Quotes about alcoholism

Freedom doesn’t come through banning freedom lies in mastering self-control.

The drinking parent lied to the sober parent the sober parent deceived the drinking parent. Most children of alcoholics have learned that no one can be trusted.

Hit the bottom and get back up or hit the bottle and stay down.

Mendacity is a system that we live in," declares Brick. "Liquor is one way out an'death's the other.

I knew that I had been partially right in the storeroom above the bar on Christmas Day. Whoever I had become had to die.

I carried a bravado about my drinking like I was a hero of debauchery. But on that Christmas Day, I felt like shit. I had a vague realisation that I was just trying to keep up with some version of myself that I had decided was accurate.

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

The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.

When it happens and it hits hard, we decide certain things, and realize there's truth in all those dark, lonely days" He had an instantaneous look about him,a glimmer and a glint over those eyes,he knew how the world worked,and took pleasure in its wickedness.He would give a dime or two to those sitting on the street,he would tell them things like:"It won't get any better,"and"Might as well use this to buy your next fix,"and finally"It's better to die high than to live sober,"His suit was presse

Why were drunks, almost always, persons of talent, personality, lovable qualities, gifts, brains, assets of all kinds (else why would anyone care?); why were so many brilliant men alcoholic?

a town with more drinking joints than reading joints has a problem reading can solve

As a teenager, I loved how I looked in the outfit of using drugs and exercising poor judgement. I had tried it on, spun around in the mirror, and decided I would choose this look, this image, this identity. But eventually and without realising it, the ability to choose had gone. I had become what at first I had only pretended to be.

Alcohol is one of the quickest vehicles with which we escape shyness, our problems, and self-consciousness, for a few hours.

Alcohol ruined me financially and morally, broke my heart and the hearts of too many others. Even though it did this to me and it almost killed me and I haven't touched a drop of it in seventeen years, sometimes I wonder if I could get away with drinking some now. I totally subscribe to the notion that alcoholism is a mental illness because thinking like that is clearly insane.

It is difficult to feel sympathy for these people. It is difficult to regard some bawdy drunk and see them as sick and powerless. It is difficult to suffer the selfishness of a drug addict who will lie to you and steal from you and forgive them and offer them help. Can there be any other disease that renders its victims so unappealing? Would Great Ormond Street be so attractive a cause if its beds were riddled with obnoxious little criminals that had “brought it on themselves?

Like alcohol and poverty, a heartbreak has the power to make a man do something he wouldn’t normally do and to make a woman do someone she wouldn’t normally do.

Some things just couldn't be protectd from storms. Some things simply needed to be broken off...Once old thing were broken off, amazingly beautiful thing could grow in their place.

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

It will all be over in 2 weeks

I'm sitting in front of the TV, watching Jerry Springer, and it makes me think of how many mad people there are in the world, and whether everyone is mad deep down, they just pretend they're not, and it's the people in asylums or on Jerry Springer who are the honest ones. I have a notebook and a chewed-up pen, and I'm trying to think of a topic for the Youth Issues speech. Mrs Thomas says she thinks I have a lot to say, but I don't. Nothing I can put words to anyway. I could talk about bullying,

One weekend it rained for 48 hours without stopping. The rain beat like bony fingers against the window panes. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Fungus was growing on the walls. I polished off a bottle of gin sitting huddled over the two-bar electric fire and wrote a poem, one of the few that has lasted through the moves and the years. It is called 'Where Can I Go?'If this is not the place where tears are understood where do I go to cry? If this is not the place where my spirits can take wing where do I

Alcohol has its own well-know defects as a medication for depression but no one has ever suggested - ask any doctor - that it is not the most effective anti-anxiety agent yet known.

People with family histories of alcoholism tend to have lower levels of endorphins- the endogenous morphine that is responsible for many of our pleasure responses- than do people genetically disinclined to alcoholism. Alcohol will slightly raise the endorphin level of people without the genetic basis for alcoholism; it will dramatically raise the endorphin level of people with that genetic basis. Specialists spend a lot of time formulating exotic hypotheses to account for substance abuse. Most e

A drinking man's someone who wants to forget he isn't still young and believing

I'll never amount to anything—well anything my parents want, so instead I’ll end up puking and drinking till I’m blind drunk, It’s funny my mother says I hurt myself to spite her but she doesn’t know I hurt myself because I am, I am, I am a writer.

Alcohol's been keeping depression alive and well for over ten thousand years.

It was clear to her now, Happiness was a seductive illusion. No one as fucked up as her deserved one drop of joy. But oh god was it delicious when it fell into her lap for a little while. (Such a pretty face) she muses (with such a bruised and battered soul). When the dawn of a promise fades into the dusk of reality, all that remains is the nightmare. Sweet, sweet loneliness. Shadows come to play and prey on her beaten mind. Her lovely little dreams of poison.

If I left any good or planted any flowers among thorns, the credit goes to God and my many substantial friends.

By all accounts Rafe's life had been shattered by the loss of his brother Peter. But whereas she turned away from drink when Draven died, Rafe had simply upended a barrel of brandy on his head and hadn't taken that hat off since.

I could simply kill you now, get it over with, who would know the difference? I could easily kick you in, stove you under, for all those times, mean on gin, you rammed words into my belly. (p. 52)

oh. she heard it too-no waters coursing, canyon empty, sun soundless- and the beast your life nowhere hiding (p. 103)

...gripping the rim of the sink you claw your way to stand and cling there, quaking with will, on heron legs, and still the hot muck pours out of you. (p. 27)

Ô, wine!, the truth-serum so potent that all those who wish to live happy lives should abstain from drinking it entirely!... except of course when they are alone.

Treatment for dependency at substance abuse treatment centers must change if alcoholism and addiction are to be overcome in our society.

I resolved to come right to the point. "Hello," I said as coldly as possible, "we've got to talk.""Yes, Bob," he said quietly, "what's on your mind?" I shut my eyes for a moment, letting the raging frustration well up inside, then stared angrily at the psychiatrist."Look, I've been religious about this recovery business. I go to AA meetings daily and to your sessions twice a week. I know it's good that I've stopped drinking. But every other aspect of my life feels the same as it did before. No,

it does seemthe more we drinkthe better the wordsgo.

I had sent her to four consecutive psychiatrists, and not one of them had gotten me sober.

She’s happier than Nicola. That’s probably true. Alcoholics can stop drinking but what is there for the children of alcoholics? Is it always too late? Probably. She doesn’t know.

Writhing bodies fused as one on the dance floor, limbs tingling, lungs drunk on the lust-filled air.

I'll drink your champagne. I'll drink every drop of it, I don't care if it kills me.

Life will hack off your head and shit down your neck every chance it gets. I've found that consuming drugs and booze, listening to music and always having an excuse in the best way to tip the scales.

I have, he went on, betrayed myself withbelief, deluded myself with lovetricked myself with sex.the bottle is damned faithful, he said,the bottle will not lie

This is a good place," he said."There's a lot of liquor," I agreed.

ligion is the opiate of the masses." "I did masses of opiates religiously.

Where else can we find happiness for a day other than from something that can offer momentary relief, something like the booze?

To a drinker the sensation is real and pure and akin to something spiritual: you seek; in the bottle, you find.

You're walking down Fool's Street, Laura used to say when he was drinking, and she had been right. He had known even then that she was right, but knowing had made no difference; he had simply laughed at her fears and gone on walking down it, till finally he had stumbled and fell. Then, for a long time, he stayed away, and if he had stayed away long enough he would have been all right; but one night he began walking down it again - and met the girl. It was inevitable that on Fool's Street there s

My father gave me everything he had. Everything I had I gave to alcohol.

Of the small number of things which I have liked and done well, drinking is by far the thing I have done best. Although I have read a lot, I have drunk more. I have written much less than most people who write; but I have drunk more than the majority of the people who drink.

Wine?" said Zoe. "At two in the afternoon?""I've decided to become an alcoholic. Just for the duration of my middle years." She filled a glass and rested it on the edge of the washbasin. "That's yours.

Somebody tells you they drink because they’re a failure, it ain’t so. They’re a failure because they drink. And they drink because it’s so damn hard not to. But as long as they have a bottle that isn’t empty, they never feel far from being happy.("Bums")

Drinking also maroons you without provisions on the island of self. Like most other promises it makes, alcohol's vow of kinship, that it will bridge your life to others, smooth the way, proves false. Fooled again: you're alone.

How is that for some people drinking is a short-term loan on the spirit, but for others a heavy mortgage on the soul?

I cannot trust my other side, my drunken side, to act in my best interests anymore.

The only thing we chase our shots with are high-fives.

When you are young your body cannot handle alcohol, and when you get old your mind cannot handle it. Either way, alcohol has its way.

I've stopped drinking, but only while I'm asleep.

An elderly black man with gray hair said, "Every bottle should come with a warning: 'This bottle may cause you to lose your job. This bottle may cause you to get a divorce. This bottle may cause you to become homeless.

We do not want to believe that we cannot control alcohol and that alcohol is, in truth, controlling and dictating our lives. When you free yourself of a dictator, like alcohol, the freedom that you experience is totally amazing and so empowering. You get your life back.

You are giving up nothing! You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

I soaked up the drink and it, in return, absorbed me.

Alcohol. It sucks the life out of a face and replaces it with its own dumb shine of inanity. It’s up to you. If you want to lose yourself, have a drink.

Alcohol does not solve problems but becomes a problem in itself

I sit there and think how it isn't fair that I can't drink at all, even a little. I realize I have crammed an entire lifetime of moderate drinking into a decade of hard-core drinking and that is why. I blew my wad.

Alcoholism is a Curse

I see that a man cannot give himself up to drinking without being miserable one-half his days and mad the other.

I believe in 'Positives' not Negatives the only thing about Alcohol I'm Powerless over is those Damn Taxes

But I'm not a saint yet. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I'm homosexual. I'm a genius.

An alcoholic is someone who can violate his standards faster than he can lower them.

Not much more than a broke disgrace who's hooked on tonics, so excuse him if his poker face has puke on it.

I am made of a thousand ghosts, only you can shoot me down.

Perhaps nothing so accurately characterizes dysfunctional families as denial. The denial forces members to keep believing the myths and vital lies in spite of the facts, or to keep expecting that the same behaviors will have different outcomes.Dad's not an alcoholic because he never drinks in the morning, in spite of the fact that he's drunk every night.

Sometimes I think, Was she thinking about me when she was drinking? Did any of them ever think about me when they were putting straws in their noses and needles in their arms? Did they even think about me once?” And she asks me, “What would it mean if they didn’t?” I stare at her, trembling. She knows what I think it means, and she wants me to say it out loud.

When people who believe themselves to be addicts or alcoholics come under great stress or trauma, they mentally give themselves permission to drink or use drugs as a remedy.

When nothing else worked, we created a holistic, hand-tailored program that saved Pax's life. At Passages, he and I use what we learned in curing him to help others discover the roots of their addiction or alcoholism and break free.

When was the last time you woke up and wished you'd had just one more drink the night before?I have never regretted not drinking. Say this to yourself, and you'll get through anything.

If you can stop using substance or stop your addictive behavior for extended periods of time without craving, you are not dependent. You are dependent only if you can't stop without physical or psychological distress (you have unpleasant physical and/or psychological withdrawal symptoms) or if you stop and then relapse.

Getting sober is a radically creative act.

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.

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.

It is ethanol that everyone is after when they drink alcoholic beverages. That is what gives us the euphoric feeling, and that is what all vendors of alcoholic drinks are selling.

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.

Avoid using cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs as alternatives to being an interesting person.

Alcoholism is a choice... not a life sentence.

This is the point where the knowing, irony-infused author laughs along with his readers about his time among the aphorisms, how he was once so gullible and needy that he drank deeply of such weak and fruity Kool-Aid. That's some other book. Slogans saved my life. All of them--the dumb ones, the preachy ones, the imperatives, the cliches, the injunctives, the gooey, Godly ones, the shameless, witless ones.

I don't have to live that way anymore

The life of the Addict is always the same. There is no excitement, no glamour, no fun. There are no good times, there is no joy, there is no happiness. There is no future and no escape. There is only an obsession. An all-encompassing, fully enveloping, completely overwhelming obsession. To make light of it, brag about it, or revel in the mock glory of it is not in any way, shape or form related to its truth, and that is all that matters, the truth.

Isms’ are described as transference of addictive patterns of dysfunctional behaviour, passed down from generation to generation. For instance, if a mother was an alcoholic who never made it into recovery, her behaviour would leave a mark on her children, husband, etc. Unless her adult children join some sort of recovery programme and adopt the mindfulness practice, they will have very similar behaviour traits to their mother but minus the alcohol abuse. There is a strong possibility that they wi

Drink a bottle of cheap champagne. Mix with orange juice. A large Glenmorangie. Milk and blackish toast. Half a bottle of Blue Nun. Budweiser. Budweiser. Go to church. Say I do etc. Budweiser. Murphy’s. Jameson. Budweiser. Stella. Stella. Cake. Stella. Jameson. Stella. Vodka and orange. Vodka and black. Speech, speech. Vodka. Vodka. Double Jameson. Double vodka. Double vodka. Get carry-outs of barley wine. Say goodbye to aunties. Uncles. Mothers etc. Stop car on M18. Vomit. Sleep. Dream of dim-l

That night, I dream. And when I wake up I remember watching a film with Nannan about a ventriloquist who went mad, his dummy coming to life and speaking for itself. My dream is like the end of the film where the ventriloquist and the dummy are in the madhouse, all these mad devil-faces pressed against the iron bars of the cell door, laughing as the dummy gets up off his chair and walks towards the ventriloquist who screams. The dummy strangles him. I can’t remember in the dream if I was the vent

In this cell you are small. They’ve taken your belt and your shoelaces. You break a little. You put your hands over your face so they don’t see. They don’t listen when you shout for water, Please. Your tongue is so dry it feels too big for your mouth. You don’t sleep. Someone behind the door shouts BASTARDS BASTARDS. You think you can see an old man crouched and watching you in that dark corner over there. You try and make spit to drink but you can’t. In the morning they give you half a plastic

I had two speeds, which often varied with my blood alcohol level: fine with whatever, and never, ever satisfied. Where was the balance between these two?

It wasn't fair that my friends could stay at Captain Morgan's pirate ship party while I was drop-kicked into a basement with homeless people chanting the Serenity Prayer.

I had this great idea: I should get a job. Freelancing came with freedom, but maybe what I required was a cage.

Alcoholism is above all a disease of denial.

Bourbon, Kentucky bourbon especially, is like Dante’s Inferno in a glass, fire walks down your throat, lungs, and heart and everything in between with an unpleasant after-taste. We got along just fine.

I understood drinking to be the gasoline of all adventure.

I found the prospect daunting, but somehow comforting, too, because the counselors insisted it could be done, and, after all, many of them were recovering alcoholics themselves.

Those unexpected morality lessons provided by the trip had jolted me into some kind of action. It was time to jettison the past before the present jettisoned me. This was my first veiled attempt at recovery. Although perhaps I was just running away again. I returned to Glasgow, planning to say a final goodbye to Anne and get out of her life, but ended up drinking with buddies in the Chip Bar and never seeing her. I called her instead to say I was moving to London and told her she could have the