Quotes on Addiction

The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.

Secrecy, once accepted, becomes an addiction.

The abused child goes on living within those who have survived such torture, a torture that ended with total repression. They live with the darkness of fear, oppression, and threats. When all its attempts to move the adult to heed its story have failed, it resorts to the language of symptoms to make itself heard. Enter addiction, psychosis, criminality.

Do not wait until the conditions are perfect to begin. Beginning makes the conditions perfect.

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

Life is very interesting... in the end, some of your greatest pains, become your greatest strengths.

For far too many people, the stigma around addiction prevents them from stepping forward for help.

You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

Having been hit by drug addiction, knowing how many are hit by it and what a big problem it is in our neighborhoods and our culture, I feel a responsibility to do something. I can see what's wrong with the system - that we have to recognize mental illness as we do cancer or broken bones - and how we need to make it better.

It's difficult to believe in yourself because the idea of self is an artificial construction. You are, in fact, part of the glorious oneness of the universe. Everything beautiful in the world is within you.

If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it.

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.

Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is.

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.

Every exit is an entry somewhere else.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

My battles with addiction definitely shaped how I am now. They really made me deeply appreciate human contact. And the value of friends and family, how precious that is.

Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach.

Contemplation is an alternative consciousness that refuses to identify with or feed what are only passing shows. It is the absolute opposite of addiction, consumerism or any egoic consciousness.

Once and for all, people must understand that addiction is a disease. It’s critical if we’re going to effectively prevent and treat addiction. Accepting that addiction is an illness will transform our approach to public policy, research, insurance, and criminality; it will change how we feel about addicts, and how they feel about themselves. There’s another essential reason why we must understand that addiction is an illness and not just bad behavior: We punish bad behavior. We treat illness.

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.