Drug Addiction Quotes

“The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict?
The answer is that he usually does not intend to become an addict. You don’t wake up one morning and decide to be a drug addict. It takes at least three months’ shooting twice a day to get any habit at all. And you don’t really know what junk sickness is until you have had several habits. It took me almost six months to get my first habit, and then the withdrawal symptoms were mild. I think it no exaggeration to say it takes about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict.
The questions, of course, could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in the other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a matter of curiosity. I drifted along taking shots when I could score. I ended up hooked. Most addicts I have talked to report a similar experience. They did not start using drugs for any reason they can remember. They just drifted along until they got hooked. If you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea what it means to need junk with the addict’s special need. You don’t decide to be an addict. One morning you wake up sick and you’re an addict. (Junky, Prologue, p. xxxviii)”
― William S. Burroughs, Junky

“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.”
― Russell Brand

“Every time I draw a clean breath, I'm like a fish out of water.”
― Narcotics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous

“I think he just loved being with the bears because they didn't make him feel bad. I get it too. When he was with the bears, they didn't care that he was kind of weird, or that he'd gotten into trouble for drinking too much and using drugs(which apparently he did a lot of). They didn't ask him a bunch of stupid questions about how he felt, or why he did what he did. They just let him be who he was.”
― Michael Thomas Ford, Suicide Notes

“This has been a novel about some people who were punished entirely too much for what they did. They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one after another of them being killed--run over, maimed, destroyed--but they continued to play anyhow. We really all were very happy for a while, sitting around not toiling but just bullshitting and playing, but it was for such a terrible brief time, and then the punishment was beyond belief: even when we could see it, we could not believe it. For example, while I was writing this I learned that the person on whom the character Jerry Fabin is based killed himself. My friend on whom I based the character Ernie Luckman died before I began the novel. For a while I myself was one of these children playing in the street; I was, like the rest of them, trying to play instead of being grown up, and I was punished. I am on the list below, which is a list of those to whom this novel is dedicated, and what became of each.
Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error in judgment. When a bunch of people begin to do it, it is a social error,a life-style. In this particular life-style the motto is "Be happy now because tomorrow you are dying," but the dying begins almost at once, and the happiness is a memory. It is, then, only a speeding up, an intensifying, of the ordinary human existence. It is not different from your life-style, it is only faster. It all takes place in days or weeks or months instead of years. "Take the cash and let the credit go," as Villon said in 1460. But that is a mistake if the cash is a penny and the credit a whole lifetime.
There is no moral in this novel; it is not bourgeois; it does not say they were wrong to play when they should have toiled;it just tells what the consequences were. In Greek drama they were beginning, as a society, to discover science, which means causal law. Here in this novel there is Nemesis: not fate, because any one of us could have chosen to stop playing in the street, but, as I narrate from the deepest part of my life and heart, a dreadful Nemesis for those who kept on playing. I myself,I am not a character in this novel; I am the novel. So, though, was our entire nation at this time. This novel is about more people than I knew personally. Some we all read about in the newspapers. It was, this sitting around with our buddies and bullshitting while making tape recordings, the bad decision of the decade, the sixties, both in and out of the establishment. And nature cracked down on us. We were forced to stop by things dreadful.
If there was any "sin," it was that these people wanted to keep on having a good time forever, and were punished for that, but, as I say, I feel that, if so, the punishment was far too great, and I prefer to think of it only in a Greek or morally neutral way, as mere science, as deterministic impartial cause-and-effect. I loved them all. Here is the list, to whom I dedicate my love:

To Gaylene deceased
To Ray deceased
To Francy permanent psychosis
To Kathy permanent brain damage
To Jim deceased
To Val massive permanent brain damage
To Nancy permanent psychosis
To Joanne permanent brain damage
To Maren deceased
To Nick deceased
To Terry deceased
To Dennis deceased
To Phil permanent pancreatic damage
To Sue permanent vascular damage
To Jerri permanent psychosis and vascular damage

. . . and so forth.
In Memoriam.
These were comrades whom I had; there are no better. They remain in my mind, and the enemy will never be forgiven. The "enemy" was their mistake in playing. Let them all play again, in some other way, and let them be happy.”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

“It takes away a lot of the thrill of killing yourself when people are looking for you and you're disappointing them, because it is a lot of fun when you're out there killing yourself.”
― Anthony Kiedis, Scar Tissue

“There are millions of people out there who live this way, and their hearts are breaking just like mine. It’s okay to say, “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 hide colored eggs. Cry, laugh, then take a nap. And when we all get to the end of the road, I’m going to write a story that’s so happy it’s going to make your liver explode. It’s going to be a great day.”
― Dina Kucera, Everything I Never Wanted to Be: A Memoir of Alcoholism and Addiction, Faith and Family, Hope and Humor

“My daughter, Carly, has been in and out of drug treatment facilities since she was thirteen. Every time she goes away, I have a routine: I go through her room and search for drugs she may have left behind. We have a laugh these days because Carly says, “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 stop for more drugs on the way to rehab, and I would do them in the parking lot of the treatment center.”
― Dina Kucera, Everything I Never Wanted to Be: A Memoir of Alcoholism and Addiction, Faith and Family, Hope and Humor

“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 read.
I used to refer to my drug use as putting the monster in the box. I wanted to be less, so I took more - simple as that. Anyway, I eventually decided that the reason Dr. Stone had told me I was hypomanic was that he wanted to put me on medication instead of actually treating me. So I did the only rational thing I could do in the face of such as insult - I stopped talking to Stone, flew back to New York, and married Paul Simon a week later.”
― Carrie Fisher, Wishful Drinking

“It is difficult to feel sympathy for these people. It is difficult to regard some bawdy drunk and see them as sick and powerless. It is difficult to suffer the selfishness of a drug addict who will lie to you and steal from you and forgive them and offer them help. Can there be any other disease that renders its victims so unappealing? Would Great Ormond Street be so attractive a cause if its beds were riddled with obnoxious little criminals that had “brought it on themselves?”
― Russell Brand

“Here is the solution to the American drug problem suggested a couple years back by the wife of our President: "Just say no.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard

“The decision-making part of the brain of an individual who has been using crystal meth is very interesting. When Carly and Andy were in their apartment, they ran out of drugs. They sold every single thing they had except two things: a couch and a blow torch. They had to make a decision because something had to be sold to buy more drugs. A normal person would automatically think, Sell the blow torch. But Andy and Carly sat on the couch, looking at the couch and looking at the blow torch, and the choice brought intense confusion. The couch? The blow torch? I mean, we may not need the blow torch today, but what about tomorrow? If we sell the couch, we can still sit wherever we want. But the blow torch? A blow torch is a very specific item. If you’re doing a project and you need a blow torch, you can’t substitute something else for it. You would have to have a blow torch, right? In the end, they sold the couch.”
― Dina Kucera, Everything I Never Wanted to Be: A Memoir of Alcoholism and Addiction, Faith and Family, Hope and Humor

“The Memory Of You Is Like A Drug To Me”
― Jeremy Aldana

“Junk sickness is the reverse side of junk kick. The kick of junk is that you have to have it. Junkies run on junktime and junkmetabolism. They are subject to junk climate. They are warmed and chilled by junk. The kick of junk is living under junk conditions. You cannot escape from junk sickness anymore than you can escape from junk kick after a shot.”
― William S. Burroughs, Junky

“I thought over and over about what I was going to do when Carly overdosed and died. How would we go on? And then I knew: I wouldn’t go on. And then I realized that it was just going to be too painful to actually have to watch her die. Right in front of me. My daughter was dying. That’s when I snapped.”
― Dina Kucera, Everything I Never Wanted to Be: A Memoir of Alcoholism and Addiction, Faith and Family, Hope and Humor

“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.”
― Russell Brand

“I’m just saying,” Jinx said, seemingly more lucid now, “when you’re lost in the deep dark forest, the thing to do isn’t to get scared of the trees. You have to find your way out again.”
― Rufi Thorpe , Margo's Got Money Troubles

“Looking back, I have come to realize that the gang lifestyle back then—the fame, the respect, and the recognition—was stronger and powerful than any drug. We were serious with what we were dealing with. It was like a do or die situation. Shelton ‘Apples’ Burrows reform gang leader”
― Drexel Deal, The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father

“I got up the next morning with morphine hangover. I poured myself a large glass of cold milk, which is an antidote for morphine.”
― William S. Burroughs, And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks

“You know how old people lose all shame about eating, and it makes you puke to watch them? Old junkies are the same about junk. They gibber and squeal at sight of it. The spit hangs off their chin, and their stomach rumbles and all their guts grind in peristalsis while they cook up, dissolving the body’s decent skin, you expect any moment a great blob of protoplasm will flop right out and surround the junk. Really disgust you to see it. 'Well, my boys will be like that one day,' I thought philosophically. 'Isn’t life peculiar?”
― William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch: The Restored Text

“All the commas in my life used to be drugs or cigarettes — get in the car have a cig, get out of the car have a cig, after dinner have a cig, before food have a cig, have a chat to you have a cig. And you can start doing that with drugs as well.”
― Matty Healy

“Tress nods, unsurprised. Her life has taken so many turns for the worse I guess at some point you just don't expect the road signs to offer you anything better.”
― Mindy McGinnis, The Last Laugh

“Drugs might kill me, but I know they'll never break my heart.”
― Mr. Joshua Shaw, I Took a Plane to Die in Denver

“When substance use progresses to the point of addiction, a person no longer chooses to use drugs or alcohol; they are compelled despite the consequences”
― Mark A. Myers

“The harder I fought against the law and its representatives, the more messed up my life became. At some point I had to ask myself, why did I keep choosing drugs and rebellion when they only ended in chaos and despair? Was it really worth the fleeting blip of euphoria when it cost so much?”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose

“I get that [Camila] cutting was no different than what I was doing, even if I couldn't see that then. But that's what you were saying. You were telling me that drinking and doing drugs and pretending I could exist outside the complicated bullshit of reality was its own form of self-harm. Meanwhile, I was telling myself my actions were something other than what they were–like control or rebellion or agency. But they weren't. There were just a way to hurt myself when I didn't know what else to do.”
― Stephanie Kuehn, We Weren't Looking to Be Found

“I used to dream of you.
I stay awake now.
That's how I got strung out.”
― Mr. Joshua Shaw, I Took a Plane to Die in Denver

“That was a defining fucking moment of my life. The moment I realized she wasn't coming back. That's when I learned you can never trust anybody, but you can always trust them to be who they are.
And my mom was a junkie.”
― Emily McIntire, Beneath the Stars

“«Satana, vattene!» urlò la donna e si fece il segno della croce.
Vitali si fermò di scatto. Il gatto poteva sembrare una specie di visione mistica, ma non quanto le papere delle quali gli aveva parlato suo fratello.
"Visione", che quella parola gli si era conficcata in testa.
«Chi mai può pensare che quel povero gatto che cerca solo qualcosa da mangiare sia Satana?» si chiese Marina mentre raggiungeva la sua classe.
«Fosse solo il gatto...» rispose Vitali scrollando la testa e aprendo la porta dell'aula. «Ci sono tante altre cose...»”
― Marianna C. Iliut, Blatnoy

“Alcohol is a straight-up hard drug. That’s not a moral judgment; it’s a scientific fact. On a biochemical level, alcohol affects the brain in the same way as Valium, Xanax, Ambien, GHB, and Quaaludes. All of them act on the GABA receptors in the brain and thus qualify as a type of drug called a GABAergic. Taking these drugs in small quantities can produce positive feelings and relaxation, but consuming too much can seriously mess you up. In fact, GABAergics can become so physically addictive that, in extreme cases, attempting to quit cold turkey can kill you.

But thanks to the wonders of advertising, people don’t think of alcohol that way. The beverage industry has spent billions of dollars to brainwash people into believing that drinking booze is fun and harmless: it’s how cool people socialize. Drinking makes you more popular and more confident, and if you play your cards right, it might even get you laid. As a result of this industrial-level gaslighting, it’s not uncommon for politicians to publicly proclaim that recreational drug use is morally repugnant and a blight on society—while simultaneously, those same politicians drink alcohol all the damn time.”
― Sam Kelly, Human History on Drugs: An Utterly Scandalous but Entirely Truthful Look at History Under the Influence