Quotes & Sayings About Drinking Alcohol

It's that idea that you can have one drink - and no you can't. Within a week I was drinking heavily. It was so quick that even I was like, 'Wow.' — Robin Williams

Happiness is a fragile thing, and alcohol, as I know from the house I grew up in, is dangerous to it. — Marian Engel

I tried instead to drown my soul in drink. I cannot say I like alcohol, but I am someone who can drink if I choose to, and I set about obliterating my heart by drinking all I could. This was a puerile way out, of course, and it very quickly led to an even greater despair with the world. In the midst of a drunken stupor, I would come to my senses and realize what an idiot I was to try to fool myself like this. Then my vision and understanding grew clear, and I sat shivering and sober. There were desolate times when even the poor disguise of drunkenness failed to work, no matter how I drank. And each time I sought pleasure in drink, I emerged more depressed than ever. — Soseki Natsume

To alcohol! The cause of ... and solution to ... all of life's problems — Matt Groening

We must do all we can to empower parents and communities to protect our youth and to encourage healthy behavior free from binge drinking and other forms of alcohol abuse. — Jon Corzine

Love is alcohol. — Katherine Applegate

The physical effects of alcohol are often one of the least rewarding parts of drinking for addicts. — Charles Duhigg

Ambitions and dreams put you at a drinking table with unexpected companions. Cups were filled and refilled, making you drunk with the illusion of changing the world. — Guy Gavriel Kay

The chief reason for drinking is the desire to behave in a certain way, and to be able to blame it on alcohol. — Mignon McLaughlin

God invented whiskey to keep the Irish from ruling the world. — Ed McMahon

Parents drinking is the reason you came into the world, and if we didn't keep doing it then, by God, it would be the reason you went back out of it. — Caitlin Moran

I only take a drink on two occasions - when I'm thirsty and when I'm not. — Brendan Behan

The hotel bar was quiet and dark, with the kind of mood that promotes good talk and serious drinking. — George R R Martin

5. Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I vow to cultivate good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming. I vow to ingest only items that preserve peace, well-being, and joy in my body, in my consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family and society. I am determined not to use alcohol or any other intoxicant or to ingest foods or other items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programs, magazines, books, films, and conversations. I am aware that to damage my body or my consciousness with these poisons is to betray my ancestors, my parents, my society, and future generations. I will work to transform violence, fear, anger, and confusion in myself and in society by practicing a diet for myself and for society. I understand that a proper diet is crucial for self-transformation and for the transformation of society. — Thich Nhat Hanh

The rest of the family tree had a root system soggy with alcohol ... One aunt had fallen asleep with her face in the mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving dinner; another's fondness for Coors was so unwavering that I can still remember the musky smell of the beer and the coldness of the cans. Most of the men drank the way all Texas men drank, or so I believed, which meant that they were tough guys who could hold their liquor until they couldn't anymore
a capacity that often led to some cloudy version of doom, be it financial ruin or suicide or the lesser betrayal of simple estrangement. Both social drinkers, my parents had eluded these tragic endings; in the postwar Texas of suburbs and cocktails, their drinking was routine but undramatic. — Gail Caldwell

I began drinking alcohol at the age of thirteen and gave it up in my fifty sixth year; it was like going straight from puberty to a mid-life crisis. — George Montgomery

Although it is no longer customary to offer visitors a straw through which to drink from a communal vat of beer, today tea or coffee may be offered from a shared pot, or a glass of wine or spirits from a shared bottle. And when drinking alcohol in a social setting, the clinking of glasses symbolically reunites the glasses into a single vessel of shared liquid. These are traditions with very ancient origins. — Tom Standage

I mostly drink clear booze because the rest of it looks it's already been through a gentleman. — Christopher Buehlman

Drinking alcohol is like eating donuts. Having one or two occasionally is not going to hurt you, but having several a day will eventually lead to serious consequences. — Cyndi Turner

Hope you've been keeping your nose clean," DS Bradshaw said, trying to be jovial as he sipped a bottle of beer. I wondered what the police force would make of the fact that he was drinking alcohol at barely half past three in the afternoon. I would inform them at the first given opportunity, and also of his professional misconduct re Mum. — Matthew Crow

With such compelling information, the question is why haven't we been able to do more to prevent the crisis of underage drinking? The answer is: the alcohol industry. — Lucille Roybal-Allard

May I suggest a drinking game where everytime I do a ridiculously long awkward blink, someone does a shot of some kind of alcohol? — Neil Patrick Harris

Alcohol is a very necessary article. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning. — George Bernard Shaw

I've never been drunk, but often I've been overserved. — George Gobel

I don't think vodka is useful. I think it's for people who don't like alcohol, in which case, you probably shouldn't be drinking it. — Rachel Maddow

Whoever I had become had to die. — Craig Ferguson

A drinker does not exist. Whatever they say, it is just the drink talking — Anne Enright

Drinking alcohol takes you into a lower state of mind. If you drink a lot of it, things get very fuzzy and they are not very sharp or defined. This brings you into a lower state of attention. — Frederick Lenz

I like to see the glass as half full, hopefully of jack daniels. — Darynda Jones

Alcohol was like a fun cousin I visited every once in a while but never planned a trip around. — Abby Fabiaschi

I can party like a twenty-four-year-old but it takes me almost a week to recover. — Amy Poehler

Judging by the deplorable state in which the garrison troops can often be found, alcohol is never in short supply. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for water. The island has only two tiny springs, so most drinking water has been collected during the rainy season and stored in cisterns for use in drier periods. — Anonymous

They're professionals at this in Russia, so no matter how many Jell-O shots or Jager shooters you might have downed at college mixers, no matter how good a drinker you might think you are, don't forget that the Russians - any Russian - can drink you under the table. — Anthony Bourdain

Oh God how subtle he would have to be, how cunning ... No paragraph, no phrase even of the thousands the book must contain could strike a discordant note, be less than fully imagined, an entire novel's worth of thought would have to be expended on each one. His attention had only to lapse for a moment, between preposition and object, colophon and chapter heading, for dead spots to appear like gangrene that would rot the whole. Silkworms didn't work as finely or as patiently as he must, and yet boldness was all, the large stroke, the end contained in and prophesied by the beginning, the stains of his clouds infinitely various but all signifying sunrise. Unity in diversity, all that guff. An enormous weariness flew over him. The trouble with drink, he had long known, wasn't that it started up these large things but that it belittled the awful difficulties of their execution. ("Novelty") — John Crowley

It wasn't some Puritan thing. Straight-edge was asking adherents to take control of their lives, not to be blind consumers, and not to be tricked into thinking that drinking and drugs were cool since in fact they were the tools of a previous generation — Kim Gordon

Teenage drinking has been declining since 1999, but students vastly overestimate their classmates' use of alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes. For example, a study conducted at a Midwestern high school when teenage alcohol use was peaking found that students believed that 92% of their peers Frank alcohol and 85% smoked cigarettes. When researchers surveyed the school to unearth the actual statistics, they learned that 47% of students had consumed alcohol and 17% smoked. — Alexandra Robbins

In wine was truth, perhaps, but in whisky, the way Hoffman sluiced it down, was an army of imaginary rats climbing your legs. — Ross Macdonald

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

Afternoon drinkers shifted in the gloom as if they sensed new blood. — Sara Sheridan

He's so full of alcohol, if you put a lighted wick in his mouth he'd burn for three days. — Groucho Marx

The social prestige of wine at table and at the club must be destroyed through lofty example and polite ridicule; forces which are not always available, and for whose successful operation much time will be required. But the outstanding fact remains, that the world has come to regard liquor in a new and clearer light. Our next generation of poets will contain but few Anacreons, for the thinking element of mankind has robbed the flowing bowl of its fancied virtues and fictitious beauties. The grape, so long permitted to masquerade as the inspirer of wit and art, is now revealed as the mother of ruin and death. The wolf at last stands divested of its sheep's clothing. — H.P. Lovecraft

Alcohol may also persuade us that we have found the truth about life, a comforting experience rarely available in the sober hour. — Joan Acocella

To quote Homer Simpson, alcohol is the cause and solution to all of life's problems. I don't think there's anything wrong with drinking and drug use, if people can do it and not hurt themselves. But it got to the point where I was really hurting myself. — Moby

A woman drove me to drink. I don't drink and drive. — Brian Spellman

Need 'nether whiskey. Whiskey chaser. Gotta get two men drunk.'
Mr. Cohan placed both hands on the bar. 'Mr. Walsh,' he said severely, 'in Gavagan's we will serve a man a drink to wet his whistle, or even because his old woman has pasted him with a dornick, but a drink to get drunk with I do not sell. Now I'm telling you you've had enough for tonight, and in the morning you'll be thanking me ... ' ("My Brother's Keeper") — Fletcher Pratt

Let me be the first to tell you, drinking alcohol is the worst thing to do in cold weather. Hot soup is the best because the process of digesting food helps to warm you up. — Morgan Freeman

I hate the taste of alcohol. When I'm drinking, I'm drinking Red Bull. — Paris Hilton

The best colleague any doctor can have is a more fully informed patient and family. — James J. Rybacki

Alcohol is an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind. — Rita Mae Brown

It does seem
the more we drink
the better the words
go. — Charles Bukowski

If I have a near-beer, I'm near beer. And if I'm near beer, I'm close to tequila. And if I'm close to tequila, I'm adjacent to cocaine. — Craig Ferguson

I'd heard the boys at school say you needed to run after your first drink, to get the alcohol working. It got you drunk faster. I didn't bother with that. I wish drinking Brandivo, a foul, sultana-flavoured brew. I took a painful gulp of it, and watched as a possum came gripping along the wire of a telegraph pole, not knowing the death humming along beside it. Its eyes were filmed with light as it reached the safety of wood, and then it went down face first like a lizard. — Tegan Bennett Daylight

esophagus. Certain
foods, including chocolate, fried or fatty foods, coffee, soda, onions, and garlic, seem
to be associated with this condition.
19
Lifestyle factors also play a role. For example,
smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, wearing tight-fitting clothes, being overweight
or obese, eating large evening meals, and reclining after eating tend to cause or
worsen the condition. — Joan Salge Blake

There was a rough stone age and a smooth stone age and a bronze age, and many years afterward a cut-glass age. In the cut-glass age, when young ladies had persuaded young
men with long, curly mustaches to marry them, they sat down several months afterward and wrote thank-you notes for all sorts of cut-glass presents - punch-bowls, finger-bowls, dinner-glasses, wine-glasses, ice-cream dishes, bonbon dishes, decanters, and vases - for, though cut glass was nothing new in the nineties, it was then especially busy reflecting the dazzling light of fashion from the Back Bay to the fastnesses of the Middle West."
--from "The Glass-Cut Bowl" by F. Scott Fitzgerald — Diana Secker Tesdell

Cade Winston, by drinking this shot, you hereby swear to do something out of character tonight. Should you fail, you'll be cused to a lifetime filled with premature ejaculation.'
'Seriously, man?'
He held up his hands and laughed, 'Hey, the alcohol gods giveth and they taketh away. — Cora Carmack

Could it be that Megan was flirting with Ted. Instead of being jealous Amit felt oddly liberated, relieved of his responsibility to Megan, to show her a good time. His head was pounding. He needed a glass of water, needed to dilute the alcohol that had rushed too quickly into his brain. The evening had barely begun but it was as if he'd been drinking for hours. Then he saw that the hand by Megan's ear was the one that had been formerly concealing her skirt. Now that she'd had a few drinks herself she no longer cared, and Amit realized he was free of his duty to stand by her side. — Anonymous

My own experience has been that the tools I need for my trade are paper, tobacco, food, and a little whisky. — William Faulkner

Craft brewers are committed to promoting the safe and moderate consumption of their beverage, and work closely with their communities to prevent underage drinking and alcohol abuse. — Sherwood Boehlert

Well, I may not have a framed Latin diploma, but I know crazy talk when I hear it. Alcohol has been an important part of the human diet for thousands of years. The Bible is filled with references to people drinking alcohol, such as this quotation from the Book of Effusions, Chapter Eight, Verse Six, Row 7: — Dave Barry

On the bright side," he went on, gesturing to the massive quantities of alcohol they had laid out on the table for their lackeys, "You get to drink loads of expensive whiskey, instead." "I don't like whiskey," Tyson told him. "I like steak knives." "Poddite," Slade sighed. Tyson squinted at him. "What?" "Poddite," Slade said, carefully arranging his plastic cutlery. "It means that your uninspired tastes mark you as one of the mindless ranks of pod-people that mechanically wander this earth, doing whatever their television or personal devices tell them to, like drinking piss because it's been marketed as 'refreshing.'" — Sara King

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

Every time I'd go out drinking I was looking for something new. But it was the same every time. I'd wake up in some bed with some person, I had a hangover and a show to do. And the truth is, it was the same every time. But now life is ... pretty interesting without the alcohol. — James Hetfield

Everyone says it's wrong, 'drinking and driving', don't they.
I can tell you two things that are far more dangerous than 'drinking and driving': 1. 'drinking'; 2. 'driving'.
Do you know how many people were killed last year in Britain as a direct result of alcohol abuse?--thirty-five-thousand!
Do you know how many people were killed as a direct result of driving a car?--twenty-two-thousand!
Do you know how many people were killed as a direct result of drinking _and_ driving?--five-hundred!
::pauses::
I'm not taking any fuckin' chances!
::swigs his beer:: — Lee Mack

Becoming a writer is a polite way of saying you've chosen alcoholism as a career. — Joe Ducie

I've never gotten in too much trouble with alcohol. I've never had a drinking problem, really. — Kurt Vile

For the first twenty years of my life, I rocked myself to sleep. It was a harmless enough hobby, but eventually, I had to give it up. Throughout the next twenty-two years I lay still and discovered that after a few minutes I could drop off with no problem. Follow seven beers with a couple of scotches and a thimble of good marijuana, and it's funny how sleep just sort of comes on its own. Often I never even made it to the bed. I'd squat down to pet the cat and wake up on the floor eight hours later, having lost a perfectly good excuse to change my clothes. I'm now told that this is not called "going to sleep" but rather "passing out," a phrase that carries a distinct hint of judgment. — David Sedaris

These guys had names for every conceivable drinking situation. They liked to have a little eye-opener to get themselves going in the morning, a midmorning bracer before attempting anything serious, a few modest cocktails at lunch, followed by the obligatory afternoon pick-me-up, which segued neatly right into happy hour and ended with a little one just to help them sleep. For purely medicinal purposes, of course. — G.M. Ford

When a man is on the road to power he buys everyone a drink. Once elected he tries to close the saloons. — Robert Lautner

I was hungry and went out for a bite, ran into a chum with a bottle of rum and we wound up drinking all night. — Jimmy Buffett

I feel like today should be a perfect Meatball day ... Let's just get wastey-pants! — Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi

Dear Pighead, The reason I am so distant is because, well, there are two reasons actually. The first reason is my drinking. I require alcohol, nightly. And nothing can get in the way. The second reason is your disease. I can't stand the idea of getting close to you, or closer, only to have you up and die on me, pulling the carpet out from under my life. You're my best friend. The best friend I ever had. I have to protect that. I don't call you or see you much because I'm killing you off now, while it's easier. Because I can still talk to you. It makes sense to me to separate now, while you're still healthy, as opposed to having it just happen to me one night out of the blue. I'm trying to evenly distribute the pain of loss. As opposed to taking it in one lump sum. — Augusten Burroughs

Having rebound sex to cure a heartbreak is like drinking alcohol to cure a hangover. — Khang Kijarro Nguyen

I don't like to overdose. Call me old-fashioned. — Chelsea Handler

In crises of this sort the Dyckmanns had usually found it effective to stare into space, encouraging the long pause that might fetch the witty words, 'Well, dear, we must go.' But the Bairds were on an entirely different wavelength, and this was the fault of the Dyckmanns. With the removal of the bottles it had been the mutual impulse of the Bairds to shoot out the door, but their second thought was that they must not... (from "Dinner on the Rocks" (1954) by Dawn Powell) — Diana Secker Tesdell

I don't want to get in a big, long discussion about right and wrong, but our company has been working on the issue of underage drinking and alcohol abuse for a long time. I've been outspoken about it. — Pete Coors

Of the small number of things which I have liked and done well, drinking is by far the thing I have done best. Although I have read a lot, I have drunk more. I have written much less than most people who write; but I have drunk more than the majority of the people who drink. — Guy Debord

Hyacinth took out a bottle of rum, and Phaedra raised her eyebrows, a reflex she'd acquired upon seeing her father and mother under its influence, their eyes and mouths turned wilder, as if a cork at the edges of their personalities had come unscrewed. — Naomi Jackson

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

The saddest thing of all was that their party represented a deviation from the conditions of the time. It was impossible to imagine that in the houses across the lane people were eating and drinking in the same way at such an hour. Beyond the window lay mute, dark, hungry Moscow. Her food stores were empty, and people had even forgotten to think of such things as game and vodka.
And thus it turned out that the only true life is one that resembles the life around us and drowns in it without leaving a trace, that isolated happiness is not happiness, so that duck and alcohol, when they seem to be the only ones in town, are not alcohol and a duck at all. — Boris Pasternak

It's been about a week without alcohol of any kind. I'm enjoying my new, clean-living lifestyle. — Anthony Bourdain

I don't have a drinking problem 'Cept when I can't get a drink. — Tom Waits

Whose asshole do I have to tongue punch to get a fucking drink around here? — J.C. Wickhart

If I only drink beer, nothing stronger, then by the end of the night I can generally recognize myself as a reasonable human being, and more importantly, wake up that way. — Robert Black

Drinking also maroons you without provisions on the island of self. Like most other promises it makes, alcohol's vow of kinship, that it will bridge your life to others, smooth the way, proves false. Fooled again: you're alone. — James Sallis

Experimenting with drugs, drinking, doing this just enough to be accepted as one of the crowd, but I hated drugs, and I hated the taste of alcohol! — Gloria Gaynor

Drink levels all mankind. It is the ultimate democrat — Terry Pratchett

While binge drinking is a significant issue, it is likely that many members of the public would be surprised by its categorisation as a mental illness, particularly at the milder end."

Public confusion caused by differing understandings of the term 'mental illness'.
Jorm AF, Reavley NJ.
Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 2012 May;46(5):397-9.
PMID: 22535288 — Anthony F. Jorm

Everyone is drinking. She can feel them out there drinking, turning into beasts. — Anna Keesey

Alcohol is probably one of the greatest things to arrive upon the earth - alongside of me. — Charles Bukowski

Do you guys ever reach the point of drunkenness where you're so drunk you're like "I better keep drinking to sober up" and then you're like "you know, I recognise that that is not how it works. But ... — Hannah Hart

One doesn't even think of
the liver
and if the liver
doesn't think of
us, that's
fine. — Charles Bukowski

Fill with mingled cream and amber,
I will drain that glass again.
Such hilarious visions clamber
Through the chamber of my brain
Quaintest thoughts - queerest fancies
Come to life and fade away;
What care I how time advances?
I am drinking ale today. — Edgar Allan Poe

Tyler took the beer out of my hand. "You were black-out drunk last night, and you're drinking again. I thought you were going to quit? Do I need to quit with you?"
"I've just lost my sister. Not the best time to stop drinking."
"There will never be a good time if you have to drink every time you're upset. Shit happens. You have to learn to deal with it without alcohol. I love you no matter what, but you need to wake up, Ellie. — Jamie McGuire

An over-indulgence of anything, even something as pure as water, can intoxicate. — Criss Jami

How many of us readers say this quote and mean it. "If I knew what I know now life would be different" ... — Robert Reed

That was how Sinner got his first taste of anything other than the froth on his father's ale. It made you grimace, but if you drank enough it felt like discovering an entire hidden room in your own house that you'd never even known about. You wanted to do more than poke your head through the doorway. You wanted to take its dimensions. — Ned Beauman

Health - what my friends are always drinking to before they fall down. — Phyllis Diller

I never drink alcohol. I do not like to blunt my senses.' 'Goodness,' I babbled, 'but how awful for you. Not drinking, I mean. I mean, imagine getting up in the morning knowing that you're not going to feel any better all day. — Kyril Bonfiglioli

Even though alcohol abuse is frowned upon by society, it's generally considered acceptable to drink in moderation in many social situations. In fact, society has a pretty high tolerance for drinking, even when people drink to the point of getting tipsy. This is definitely not the case for self-harm, though. On the contrary, society generally sees self-harm as unacceptable at any level and under any circumstances. — Kim L. Gratz

There are two kinds of people I don't trust: people who don't drink and people who collect stickers. — Chelsea Handler