Quotes About Alcoholism

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

I have a very powerful form of alcoholism. I finally gave up and accepted the fact that if I even smell too much booze, I'm going to start drinking again. That's just how I am.

I drank for about 25 years getting over the loss of my father and I took the anger out on myself. I did a good job at beating myself up at sometimes. I don't drink anymore but my alcoholic head occasionally says different. 'Nil By Mouth' was a love letter to my father because I needed to resolve some issues in order to be able to forgive him.

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

My dad was the town drunk. Most of the time that's not so bad but New York City?

It was an old game for us. Tell me a story, she liked to say, meaning charm me—my life in this Texas suckhole is duller than a rubber knife. Amaze me. If I ever wonder what made me a writer—if I tug the thread of that urgent need I have to put marks on paper, it invariably leads me back to Mother, sprawled in bed with a luminous hangover, and how some book of rhymes I've done in crayon and stapled together could puncture the soap bubble of her misery.

I'm not an alcoholic—I don't have the discipline to become one—

I'm not an alcoholic—I don't have the discipline to become one—but

By 1831, he had determined to leave the grocery business and to begin manufacturing chocolate and cocoa. He had convinced himself that "drinking chocolate" could become an alternative to the gin and whiskey that were ravaging so many lives.

The results of a 1995 study conducted by Harvard Medical School indicated that alcoholics have a better chance of quitting drinking if they don't attend AA than if they do. Americans seldom hear about such results, in part because AA and its sister organizations have actively opposed independent research that could test their programs' effectiveness.

The best treatment for alcoholism is religious conversion.

Peterson J.B., Pihl, R.O., Gianoulakis, C., Conrod, P., Finn, P.R., Stewart, S.H., LeMarquand, D.G. Bruce, K.R. (1996). "Ethanol-induced change in cardiac and endogenous opiate function and risk for alcoholism." Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, 20, 1542-1552.

Once you're known to be an alcoholic, that's how many people identify you, which could be a reason not to talk about it.

Such was the demand for sugar, the price of a sweet tooth was a toothless smile. Such was the demand for coffee, the price of caffeine was addiction, heart palpitations, osteoporosis and general irritability. The price of rum was chronic liver disease, alcoholism and permanent memory loss. The cost of tobacco was cancer, stained teeth and emphysema.

We're alcoholics. We're generally satisfied just to hurt ourselves.

There are some fine books and essays about that. Lewis Hyde has written about alcoholism and poets and the role that society gives its writers - encouraging them to die.

When I got home, I poured myself one last quick drink. I took a deep sip and let the warm liquor travel to destinations well known. Yes, I drink. But I'm not a drunk. That's not denial. I know I flirt with being an alcoholic. I also know that flirting with alcoholism is about as safe as flirting with a mobster's underage daughter. But so far, the flirting hasn't led to coupling. I'm smart enough to know that might not last. Chloe

It's maybe hard to believe, but as a kid I really had a lot of self-doubts. My father was very ill - he was an alcoholic - so there were a lot of things that built up for me. And because I was going to a Catholic school in a small German town, a lot of it was suppressed. I was angry and didn't know how to get it out.

I looked at mother with adoration in my own eyes, and when she had taken the kerosene lamp and had gone away, and when we boys were all again curled quietly like sleeping puppies in the bed, I cried a little, as I am sure father must have cried sometimes when there was no one about. Perhaps his getting drunk, as he did on all possible occasions, was a way of crying too.

But those who initially went to the West were overtaken by the barbarism of the frontier with astonishing speed - think Lord of the Flies or Heart of Darkness. There was murder, mayhem, robbery, alcoholism, depression, and suicide, and all of it on a positively Homeric scale that still has cultural anthropologists enraptured.

Boundaries are to take care of ourselves, not to control others. If we set a boundary not to be around practicing alcoholics, it isn't to force Harvey to stop drinking. Harvey can choose to drink or not drink. Our boundary gives us a guideline to make our choice—whether we want to be around Harvey.

Sometimes codependents were blamed; sometimes they were ignored; sometimes they were expected to magically shape up (an archaic attitude that has not worked with alcoholics and doesn't help codependents either).

It's clear now that codependency isn't a fad, as some people once claimed. It's come full circle. As family illnesses, from alcoholism to Alzheimer's disease, continue to become openly discussed by more people, so does the number of people seeking help for codependency increase.

Control is an illusion. It doesn't work. We cannot control alcoholism. We cannot control anyone's compulsive behaviors—overeating, sexual, gambling—or any of their behaviors. We cannot (and have no business trying to) control anyone's emotions, mind, or choices. We cannot control the outcome of events.