Alcoholics Quotes

My father was raised by a violent alcoholic. There was alcoholism in my mother's family. I'm half-adopted, and my birth father was a drug addict and alcoholic. So, I think they very consciously made decisions and parented me in a way that was aimed to help save me from that. So, I knew it would be particularly painful and it was, especially for my father. ~ Melissa Febos

Suppose it was demonstrated that one out of twenty alcoholics could learn to become a moderate social drinker. The experienced clinician would answer, 'Even if true, act as if it were false, for you will never identify that one in twenty, and in the attempt five in twenty will be ruined.' Investors should forsake the search for such tiny needles in huge haystacks. ~ Paul Samuelson

Can you see that meetings and centers that don't address the real causes of dependency are almost certain to be little or no help? They actually can be very damaging. ~ Chris Prentiss

Glitch or not, we seem to need a power greater than ourselves. We seem to need enormous shadows of divinity stalking us. We know we are weak. Alcoholics are, above all, lonely, fearful pepole who make a fetish of loneliness, who think they
we
are too good to be part of the human race. And we have to be humbled to remember who we are
stumbling human beings, more ape than angel. ~ Erica Jong

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. ~ James Frey

I got thrown out of Alcoholics because when the other clients saw me they thought they were having the DT's ~ Dave Dutton

I often wonder if all the writers who are alcoholics drink a lot because they aren't writing. It is not because they are writers that they are drinking, but because they are writers who are not writing. ~ Natalie Goldberg

To give up power to change for the better is inherently distasteful to everyone, and to force people to affirm that they are addicts or alcoholics so they can speak in a meeting is shameful and demoralizing. ~ Chris Prentiss

When I finally embraced abstinence it was because of the simple urge to work a longer day. Thus, without joining Alcoholics Anonymous, I was at last able to leave Piss-Artists Notorious. ~ Clive James

Drunkards have a problem, not with sobriety, but with reality. ~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

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. ~ Chris Prentiss

Addiction should never be treated as a crime. It has to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to jail in this country. Over 500,000 people are in our jails who are nonviolent drug users. ~ Ralph Nader

Fiction writers are fully ten times more likely to be bipolar than the general population, and poets are an amazing forty times more likely to struggle with the disorder. Based on statistics like these, psychologist Daniel Nettle writes, "It is hard to avoid the conclusion that most of the canon of Western culture was produced by people with a touch of madness." Essayist Brooke Allen does Nettle one better: "The Western literary tradition, it seems, has been dominated by a sorry collection of alcoholics, compulsive gamblers, manic-depressives, sexual predators, and various unfortunate combinations of two, three, or even all of the above. ~ Jonathan Gottschall

The reason the program is so successful is because alcoholics help other alcoholics. I've never met a Normie (our lingo for a person who doesn't have a problem with drugs and alcohol) who could even conceive of what it's like to be an alcoholic. Normies are always going, 'There's this new pill you can take and you won't want to shoot heroin anymore.' That shows a fundamental misunderstanding of alcoholism and drug addiction. These aren't just physical allergies, they're obsessions of the mind and maladies of the spirit. It's a threefold disease. And if it's partly a spiritual malady, then there's a spiritual cure. ~ Anthony Kiedis

Publishers seem to be in an alcoholic haze most of the time. Well, the publishers have no idea what a writer is. ~ James Purdy

Recovering alcoholics have an expression: "If you have one foot in yesterday and one foot in tomorrow, you're pissing all over today." With all that's happened, it's been liberating to understand that I don't have to carry the weight of all my disappointments or expectations. Sometimes it just is what it is. I can accept that. ~ Michael J. Fox

Nice: meaning I'm going to be dating leather-wearing alcoholics and complaining about them - to you. ~ Raymond Chandler

When people asked about his schizophrenia, Eric, who didn't exactly flaunt his illness but wasn't ashamed of it, either, offered up the comparison of alcoholism. Not every drunk is a single bourbon away from skid row, just like every schizophrenic is not a tatty-haired, crazy-eyed gunman who delights in murdering alien-people from clock towers. There are functioning alcoholics just as there are functioning schizophrenics, individuals who work, maintain homes, and have hobbies, goals, and relationships like every other slob on the planet. ~ Vivian Barz

Sure, genetics do play a role in alcholism. You're more likely to be an alcoholic if one or both of your parents are also alcoholics. But that's just one part of the equation; the other part is your behavior. You can't become an alcoholic if you never take a drink. So if you know you're predisposed to addiction because of your family history, then just don't get started, and you'll never find yourself on that path.
Same with any other type of 'family curse.' If you parents smoke, don't pick up a cigarette. If your parents are obese, work hard to exercise and eat right so you don't follow in their foosteps. But some people find it easier to play the victim. They do whatever bad habits they want to because they think they have a built-in defense - I grew up this way. ~ Gaby Rodriguez

It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous

As one of my early A.A. sponsors used to say, I didn't hang out with lower companions - I had become one. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous

An alcoholic father, poverty, my own juvenile diabetes, the limited English my parents spoke - although my mother has become completely bilingual since. All these things intrude on what most people think of as happiness. ~ Sonia Sotomayor

Dan Lynch was chuckling, his hand around his small glass. 'I remember Billy saying that AA was a Protestant thing when you came right down to it. Started by a bunch of Protestants. He said he didn't like the chummy way some of them were always calling Our Lord by his first name. I drove him to the first meeting and waited to take him home, 'cause Maeve didn't want him driving, and when he came out he said you could tell who the Catholics were because they'd all been bowing their heads every ten seconds while the Protestants bantered on about Jesus, Jesus Jesus.'
(And sure enough, up and down our stretch of table, heads bobbed at the name.) ~ Alice McDermott

My childhood was rough, we were poor and my parents were alcoholics, but nobody was mean. I knew I was loved. We were on welfare, but I never felt abandoned or unloved. ~ Carol Burnett

Halloween is tomorrow. A group of wine experts has actually come up with a list of the best wines to pair with Halloween candy. They say, White wine goes great with Skittles, red wine goes great with Twix, and ... we're alcoholics, aren't we? ~ Jimmy Fallon

I think that I'm coming off as the biggest alcoholic in the world. ~ Viola Davis

Resolution number one: Obviously will lose twenty pounds. Number two: Always put last night's panties in the laundry basket. Equally important, will find sensible boyfriend to go out with and not continue to form romantic attachments to any of the following: alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobic's, peeping toms, megalomaniacs, emotional fuckwits or perverts. And especially will not fantasize about a particular person who embodies all these things ~ Helen Fielding

I'd worked at a small town newspaper, and I was thinking of all the strange stories that I had seen float through the newsroom in my time there that were dismissed as kind of amusing curiosities. Somehow from that I got to this idea of an eccentric alcoholic who built a lighthouse in the woods. ~ Michael Koryta

Because 'You're perfect just the way you are,' is what your guidance counselor says. And she's an alcoholic. ~ Libba Bray

Like many alcoholics, I was a staggering woman in a chic apartment, sick and utterly disgusting. ~ Mercedes McCambridge

An alcoholic will steal your wallet and lie to you. A drug addict will steal your wallet and then help you look for it. ~ David Sheff

Avoid then, the deliberate manufacture of misery, but if trouble comes, cheerfully capitalize it as an opportunity to demonstrate His omnipotence. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous

The thing about alcohol, though non-drinkers, non-alcoholics and reformed alcoholics may falsely dispute this, is that each day, or night on booze, is a different journey, the destination being a mystery, but quite possibly the final one. ~ Robert Black

I propose to provide proof ... that just as always an alcoholic ferment, the yeast of beer, is found where sugar is converted into alcohol and carbonic acid, so always a special ferment, a lactic yeast, is found where sugar is transformed into lactic acid. And, furthermore, when any plastic nitrogenated substance is able to transform sugar into that acid, the reason is that it is a suitable nutrient for the growth of the [lactic] ferment. ~ Louis Pasteur

The feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous

Alcohol had a lot to do with it, too, and mental instability. All writers are narcissistic, manic-depressive drug addicts and alcoholics, and I am no exception. ~ T.C. Boyle

The mentality and behavior of drug addicts and alcoholics is wholly irrational until you understand that they are completely powerless over their addiction and unless they have structured help, they have no hope. ~ Russell Brand

I like the hip writers: Fitzgerald, the guy who committed suicide, Hemingway, all those guys. Some of them were alcoholics and drug addicts but they had fun. They were real people. They formed the culture of American literature. Hemingway admired Tolstoy, Tolstoy admired Pushkin, and Mailer admired Hemingway. It all flows down. The greats are all connected. One day I'm gonna write a book myself. The first chapter will be about what a rough deal my momma got. She believed in you guys and your society. ~ Mike Tyson

Religion," [some] argue, "may be all right for certain emotional people, but you can't beat a man who believes in himself." But this self-confident generation has produced more alcoholics, more dope addicts, more criminals, more wars, more broken homes, more assaults, more embezzlements, more murders, and more suicides than any other generation that ever lived. It is time for all of us to take stock of our failures, blunders, and costly mistakes. It is about time that we put less confidence in ourselves and more trust and faith in God. ~ Billy Graham

Government doesn't work. You work, I work, Federal Express works, Microsoft works, the Salvation Army works, Alcoholics Anonymous works, but government doesn't. ~ Harry Browne

That's what alcoholics do. It's in their job description: fall apart and then keep falling apart. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

I know I was an alcoholic because I was preoccupied whether alcohol was going to be served or not. ~ Betty Ford

Have you ever been to an AA meeting? No wonder these people are alcoholics - I've never needed a drink more badly in my life. ~ Chelsea Handler

I had also read somewhere that if a man didn't truly believe or understand what he was espousing, somehow he could do a more convincing job ~ Charles Bukowski

They're like 'You're an alcoholic.' I go 'No, I'm not.' and then-apparently that's what alcoholics say too, you know? ~ Norm MacDonald

The 21st Amendment gives the states the right to decide what the drinking ages should be and other aspects relative to alcoholic beverages, and I support that. As a United States senator, I want to weigh in - this is not my agenda. ~ Pete Coors

A lot of people feel like they're victims in life, and they'll often point to past events, perhaps growing up with an abusive parent or in a dysfunctional family. Most psychologists believe that about 85 percent of families are dysfunctional, so all of a sudden you're not so unique. My parents were alcoholics. My dad abused me. My mother divorced him when I was six ... I mean, that's almost everybody's story in some form or not. The real question is, what are you going to do now? What do you choose now? Because you can either keep focusing on that, or you can focus on what you want. And when people start focusing on what they want, what they don't want falls away, and what they want expands, and the other part disappears. (Jack Canfield) ~ Rhonda Byrne

I've often wanted to play the victim, or somebody who makes terrible choices. I would love to play the alcoholic mother who horribly lets down her children. That's a great morally imperiled role. ~ Lucy Lawless

I was court-ordered to Alcoholics Anonymous on television. Pretty much blows the hell out of the second A, wouldn't you say? ~ Paula Poundstone

I formed a new group called Alcoholics-Unanimous. If you don't feel like a drink, you ring another member and he comes over to persuade you. ~ Richard Harris

The era of waking up in the morning and partying with prostitutes and alcoholics was gone. He was back home where there were set rules and principles. ~ Jaachynma N.E. Agu

To the night version of her (mother) I owe free-floating anxiety. I am no longer a child in an unsafe home, but anxiety became habit. My brain is conditioned. I worry. I recheck everything obsessively. Is the seat belt fastened, are the reservations correct, is my passport in my purse? Have I done something wrong? Have I said something wrong? I'm sorry - whatever happened must be my fault. Is everyone all right, and if they aren't, how can I step in? That brilliant serenity prayer: God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. To all the children of alcoholics I want to say, Good luck with that. If I don't do it myself, it won't get done (this belief is often rewarded in this increasingly incompetent world). Also, I panic easily. I am not the person you want sitting in the exit row of an airplane. And distrust. Just in general, distrust. Irony.
Irony, according to the dictionary, is the use of comedy to distance oneself from emotion. I developed it as a child lickety-split. Irony was armor, a way to stick it to Mom. You think you can get me? Come on, shoot me, aim that arrow straight at my heart. It can't make a dent because I'm wearing irony. ~ Delia Ephron

Gately's snapped to the fact that people of a certain age and level of like life-experience believe they're immortal: college students and alcoholics/addicts are the worst: they deep-down believe they're exempt from the laws of physics and statistics that ironly govern everybody else. ~ David Foster Wallace

Lord, give me the courage to change the things which can and ought to be changed, the serenity to accept things which cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference - Alcoholics Anonymous ~ Stephen Covey

Not to mention, we're using you for bait. (Syn)
Are you that drunk? (Nykyrian)
What? I wasn't supposed to tell her that? (Syn)
I'm bait? (Kiara)
No, you're not bait. Ignore the alcoholic whose view of reality is distorted by his brain-damaged hallucinations. (Nykyrian) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

I've been a practicing alcoholic and drug addict for most of my life. ~ Ozzy Osbourne

Social scientists are not universally liked or appreciated, but we are still marginally more acceptable than alcoholics and escaped lunatics. ~ Kate Fox

I'm no alcoholic. I'm a drunkard. There's a difference. A drunkard doesn't like to go to meetings. ~ Jackie Gleason

The program works, if you work it. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous

It was a place for people with mental health problems and not alcoholics; as though the two could be neatly divided like that; as though the world was black and white and not a murky grey. ~ Victoria Spry

I come from an alcoholic Irish background - I know where I was going! But I met my wife and started to practise Buddhism, which is a levelling experience for me, and there hasn't been a day I've missed in 40 years. I apply it to everything - to my work and relationships. I try to be a compassionate person. ~ Patrick Duffy

I'm just going to crumble like a wreck. I'll go home, become an alcoholic and maybe! jump of a bridge. ~ Gordon Strachan

Alcoholism is a disease," she said. "Like athlete's foot. Or herpes. It's nothing to be ashamed of. Luker and I have lots of friends who are alcoholics. And speed freaks too." "Well, ~ Michael McDowell

No one waits to trap him in a lie. He is told what lies he is getting ready to tell. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous

I will not fall for any of the following: alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobics, people with girlfriends or wives, misogynists, megalomanics, chauvists, emotional fuckwits or freeloaders, perverts. ~ Helen Fielding

Through the years I had quit on everything that ever mattered: college, going for promotions, relationships - at least the relationships that demanded any work. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous

That I'm an alcoholic is completely ridiculous. ~ Shannen Doherty

People help themselves by trying to help others, and this is the process that helps alcoholics get sober and stay that way. Love and tolerance of others, as stated on page 84 of the text of Alcoholics Anonymous, is the "code" of living that is suggested to AA members. ~ Mel B.

ACOA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) Counseling can break the cycle in your family. Did you parent your parents? Chaos seem normal? Unhappiness is expected?http://marlana.org/spiritual-healing ~ Spiritual Healing

You turn into this desperate dude looking for a shred of attention when you just had so much. It's like, "I'm just lonely and all I really want is a hug, but I gotta capture that in something real gross." You start to understand why circus clowns are alcoholics. ~ Babatunde Adebimpe

Legalism is a more dangerous disease than alcoholism because it doesn't look like one. Alcoholism makes men fail; legalism helps them succeed in the world. Alcoholism makes men depend on the bottle; legalism makes them self-sufficient, depending on no one. Alcoholism destroys moral resolve; legalism gives it strength. Alcoholics don't feel welcome in the church; legalists love to hear their morality extolled in church. ~ John Piper

I don't like the word 'alcoholic'. I like to think of myself as an advanced drinker. ~ Chelsea Handler

Asking patients to describe what triggers their habitual behavior is called awareness training, and like AA's insistence on forcing alcoholics to recognize their cues, it's the first step in habit reversal training. The tension that Mandy felt in her nails cued her nail biting habit. ~ Charles Duhigg

The pressure to reduce health care costs is aimed only at the treatment of real diseases. There is no pressure to reduce the costs of treating fictitious diseases. On the contrary, there is pressure to define ever more types of undesirable behaviors as mental disorders or addictions and to spend ever more tax dollars on developing new psychiatric diagnoses and facilities for storing and treating the victims of such diseases, whose members now include alcoholics, drug abusers, smokers, overeaters, self-starvers, gamblers, etc. ~ Thomas Szasz

College seems like a pretty expensive way to become an alcoholic. ~ Natasha Leggero

A New Year: 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days, 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes - a ~ Alcoholics Anonymous

When you live in an alcoholic family or an abusive family, you tiptoe, you don't want to step on any mines. ~ Glenn Beck

Black-and-white thinking is the addict's mentality, which can be a bar to recovery when one is still active. But an addict who finds the willingness can then rely on the same trait to stay clean: "Just don't drink," they say in AA.
How's that going to work for an addicted eater? Food addicts have to take the tiger out of the cage three times a day. I've read that some drinkers have tried "controlled drinking," and it hasn't been very successful. Eaters don't just have to try it; they must practice it to survive.
Having a food plan is an attempt to address that, and having clear boundaries is a key to its working. But the comfort of all or nothing is just out of reach.
...
I'm saying that food addicts, unlike alcoholics and may others, have both to try for perfection and to accept that perfection is unattainable, and that the only tool left is a wholesome discipline.
The problem is, if we had any clue about wholesome discipline, we wouldn't be addicts. ~ Michael Prager

Loyal prophets of an indifferent god" (on the topic of alcoholics, p.222) ~ Lev Grossman

I know one gay ex-Mormon who is a talented, self-destructive alcoholic. Whenever he is drunk and going on a tear, we are back to the Mormon Church and his being thrown out of the Mormon Church and growing up with this sense of being evil. ~ Andrew Solomon

I will lift mine eyes unto the pills. Almost everyone takes them, from the humble aspirin to the multi-colored, king-sized three deckers, which put you to sleep, wake you up, stimulate and soothe you all in one. It is an age of pills. ~ Malcolm Muggeridge

Cigarettes and coffee: an alcoholic's best friend! ~ Gerard Way

[S]he was my Muse, my alcoholic's bourbon on the rocks: irresistible. ~ Claire Messud

One day at a time. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous

When I hear alcoholics talk about having their demons, I think that they're probably absolutely literally correct. ~ Alan Moore

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. ~ Christopher Dines

had we not been brought to where we stood by a certain kind of faith? For did we not believe in our own reasoning? Did we not have confidence in our ability to think? What was that but a sort of faith? Yes, we had been faithful, abjectly faithful to the God of Reason. So, in one way or another, we discovered that faith had been involved all the time! We found, too, that we had been worshippers. What a state of mental goose flesh that used to bring on! Had we not variously worshipped people, sentiment, things, money, and ourselves? And then, with a better motive, had we not worshipfully beheld the sunset, the sea, or a flower? Who of us had not loved something ~ Alcoholics Anonymous

...one of the primary differences between alcoholics and nonalcoholics is that nonalcoholics change their behavior to meet their goals and alcoholics change their goals to meet their behaviors. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous

I'm ombibulous. I drink every known alcoholic drink and enjoy them all. ~ H.L. Mencken

A number of U.S. colleges are going to start having dorms for alcoholics. I believe those are called dorms. ~ Craig Ferguson

We sometimes hurt those we love because they need to be "taught a lesson," when we really want to punish. We were depressed and complained we felt bad, when in fact we were mainly asking for sympathy and attention. This odd trait of mind and emotion, this perverse wish to hide a bad motive underneath a good one, permeates human affairs from top to bottom. This subtle and elusive kind of self-righteousness can underlie the smallest act or thought. Learning daily to spot, admit, and correct these flaws is the essence of character-building and good living. An honest regret for harms done, a genuine gratitude for blessings received, and a willingness to try for better things tomorrow will be the permanent assets we shall seek. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous

[After Easy Rider] I couldn't get another movie, so I lived in Mexico City for a couple of years. I lived in Paris for a couple of years. I didn't take any photographs, and then I went to Japan and saw a Nikon used. I bought it, and I just started, like an alcoholic. I shot 300 rolls of film. That was the beginning of me starting again ... ~ Dennis Hopper

Montreal's not a city. It's a Disney World for alcoholics. ~ Mike Wilmot

The first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong. To conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got. The usual outcome was that people continued to wrong us and we stayed sore. Sometimes it was remorse and then we were sore at ourselves. But the more we fought and tried to have our own way, the worse matters got. As in war, the victor only seemed to win. Our moments of triumph were short-lived. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous

But the greatest human problems are not social problems, but decisions that the individual has to make alone. The most important feelings of which man is capable emphasise his separateness from other people, not his kinship with them. The feelings of a mountaineer towards a mountain emphasise his kinship with the mountain rather than with the rest of mankind. The same goes for the leap of the heart experienced by a sailor when he smells the sea, or for the astronomer's feeling about the stars, or for the archaeologist's love of the past. My feeling of love for my fellowmen makes me aware of my humanness; but my feeling about a mountain gives me an oddly nonhuman sensation. It would be incorrect, perhaps, to call it 'superhuman'; but it nevertheless gives me a sense of transcending my everyday humanity.

Maslow's importance is that he has placed these experiences of 'transcendence' at the centre of his psychology. He sees them as the compass by which man gains a sense of the magnetic north of his existence. They bring a glimpse of 'the source of power, meaning and purpose' inside himself. This can be seen with great clarity in the matter of the cure of alcoholics. Alcoholism arises from what I have called 'generalised hypertension', a feeling of strain or anxiety about practically everything. It might be described as a 'passively negative' attitude towards existence. The negativity prevents proper relaxation; there is a perpetual excess of adrenalin in the bloodstrea ~ Colin Wilson

Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous

Although my work leads me to spend time with Nazi skinheads, diseased street prostitutes and homeless alcoholics, I do not have the strength of character to be a pathologist. ~ William T. Vollmann

When I stopped living in the problem and began living in the answer, the problem went away. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous

Anxiety is the dizziness we experience when we recognize we hold the freedom and responsibility for our life choices. More than anyone, alcoholics have a very clear sense of this dizziness, especially when we were coming to realize our own powerlessness over alcohol and that we could act differently. ~ Peg O'Connor

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. ~ Abraham J. Twerski