Quotes About Addiction

Every addiction arises from an unconscious refusal to face and move through your own pain. Every addiction starts with pain and ends with pain. Whatever the substance you are addicted to - alcohol, food, legal or illegal drugs, or a person - you are using something or somebody to cover up your pain.

Once you've been overweight you never want to be overweight again, so you keep going, keep going, like for any addiction. Health can be an addiction, it doesn't have to be drugs or alcohol.

I hope 'Warning: This Drug May Kill You' documentary helps to show the humanity of the people who are struggling with the brain disease of addiction because that is what this is - this isn't about bad people, this is about good people who became addiction oftentimes in the process of being prescribed medication for pain.

Addiction is a very compelling subject for literature - especially now that it's nearly impossible to come out of adult experience without some addiction - to substances, sure, but also to love, sex, success, failure, power.

Addiction is the number one disease of civilization, and it's directly and indirectly related to all other diseases. Besides physical addictions to nicotine, alcohol, and other substances, there are psychological addictions, such as the addiction to work, sex, television, melodrama, and perfection.

I am a community social psychologist and a lot of my work deals with social work and helping people overcoming addiction and trauma.

If you're to the point where you're trying to overcome that means you're at the point where you've admitted that you have a problem, and that might be your strongest point in the addiction.

[Addiction's] not about placating the bad dog - it's about feeding the good dog. You still have to feed the bad dog, but only enough so that the ASPCA doesn't bring you up on charges.

What has drug addiction done for me? It's cost me my career, my fortune and basically my sex life when I found out I was HIV positive.

My view of addiction, whether it's drugs, food, alcohol or any list of other things, is the same reason I asked my mother why I wasn't a drug addict or alcoholic, which is because when you're not loved, often people become an addict and self destructive. Now the opposite of love is indifference and even worse is rejection and abuse, and I meet those people.

Addiction is a health issue, not a social issue, not a crime, not a legal issue.

Well, I know from some of my own experience, and many of my friends' experiences, when going through that sort of program. The whole addiction game really forces you to focus on what brings you there and accept the only way out. So once you really put this focus on getting better and figuring out what your flaws are, that's what brings you back. I think she could've been more reckless and shown up earlier, but I wasn't really available to come back.

Some are addicted to cigarettes, some, God forbid, to drugs, and some become addicted to money. They say that the worst addiction is to power. I have never felt that. I have never been addicted to anything

No behavior can be changed before it's acknowledged. And no addiction is beyond the reach of Love.

The worst thing you can do for your loved one caught in alcoholism or addiction is to help the person continue in the deception that he or she is OK. Your best course of action is to speak the truth in love (see Eph. 4:15) and don't allow him or her to escape the consequences of wrong behavior.

I am on an emotional roller coaster ride to survive and to conquer obesity, not only for myself but also for everyone that battles some kind of addiction.

Romantic love is an addiction.

It's been so long since I've really truly felt what it's like to live life without substances to help. Massive struggle that's natural to one's health, but with addiction in my blood I play the cards I was dealt.

I was faced with a choice: to deny my addiction and embrace that 'comfortably numb' but 'magicless' existence, or accept the burden of insight, take the road less travelled, and embark on the often painful journey to discover who I was and where I fit.

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

Most memoirs about alcoholism, promiscuity, and addiction are deep, sobering tales full of scars that will never heal and include alarming statistics and reflection about recovery.This is not one of those memoirs.

Success is both an addiction and an enslavement.

Kids are like heroin, a little heroin addiction. When it’s bad, you’ve never been so miserable, but when it’s good you’ve never been so high.

If you're losing the battle against a persistent bad habit, an addiction, or a temptation, and you're stuck in a repeating cycle of good intention-failure-guilt, you will not get better on your own. You need the help of other people. Some temptations are only overcome with the help of a partner who prays for you, encourages you, and holds you accountable.

Addiction is perhaps a sickness of the spirit.

Whenever you feel upset, take full responsibility for the emotions that you are experiencing. Get to work as quickly as possible identifying the programming, or the addiction, that is leading you to reject what other people are saying or doing.

Each and every child in this country is valuable because they are our future as a society. We cannot afford to lose a single child to ill-health, under-education, abuse, addiction, jail, or gun violence. America's highest goal should be for every child to grow up to be a successful young adult -- healthy, educated, free, secure, and a good citizen.

The fact is that being seductive is an addiction that can never be satisfied.

When someone tells me that they insist on having drinks with me, and there are some cultures where sealing the deal or celebrating or having a guest in the home, it is very traditional to slam down a couple shots or whatever the local grog is. I just tell them I'm allergic, which is not a lie, you know alcoholism and drug addiction in many ways are described as an allergy of the body and the mind. So I just tell them I'm allergic and they're like, "Oh, no problem."

Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is.

Here's how I became myself: mess, failure, mistakes, disappointments, and extensive reading; limbo, indecision, setbacks, addiction, public embarrassment, and endless conversations with my best women friends; the loss of people without whom I could not live, the loss of pets that left me reeling, dizzying betrayals but much greater loyalty, and overall, choosing as my motto William Blake's line that we are here to learn to endure the beams of love.

Yes, creative people are more prone to addiction or addictive behavior. But, equally as prone is your mailman, your mother, your brother, your friend, the guy who does your banking. It's everywhere. The thing that happens in the press sometimes is Whitney Houston. She was just an addict. Just like your uncle Steve.

There is so much to life; my heart breaks watching someone held captive by addiction.

Recovery is a bit like an addiction; you take it day by day. If you set yourself too many goalposts, you'll have problems.

That's it. With equal parts regret and relief, the Jane's Addiction experiment is at an end.

The Easter Bunny is a major reason for heroin addiction in America.

I used to kind of blame someone for not being able to get through that - I'm talking about the addiction part - but I've had a few experiences recently where you don't blame the person anymore.

Addiction is a revolt of the soul.

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.

The idea that addiction is somehow a psychological illness is, I think, totally ridiculous. It's as psychological as malaria. It's a matter of exposure. People, generally speaking, will take any intoxicant or any drug that gives them a pleasant effect if it is available to them.

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

I brought something back from those experiences [with drugs] which made me softer, open to other ideas. And I've learned from listening to other people talk about their experiences, from listening to Bill Hicks or reading Terrence McKenna or Aldous Huxley and Timothy Leary. But there's always some dumb cop out there who says "We don't need another legal drug and there's psychological addiction and blah blah blah."

Addiction is such an isolating incident in your life. You feel alone. And when you admit, when you come into a fellowship and people just surround you and say, "We will help you, that you're not alone, that we've been through it before, and you will get through it," just gives you such great hope.

To the extent to which the pull that moves me really is irresistible, like an invincibly strong addiction, the normal procedures of evaluation, deliberation, choice, decision, etc. that constitute the substance of our political life are not operating. The same is true of overwhelming aversion. The person being tortured who simply wants it to stop, period, is also not a good model for an agent acting politically.

People do not realize this, but my drug addiction was actually a short span of time. It was only for two years.

I know, and know of, people who said they have taken a hit of crack and never tried it again. I overheard one woman in LA say she took one hit and it mad her feel so good, she was afraid to try it again. I am not a doctor, but I do believe that if one is predisposed to addiction, taking one hit may be all it takes. Certainly that is how it worked out for me.

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.

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