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Quotes About Addiction

If Nic were not ill he would not lie. If Nic were not ill he would not steal. If Nic were not ill he would not terrorize his family. He would not forsake his friends, his mother, Karen, Jasper, and Daisy, and he would not forsake me. He would not. He has a disease, but addiction is the most baffling of all diseases, unique in the blame, shame, and humiliation that accompany it.
~ David Sheff
Every time the telephone rings, my stomach constricts. Long after the euphoria from meth is no longer attainable—Tennessee Williams described the equivalent with alcohol in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof: "I never again could get the click"—addicts are agitated and confused, and most stop eating and sleeping. Parents of addicts don't sleep, either.
~ David Sheff
What about people with high cholesterol who keep eating French fries? Do we say a disease is not biological because it's influenced by behavior? No one starts out hoping to become an addict; they just like drugs. No one starts out hoping for a heart attack; they just like fried chicken.
~ David Sheff
The room has Nic's smell—not the sweet childhood smell he once had, but a cloying odor of incense and marijuana, cigarettes and aftershave, possibly a trace of ammonia or formaldehyde, the residual odor of burning meth. Smells like teen spirit.
~ David Sheff
Nic ha fatto uso di droghe, a fasi alterne, per oltre un decennio, e in quegli anni credo di avere sentito, pensato e fatto quasi tutto quello che un genitore può sentire, pensare e fare.
~ David Sheff
At my worst, I even resented Nic because an addict, at least when high, has a momentary respite from his suffering. There is no similar relief for parents or children or husbands or wives or others who love them. Nic
~ David Sheff
For heroin users with a five-year history of addiction, it may take ten or fifteen years to help them come out of it, but if you start when they're twenty-five, by the time they're forty they're pretty much rehabbed. If you don't, most of them burn out by forty.
~ David Sheff
Substance abusers lie about everything, and usually do an awesome job of it." Stephen King once wrote. "It's the liar's disease." Nic once told me, quoting an AA platitude, "An alcoholic will steal your wallet and lie about it. A drug addict will steal your wallet and then help you look for it." Part of me is convinced that he actually believes that he will find it for you.
~ David Sheff
I longed for someone to scrape out every remnant of Nic from my brain and scrape out the knowledge of what was lost and scrape out the worry and not only my anguish but his and the burning inside like I might scrape out the seeds and juicy pulp of an overripe melon, leaving no trace of the rotted flesh.
~ David Sheff
A handsome woman with auburn hair cut short, wearing a silk blouse, cardigan, and wool pants, says that she is a doctor. Deeply sad, she admits that for more than a year she conducted surgeries while high on meth. She initially tried it at a party. "I felt better than I had ever felt before in my life," she says. "I felt as if I could do anything. I never ever wanted to lose that feeling.
~ David Sheff
Fentanyl is fifty times stronger than heroin. Another concern is an opioid called carfentanil, which is as much as one hundred times more potent than fentanyl. According to the New York Times, an amount smaller than a snowflake could kill a person.
~ David Sheff
Nic is absent, only his shell remains. I have been afraid—terrified—to lose Nic, but I have lost him. In the past, I tried to imagine the unimaginable and I tried to imagine bearing the unbearable. I imagined losing Nic by overdose or accident, but now I comprehend that I have already lost him. Today, at least, he is lost.
~ David Sheff
The most ubiquitous form on the mainland is crystal, which is often manufactured with such ingredients as decongestants and brake cleaner in what the DEA has called "Beavis and Butt-head" labs in homes and garages. Mobile, or "box," labs in campers and vans, and labs in motels, have been discovered in every state. In 2006, Bill Maher quipped, "If Americans get any dumber about science, they won't even be able to make their own crystal meth.
~ David Sheff
Even as all the experts kindly tell the parents of addicts, "You didn't cause it," I have not let myself off the hook. I often feel as if I completely failed my son. In admitting this, I am not looking for sympathy or absolution, but instead stating a truth that will be recognized by most parents who have been through this.
~ David Sheff
He is brilliant and wonderful and charismatic and loving when he's not using, but like every addict I have ever heard of, he becomes a stranger when he is, distant and foolish and self-destructive and broken and dangerous.
~ David Sheff
The main problems with America's addiction-treatment system stem from its roots in the archaic notion that addiction is a choice, not a disease. One common symptom of the disease of addiction is relapse. Kicking an addict out of treatment for relapsing is like kicking a cancer patient out of treatment when a tumor metastasizes.
~ David Sheff
When I came to see you It hurt me how thin you had become In the months of addiction & disease & although your particular abyss Was a man & not a drug The degradation was the same The same wasting of the flesh The same tapped-out well emptied Of the least leaf of emotion The same frozen rage
~ David St. John
Alcoholism is above all a disease of denial.
~ David Stafford
Non-alcoholic ways in which parents may not 'be there' for the children can include: - violence and sexual abuse - workholism - gambling - transquilliser addiction- - womanizing - frequent journeys abroad - death - suicide - being unemployed or unemployable - frequent hospitalisation - mental or physical handicap - excessive religiosity - rigid rules and regulations - homes where children are never allowed to be themselves but must always be pleasing to adults
~ David Stafford
If we want to address global warming, along with the other environmental problems associated with our continued rush to burn our precious fossil fuels as quickly as possible, we must learn to use our resources more wisely, kick our addiction, and quickly start turning to sources of energy that have fewer negative impacts.
~ David Suzuki
abuse of drugs was not "a mysterious and inexplicable natural catastrophe, but a form
~ David T. Courtwright
Limbic capitalism refers to a technologically advanced but socially regressive business system in which global industries, often with the help of complicit governments and criminal organizations, encourage excessive consumption and addiction.
~ David T. Courtwright
The nature of addiction has implications - more precisely, temptations -for businesses that sell habituating products. One is to encourage early and frequent consumption. Treat the lads, the salon keepers used to say, and you'll have their money in the till when they're adults. And the more they drink, the greater the profits.
~ David T. Courtwright
The Teen Challenge ministry was born out of those humble early days of ministry. It now includes over 500 drug and alcohol rehab centers around the world, even in Muslim countries. These include homes for girls and women addicts and alcoholics, all which are reaching many.
~ David Wilkerson