The desire to be loved, to feel loved, is behind every diet, pill, surgery, and lie. It is behind each act of violence and every affair as well as each organized religion and every method of self-help.

What is addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood.

What if I’m so broken I can never do something as basic as feed myself? Do you realize how twisted that is? It amazes me sometimes that humans still exist. We’re just animals, after all. And how can an animal get so removed from nature that it loses the instinct to keep itself alive?

I feel very privileged to hear how somebody used to run around stickin’ people up and stealing cars, and now they’re gettin’ their life back together… I just love the stories. The stories of the fallen world, they excite us. That’s the interesting stuff.

There have been times I’ve felt so much art in my soul I grew sick of artists.

One of the first actions we take at Passages is to ruthlessly scrutinize, always under a doctor’s supervision and care, the specific necessity of any mind- altering or mood-altering medications that our clients are taking. As soon as any non essential drugs are out of their systems, the feelings they were trying to suppress usually...

Don’t be stuck in a life that’s not yours just because of a bad habit

I never lie ― I am a blatantly truthful person about almost everything. My addiction (or disease as some call it) always lies. I have had very good relationships, but the addict in me always fucked them up. I fall in love quickly, it’s a high that rivals drugs for a while. I am monogamous, but...

I felt that if he touched me, I’d die. and then the thought crawled into my brain that if he didn’t touch me, I’d die.

Are you addicted if there is simply no reason for you to do anything else?

I’ve always had an interest and addiction to photography. I do events and weddings and my specialty is golf course photography.

To have the beginning of a truly great story, you need to have a character you’re completely and utterly obsessed with. Without obsession, to the point of a maddening addiction,there’s no point to continue.

The inability to stop is the essence of what addiction is, … my favorite drug was more and all.

Remember what I used to tel you when you were a little girl? ‘A fool and her money soon part.’ Current-day translation? Stop pissing away your assets at Bloomingdale’s.

I think Amy Winehouse’s decision not to go to rehab was a bad one. In fact, I think it was the worst idea since Dodi Al Fayed said to Princess Diana, “Ooh, look! A tunnel! Whack that seat belt off and let’s have a fuck.

When you judge other people without wanting to know the true story behind their actions, is usually when there is something inside of you that is so broken that if you found out what you believed about them was a lie, you wouldn’t want to accept it or make amends.

I recovered from recovering so no longer celebrate not doing bad things to defend myself as good. I added new bad for good measure.

no reality.” Light merely entered the eye and was translated into electrical signals which were translated into chemical signals translated into gestalts and translated into electrical signals again and so on. It was all a dream of a dream of a dream signifying a source which could be reality of which we experienced only distant...

So you were lookingfor drugs I might have left behind? I’m a drug addict, Mother. We don’t leave drugs behind, especially if we’re going into treatment. We do all the drugs. We don’t save drugs back for later. If I have drugs, I do them. All of them. If I had my way, we would...

I am a fan of overdoing something, but not running it into the ground. They are complete opposites with only a fine line separating them.

It is ethanol that everyone is after when they drink alcoholic beverages. That is what gives us the euphoric feeling, and that is what all vendors of alcoholic drinks are selling.

MARK ARM : Even if I did talk to [Layne Staley], I don’t know what I would have said. Seeing him so far down the line on this trajectory that he had set for himself made me queasy. It seemed to me like once he discovered heroin, he decided he was going to fully embrace...

The childhood sexual abuse taught me that my value came from sex. In adulthood, I was driven to have sex since I always felt worthless. I felt important and desired until it was over and then I felt like garbage—the same way I did after the abuse. I desperately needed to feel valued again, which...

If I was lonely, if I was afraid of being alone, then why abandon myself? Why run to someone else looking to give myself the thing that only I could give? I wanted to escape myself because I felt empty, and the emptiness frightened me. But obviously, I was empty because I was always running...

I, the unfortunate Doctor Polyakov, who became addicted to morphine in February of this year, warn anyone who may suffer the same fate not to attempt to replace morphine with cocaine. Cocaine is a most foul and insidious poison. Yesterday Anna barely managed to revive me with camphor injections and today I am half dead.

When my pals in high school were starting to drink, it always looked unappealing to me. I would be at a big party and see one of the popular girls or football players completely wasted and puking and acting a fool, and think to myself, There’s nothing cool about that. I never wanted to be...

People say hate is like a poison — but they’re wrong. It’s like a drug. You never forget your first hit, how it seduces you with its strength and power, and takes you completely by storm. It colors your world in light and meaning, until you wonder how you ever managed to get by without...

a detestable, viscous place populated by slugs

We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.

Her loving hands, soft lips, and perfumed scents were an addiction for which he had no cure.

Once upon a time the future was supposed to be brighter, shinier and more fun. When did that vision pass? When did the word ‘new’ lose it’s luster? Now the past is supposed to hold the hopes we once confided to the future. We’re directing attachments that used to go forward backward.

One thing I’ve learned is it’s better to be addicted to things than people. You get hooked on a thing and if someone takes it from you, you can find another source. Only people can really hurt you. Only people can push you out into the cold permanently.

There are casualties in war. Those who don’t make it back to a place of sound hopes and dreams. Some take on their demons alone. They are deceived into fearlessness and trampled by the hooves of their oppressor. Besides intervention, there is little justice for the thousands-upon-thousands hacked to pieces all around us. How dare...

My fear of abandonment is exceeded only by my terror of intimacy.

Times change and discoveries are made that render earlier techniques and approaches less effective. Change is inevitable. To remain rigid when the whole world is changing and advancing is to invite misfortune. The AA program in particular is challenged with an opportunity of unprecedented magnitude.

Drug addicts driven to crime to finance their drug addiction are not often inclined toward violent crime. Violence requires all different kinds of energy, and most drug addicts like to expend their energy not on their professional crime but on what their professional crime lets them afford. Drug addicts are often burglars, therefore.

Well I would have used silverware if you hadn’t sold all the forks and spoons to pay for your Ethel Merman addiction.”

Theirs was a tug-of-war and neither could let go. Both felt the burn and still wouldn’t let go. Some might call it a game for neither could admit defeat.

Even those who drink until blacking out, those who beat women, are not the exception, hopefully not the norm, trapped somewhere in society in a dark place nobody wants to talk about.

Słowo jest moją używką, moim narkotykiem, rozsmakowałem się w przedawkowywaniu

I think golf is literally an addiction. I’m surprised there’s not Golf Anonymous.

Yet they enjoy the high. In the surest sign that selenium actually makes them go mad, cattle grow addicted to locoweed despite its awful side effects and eat it to the exclusion of anything else. It’s animal meth.

When I was ten all I knew was that I hated the weird words used to describe whatever it was that was wrong with my brother—to this day I think it all happened because he was overtaken by evil spirits that got loose in that haunted house ride at the carnival that summer. It’s easier...

Day after day, more and more medications are prescribed for depression and addiction, assuming that these things run in our blood, when really they run in our patterns of awareness.

It was not long before I discovered that withdrawing addicts lost their composure in exactly the same manner that careless millionaires lose their money: gradually, then suddenly.

Imagine trying to live without air.Now imagine something worse.

With addiction, a client’s fears can be ripened into some very pleasing fruit: Irritability, suspiciousness, isolation, paranoia, and finally on to that grand banana —the fear of Fear itself.

Modest, conventional expectations weren’t enough to lure Adam Brown away from the power of drug addiction that ensnared him. Instead, the college dropout already in his mid-twenties found only the big, near-impossible dream of being a Navy SEAL captivating enough to consistently draw him to different choices.

It’s the causes, not the dependent person, that must be corrected. That’s why I see the United States’ War on Drugs as being fought in an unrealistic manner. This war is focused on fighting drug dealers and the use of drugs here and abroad, when the effort should be primarily aimed at treating and curing...

Teen “addiction” to social media is a new extension of typical human engagement. Their use of social media as their primary site of sociality is most often a byproduct of cultural dynamics that have nothing to do with technology, including parental restrictions and highly scheduled lives. Teens turn to, and are obsessed with whichever environment...