Drug Addiction Recovery Quotes

I chose to share both the good and the bad parts of my story, and of my imagination, so that it might help even one person realize that there is hope. You are not alone. And it does get better. I promise you it's worth it. ~ Kimberly Nalen

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

In my personal recovery, mindfulness has helped me to become aware of my trauma responses and given me an anchor to stay present when I have been triggered. Being able to feel my triggers without reacting must be largely credited to learning to anchor myself in my body through mindful body scan meditation. ~ Christopher Dines

In 'Drug Addiction Recovery' Christopher Dines elegantly teaches us a process for healing from paralysing grief, addiction and emotional wounds using a mindfulness-based approach. ~ Christopher Dines

As we celebrate Recovery Month, it is time for Congress to knock down the barriers to treatment and recovery for 26 million Americans suffering the ravages of alcohol and drug addiction. ~ Jim Ramstad

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. ~ Christopher Dines

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

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. ~ Christopher Dines

Many people in recovery find that they feel spiritually grounded when in regular contact with the great outdoors. Others feel a deep serenity after lighting a candle in a church or temple or by chanting a sacred mantra. The point is that, unlike a typical religion that lays out a non-negotiable ideology, spirituality is expansive and deeply personal. ~ Christopher Dines

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. ~ Christopher Dines

Spurred by Amy's death I've tried to salvage unwilling victims from the mayhem of the internal storm and am always, always just pulled inside myself. ~ Russell Brand

In 2017, I was invited to lead a mindfulness workshop and guide a live meditation on Mingus Mountain, Arizona, to over 100 men and women at a recovery retreat. On the eve of my workshop, I had the opportunity to join in a men's twelve-step meeting, which took place by the campfire in Prescott National Park Forest, with at least 40 men recovering from childhood grief and trauma. The meeting grounded us in what was a large retreat with many unfamiliar faces. I was the only mixed-race Brit, surrounded by mostly white middle-class American men (baby boomers and Generation X), yet our common bond of validating each other's wounds in recovery utterly transcended any differences of nationality, race and heritage. We shared our pain and hope in a non-shaming environment, listening and allowing every man to have his say without interruption. At the end of the meeting we stood up in a large circle and recited the serenity prayer:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know that one is me".

After the meeting closed, I felt that I belonged and I was enthusiastic about the retreat, even though I was thousands of miles away from England. ~ Christopher Dines

All addictions are primitive and negative manifestations of a person's deeper needs. They are a sign that the person longs for a soul connection and an everlasting bliss. ~ Pulkit Sharma

There is a difference between following your instincts and listening to your intuition. Instincts are primitive modes of survival (fight, flight, freeze, sexual urges, hunting and so on), whereas intuition is a much higher manifestation of thought and emotions. ~ Christopher Dines

Understanding why we are afraid to grieve is a prelude to transforming our lives. Getting in touch with our deepest fears and airing them in a safe space can be incredibly liberating. ~ Christopher Dines

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

What was so painful about Amy's death is that I know that there is something I could have done. I could have passed on to her the solution that was freely given to me. Don't pick up a drink or drug, one day at a time. It sounds so simple; it actually is simple but it isn't easy; it requires incredible support and fastidious structuring. ~ Russell Brand

While excellence is a wonderful ideal, perfectionism is a dysfunctional belief system. Many people openly admit that they are perfectionists, which is really an unconscious cry for help. Being a perfectionist is really stating that whatever we attempt to do will never be good enough. This is due to a mistaken belief that we are flawed and unlovable. ~ Christopher Dines

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. ~ Christopher Dines

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. ~ Christopher Dines

The reality is that there are plenty of trustworthy people in the world rebuilding their lives. It was a very gradual process for me to open up and talk about what was really going on in my recovery. The more I started to take risks by talking to others, however, the more I had an opportunity to exercise boundaries. As I asserted new boundaries, I started to gravitate towards people with integrity, warmheartedness and decency. ~ Christopher Dines

Addiction does not cause partner abuse, and recovery from addiction does not "cure" partner abuse. ~ Lundy Bancroft

Imagine this:
Ice is coming to YOUR house.
Can you HEAR it knocking?
Are you ready?
What will YOU do? ~ Cornelia Connie D. DeDona

Mental stories can literally spoil a human life. It took me a long time to become aware of my mental commentary, such as: "Everything always goes wrong", "I won't be accepted", "I'm a failure" or "What's the point?" Those fears were deep-rooted and triggered many upsetting addictive patterns of behaviour ~ Christopher Dines

Maybe if I had gone on like that I could have stopped myself in time. Maybe at that point I still had it in me to come through. ~ Liz Thebart

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. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

He has half the deed done who has made a beginning. ~ Horace

One's prescription can seem extensive--even overwhelming, depending on an individual's circumstance--and I can imagine the prospects exciting few people of any stripe. Lots of eaters are going to balk at abstaining, but to learn that recovery is going to require rigorous honesty, or more attention to spirit, could be far more off-putting.
Then again, who gets excited about any serious treatment prescription? Certainly not the cancer patient told she'll have to undergo radiation, or the back patient ordered to a month's uninterrupted bed rest, or the lung patient told he'll need a double transplant.
To some, the flaw of those comparisons will be their being equated with food addiction, and that is the rub, entirely. The medical profession and the public at large don't see that they are equivalent. The consequences of obesity (the chief consequence of food addiction) constitute the fastest-growing, and soon the gravest, threat to public health. Obesity is suicide on lay-away: It has plenty of time to degrade quality of life before finally ending life prematurely. ~ Michael Prager

Drinking is something people do; it's not what you are. But when it becomes what you are, you need to think about becoming something else. ~ Tim Cowlishaw

Until you find out what you are running from, you will never figure out where you are going. ~ Joseph A, Meyering Sr

I do love Oregon." My gaze wanders over the quiet, natural beauty surrounding us, which isn't limited to just this garden. "Being near the river, and the ocean, and the rocky mountains, and all this nature ... the weather."
He chuckles. "I've never met anyone who actually loves rain. It's kind of weird. But cool, too," he adds quickly, as if afraid to offend me. "I just don't get it."
I shrug. "It's not so much that I love rain. I just have a healthy respect for what if does. People hate it, but the world needs rain. It washes away dirt, dilutes the toxins in the air, feeds drought. It keeps everything around us alive."
"Well, I have a healthy respect for what the sun does," he counters with a smile."
"I'd rather have the sun after a good, hard rainfall."
He just shakes his head at me but he's smiling. "The good with the bad?"
"Isn't that life?"
He frowns. "Why do I sense a metaphor behind that?"
"Maybe there is a metaphor behind that." One I can't very well explain to him without describing the kinds of things I see every day in my life. The underbelly of society - where twisted morals reign and predators lurk, preying on the lost, the broken, the weak, the innocent. Where a thirteen-year-old sells her body rather than live under the same roof as her abusive parents, where punks gang-rape a drunk girl and then post pictures of it all over the internet so the world can relive it with her. Where a junkie mom's drug addiction is readily f ~ K.A. Tucker

Her screams are heard across generations who dared not scream
and died without joy,in silence and isolation. ~ David W. Earle

The drive downtown is an experience unto itself. You're controlled by this dark energy that's about to take you to a place where you know you don't belong at this stage in your life. You get on the 101 freeway and it's night and it's cool outside. It's a pretty drive, and your heart is racing, your blood is flowing through your veins, an it's kind of dangerous, because the people dealing are cut-throat, and there are cops everywhere. It's not your neck of the woods anymore, now you're coming from a nice house in the hills, driving a convertible Camaro. ~ Anthony Kiedis

I'm beginning to have second thoughts regarding the validity of Gloria's theory that I can overcome my heroin addiction by the simple process of shooting up vast quantities of speed with her twenty times daily. ~ Jim Carroll

There were leaders here and elsewhere who agreed with the woman, he knew, including an Ohio sheriff who'd recently proposed taking naloxone away from his deputies, claiming that repeated overdose reversals were "sucking the taxpayers dry." Lloyd thought immediately of the answer Jesus gave when his disciple asked him to enumerate the concept of forgiveness. Should it be granted seven times, Peter wanted to know, or should a sinner be forgiven as many as seventy times? In the shadow of the church steeples, Lloyd let Jesus answer the woman's question: "Seventy times seven," he said. ~ Beth Macy

Scores of high-powered men and women are addicted to substances or destructive addictive patterns of behaviour. As a matter of fact, it is easier to hide one's addiction while maintaining a high-powered position compared to the addicts and alcoholics we see sleeping on street corners. ~ Christopher Dines

All out weird shit internally overlaps like techtonic plates, and we just wait for them to grind together, brace for the earthquake. ~ Juno Dawson

Drug abuse and addiction are very real problems, the remedy for which is education and medical treatment, not incarceration. In fact, the most abused drugs in the United States now appear to be oxycodone and other prescription painkillers. Should ~ Sam Harris

Take a few minutes now and see your current circumstances- your physical condition, your emotional condition, your possessions, your financial condition, where and how you live, your relationships, the situations surrounding your life, and the way you believe other people see you- as mirrors showing you "Who You Are. ~ Chris Prentiss

I've seen firsthand the terrible consequences of drug abuse. My heart is with all who suffer from addiction and the terrible consequences for their families. ~ Columba Bush

Everything is subjective. ~ Douglas Hsieh

No more junk talk, no more lies. No more mornings in the hospital getting bad blood drained out of me. No more doctors trying to analyse what makes me a drug addict. No more futile attempts at trying to control my heroin use. No more defending myself when I know I am practically indefensible. No more police using me as practice. No more ODs, no more losses. No more trying to take an intellectual position on my heroin addiction when it takes more than it gives. No more dope-sick mornings, no more slow suicide, no more pain without end.
No more AA. No more NA. No more mind control. No more being a victim, no more looking for reasons in childhood, in God in anything but what exists in HERE. No more admitting I am powerless.
Down the dusty Los Angeles sidewalks, down the urine stained London back alleys ... there goes the connection fading into the crowd like a 1960's Polaroid.
"Business ... ?"
"Whachoo need ... ?"
"Chiva ... ? ~ Tony O'Neill

Drugs are about dulling perception, about addiction and about behavioral repetition ... What *psychedelics* are about is pattern- dissolving experiences of an extraordinarily high or different awareness. They are the exact opposite of drugs. They promote questioning , they promote consciousness, they promote value examinations, they promote the reconstruction of behavioral patterns. ~ Terence McKenna

Every pain, addiction, anguish, longing, depression, anger or fear
is an orphaned part of us
seeking joy,
some disowned shadow
wanting to return
to the light
and home
of ourselves. ~ Jacob Nordby

I felt that if people understood the struggle of recovery, then some of the stigma of addiction might be reduced because the audience would understand in a palpable way that addiction is a disease that tells the afflicted, despite years or even decades of heartbreaking evidence to the contrary, that using will make things better. ~ Brian Lindstrom

Saying things like "you must hit rock bottom before you can rise up" is just an excuse for not doing the effort of rising up earlier.
When you hit rock bottom you must rise up - because you have no other option. ~ Fergus MacDermott

As massive numbers of homeless, hungry, unemployed, drug-addicted, illiterate, and mentally ill people vanish behind its walls, the social problems of extreme poverty, homelessness, hunger, unemployment, drug addiction, illiteracy, and mental illness become more ignorable, too. ~ Maya Schenwar

I ended up going into this big art historical argument.' [Barry Blinderman] invoked, for example, Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim altarpiece, painted in the sixteenth century for a monastery where monks cared for people with skin diseases - so the suffering Christ in that painting shows symptoms of skin disease. 'It's because he's the man of sorrows,' Blinderman argued. 'He takes on the suffering of the world. So if Christ were to appear physically today, one of the sicknesses he would have to take on would be drug addiction. ~ Cynthia Carr

[A]ccept that the addiction exists not because of yourself, but in spite of yourself. You did not come into life asking to be programmed this way. It's not personal to you - millions of others with similar experiences have developed the same mechanisms. What is personal to you is how you respond to it in the present. ~ Gabor Mate

Like most people who decide to get sober, I was brought to Alcoholics Anonymous. While AA certainly works for others, its core propositions felt irreconcilable with my own experiences. I couldn't, for example, rectify the assertion that "alcoholism is a disease" with the facts of my own life.
The idea that by simply attending an AA meeting, without any consultation, one is expected to take on a blanket diagnosis of "diseased addict" was to me, at best, patronizing. At worst, irresponsible. Irresponsible because it doesn't encourage people to turn toward and heal the actual underlying causes of their abuse of substances.
I drank for thirteen years for REALLY good reasons. Among them were unprocessed grief, parental abandonment, isolation, violent trauma, anxiety and panic, social oppression, a general lack of safety, deep existential discord, and a tremendous diet and lifestyle imbalance. None of which constitute a disease, and all of which manifest as profound internal, mental, emotional and physical discomfort, which I sought to escape by taking external substances.
It is only through one's own efforts to turn toward life on its own terms and to develop a wiser relationship to what's there through mindfulness and compassion that make freedom from addictive patterns possible. My sobriety has been sustained by facing life, processing grief, healing family relationships, accepting radically the fact of social oppression, working with my abandonment conditioning, ~ Noah Levine

Every generation finds the drug it needs. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

June 16, 2018

I feel lovely, but it's just the drugs. But sometimes I think that maybe it isn't just the drugs? Maybe these feelings are inside of us all along, and the drugs find them. Maybe that's why some people choose to be junkies because they choose to believe that they're worthy of happiness. And maybe some of us like the pain so much that we numb it in order for us to really understand it. To put these suicidal feelings to sleep and fall in love with the way we fall in love with the stars within us. I think self-destruction is the most addictive thing. There's something very powerful and magical about it. ~ Juansen Dizon