Quotes About Recovery

That's the thing with addicts. We don't intend to drink or use drugs. Usually the times we most shouldn't drink or use is when we end up drinking and using the most. Loss of control is the identifying stamp and seal of addiction. We lose control of when we use, what we use, how much we use, and what we do when we're drunk or stoned.

I realized that although I was saying I wanted my spouse to get better, I was really afraid of getting better and looking at my own stuff. I kept adding pressure as a way of sabotaging.

I wanted to be a victim. I continued to act like I did not have choices and that it was always everyone else's fault in the family for how I felt and reacted." More

We cannot begin to work on ourselves, to live our own lives, feel our own feelings, and solve our own problems until we have detached from the object of our obsession.

Even recovering alcoholics and addicts noticed they were codependent and perhaps had been long before becoming chemically dependent.8 Codependents started cropping up everywhere.

But our real problems as codependents are our own characteristics—our codependent behaviors. Who's codependent? I am.

The chemically dependent partner numbs the feelings and the nonabuser is doubled over in pain—relieved only by anger and occasional fantasies," wrote Janet Geringer Woititz in an article from the book CoDependency, An Emerging Issue.1

Pneumonia victims will cough until they get appropriate treatment for their illness. Alcoholics will drink until they get the same.

I'm really looking forward to being clean again. It's this weird thing with smack. First off it makes you feel so good. But after a bit, after your body gets used to it, it stops working like that. You start needing it just to stay normal... Then you get sick of it and give it up for a few days. And that's the really nasty thing because then, when you're clean, that's when it works so well.

what the hell do I do about a broken lifebond? He shook his head, obviously at a loss. I can't tell you; I don't know. I don't Heal minds, I Heal bodies. And I don't know of anyone who Heals hearts.

Keep breathing. Exhale all the hurt and sorrow, inhale the untainted air.

The lives of the Outer Dwellers had become almost normal again. Bitterness was their bread and rivalry their wine.

I was in and out of the hospital almost daily from then on. They X-rayed, poked, and prodded me, and then they did it again for good measure.

Cannot put Humpty Dumpty to rights!

The message carried by all the pioneers of codependency recovery was the same: Not only can we lovingly detach from other people and take care of ourselves, it is our primary responsibility in life to do that.

Burleson later shared his first impressions of me with a TV interviewer: "I couldn't believe what I saw. This man had no face. It was completely black, solid black, like he had a crust over him. His jacket was unzipped down to his waist, full of snow. His right arm was bare and frozen over his head. We could not lower it. His skin looked like marble. White stone. No blood in it.

A distinction must be made between that writing which enables us to hold on to life even as we are clinging to old hurts and wounds and that writing which offers to us a space where we are able to confront reality in such a way that we live more fully. Such writing is not an anchor that we mistakenly cling to so as not to drown. It is writing that truly rescues, that enables us to reach the shore, to recover.

I was still mourning- clinging to the broken heart of girlhood, to broken connections. When that mourning ceased I was able to love again.

And if one's goal is self-recovery, to be well in one's soul, honesty and realistically confronting loneliness is party of the healing process.

Addiction makes love impossible.

All the years of my life I thought I was searching for love I found, retrospectively, to be years where I was simply trying to recover what had been lost, to return to the first home, to get back the rapture of first love. I was not really ready to love or be loved in the present. I was still mourning -- clinging to the broken heart of girlhood, to broken connections. When that mourning ceased I was able to love again.

At the time, recently separated from a partner of almost fifteen years, I was often overwhelmed by grief so profound it seemed as though an immense sea of pain was washing my heart and soul away.

And we spend a lifetime undoing the damage caused by cruelty, neglect, and all manner of lovelessness experienced in our families of origin and in relationships where we simply did not know what to do.

Healing is an act of communion