Quotes About Recovery

I had never before considered the possibility that I might never even want a drink yet still be left with this horrible, throbbing vacancy in the center of my being, right where my mental health and contentment were supposed to be.

As my friend Amy observed: Divorce is like a Polaroid picture. What truly happened will develop over time and you will see.

Despite evidence to the contrary, I hated drinking to the point that I misplaced really big slabs of time.

If you don't like smoking don't even bother getting sober, just stay drunk.

I hate having feelings. Why does sobriety have to come with feelings? One minute I feel excited, the next I feel terrified. One minute I feel free and the next I feel doomed. I think about lobotomies. Are they like nose jobs, can you just go and have one? Or do you need a doctor's recommendation?

And it hits me, the reason for all the metaphors in recovery. Because the bald truth would be too terrifying. What she's saying is I may need an all-new career and all-new friends.

In AA, you are brainwashed into believing that all the good stuff happens only after you stop drinking. Clearly they are lying; my life improved significantly as soon as I ordered a cocktail.

See, alcoholism is exactly like bubble gum. You know when you blow a bubble and it bursts, some of the gum sticks to you chin? What's the only thing that gets the bubble gum off your chin? Bubble gum. You have to take the bubble gum out of your mouth and press it against the gum on your chin and it'll pick it up. Only an alcoholic can treat another alcoholic. Only other alcoholics can get you sober.

I'm an alcoholic who doesn't (and doesn't want to) drink anymore so I exist in a state of never-ending micro-addictions that reveal themselves in the form of obsessions.

Feeling like you cannot stand one more minute doesn't mean you can't. You can, actually. It's incredibly easy to stop smoking. And it's horrifically uncomfortable. Then not quite horrifically uncomfortable. Then it's damn uncomfortable. Then it's uncomfortable. Then it's not as uncomfortable as it was at first. Then it's not so bad. And then you don't smoke anymore. And you don't miss it.

While there are some things from which you never heal, so be it. The truth about healing is that you don't need to heal to be whole.

Applause is a constant thing in AA. It's how we buy drinks for each other.

Normal people hadn't been molested or reared by a clinically psychotic mother, an alcoholic father, or a perversely mad psychiatrist who wore a Santa hat and performed toilet bowl readings. These were normal people, and I lived among them now. I thought, This must be what I want.

Therapy could be of tremendous benefit to "getting over" one's past if the therapy is focused on specific ways to stop submitting to the temptation to obsess. Many people with difficult histories carry these histories with them, burnishing the past with each retelling.

You can never replace it. The good news is you do learn to live without it. You miss it. You want it. You hang out with a bunch of other crazy people who feel the same way and you live with it. And eventually, you start to sound like a cloying self-help book, like me.

Applause is a constant thing in AA. It's how we buy drinks for each other.

To stop drinking, all you have to do is sit. In 100 percent of the documented cases of alcoholism worldwide, the people who recovered all shared one thing in common, no matter how they did it: They didn't do it.

You know, American alcoholics are pretty fucking hard to insult.

A big, friendly-looking man approaches me. "Hey, I'm Bobby," he says with a thick Baltimore accent, "… and I'm an alcoholic.

It does not matter whether or not those responsible for harming you ever understand what they did, care about what they did, or apologize for it. It does not matter. All that matters is your ability to stop fondling the experience with your brain. Which you can do right now. A good therapist can help by preventing you from spending time wallowing in the past and instead focus on organizing your future.

Exactly! What you are doing is 'telling on your addict.

You can't move away from your addiction, it will follow you wherever you go.

Bulls**t,' I say. 'You chose to relapse. You didn't have to.' I hate it when alcoholics relapse and then act like somebody cut the bake lines on their cars. 253-254.

Bulls**t,' I say. 'You chose to relapse. You didn't have to.' I hate it when alcoholics relapse and then act like somebody cut the brake lines on their cars.