Religion is for people who fear hell, spirituality is for people who have been there.
— David Bowie
Whopping Addicts In Recovery quotations
In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.
And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.
In God's economy, nothing is wasted. Through failure, we learn a lesson in humility which is probably needed, painful though it is.
What is addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress.
It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood.
Addiction beggins whith the hope that something 'out there' can instantly fill up the emptiness inside.
Do not let your fire go out ... Do not let the Hero in your soul perish ... Check your road and the nature of your battle. The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.
Have patience with all things, but chiefly have patience with yourself.
Do not lose courage in considering your own imperfections but instantly set about remedying them -- every day begin the task anew.
We cannot, in a moment, get rid of habits of a lifetime.
Take a chance! All life is a chance
Every experience in your life is being orchestrated to teach you something you need to know to move forward.
Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach.
No one's happiness but my own is in my power to achieve or to destroy.
Do not let the hero in your soul perish.
Cocaine for me was a place to hide. Most people get hyper on coke. It slowed me down. Sometimes it made me paranoid and impotent, but mostly it just made me withdrawn.
Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations.
Every habit he's ever had is still there in his body, lying dormant like flowers in the desert. Given the right conditions, all his old addictions would burst into full and luxuriant bloom.
I grew up in traditional black patriarchal culture and there is no doubt that I’m going to take a great many unconscious, but present, patriarchal complicities to the grave because it so deeply ensconced in how I look at the world. Therefore, very much like alcoholism, drug addiction, or racism patriarchy is a disease and we are in perennial recovery and relapse. So you have to get up every morning and struggle against it.
Mock the devil, and he will flee from thee.
We get very little wisdom from success, you know.
It is 10 years since I used drugs or drank alcohol and my life has improved immeasurably. I have a job, a house, a cat, good friendships and generally a bright outlook.
You've recognised a fundamental feature of an addict's life.
Maintaining your habit is so important you've no real interest in anything else.
Sobriety was the greatest gift I ever gave myself.
Any addict in recovery would say that life never becomes perfect.
Your life is better, but that doesn't mean it's easier. Life, at least for a certain period of time, becomes harder and you have to work through that to get to the light at the end of the tunnel.
I want what I want when I want it.
We must move in our recovery from one addiction to another for two major reasons: first, we have not recognized and treated the underlying addictive process, and second, we have not accurately isolated and focused upon the specific addictions.
You don't need to hide the fact that you're in recovery, but you don't have to share your history of addiction with acquaintances at work, either.
When you get into recovery after some addiction you have to relearn a lot of perceptions, attitudes and self-awareness if you want to stay clean. You really do change. Change doesn't happen often but to a certain extent in some way, I think when you get into recovery and you stay there, you change.
Addiction is a relationship, a pathological relationship in which... obsession replaces people.
I felt that if people understood the struggle of recovery, then some of the stigma of addiction might be reduced because the audience would understand in a palpable way that addiction is a disease that tells the afflicted, despite years or even decades of heartbreaking evidence to the contrary, that using will make things better.
No man or woman is uniformly successful.
.. we must all expect a rather high percentage of failure in the things we attempt.
I have an addictive personality myself and one of the things I've learned is, you're always in recovery. Part of my healing process is being a mentor and teacher and helping people. Yet, at the same time, I have to be very careful about my own addictions.