Quotes About Addiction

The opposite of addiction is human connection. And I think that has massive implications for the war on drugs. The treatment of drug addicts almost everywhere in the world is much closer to Tent City than it is to anything in Portugal. Our laws are built around the belief that drug addicts need to be punished to stop them. But if pain and trauma and isolation cause addiction, then inflicting more pain and trauma and isolation is not going to solve that addiction. It's actually going to deepen it.

When Patanjali says "non-attachment", he is not anti-love. Really, he is for love. Non-attachment means be natural, loving, flowing, but don't get obsessed and addicted. Addiction is the problem. Then it is like a disease. You cannot love anybody except your child - this is addiction. Then you will be in misery. Your child can die; then there is no possibility for your love to flow. Even if your child is not going to die, he will grow. And the more he grows, the more he will become independent. And then there will be pain. Every mother suffers, every father suffers.

What is sex addiction? I asked a doctor and the guys goes, Sex addiction... People will end up doing something they don't want to do just for sex. Isn't that called a first date, man? If sex was the result of something I wanted to do, there'd be condoms all over my PlayStation.

I think the original, 'They're the next Jane's Addiction' things that people said about us in the beginning have been pretty much wiped out.

Don't we get it? To put our arm around someone who is gay, someone who has an addiction, somebody who lives a different lifestyle, someone who is not what we think they should be... doing that has nothing to do with enabling them or accepting what they do as okay by us. It has nothing to do with encouraging them in their practice of what you or I might feel or believe is wrong vs right.It has everything to do with being a good human being. A good person. A good friend.

I have a writing addiction.

Practically every environmental problem we have can be traced to our addiction to fossil fuels, primarily oil.

The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.

Anyone who has lived through it, or those who are now living through it, knows that caring about an addict is as complex and fraught and debilitating as addiction itself.

I used to have an eBay addiction. I was really good at selling stuff. My sister needed to get to a funeral in Ireland - the airlines were on strike - so I listed her on eBay: damsel in distress. Guys were outbidding guys to be the hero and help her. A guy who owned a helicopter won.

I've always been very open about it. I've been very open about my addiction, about my panic disorder. But I think that transparency is what can separate you from others because I think that is where comedy is going.

We have tax revenue that's going to allow us to look in a much more comprehensive way at intervening in addiction.

The need to help spread democracy and the ability to do that will be much greater if we break this addiction to oil, which gives the oil princes and sultans the power in the Mideast.

Opioid replacement therapy is the standard evidence-based model to treat people with acute opioid addiction, and that is unassailable according to every research study that's been done. If that is the evidence-based model, then why can't we meet the large-scale need that's out there? We can't because one, there aren't enough doctors who can prescribe [drugs like methadone], and two, there are these artificial limits [by insurers] on who doctors can prescribe to.

Enslavement to your own weakness - be it an addiction to alcohol, or to a woman or to fame - it's degrading, and it means losing your dignity and your freedom.

Drug addiction is tearing our communities and our country apart, and until we decide we're going to think differently about it, until we decide that we're going to invest as a country in prevention and treatment, until we decide that as individuals we're going to step up and do our part to address this epidemic, we're not going to solve this.

Women have come a long way over the past 20 years, but in substance abuse and addiction, women have come the wrong way.

What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction.

[Jack Nash from The Andromeda Strain] was not in the original film, but he was kind of a Geraldo Rivera almost kind of reporter that had a drug addiction. We start the story in rehab, and then he gets the roots of the story. I loved him.

Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain.

We have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil... The best way to break this addiction is through technology.

I was doing interviews and a question came up about whether I had anything I was addicted to. I said 'I actually have an addiction to eye drops.' And like, as I was on the phone I'd had my third - in the hour! - dose. I had them with me all the time.

Addiction beggins whith the hope that something 'out there' can instantly fill up the emptiness inside.

Depression is about anger, it's about anxiety, it's about character and heredity. But it is also about something that is in its way quite unique. It is the illness of identity, it is the illness of those who do not know where they fit, who lose faith in the myths they have so painstakingly created for themselves. It is a plague - especially if you add in its various forms of expression, like alcoholism, anorexia, bulimia, drug addiction, compulsive behavior of one kind or another. They're all the same things: attempts to avoid disappearance, or nothingness, or chaos.

No-strings relationships have helped cure me of love addiction. All my life I've been in long-term monogamous relationships. I had to break that pattern by not allowing myself to have a relationship for a year, stopping myself from committing to men. I haven't been celibate. I've had lots of dates and lots of sex, but I haven't been pushing to turn a date into a relationship. This has been a huge thing for me.

The addiction isn't your problem - it is what you use to cope with your problem.

There are chemical and other explanations for addictions, but speaking from my own observations (and I am a shamanic type), there is always some sort of disembodied spirit causing some of the addiction, riding your energy field, trying to impose their needs and addictions onto you.

Even if I remember the first time perfectly, I don't remember the beginning at all. I mean: the beginning of addiction. It's hard to say when it becomes a problem; it sneaks up on you like a sun shower.

I'm fascinated by the whole issue of arousal addiction, which seems to be mostly a problem for young men.

The very wealthy and the very famous have a much closer affinity with the indigent street person than with the rest of us. There's the narcissism, the addiction, even the outlandish dress. Often they don't put great value in relationships.

I have a bit of a traveling addiction, and, ah, yeah. I went to, ah, Bali this summer.

To limit yourself to a label of "alcoholic" is masochistic and false if you have awakened a deeper spiritual identity within and have come to know your true self as unconditioned pure awareness. This doesn't mean that recovering alcoholics don't have to be concerned with relapsing, they must always remain vigilant. The power of addiction should not be underestimated. This exercise in vigilance can become a spiritual tool of liberation as well. Always being aware of choosing between real happiness and false happiness is also the discrimination required to attain enlightenment.

Life is a series of baby steps along the way and if you add up these tiny little steps you take toward your goal, whatever it is, whether it's giving up something, a terrible addiction or trying to work your way through an illness. When you total up those baby steps you'd be amazed over the course of 10 years, the strides you've taken.

A "snapshot" feature in USA Today listed the five greatest concerns parents and teachers had about children in the '50s: talking out of turn, chewing gum in class, doing homework, stepping out of line, cleaning their rooms. Then it listed the five top concerns of parents today: drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, suicide and homicide, gang violence, anorexia and bulimia. We can also add AIDS, poverty, and homelessness. . . . Between my own childhood and the advent of my motherhood--one short generation--the culture had gone completely mad.

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

Fear is the memory of pain. Addiction is the memory of pleasure. Freedom is beyond both.

A hurt is at the center of all addictive behaviors. . . . The wound may not be as deep and the ache not as excruciating, and it may even be entirely hidden—but it’s there. As we’ll see, the effects of early stress or adverse experiences directly shape both the psychology and the neurobiology of addiction in the brain

(UGO, about Crank) I see the addiction to video games because you want to win them and it's just hard enough so you'd want to keep playing it over and over to try to figure it out. I definitely feel the movie is like a game at times but I'm not a huge videogame lover.

Rachel Resnick's story of love lost and love sought cracks open the timeworn addiction narrative to release something raw, probing, brave, and redemptive. The courage it took to write this story is challenged only by the courage it must have taken to live it. I sit in awe of such unflinching honesty. LOVE JUNKIE is memoir at its very best.

I'm also a video game addict, so I'm always looking to support my addiction.

Onstage it was always comfortable for me because that's where I felt at home. Offstage it was a different situation. I was still shy offstage and unfortunately, my shyness and my inability to communicate and really have great conversations or be part of the gang - in inverted commas - led me to the drug addiction, which, you know, blighted my life for 16 years because I thought by doing that it would make me join in.

Although the Chinese had used opium as a medicine, there was no widespread addiction before the British arrived.

Workaholicism is such a tough addiction to get over. I had to divorce my wife because she was an enabler.

I had not taken a bath in a year nor changed my clothes or removed them except to stick a needle every hour in the fibrous grey wooden flesh of heroin addiction. I did absolutely nothing.

Food-addiction, or food-drunkenness, is an old story in Hygienic literature. This is the first mention I have seen of it in "regular" medical literature. I fear to hope that its recognition spells progress.

Beware of Destination Addiction... a preoccupation with the idea that happiness is in the next place, the next job and with the next partner. Until you give up the idea that happiness is somewhere else, it will never be where you are.

The trouble with addiction is that you can park the car but you can never switch off the engine or stop yourself from hearing the revs.