I couldn’t stop so I quit.

When you are young your body cannot handle alcohol, and when you get old your mind cannot handle it. Either way, alcohol has its way.

Is a few hours of hell-raising, or respite from life’s toil worth this every morning?

AA purports to be open to anyone, as it is stated in Tradition Tree, “The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking,” but it isn’t open to everyone. It’s open only...

Co do szczegółów, to podobał mi się fragment na temat alkoholu. Z dłuższych cytatów, przytaczanych niestety bez podawania źródeł, wynika tutaj, że często nieodparta atrakcyjność alkoholu polega nie na fizycznej przyjemności, lecz na jego mistycznej...

The GeraniumWhen I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,She looked so limp and bedraggled,So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,Or a wizened aster in late September,I brought her back in againFor a...

To a drinker the sensation is real and pure and akin to something spiritual: you seek; in the bottle, you find.

Alcohol ruined me financially and morally, broke my heart and the hearts of too many others. Even though it did this to me and it almost killed me and I haven’t touched a drop of...

I’ll drink your champagne. I’ll drink every drop of it, I don’t care if it kills me.

People don’t like to talk about alcohol. They don’t like to think about it, except in the most superficial of ways. They don’t like to examine the damage it does and I don’t blame them....

She’s happier than Nicola. That’s probably true. Alcoholics can stop drinking but what is there for the children of alcoholics? Is it always too late? Probably. She doesn’t know.

Roxy was my breath of fresh air. My soft place to land. She was home to me.

You are not an alcoholic or an addict. You are not incurably diseased. You have merely become dependent on substances or addictive behavior to cope with underlying conditions that you are now going to heal,...

And you know what the worst thing was?The worst thing was that nobody ever believed how hard we tried.

Ô, wine!, the truth-serum so potent that all those who wish to live happy lives should abstain from drinking it entirely!… except of course when they are alone.

Envy and respect are not the same things…Before I endow you with respect, I should find out whether your curiosity is intellectual or merely morbid. Not that those who gawk at train derailments are so...

Every person in the AA program who’s successful is living proof that he or she does have power over addictive drugs and alcohol- the power to stop.

She’d either be a heartless mother and wife or a spineless enabler, when all she really wanted was the man she’d once believed him to be.

I resolved to come right to the point. “Hello,” I said as coldly as possible, “we’ve got to talk.””Yes, Bob,” he said quietly, “what’s on your mind?” I shut my eyes for a moment, letting...

One weekend it rained for 48 hours without stopping. The rain beat like bony fingers against the window panes. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Fungus was growing on the walls. I polished off a bottle...

Some lurid things have been said about me—that I am a racist, a hopeless alcoholic, a closet homosexual and so forth—that I leave to others to decide the truth of. I’d only point out, though,...

I didn’t chug the hairspray because I’m an alcoholic. I drank it to style my throat hairs.

We do not want to believe that we cannot control alcohol and that alcohol is, in truth, controlling and dictating our lives. When you free yourself of a dictator, like alcohol, the freedom that you...

One day at a time, sweet Jesus. Whoever wrote that one hadn’t a clue. A day is a fuckin’ eternity

People with family histories of alcoholism tend to have lower levels of endorphins- the endogenous morphine that is responsible for many of our pleasure responses- than do people genetically disinclined to alcoholism. Alcohol will slightly...

If I were to create a word that more accurately describes alcoholism and addiction, I would say it was dependencyism. Sounds silly, doesn’t it? Yet it’s no sillier than the word alcoholism. The reason alcoholism...

Last night I dreamt Moses and I were rowing underwater.We could breathe and talk to one another.We rowed past schools of fish and sea anemones and Moses named them for me.”—Jules Finn

The mentality and behavior of drug addicts and alcoholics is wholly irrational until you understand that they are completely powerless over their addiction and unless they have structured help, they have no hope.

I want to feel calm and at ease. Like someone who lives in Half Moon Bay, California, and makes hummus from scratch. Instead, I feel like I’m a contestant on some awful supermarket game show...

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.

Count Olaf had taken out a bottle of wine to pour himself some breakfast, but when he saw the book he stopped, and sat down.

Mendacity is a system that we live in,” declares Brick. “Liquor is one way out an’death’s the other.

Karl Marx: “Religion is the opiate of the masses.”Carrie Fisher: “I did masses of opiates religiously.

Those unexpected morality lessons provided by the trip had jolted me into some kind of action. It was time to jettison the past before the present jettisoned me. This was my first veiled attempt at...

The door is crackedWe used to meetlike water does landnonot thatmore like when skin touches skinkissing fingertipsor when air escapes a lung and is felt across the worldI’ve leapt over cracks in sidewalksand swallowed away...

You are giving up nothing! You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Writhing bodies fused as one on the dance floor, limbs tingling, lungs drunk on the lust-filled air.

…there is a saying used in twelve-step programs and in most treatment centers that “Relapse is part of recovery.” It’s another dangerous slogan that is based on a myth, and it only gives people permission...

Alcoholism or addiction is a disease because it fits the definition of disease. It is progressive and chronic, and left untreated, it will kill.

Spurred by Amy’s death I’ve tried to salvage unwilling victims from the mayhem of the internal storm and am always, always just pulled inside myself.

His eyes are so clear and blue that nothing but clichés enter my mind.

When people who believe themselves to be addicts or alcoholics come under great stress or trauma, they mentally give themselves permission to drink or use drugs as a remedy.

Blackouts can be fun if approached with the right mindset. You just can’t sweat the fact that you’ve lost a small portion of your life for all eternity. Occasionally, little bubbles of memory will float...

A drinking man’s someone who wants to forget he isn’t still young and believing

I mean, that’s at least in part why I ingested chemical waste – it was a kind of desire to abbreviate myself. To present the CliffNotes of the emotional me, as opposed to the twelve-column...

I found the prospect daunting, but somehow comforting, too, because the counselors insisted it could be done, and, after all, many of them were recovering alcoholics themselves.

Reaction timeTouch the underside of a penny you find on the streetDoesn’t feel any different unless you close your eyesI can taste the copper in my mouth nowseeping from between my teethThere’s an explanation I’m...

The only thing we chase our shots with are high-fives.

When it’s summer, people sit a lot. Or lie. Lie in the sense of recumbency. A good heavy book holds you down. It’s an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin...

When I walked into the house, I went in search of one of my dad’s bottles. Not that they were that hard to find. He hid bottles all over the house. I knew where they...