Quotes About Addiction

It sort of is," says Joe. "It's been like that for . . . My mom sometimes needs someone to watch out for her. She—she gets drunk, high, does stupid things.

emotional sobriety"—the ability to regulate one's feelings without self-medicating, whether that medication comes in the form of substances, defenses, affairs, or the internet.

The internet can be both a salve and an addiction, a way to block out pain (the salve) while simultaneously creating it (the addiction).

Of course, therapists aren't persuaders. We can't convince an anorexic to eat. We can't convince an alcoholic not to drink. We can't convince people not to be self-destructive, because for now, the self-destruction serves them. What we can do is try to help them understand themselves better and show them how to ask themselves the right questions until something happens — either internally or externally — that leads them to do their own persuading.

She was like a drug. The most addicting kind, and he had a problem—he was pretty sure that she was developing feelings for him. He had no idea what to do with that, or with is own feelings, which were definitely getting in his way. This whole no emotional attachment thing had gone straight to shit. Because Mallory Quinn was emotionally attached to every person she ever met, and she had a way of making that contagious. He craved contact with her in a way that he wasn't experienced with.

The sign on the front door explaining what kind of meeting: NA-NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS Someone had attached a sticky note that said: EMPHASIS ON THE A, PEOPLE! Ty didn't know wheather to be amused that only in Lucky Harbor would the extra note be necessary, or appalled that the town was trusted with the anonymous at all.

The kiss ignited like a rocket flash. Not that this surprised her. Everything pertaining to Mark seemed to burn hot and fast. Frustration, lust… His mouth was rough, hot and hungry on hers as he pulled her closer, taking control. She heard herself moan, kissing him with helpless desperation. If dessert was her usual drug of choice, it'd just been replaced because she couldn't seem to get enough of him.

It's the only thing I haven't marathoned yet." She turned

She looked up at me with a polite smile, her dark hair long and appealing...I liked the smile. Maybe I didn't look like a beaten-up bum. Maybe on me it just looked ruggedly determined. I'm sorry, sir, she said, but the addiction counseling center is on twenty-six. Sigh.

Junkies are happy when they're high," I said quietly, "but they don't need to be happy. They need to be free.

the instant morning energy that can be possessed only by someone who has not yet discovered the immutable necessity of coffee.

In 1958 a friend in San Francisco burned out his veins shooting up hot paregoric, a cheap high. It's safer for me to continue smoldering just below the temperature of actual flame wondering if there's a distant land where life freely flows like a river. Years ago in a high green pasture near timberline I watched a small black bear on its back rolling back and forth and shimmying to scratch its back, pawing the air with pleasure, not likely wanting to be anywhere or anyone else.

Drugs are a bet with your mind." "It's like gambling, somehow. You go out for a night of drinking and you don't know where you're going to end up the next day. It could work out good, or it could be disastrous. It's like the throw of the dice.

It had soaked in on him at last, the spot he was in. Soaked clear through a quart of booze until it hit him where he lived and rubbed the place raw.

When you stop drinking, you have to deal with this marvelous personality that started you drinking in the first place.

when she drank she did not dream.

The sugary rhizomes of Stilbocarpa have saved the lives of many shipwrecked people who gnawed them in desperation, though they need to be cooked to be palatable. A strange side effect was that eating Stilbocarpa roots bleached the teeth, so that even men who had been addicted for years to chewing tobacco ended up with teeth as white as a child's.

Next to coffee, chocolate was her favorite aroma.

Chocolate's not seasonal. It's good any time of the year. Chocolate's like oxygen. It's elemental.

Why can no one here think of anything but chocolates?

He drank, for the same reason he wrote second-rate science fiction. Not to forget but to remember, to open the past and find himself there again. He opened each bottle, began each story with the secret conviction that here was the magic drought that would restore him. But magic, like wine, needs the right conditions in order to work.

This must be what an addict feels like, I think, trying to fight the pull of one last, quick read. My fingers itch toward the binding, and finally, with a sigh of regret, I just grab the book and open it, hungrily reading the story.

Imagine if you were the positive pole of a magnet, and you were told that under no circumstances were you allowed to touch that negative pole that was sucking you in like a black hole. Or if you crawled out of the desert and found a woman standing with a pitcher of ice water, but she held it out of your reach. Imagine jumping off a building, and then being told not to fall. That's what it feels like to want a drink.

I have a slight addiction to Diet Coke, and, of course, I absolutely shouldn't touch it because it makes the kidneys work really hard.