocally illustrates that this war has been a massive failure. It has not only failed to reduce violent crime, but arrest rates—throughout its tenure—have continuously ascended even when crime rates have descended.

to live a substance-free life under the pressures of the daily grind is state-sponsored suicide

When you push someone's head under water for 5 minutes, they will drown. It doesn't matter if the person is a sinner or a saint. It's just a natural process. If their head is under water, the lack of oxygen will make them drown. That rule applies to everyone, good or bad, equally. It doesn't matter if the drowning person has strong moral fiber. And it doesn't matter if you're a good or a bad person, once you become addicted to drugs. What happens next is inevitable. It's a natural process that happens in everyone's brain, once the drugs take over. So don't ever fool yourself into thinking that only weak or bad people get addicted.