Best 110 quotes in «drug addiction quotes» category

Using excuses for the predicament you're in and minimizing your situation, whether it is drug or alcohol use, is a sure sign of an addict.

Veeva should count her blessings. Three years ago it was cocaine and a year ago it was crack and lemme tell you, that stuff you got to have. You do anything for that high." He laughed again, savoring his memories. "Where do you think the furniture went? Up my nose, that’s where. She finally had me carted out of here screaming like an insane man. Spent some time in Bellevue with little sparkly bugs coming out my orifices. Compared to that being a drunk is practically a sensible existence.

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.

We, as a society, have arbitrarily differentiated between acceptable and unacceptable drug addictions.

We did not come into this world loathing ourselves or wishing to numb or feelings. As small children, we operated from a place of wonder, curiosity, spontaneity and creativity.

While we've painted the guardians of the pale in a somewhat reactionary light, let's give the gatekeepers their due. What lies beyond the pale isn't always safe and secure. Outside the fence of state-sanctioned consciousness, there are, to be sure, peaks of profound insight and inspiration. But there are also the swamps of addiction, superstition, and groupthink, where the unprepared can get stuck.

What would you rather have?" "Cheeseburger and a small fry. Coke classic. Better yet, dope classic." "Sure. I'll take a milkshake. What's the special flavor this week, chocolate Jack Daniels?" "Strawberry scotch." "Stick one of those paper umbrellas in mine." "Shove a syringe in mine. And a plastic tombstone. RIP, baby. He was born a rock star. He died a junkie." "Rock in peace." [...] "He wanted the world and lost his soul. [...] Sold it all for rock and roll. Lost his heart in a needle. Found his life in the grave. The road to hell is paved in marijuana leaves. Now he rocks in peace.

When I went to prison and came out, it was like another stripe being added to my shoulder—another notch of respect on my belt. On the streets, you cannot get a name until you do something. You have to prove who you are by doing something outrageous, like shooting someone from a rival gang. It allowed others to see what type of person you were, and established the fact that you were ready for anything. Back in the day, what we were looking for was for someone to have our backs. So every time I did something and was recognized for what I did, it gave me more nerves to continue. After the deed was all said and done, and we were hanging on the blocks, everyone is praising you and talking about what you did. You all should have been there. You should have seen how Taco rushed up on that fella and dealt with him. Those praises were like drugs that eventually poison the mind, and gave you more inspiration to do things to have more people talking about you. People recognizing you as one who isn’t scared, one who is ready to do whatever is needed. No one ever wants to go to prison. I never wanted to go to prison. I just wanted to be recognized as one willing and ready for a battle anytime. Troit Lynes, former death row inmate of Her Majesty Prison in the Bahamas

When you're using drugs, you're driven by this mystical black energy, a force inside you that just won't quit. And the weaker you get, the more you feed into that energy, and the more it fucks with you. When your spirit becomes dark and your lifestyle becomes dark, your existence is susceptible to infiltration by dark spirits. I've seen it so many times with addicts. You can see that they're controlled by dark energy, the way they look, their appearance, their voice, their behavior, it's not them.

[...] we grieved for both our lives, in which we were both more dead than alive.

When John left the band, I resented him for not being my friend and for abandoning our musical comradeship. But all the time that he was out of the band and going through his anguish, I prayed for him constantly. From going to meetings I'd learned that one of the reasons that alcoholics get loaded is because they harbor resentments. One of the techniques they teach to get rid of a resentment toward somebody is to pray for him or her to get everything that you want for yourself in life-to be loved, to be successful, to be healthy, to be rich, to be wonderful, to be happy, to be alive with the light and the love of the universe. It's a paradox, but it works. You sit there and pray for the person you can't stand to get everything on earth that you would want for yourself, and one day you're like 'I don't feel anything bad toward this person.

But actually, my drug addiction thing, I was so stubborn.

Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations.

Until I went to rehab, I didn't understand what it did.

AA purports to be open to anyone, as it is stated in Tradition Tree, "The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking," but it isn't open to everyone. It's open only to those who are willing to publicly declare themselves to be alcoholics or addicts and who are willing to give up their inherent right of independence by declaring themselves powerless over addictive drugs and alcohol, as stated in Step One, "We admitted we are powerless over alcohol- that our lives had become unmanageable.

A patient complains of feeling nervous or fearful. These feelings and behaviors suggest that the patient has an anxiety disorder, and the doctor prescribes whatever drug will most probably work for an anxiety disorder. However, there's no conclusive way to tell that this patient definitely has an anxiety disorder. Even if the doctor did get the diagnosis correct, there's a great deal of variation regarding which drug class (for example, anti-anxiety drugs versus antidepressants) a particular individual will respond to and which drug within a class (for example, Prozac versus Zoloft) will work best. If the drug doesn't work, the doctor will try the next one on the list and so on, thus delaying treatment success and complicating the process with the mix-and-match type of treatment.

A crack rock-bottom is beneath rock-bottom. It’s a slab ceiling in every direction. A concrete box filled with guilt. During the chase you’re focused. The only thing that exists is the fix. Your mind is lost in the now, in the journey. Your life, everyone you’re hurting, everything you left behind, it all quiets down until you find this bottom, this moment of clarity. And when you find it the guilt is upon you. There’s nowhere to go. Not until the fix frees you.

Addiction isn't about using drugs. It's about what the drug does to your life.

A family is a social system and if that system is dysfunctional, the ramifications for the children growing up within it are grave. In what is known as generational drug addiction, the adult children of drug addicts and alcoholics are quietly suffering all over the world. By the time the children have grown up, dysfunction has been deeply ingrained in mind, body and brain.

Always, you wake up to an unpleasant memory and an unpleasant body and your spirit is reduced to a pile of dirty ashes residing somewhere inside of your ass. You've gotta face the music, which is a beautiful island outside, but you can't even bear to look out the window.

An eerie aspect of social media is the way the dead’s account lingers in digital space as a floating memorial. Friends post emotional farewells as if the departed will read them. But we all know that those words are for the rest of the world as if to flaunt their bond with the deceased like a new car or engagement ring. Just like any material possession that ceases production, a person’s value amplifies when they are dead. They have no future. They have no present. Their past becomes a limited resource that everyone is desperate to snag a piece of.

At one point the worst thing to happen was the odd stabbing or slashing, the violence that we live with nowadays used to only be seen in Hollywood gangster movies such as Gangs of New York, Menace to Society and Boys and the Hood. Even when we were reading about the crack hitting London, no one in Scotland would have thought in their wildest dreams that it would have taken off in our cities, towns and now even highland villages.

[...] but for the first time ever, I finally had it in me and I wanted to live. He had taught me well indeed.

Being able to be aware that we have thoughts, but that we are not our thoughts, is a major breakthrough for people seeking emotional health and spiritual wellbeing.

Brian ‘The Tax Man’ Cockerill - While I’m mentioning drug dealers, I have to give a mention to a man hated by the peddlers of soul destroying stuff, big Brian ‘The Tax Man’ Cockerill (AKA as Scot’s Brian), born on 16 December 1964 in Coatbridge, in Lanarkshire, at 6ft 3in, with 23 stone of rock solid muscle, his awesome power has made him a truly terrifying force in Britain’s underworld. A walking colossus, anyone who gets in his way and tries to stay there had better be ready for the hiding of their life.

Drug cartels have taken the driver’s seat, training our young men and women on how best to self destruct, while the larger community watches on helplessly as these bands of renegades lead our people towards the path of self annihilation

Clearly everyone in my life who should have been vertical was horizontal.

Compulsively saying "Sorry" is often a reflection of wanting to apologize for our very existence. I used to say the word 'sorry' when there was no need for me to do so. It became a habit and reflected my chronic toxic shame, low self-worth and low self-esteem.

Drug addicts will likely suffer from other addictive or dysfunctional behaviours. Seldom will you meet a drug addict who does not exhibit multiple addictive behaviours. Because drug addiction and eating disorders are impossible to ignore so are often in the splotlight, often subtler addictive behaviours, such as love addiction, compulsive underearning and sex addictions, may be neglected.

Each night we watched the sun set no matter where we were, and we'd wake up early to witness it rising again. That was the thing about life: even when the days faded to black, you were always given another chance. A second moment to try again to rise from the ashes.

Drugs will have a huge effect on my work for the rest of my life, whether I'm using or not.

For innocence lost The same is the cost The ride of your life But you can never get off

Emotionally wounded addicts have an extremely difficult time with intimacy and with trusting themselves and others. They have a deep desire to trust, but their emotional scars and traumatic memories haunt them whenever an opportunity to trust another person arises. Naturally this can lead to a very lonely existence.

Essentially, 'mindfulness' means having a deeper awareness of what is. Mindfulness entails being aware of our thoughts, feelings and body sensations as they arise in the present moment.

Everything is subjective.

For all the alcoholics and addicts out there, you are loved, stopped being so stubborn and come in from the cold. Wherever you are, there is a brighter light in your sight. Move towards it every day, and keep moving towards it. Even the worst and strongest addiction is a choice—a choice not to fight, to give up, to indulge the impulse, or instead to accept the hands offered you to help, even from strangers, even from the state. Don’t hate those who gave up on you, it wasn’t their fault, you just wore them down. Show them they were wrong about you. Your troubles are meant to mold you into something better, not destroy you, so FIGHT! Another day comes for the better if you’re standing in the right spot for it to hit you. Find the right spot and stay there until it does.

For many emotionally wounded addicts, the idea of grieving is a daunting prospect. To regularly grieve does require courage and a desire to heal - but rest assured; the resulting gains from these efforts are profound.

Frozen grief occurs when we deliberately numb out and refuse to process our major losses. Frozen grief is essentially suppressed emotional pain (loss and abandonment) stored in the human body. Frozen grief torments drug addicts. Deep below the emotional surface of the drug addict who has yet to find recovery lies untold, suppressed pain and loss.

Happiness is not to be found at the bottom of a bottle or from the tip of a needle; it is not to be found amidst a cloud of smoke or within a sugar-coated pill. If you look for it in these places, you will find naught but despair.

Funny how someone can be so beautiful and totally fucked up at the same time.

I don't know what happened, but I do know this. It's not going anywhere. When you light up it waits for you to come down. You have to confront whatever's bothering you and look it straight in the eye. It's alright to forgive yourself, and it's okay to fight back, because if you don't kick the shit out of it, then it kicks you. It's a dog world, but you can control it, if you want to. A lot of people are going to try to make you feel like shit, but that doesn't mean you are. You are who you decide to be. I hope you're the kind of person that fights, because that's the only way to win.

He didn't think his mother's brother used drugs and yet the number of spoons and trap house Feng Shui seemed to keep the option open.

His mom was high when Whitey was born. She was also high when she named him. Esmerelda was the name of her sister, the only person in the world who ever treated her decently, and Torno was short for tornado, because that’s how it felt when Whitey came out. Whitey’s mom had a penchant for the cocaine.

How much tragedy has to happen before I split wide open? Sam Hughes

I believe you can consider yourself a successful prose writer when the number of words you put on a page each day is equal to, or greater than, the number of milligrams of mind-altering chemicals you ingest in that day. (Note: this rule does not apply to poets who write in the short-form. You, my boys and girls, are free as birds!)

I believe that there is a sacred child-like spirit in all of us (often referred to as our younger self or sacred inner child), one we can access and heal in recovery. We can gradually learn to integrate our youthful spirit into our everyday life. There is sweet sacredness when a person truly dedicates himself or herself to reclaiming his or her forgotten and abandoned inner child.

I don't see money as evil or good: how can illusion be evil or good? But I don't see heroin or meth as evil or good, either. Which is more addictive & debilitating, money or meth? Attachment to illusion makes you illusion, makes you not real. Attachment to illusion is called idolatry, called addiction.

He knows nothing of those dark roads she’s travelled, those dark deeds she’s done, the doors she’s locked her innocence in. That Joy Green is gone. Those keys are lost. Jackie loves a memory, that’s all, and what good did love ever do anybody anyway.

If I had to offer up a one sentence definition of addiction, I'd call it a form of mourning for the irrecoverable glories of the first time...addiction can show us what is deeply suspect about nostalgia. That drive to return to the past isn't an innocent one. It's about stopping your passage to the future, it's a symptom of fear of death, and the love of predictable experience. And the love of predictable experience, not the drug itself, is the major damage done to users.

I forced my eyes open and saw the image that’s haunted me every day for the past years of my life. And every day, in my nightmares.