Quotes & Sayings About Alcoholics

And somewhere
out there,
in the river of
addicts,
alcoholics,
wife beaters,
doormats,
overeducated legalized thieves,
fascist police,
and bitter rivalries
someone told me
it's a good city,
and I don't know
what's more frightening — Phil Volatile

You turn into this desperate dude looking for a shred of attention when you just had so much. It's like, "I'm just lonely and all I really want is a hug, but I gotta capture that in something real gross." You start to understand why circus clowns are alcoholics. — Babatunde Adebimpe

Is it the part of the police department to harass me when this city is a flagrant vice capital of the civilized world?" Ignatius bellowed over the crowd in front of the store. "This city is famous for its gamblers, prostitutes, exhibitionists, anti-Christs, alcoholics, sodomites, drug addicts, fetishists, onanists, pornographers, frauds, jades, litterbugs, and lesbians, all of whom are only too well protected by graft. If you have a moment, I shall endeavor to discuss the crime problems with you, but don't make the mistake of bothering me. — John Kennedy Toole

A lot of people feel like they're victims in life, and they'll often point to past events, perhaps growing up with an abusive parent or in a dysfunctional family. Most psychologists believe that about 85 percent of families are dysfunctional, so all of a sudden you're not so unique. My parents were alcoholics. My dad abused me. My mother divorced him when I was six ... I mean, that's almost everybody's story in some form or not. The real question is, what are you going to do now? What do you choose now? Because you can either keep focusing on that, or you can focus on what you want. And when people start focusing on what they want, what they don't want falls away, and what they want expands, and the other part disappears. (Jack Canfield) — Rhonda Byrne

The secret, the alcoholics said, was God. — Charles Duhigg

I got thrown out of Alcoholics because when the other clients saw me they thought they were having the DT's — Dave Dutton

In the one-treatment-fits-all approach, clients sit in group meetings all day and all evening and listen to each other stories. At the end of the first week, everyone in the room knows everyone's story. That goes on for three more weeks, and then most people go home with the same problems they brought with them when they arrived. — Chris Prentiss

I like characters with problems. I like to understand them ... To play alcoholics, fetishists, strange girls, you have to dig deep within yourself. It's 'elsewhere' that interests me. — Marie Trintignant

The three of us had a pact, governed by signals - pinching one another, agreeing to step fiercely on each other's toes when we felt riotous laughter welling up within us. It was not that any of us doubted the efficacy of group therapy for alcoholics (it is probably the only treatment), but, oh, dear heart, alcoholics in the loony bin! — Frederick Exley

They're like 'You're an alcoholic.' I go 'No, I'm not.' and then-apparently that's what alcoholics say too, you know? — Norm MacDonald

The greatest enemies of us alcoholics are resentment, jealousy, envy, frustration, and fear. — Alcoholics Anonymous

We don't have to take things so personally. We take things to heart that we have no business taking to heart. For instance, saying "If you loved me you wouldn't drink" to an alcoholic makes as much sense as saying "If you loved me, you wouldn't cough" to someone who has pneumonia. Pneumonia victims will cough until they get appropriate treatment for their illness. Alcoholics will drink until they get the same. When people with a compulsive disorder do whatever it is they are compelled to do, they are not saying they don't love you - they are saying they don't love themselves. — Melody Beattie

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. — Jerzy Pilch

I want what I want when I want it. — Eric Cantor

Alcoholics are, in truth, failures, and their failure is a simple failure of will. They have made bad choices, and they continue to do so every day. By calling them victims of a disease, we magically shift the burden of the problem from choice and personal control, where it belongs, to an impersonal force - disease. — Martin E.P. Seligman

A New York times reporter wrote about David Wilkerson,"He was the model of absolute simplicity, directness and non-sophistication. He sought out gang members, drug addicts and alcoholics with no other weapon than the Bible. He just went out on the streets, mixed with the kids and reasoned with them face to face, often quoting the Bible, and it worked. — Gary Wilkerson

That's what alcoholics do. It's in their job description: fall apart and then keep falling apart. — Audrey Niffenegger

Dan Lynch was chuckling, his hand around his small glass. 'I remember Billy saying that AA was a Protestant thing when you came right down to it. Started by a bunch of Protestants. He said he didn't like the chummy way some of them were always calling Our Lord by his first name. I drove him to the first meeting and waited to take him home, 'cause Maeve didn't want him driving, and when he came out he said you could tell who the Catholics were because they'd all been bowing their heads every ten seconds while the Protestants bantered on about Jesus, Jesus Jesus.'
(And sure enough, up and down our stretch of table, heads bobbed at the name.) — Alice McDermott

Maybe I've just read too many novels. In novels, alcoholics are always attractive and fuuny and charming and complex, like Sebastian Flyte or ABe North in Tender in the Night, and they're drinking because of a deep, unquenchable sadness of the soul, or the terrible legacy of the First World War, whereas I just get drunk because I'm thirsty, and I like the taste of lager ... — David Nicholls

Gately can't even imagine what it would be like to be a sober and drug-free biker. It's like what would be the point. He imagines these people polishing the hell out of their leather and like playing a lot of really precise pool. — David Foster Wallace

It would be truly wonderful if we could live as alcoholics do, to be unwarlike for just another day. We don't. — Kurt Vonnegut

You drink to escape the emotional pain you're in, and then the next day you do it all over again to get rid of the physical pain. So you drink more and your drink more often and pretty soon you're drunk all the time and it becomes just as bad, if not worse, than the reality you were attempting to escape from in the first place. Only now, you need an escape from the escape, so you find something even stronger than the alcohol. And maybe that's what turns alcoholics into addicts. — Colleen Hoover

I wanted you to have an image of this place in your mind because you need to know that it exists. People think a place like this is perfect. Living a simple life close to the land and all that. It isn't. There are mean people and alcoholics and medical bills to pay and depressed people galore. But some of us feel okay here, you know, despite all that. — Francisco X Stork

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. — James Frey

Like so many other recovered alcoholics, I am to this day bewildered that it took so long for me to understand that there was no such animal as 'social drinking' for me; that it had nothing to do with my willpower or self-respect or moral fiber, that it was a simple biochemical intolerance to a drug. — Mercedes McCambridge

The program works, if you work it. — Alcoholics Anonymous

Sure, genetics do play a role in alcoholism. You're more likely to be an alcoholic if one or both of your parents are also alcoholics. But that's just one part of the equation; the other part is your behavior. You can't become an alcoholic if you never take a drink. So if you know you're predisposed to addiction because you have a family history, then just don't get started, and you'll never find yourself on that path. — Gaby Rodriguez

...one of the primary differences between alcoholics and nonalcoholics is that nonalcoholics change their behavior to meet their goals and alcoholics change their goals to meet their behaviors. — Alcoholics Anonymous

When we developed still more, we discovered the best possible source of emotional stability to be God Himself. We found that dependence upon His perfect justice, forgiveness, and love was healthy, and that it would work where nothing else would. If we really depended upon God, we couldn't very well play God to our fellows nor would we feel the urge wholly to rely on human protection and care. — Alcoholics Anonymous

I come from a long line of downtrodden women who marry alcoholics. All the way back to my Lenni Lanape great-great-great-(lots of greats) grandmother, Scarlet Bird, a red-haired New Jersey Indian who married William Penn. I know this to be true because of the red highlights in my hair, and because, if you ever see the statue of William Penn in Philadelphia, the one that dictates the height of all the buildings in its perimeter, you will notice, if you look at him from behind, that he and I have the exact same rear end. — Wendy Wunder

Scores of high-powered men and women are addicted to substances or destructive addictive patterns of behaviour. As a matter of fact, it is easier to hide one's addiction while maintaining a high-powered position compared to the addicts and alcoholics we see sleeping on street corners. — Christopher Dines

It is so small secret that many writers are also alcoholics, drug addicts, sexual deviants, or habitual wearers of blue jeans (in some cases all of the above). — Arthur Graham

PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail. This is our twelfth suggestion: Carry this message to other alcoholics! You can help when no one else can. You can secure their confidence when others fail. Remember they are very ill. Life will take on new meaning. To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends - this is an experience you must not miss. We know you will not want to miss it. Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other is the bright spot of our lives. — Alcoholics Anonymous

The day I became free of alcohol was the day that I fully understood and embraced the truth that I would not be giving anything up by not drinking — Liz Hemingway

Should alcoholics go to liquor stores? — Ally Carter

Alcoholics build defenses like the Dutch build dikes. — Stephen King

The pressure to reduce health care costs is aimed only at the treatment of real diseases. There is no pressure to reduce the costs of treating fictitious diseases. On the contrary, there is pressure to define ever more types of undesirable behaviors as mental disorders or addictions and to spend ever more tax dollars on developing new psychiatric diagnoses and facilities for storing and treating the victims of such diseases, whose members now include alcoholics, drug abusers, smokers, overeaters, self-starvers, gamblers, etc. — Thomas Szasz

My admiration for the phenomenon of Alcoholics Anonymous is boundless. — Mercedes McCambridge

Although my work leads me to spend time with Nazi skinheads, diseased street prostitutes and homeless alcoholics, I do not have the strength of character to be a pathologist. — William T. Vollmann

It was a place for people with mental health problems and not alcoholics; as though the two could be neatly divided like that; as though the world was black and white and not a murky grey. — Victoria Spry

I think that I'm coming off as the biggest alcoholic in the world. — Viola Davis

From the moment of birth, folks suddenly wanted what others said they could not have. Kids craved the most sugary sweets how alcoholics thirsted for one more drink with the most impactful punch. — Jermaine Watkins

Definition of an alcoholic is an egomaniac with an inferiority complex — Alcoholics Anonymous

Not being a man of means, I knew that if I did not stay sober enough to earn money, I would run out of liquor. — Alcoholics Anonymous

Alcohol had a lot to do with it, too, and mental instability. All writers are narcissistic, manic-depressive drug addicts and alcoholics, and I am no exception. — T.C. Boyle

Drug addicts had their drugs. Alcoholics had their bottles. Serial killers had their murders. — Jess C. Scott

Have you ever been to an AA meeting? No wonder these people are alcoholics - I've never needed a drink more badly in my life. — Chelsea Handler

They sound like the philosophy of a man who, having a headache, beats himself on the head with a hammer so that he cannot feel the ache. — Alcoholics Anonymous

Adults who were hurt as children inevitably exhibit a peculiar strength, a profound inner wisdom, and a remarkable creativity and insight. Deep within them - just beneath the wound - lies a profound spiritual vitality, a quiet knowing, a way of perceiving what is beautiful, right, and true. Since their early experiences were so dark and painful, they have spent much of their lives in search of the gentleness, love, and peace they have only imagined in the privacy of their own hearts. — Wayne Muller

I know why we're here. We're all here because we're not all there. — Steven Tyler

If any feel that as psychiatrists directing a hospital for alcoholics we appear somewhat sentimental, let them stand with us a while on the firing line, see the tragedies, the despairing wives, the little children; let the solving of these problems become a part of their daily work, and even of their sleeping moments, and the most cynical will not wonder that we have accepted and encouraged this movement. We feel, after years of experience, that we have found nothing which has contributed more to the rehabilitation of these men than the altruistic movement now growing up among them. — William Duncan Silkworth

I'm an old man now. Old on the inside. I'm a drunk, and I hate to tell you, but I'm not prepared to change. So you have to figure out if you want to forgive me and love me like I am, or run away again. Or hell, stay here and hate me. Just ... know that I love you the best way I know how. I always have. I do the best I can. — Suzanne Palmieri

I wouldn't doubt it if the CIA is behind Alcoholics Anonymous. — Scott Stapp

I like the hip writers: Fitzgerald, the guy who committed suicide, Hemingway, all those guys. Some of them were alcoholics and drug addicts but they had fun. They were real people. They formed the culture of American literature. Hemingway admired Tolstoy, Tolstoy admired Pushkin, and Mailer admired Hemingway. It all flows down. The greats are all connected. One day I'm gonna write a book myself. The first chapter will be about what a rough deal my momma got. She believed in you guys and your society. — Mike Tyson

The drinking parent lied to the sober parent; the sober parent deceived the drinking parent. Most children of alcoholics have learned that no one can be trusted. — Abraham J. Twerski

We do not want to believe that we cannot control alcohol and that alcohol is, in truth, controlling and dictating our lives. When you free yourself of a dictator, like alcohol, the freedom that you experience is totally amazing and so empowering. You get your life back. — Liz Hemingway

She's happier than Nicola. That's probably true. Alcoholics can stop drinking but what is there for the children of alcoholics? Is it always too late? Probably. She doesn't know. — Roddy Doyle

As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day "Thy will be done." We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions. We become much more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves. — Alcoholics Anonymous

It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. — Alcoholics Anonymous

My childhood was rough, we were poor and my parents were alcoholics, but nobody was mean. I knew I was loved. We were on welfare, but I never felt abandoned or unloved. — Carol Burnett

I will not fall for any of the following: alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobics, people with girlfriends or wives, misogynists, megalomanics, chauvists, emotional fuckwits or freeloaders, perverts. — Helen Fielding

I often wonder if all the writers who are alcoholics drink a lot because they aren't writing. It is not because they are writers that they are drinking, but because they are writers who are not writing. — Natalie Goldberg

There is mounting concern worldwide over the consumption of alcohol. The U.S. government estimates that 10.6 million adults are alcoholics and that one family in four is troubled by alcohol. It is a factor in half of all the nation's traffic deaths. — Russell M. Nelson

The Teen Challenge ministry was born out of those humble early days of ministry. It now includes over 500 drug and alcohol rehab centers around the world, even in Muslim countries. These include homes for girls and women addicts and alcoholics, all which are reaching many. — David Wilkerson

Resolution number one: Obviously will lose twenty pounds. Number two: Always put last night's panties in the laundry basket. Equally important, will find sensible boyfriend to go out with and not continue to form romantic attachments to any of the following: alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobic's, peeping toms, megalomaniacs, emotional fuckwits or perverts. And especially will not fantasize about a particular person who embodies all these things — Helen Fielding

I learned many interesting things from Delia: for example, that she and Gulya had both married alcoholics, but Delia's alcoholic had taken all her money, whereas Gulya had managed her alcoholic well and taken all his money. — Elif Batuman

article by a prominent clergyman in which I caught the word resentment. He said, in effect: "If you have a resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray for the person or the thing that you resent, you will be free. If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them, you will be free. Ask for their — Alcoholics Anonymous

I gave alcohol everything I had — Alcoholics Anonymous

To this day, I am amazed at how many of my problems - most of which had nothing to do with drinking, I believed - have become manageable or have simply disappeared since I quit drinking. — Alcoholics Anonymous

Multi-taskers often think they are like gym rats, bulking up their ability to juggle tasks, when in fact they are like alcoholics, degrading their abilities through over-consumption. — Clay Shirky

People lie for many reasons: to save themselves, to get out of trouble, to avoid hurting someone's feelings. Manipulators lie to get what they want. Narcissists lie to make themselves seem grand to others and themselves. Recovering alcoholics lie to safeguard their tattered reputation. And those who love us most lie to us most of all, because life is a bumpy ride and they want to smooth it out as much as possible. — Ilona Andrews

The mai tai got its name when two Polynesian alcoholics got in a fight over some neckwear. — George Carlin

A few years ago we colonised this place with some of our finest felons, thieves, muggers, alcoholics and prostitutes, a strain of depravity which I believe has contributed greatly to this country's amazing vigour and enterprise. — Ian Wooldridge

My name is Kevin James Breaux and I am an author. Why does that always sound like I am introducing myself at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting? — Kevin James Breaux

In the wake of my spiritual experience there came a vision of a society of alcoholics. — Bill W.

You know, they say that Bill Wilson asked for whiskey as his dying wish. The man was dying, at the end of the line, and he wanted the one vice he'd been fighting all his life. Even the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous wanted whiskey on his deathbed. — Kandi Steiner

Avoid then, the deliberate manufacture of misery, but if trouble comes, cheerfully capitalize it as an opportunity to demonstrate His omnipotence. — Alcoholics Anonymous

Like many alcoholics, I was a staggering woman in a chic apartment, sick and utterly disgusting. — Mercedes McCambridge

Merton. Gethsemani required a vow of silence, and at dinner if you wanted salt, you had to stare hard at the shaker until another brother noticed. One day, cutting down a tree, Jack couldn't contain himself. He held his head back and roared, "Timber." After that, his days at the monastery were numbered. Within a couple of years, he had married, and he and his young wife, Fran, who herself had just spent a year in a nunnery, opened a Catholic Worker farm in eastern Missouri for recovering alcoholics. — Alex Kotlowitz

The story is even Bill Wilson, a founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, couldn't overcome the sex monkey on his back, and spent his sober life cheating on his wife and filled with guilt. — Chuck Palahniuk

Lord, give me the courage to change the things which can and ought to be changed, the serenity to accept things which cannot be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference - Alcoholics Anonymous — Stephen Covey

Halloween is tomorrow. A group of wine experts has actually come up with a list of the best wines to pair with Halloween candy. They say, White wine goes great with Skittles, red wine goes great with Twix, and ... we're alcoholics, aren't we? — Jimmy Fallon

I hate alcoholics and AA (alcoholics anonymous). If you can't drink responsibly, don't drink at all. Don't go to meetings, whine about your character flaws and blame the fact that you are a sociopath on booze. — Roseanne Barr

I believe that food addicts need the same type of support offered to alcoholics and drug addicts. They need to detoxify first first and then learn about their disease, while dealing with the thoughts and feelings that arise once they are off their drug. Quite often, psychological issues do not become obvious until food addicts have been abstinent for a long period of time. That's why ongoing support is needed to prevent addicts from relapsing in a panicky effort to cope. — Vera Tarman

How did people have conversations anyway? How did they meet and then begin to talk as if they had known each other for years? — Alcoholics Anonymous

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. — Ralph Nader

My personal view (and not the view of the LAS by any means) would be to prohibit alcohol, but legalise cannabis. Not only would it cut our workload by, at my estimate, 60-70%, but I've never had anyone high on cannabis try to hit me. Cannabis users are very rarely violent, tend to be generally easier to handle and seldom get loud and annoying. It's true that there are long-term health consequences, and that heavy 'stoners' can waste their life away, but the same holds true of alcohol and alcoholics. — Tom Reynolds

Being a little kinder, a little slower to anger, a little more loving makes my life better - day by day. — Alcoholics Anonymous

I feel that people who haven't read my books and haven't heard me lecture - who don't in fact know what my work is about - have been very hard on me. There is an expression in Alcoholics Anonymous called "contempt prior to investigation." I feel many people practice contempt prior to investigation. — Marianne Williamson

You cannot fix people who will not take feedback, because from their perspective, they do not have a problem. — Henry Cloud

RIGOROUS HONESTY Who wishes to be rigorously honest and tolerant? Who wants to confess his faults to another and make restitution for harm done? Who cares anything about a Higher Power, let alone meditation and prayer? Who wants to sacrifice time and energy in trying to carry A.A.'s message to the next sufferer? No, the average alcoholic, self-centered in the extreme, doesn't care for this prospect - unless he has to do these things in order to stay alive himself. TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 24 I am an alcoholic. If I drink I will die. My, what power, energy, and emotion this simple statement generates in me! But it's really all I need to know for today. Am I willing to stay alive today? Am I willing to stay sober today? Am I willing to ask for help and am I willing to be a help to another suffering alcoholic today? Have I discovered the fatal nature of my situation? What must I do, today, to stay sober? — Alcoholics Anonymous

We cannot subscribe to the belief that this life is a vale of tears, though it once was just that for many of us. But it is clear that we make our own misery. — Alcoholics Anonymous

One day at a time. — Alcoholics Anonymous

We sometimes hurt those we love because they need to be "taught a lesson," when we really want to punish. We were depressed and complained we felt bad, when in fact we were mainly asking for sympathy and attention. This odd trait of mind and emotion, this perverse wish to hide a bad motive underneath a good one, permeates human affairs from top to bottom. This subtle and elusive kind of self-righteousness can underlie the smallest act or thought. Learning daily to spot, admit, and correct these flaws is the essence of character-building and good living. An honest regret for harms done, a genuine gratitude for blessings received, and a willingness to try for better things tomorrow will be the permanent assets we shall seek. — Alcoholics Anonymous

Those years on the golf course as a caddie, boy, those people were something. They were vulgar, some were alcoholics, racist, they were very difficult people to deal with. A lot of them didn't have a sense of humor. — Martin Sheen

The only thing I'm addicted to is winning. This bootleg cult, arrogantly referred to as Alcoholics Anonymous, reports a 5 percent success rate. My success rate is 100 percent. — Charlie Sheen

I'm going to Ibiza with the lads! I'll probably come back a raging alcoholic. — Katie Taylor

Even prostitutes, alcoholics, embezzlers - I won't rehearse the whole catalogue - need health insurance. — William Levada

Among young people ... drinking is for getting drunk. And many go on to become alcoholics. — Billy Graham

I repeat that the poor, the sufferers from leprosy, the rejected, the alcoholics, whom we serve, are beautiful people. Many of them have wonderful personalities. The experience which we have by serving them, we must pass on to people who have not had that wonderful experience. — Mother Teresa