Alcoholism Quotes

What was so painful about Amy’s death is that I know that there is something I could have done. I could have passed on to her the solution that was freely given to me. Don’t pick up a drink or drug, one day at a time. It sounds so simple; it actually is simple but it isn’t easy; it requires incredible support and fastidious structuring.

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

She was trying to hide it, the pain I had caused her again. Because she knew how much those tears destroyed me.

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 recovery. Although perhaps I was just running away again. I returned to Glasgow, planning to say a final goodbye to Anne and get out of her life, but ended up drinking with buddies in the Chip Bar and never seeing her. I called her instead to say I was moving to London and told her she could have the house and everything else we owned, which wasn't much. I think she was as relieved as I was that I was leaving town for good.

And in my mind, this settles the issue. I would never drink cologne, and am therefore not an alcoholic.

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

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

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

But I'm not a saint yet. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I'm homosexual. I'm a genius.

The life of the Addict is always the same. There is no excitement, no glamour, no fun. There are no good times, there is no joy, there is no happiness. There is no future and no escape. There is only an obsession. An all-encompassing, fully enveloping, completely overwhelming obsession. To make light of it, brag about it, or revel in the mock glory of it is not in any way, shape or form related to its truth, and that is all that matters, the truth.

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.

I'm sick of the ignorance that lack of funding has generated, of the fathers who apporach me at dinner parties with their four-year-old girls clasped to their pant legs and say, "Yeah, but studies say kids can buy drugs more easily than they can buy alcohol." To which I always respond, "I guess that means you keep heroin in your liquor cabinet?

Bad days my memory functions no better than an out-of-focus kaleidoscope, but other days me recall is painfully perfect.

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.

Slurping these spirits is soul preparation, a warped communion, myself serving as god, priest, and congregation.

ligion is the opiate of the masses." "I did masses of opiates religiously.

Alcoholism is above all a disease of denial.

...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 to relapse because that think that when they do, they are on the road to recovery.

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

If I left any good or planted any flowers among thorns, the credit goes to God and my many substantial friends.

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

oh. she heard it too-no waters coursing, canyon empty, sun soundless- and the beast your life nowhere hiding (p. 103)

Now I see that it isn't the problems along the way that make us or break us. It's how we learn to stand and face them that makes the difference.

This is a good place," he said."There's a lot of liquor," I agreed.

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

Tomorrow! How sweet its prospects for a drunkard the night before. There is no better word. Before the earth hurls itself into sunshine, nothing is not possible.

it does seemthe more we drinkthe better the wordsgo.

I dun knw things get trappedIn my mindThen itss smethin That I wanna find I dun get the answer Is there anyone listenin to me No one there to seeTo see the pain and the agony Inside ur beautiful heartTo see that u kissed the painAnd kicked everythin apart

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.

As a teenager, I loved how I looked in the outfit of using drugs and exercising poor judgement. I had tried it on, spun around in the mirror, and decided I would choose this look, this image, this identity. But eventually and without realising it, the ability to choose had gone. I had become what at first I had only pretended to be.

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 head and hadn't taken that hat off since.

Life is better when you're drunk. I ought to become an alcoholic.

A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.

An alcoholic is someone who can violate his standards faster than he can lower them.

That night, I dream. And when I wake up I remember watching a film with Nannan about a ventriloquist who went mad, his dummy coming to life and speaking for itself. My dream is like the end of the film where the ventriloquist and the dummy are in the madhouse, all these mad devil-faces pressed against the iron bars of the cell door, laughing as the dummy gets up off his chair and walks towards the ventriloquist who screams. The dummy strangles him. I can’t remember in the dream if I was the ventriloquist or the dummy. I’m in a funny mood all day. I don’t say much. I don’t feel like it.

I'm sitting in front of the TV, watching Jerry Springer, and it makes me think of how many mad people there are in the world, and whether everyone is mad deep down, they just pretend they're not, and it's the people in asylums or on Jerry Springer who are the honest ones. I have a notebook and a chewed-up pen, and I'm trying to think of a topic for the Youth Issues speech. Mrs Thomas says she thinks I have a lot to say, but I don't. Nothing I can put words to anyway. I could talk about bullying, or alcoholism, but I don't think I could speak about that out loud, it's too real, and it'd be like I was standing up there naked. More than naked. It would be like my skin was all peeled off and I was just standing there with my heart all bloody and thumping in my rib cage for everyone to see.

I sit there and think how it isn't fair that I can't drink at all, even a little. I realize I have crammed an entire lifetime of moderate drinking into a decade of hard-core drinking and that is why. I blew my wad.

It was your choice to sleep with her Gavin! It didn't just happen!

Whether I or anyone else accepted the concept of alcoholism as a disease didn't matter; what mattered was that when treated as a disease, those who suffered from it were most likely to recover.

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

Millions of deaths would not have happened if it weren’t for the consumption of alcohol. The same can be said about millions of births.

One cannot properly drink without self-deception: the lips have to deny the liquor that just passed down the throat. It was surely for the relief of drunkards that the Lord God did not write upon the stone tablets the commandment: thou shalt not lie. The word has to deny the addiction. Among the tribe of alcoholics, lying is a badge of honor - the truth is first an indiscretion, later an affront, and finally a source of despair. If you truly drink, you have to announce to all and sundry that you do not drink; if you admit you drink, that means you do not truly drink. True all-out drinking has to be concealed; anyone who reveals it is giving in, confessing to helplessness, and all that remains for him is weeping, the gnashing of teeth, and the 12 step program.

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, that if true these accusations must also have been true when I was still on the correct side, and that such shocking deformities didn't seem to count for so much then. Arguing with the Stalinist mentality for more than three decades now, and doing a bit of soapboxing and street-corner speaking on and off, has meant that it takes quite a lot to hurt my tender feelings, or bruise my milk-white skin.

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.

Of the small number of things which I have liked and done well, drinking is by far the thing I have done best. Although I have read a lot, I have drunk more. I have written much less than most people who write; but I have drunk more than the majority of the people who drink.