…you’re either gonna spend your life fucking pussy, or taking it to church.

The description of Huck’s father grabbed my full attention, and I glanced up at the book in my teacher’s hand as if to double check. My eyes bulged reflexively. Huck’s father was an abusive drunk...

…gripping the rim of the sink you claw your way to stand and cling there, quaking with will, on heron legs, and still the hot muck pours out of you. (p. 27)

The advertise their products in such a fashion as to make it seem wonderful to drink their ethanol products. It does not matter if they give their products fancy name like Cabernet Sauvignon or Pinot...

The movements of some more little red birds in the garden, like animated rosebuds, appeared unbearably jittery and thievish. It was as though the creatures were attached by sensitive wires to his nerves.

Ethan didn’t mind his blood being taken – he just disliked the fact that it had to be sucked through a needle in order to do it.

Hitch: making rules about drinking can be the sign of an alcoholic,’ as Martin Amis once teasingly said to me. (Adorno would have savored that, as well.) Of course, watching the clock for the start-time...

By all accounts Rafe’s life had been shattered by the loss of his brother Peter. But whereas she turned away from drink when Draven died, Rafe had simply upended a barrel of brandy on his...

Getting sober is a radically creative act.

You never turn away family, no matter how f***ed up they are.

It wasn’t fair to pull her into that vortex, because I couldn’t be fixed. And Roxy was a fixer. She thought she could help me, I could see it in her eyes.

My kid is a drug addict or alcoholic, and I still love them and I’m still proud of them.” Hold your head up and have a cappuccino. Take a trip. Hang your Christmas lights and...

Life will hack off your head and shit down your neck every chance it gets. I’ve found that consuming drugs and booze, listening to music and always having an excuse in the best way to...

Answer me, you good-for-nuthin’ wench!” The pain bit instantly as his hand connected with my cheek. I shook my head in answer to his crazy questions, feeling a rise of warm tears.

one doesn’t even think ofthe liverand if the liverdoesn’t think ofus, that’sfine.

Think about the stigma that is attached to the idea that alcoholism is a disease, an incurable illness, and you have it. That’s a terrible thing to inflict on someone. Labeling alcoholism as a disease,...

Far above him a few white clouds were racing windily after a pale gibbous moon. Drink all morning, they said to him, drink all day. This is life!

I cannot trust my other side, my drunken side, to act in my best interests anymore.

The hard things in life, the things you really learn from, happen with a clear mind.

I knew that I had been partially right in the storeroom above the bar on Christmas Day. Whoever I had become had to die.

Alcoholism is above all a disease of denial.

Avoid using cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs as alternatives to being an interesting person.

You’re walking down Fool’s Street, Laura used to say when he was drinking, and she had been right. He had known even then that she was right, but knowing had made no difference; he had...

Maybe it was that brokenness inside of Bentley that I recognized and drew me to him, I didn’t know. I just remember thinkin’ how I wanted to know more about him. And I wanted to...

I felt empty and sad for years, and for a long, long time, alcohol worked. I’d drink, and all the sadness would go away. Not only did the sadness go away, but I was fantastic....

So you mean to tell me you won’t fuck anyone you don’t share some kind of deep emotional connection with? What a sad, depressing, truly horrible life you must lead…

If there’s one thing I learned in Alanon, it’s that you got to face the music because it just grows louder when you ignore it.

Drinking gave me a rush of confidence, and for a boy hounded by feelings of inadequacy, the buzz was a welcome relief. What was impossible to realize at the time was that I was shooting...

People who are dependent are merely using alcohol as a crutch to get through the day. Yet doctors and scientists are still treating “alcoholism” as if it is the problem, when it has nothing to...

I soaked up the drink and it, in return, absorbed me.

It was clear to her now, Happiness was a seductive illusion. No one as fucked up as her deserved one drop of joy. But oh god was it delicious when it fell into her lap...

When you quit drinking you stop waiting.

Bourbon, Kentucky bourbon especially, is like Dante’s Inferno in a glass, fire walks down your throat, lungs, and heart and everything in between with an unpleasant after-taste. We got along just fine.

If I were an alcoholic, I’d work at a wine farm, where grape booze grows on trees, bottled and ready to chug.

In this way, the Church was a true reflection of the whole of Russian society. The KGB and the Russian people had penetrated each other to such an extent that they could not be separated....

The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it’s egotism.

The longer we spent together, the more she discovered about me. The things I didn’t want her to know. The darkness and the anger and the pain.

I’ve stopped drinking, but only while I’m asleep.

An empty bottle of Jack is almost just as beautiful as a new and unopened bottle…in the same sense as looking down at muddied feet, and looking back the way you came. The journey you’ve...

brought it on themselves?