Selected addiction quotes

1. 'I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.'

2. I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice.

3. It's about the girlfriend who left me last year. I tried to put all my anger in those words, even though I'm just as much to blame for the break-up. 'Soma' is based on the idea that a love relationship is almost the same as opium: it slowly puts you to sleep, it soothes you, and gives you the illusion of sureness and security. Very deceivable.

4. Do you know what the good side of crack is? If you're up at the right hour, you can get a VCR for $1.50. You can furnish your whole house for $10.95.

5. Humanity I love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

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

7. I become drunk as circumstances dictate.

8. Music makes me high on stage, and that's the truth. It's like being almost addicted to music.

9. I have tried drugs and a little of everything else, and there is nothing in the world more soul-satisfying than having the kingdom of God building inside you and growing.

10. Everybody smokes! Models, actresses, everyone! Don't they realize that it's gross? I understand it's an addiction, but it still pains me to see my friends do it.

11. Is there something in druggy subjects that encourages directors to make imitation film noir? Film noir itself becomes an addiction.

12. Addiction should never be treated as a crime. It has to be treated as a health problem. We do not send alcoholics to jail in this country. Over 500,000 people are in our jails who are nonviolent drug users.

13. You know I have always tried to be honest with you and open about my life, so I need to tell you that part of what you have heard and read is correct. I am addicted to prescription pain medication.

14. I used to be a heavy gambler. But now I just make mental bets. That's how I lost my mind.

15. The most expensive habit in the world is celluloid, not heroin, and I need a fix every few years.

16. Back in my rummy days, I would tremble and shake for hours upon arising. It was the only exercise I got.

17. Now don't say you can't swear off drinking; it's easy. I've done it a thousand times.

18. I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

19. The idea that a game is anything more than a game: You know, there are people who are basically unbalanced who are going to misuse a game and have bad results. If a golfer who insists on playing during a lightning storm gets hit by a stroke of lightning and is killed nobody says, 'There's golfers dying by the droves being hit by lightning!' You can overdo what you really like, and if you're unbalanced you go overboard.

20. The seven dwarfs were each on different little trips. Happy was into grass and grass alone : Happy, that's all he did. Sleepy was into reds. Grumpy, too much speed. Sneezy was a full blown coke freak. Doc was a connection. Dopey was into everything. Any old orifice will do for Dopey. He's always got his arm out and his leg up. And then, the one we always forget, because he was Bashful. Bashful didn't use drugs. He was paranoid on his own. Didn't need any help on that ladder.

21. 'One thing leads to another'? Not always. Sometimes one thing leads to the same thing. Ask an addict.

22. My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet. As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind. I'm a wretch. But I love, love.

23. Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on.

24. Coleridge, poet and philosopher wrecked in a mist of opium.

25. I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too.

26. Addiction is not just for bad people or scumbags - it's a universal disease.

27. My family was a bunch of drunks, when I was six I came up missing, they put my picture on a bottle of scotch.

28. Thou hast the keys of Paradise, oh just, subtle, and mighty opium!

29. I like liquor - its taste and its effects - and that is just the reason why I never drink it.

30. Three of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on the marrow of the volcano. It's not the tobacco we're after but the fire. When we smoke, we are performing a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning.

31. I don't have a drinking problem 'cept when I can't get a drink.

32. I'm running out of everything now. Out of veins, out of money.

33. Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to any thing but power for their relief.

34. Our culture runs on coffee and gasoline, the first often tasting like the second. (p. 81)

35. I've had cocaine, but I don't like it. The Beatles had lots of it in their day, but it's a dumb drug, because you have to have another one 20 minutes later. Your whole concentration goes on getting the next fix. Really, I find caffeine is easier to deal with. ... A little mushroom or peyote is not beyond my scope, you know, maybe twice a year or something. You don't hear about it anymore, but people are still visiting the cosmos. We must always remember to thank the CIA and the Army for LSD. That's what people forget. ... They invented LSD to control people and what they did was give us freedom. Sometimes it works in mysterious ways its wonders to perform.

36. I saw this wino, he was eating grapes. I was like, 'Dude, you have to wait.'[5]

37. I hate television. I hate it as much as I hate peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.

38. More people are driven insane through religious hysteria than by drinking alcohol.

39. I awoke from The Sickness at the age of forty-five, calm and sane, and in reasonably good health except for a weakened liver and the look of borrowed flesh common to all who survive The Sickness... When I speak of drug addiction I do not refer to keif, marijuana or any preparation of hashish, mescaline, Banisteriopsis caapi, LSD6, Sacred Mushrooms or any other drugs of the hallucinogen group... There is no evidence that the use of any hallucinogen results in physical dependence. (pp. 199-201)

40. The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client. (p. 224)

41. I don't drink, I'm a totalitarian.

42. Addiction may be something to which some of us are predisposed, like diabetes, rather than a voluntary behavior - but it's also reversible. A 'disease model' of alcoholism and other addictions in no way diminishes our personal accountability once we know the facts. It simply suggests how hard recovery will be, and how much help we need.

43. In the warm room She'll touch you with your Mamma's hand. You'll long to kiss those red lips, But when you do It'll feel like kicking a habit.

44. I have known a lot of people to go down and out - they kill themselves with alcohol or downers. But I've never known anybody to go up and out.

45. She was an alcoholic. I didn't blame myself for that. The worst problem in the life of any alcoholic is alcohol.

46. I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.

47. I have this heavy addiction to life and I'm told that the withdrawal symptoms are shocking.

48. Interviewer: You once said you had a drug problem... Lily: Yeah, I still do. It's so hard to find good grass these days.

49. She didn't feel anything, no grief or remorse, though her heart was racing and her breath came in gasps. A shocky combat-high, that immortal rush that made men charge machine guns. So this was what the war-addicts came for.

50. If one is able to stop smoking, he may continue, if he is unable to quit, then he must!

51. You are to bring my message to those ensnared in the drug-net of illusion that they should abstain, that the drugs will bring more harm than good. I send my love to them.

52. 'Don't want a cigarette, cause that's a form of slavery.' - Hole in the Bucket.

53. I grew up as a TV baby, with my TV babysitter, up until I was about 10. Then my mother just ripped the thing out of the wall and put it in a closet, and we didn't watch it. I have that sort of ability to become addicted to it. And I'm just so fascinated by it once I turn it on, I'm not even that aware what's there. I'm just watching it. So I don't ever turn it on. I get my news from the newspaper. I don't want to watch the Hollywood news product on TV... There's no other piece of furniture in my home I'd stare at for three hours at a time, so I try not to do it to the TV.

54. The more you read and the more you teach yourself, the less you rely on something like drugs to take you to a better place.

55. There are three things that I know a bit about in my life and that's QPR, my guitar and drugs. I know QPR are the best football team in the world, my guitar is the most beautiful thing I own and that I don't take enough drugs to kill me. It isnt drugs that I need to get rid of; it's the demons that fill my head. Once I have come to terms with my demons, maybe I'll be able to get clean.

56. I think I only needed something to hold on to. It has never been about depravity. It's always been about melody. But melody and I met in many depraved situations. Meeting melody is the victory of the empty spiralling nightmare.

57. With drugs, I think the sort of person that would die from an overdose is gonna die soon enough anyway, because they've got that will to destroy what's left of their life.

58. Drugs don't work. They don't even make you forget - only momentarily, because if something's that painful, nothing's going to make you forget it. You think they'll fill the hole, but the hole just gets deeper: It's like trying to fill in a hole without a spade.

59. After years of entrenched drug abuse, you have a mourning period. I know it's a bit sad, but I'm in mourning. I'm in mourning for an armful.

60. I don't see any point or any good in drugs that are as disruptive as cocaine.

61. Three signs you're addicted to cocaine: First of all, if you come home to your house and you have no furniture and cats going, 'I'm outta here, prick!', warning. Number two: If you have this dream where you're doing cocaine in your sleep and you can't fall asleep and you're doing cocaine in your sleep and you can't fall asleep, and you wake up and you're doing cocaine, BINGO! Number three: if on your tax form it says, '$50,000 for snacks,' MAYDAY!

62. If alcohol is a crutch, then Jack Daniel's is the wheelchair.

63. I joined Gambler`s Anonymous. They gave me two to one I don`t make it.

64. (Falls down in a drunken stupor): Let's sit down.

65. I'd had enough. I felt so low: I was 26 and there was an exact moment when I just knew I didn't want to do it any more. I was out with two very good friends of mine, who are now dead. They both died of alcoholism. It was about 3am and I thought: 'I don't want this. I have to stop.' I'd felt that before, a hundred times, but I woke up next morning and I still didn't want to do it. And that was the first time in ten years I'd had that strength of feeling.

66. You grew up, we grew up B.C. Before crack. That's just saying it all. You understand? You don't have parents... You have young kids, fourteen, coming home and their mama is smoking out, going to their best friend to get the product.

67. I could have been a serious athlete, only to have my promise cut short when I discovered Woodbines and women. Thankfully I have long since given up the former, and the latter have long since given up on me-except, of course, for the lovely Lady Stratford, who for reasons beyond my comprehension still tolerates my presence.

68. Because of sin, I am self-addicted, living in the wreckage of the fall, my body, my heart, and my affections are prone to love things that kill me.

69. 'I got me a funny little drinking problem.' (from 'Drinking Problem')

70. In the early days when I was drinking ... I had a very blurry line about where those two were... but I mean, that happens when you drink twenty-two hours a day. I would just sit and drink. I didn't know whether or not I was supposed to be Alice when I went out for dinner and was a little lit. Then there was the question about whether or not I should wear the make up because I didn't really want to disappoint anyone. Was I supposed to get into trouble? Was I supposed to get arrested that night? All of those questions went through my mind. You have to remember though who my older brothers and sisters were though--guys like Jim Morrison and Keith Moon and all the people who were living that life. After they all died, I just sat there and went, 'if one generation is going to learn from the next the truth is going to have to be that you don't have to die to be your character.' I figured then that I had better be able to separate the two. When I go onstage as Alice to this day, I play Alice to the hilt - I play him for everything he is worth, but when I'm offstage, I never think about Alice Cooper. He never occurs to me. .. I walk off stage though and I turn away from the audience, I go back to being me again. Whenever I see an audience, that's when I turn into Alice. If there was no audience there, there would be no reason to be Alice. . If I tried to be Alice Cooper all the time - I'd either be in an insane asylum or in jail or dead. Alice is just too intense, and you just can't be Alice all the time. Jim Morrison couldn't be Jim Morrison, so he died. Jimi Hendrix couldn't be Jimi Hendrix, so he died. That's really what killed Janis Joplin, Keith Moon and all the way down the line. They were all animated characters who couldn't live up to their lifestyle, so I said that I needed to be able to separate the two - that's why I'm still here.

71. My manager saw me drinking backstage and he said 'Mitch, don't use liquor as a crutch.' I can't use liquor as a crutch, because a crutch helps me walk. Liquor severely fucks up the way I walk. It ain't like a crutch, it's like a step I didn't see. - Live at the 40 Watt Club, Athens, Georgia, April 9, 2002

72. '[Being a drug addict] is like making love to a gorilla, you don't stop 'till the gorilla is done...' - from VH1's Behind the Music: Megadeth

73. I got bored of the tedious conversations, talking to the dealer in a stairwell where you're not supposed to be, then going back to a depressing room and spending nine hours locked up going 'eeerh', then going back to get more with what little money you have left

74. [when asked about cigarettes] 'I don't recommend them... but I smoke them.' - seen at http://youtube.com/watch?v=nJN1wdDUpDg

75. I saw a man take a needleful of hard drug And die slow

76. If I want drugs, I don't have to do a gig to get them. I do a gig when I feel shit, because I need to be playing. There's no drug in the world that can compare with playing music

77. When she wakes up in the morning She writes down all her dreams Reads like the Book of Revelations Or the Beano or the unabridged Ulysses Oh, I really wanna know So tell me, Where does all the money go? Where does all the money go? Straight, straight up her nose

78. In the morning theres a buzz of flies Between the pillows and the skies that break into your eyes Through the looking glass and inbetween your thighs It's really no small surprise How it goes straight down the rabbit hole There it goes

79. Bustin with automatic straps, my raw raps like good crack/ni**az fiendin, I got em comin back

80. addicted to the fast life

81. But somethin changed in this dirty game, everything's strange/Lost all my homies over cocaine.. mayne

82. Am I cold or is it just I sold my soul?/Addicted to these streets, never find true peace I'm told

83. Come take my body God, don't let me suffer any longer/Smoke a pound of marijuana, so I know it ain't long

84. Reality is a crutch for people who can't cope with drugs.

85. I hear addicts talk about the shakes and panic attacks and the highs and lows of resisting their habit, and to some degree I understand them because I have had habits of my own, but no drug is so powerful as the drug of self. No rut in the mind is so deep as the one that says I am the world, the world belongs to me, all people are characters in my play. There is no addiction so powerful as self addiction

86. A long time ago, before I really pulled my life together, I was a prostitue; I got involved in a lot of dangerous things. One of them was a nightly Russian Roulette game, and we thought it was fun, we were coked out of our minds, we drank a lot, I was the champ-- for a solid year I played Russian Roulette. Did you ever see Deer Hunter with Christopher Walken? That's what I looked like.

87. My family was a bunch of drunks, when I was six I came up missing, they put my picture on a bottle of scotch.

88. The whole world was crying when Kurt's gun went bang When Eazy-E died though, it wasn't no thang Rapper dies of A.I.D.S. but you hardly mention Rocker blows his face off and becomes a legend Heroin and a shotgun, a hero is made Maybe I should do that shit so J can get paid

89. It is hard to quit smoking. Every one of them looks pretty good to me right now. Every cigarette looks like it was made by God, rolled by Jesus and lightly moistened shut with Claudia Schiffer's pussy lips right now.

90. It's really weird how your life changes. Tonight I'm drinking water. Four years ago? Opium. Night and day, you know?

91. How much do you smoke, sir? Two packs a day, is that right? Pussy. I go through two lighters a day. That's right, two lighters! You're a health nut compared to me. You're like the Jack LaLanne of smokers compared to me.

92. I used to drink, I did. I had to quit. Man, I was an embarrassing drunk. I'd get pulled over by the cops, I'd be so drunk I'd be out dancing in their lights thinking I'd made it to the next club.

93. Two great European narcotics, alcohol and Christianity.

94. 'In 1969 I gave up women and alcohol. It was the worst 20 minutes of my life.'

95. 'I've stopped drinking, but only while I'm asleep.'

96. A man who must separate himself from his neighbours' habits in order to be happy, is in much the same case with one who requires to take opium for the same purpose. What we want to see is one who can breast into the world, do a man's work, and still preserve his first and pure enjoyment of existence.

97. Men do not knowingly drink for the effect alcohol produces on the body. What they drink for is the brain-effect; and if it must come through the body, so much the worse for the body.

98. Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.

99. If an addict who has been completely cured starts smoking again he no longer experiences the discomfort of his first addiction. There exists, therefore, outside alkaloids and habit, a sense for opium, an intangible habit which lives on, despite the recasting of the organism.... The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house.

100. It is not I who become addicted, it is my body.