Pain Of Addiction Quotes & Sayings

The hardcore drug addicts that I treat, are, without exception, people who have had extraordinarily difficult lives. The commonality is childhood abuse. These people all enter life under extremely adverse circumstances. Not only did they not get what they need for healthy development; they actually got negative circumstances of neglect. I don't have a single female patient in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver who wasn't sexually abused, for example, as were many of the men, or abused, neglected and abandoned serially, over and over again. That's what sets up the brain biology of addiction. In other words, the addiction is related both psychologically, in terms of emotional pain relief, and neurobiological development to early adversity. — Gabor Mate

As I stand at the edge of the pit, searching for his body amongst all the others, I am slightly frightened by the violent clashes. It seems almost savagery, the way they throw themselves into each other. As I continue to watch, unable to look away, drawn in by their angry and troubled release I see him. His body is sweating, his muscles are flexed and his face holds an expression of pain mixed with pleasure. In that moment I realize their is so much I don't know about the man I am falling in love with and my fear of him excites me. — Nicole T. Smith

Every pain, addiction, anguish, longing, depression, anger or fear
is an orphaned part of us
seeking joy,
some disowned shadow
wanting to return
to the light
and home
of ourselves. — Jacob Nordby

Maybe there were times when suicide made sense. When the immoral choice is moral. Emerson could believe that. But his father was no Walter White. He hadn't been terminally ill or struggling with addiction or living a dual life where he'd accrued huge gambling debts that he couldn't pay off. There'd been no sacrifice in his actions. Only weakness. And his pain, however deep it had been, hadn't disappeared with his death. He'd simply passed it on to those who'd loved him. That's what really got to Emerson. The selfishness of it all. — Stephanie Kuehn

How many mental health problems, from drug addiction to self-injurious behavior, start as attempts to cope with the unbearable physical pain of our emotions? If Darwin was right, the solution requires finding ways to help people alter the inner sensory landscape of their bodies. Until recently, this bidirectional communication between body and mind was largely ignored by Western science, even as it had long been central to traditional healing practices in many other parts of the world, notably in India and China. Today it is transforming our understanding of trauma and recovery. — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

One cure for the pain of desecration is the move towards total PROFANATION: in other words, to wipe out all vestiges of sanctity from the once worshipped object, to make it merely a thing OF the world, and not just a thing IN the world, something that is nothing over and above the substitutes that can at any time replace it. That is what we see in the spreading addiction to pornography - a profanation that removes the sexual bond entirely from the realm of intrinsic values. It involves wiping out one area in which the idea of the beautiful had taken root, so as to protect ourselves from the possibility of love it and therefore losing it. — Roger Scruton

Eckhart Tolle says, "Addiction begins with pain and ends with pain," meaning that pain is behind compulsive behavior. Eleven years clean, I still feel the urge to medicate pain. Whenever events don't go my way, my first instinct is to annul the feeling, to look for an external resource to solve the problem. The second part of Eckhart's edict kicks in here - addiction "ends with pain." Medication of any kind offers only a temporary solution; it always leads back to pain and becomes therefore predictably cyclical. — Russell Brand

the core of addiction doesn't lie in what you swallow or inject - it's in the pain you feel in your head. Yet we have built a system that thinks we will stop addicts by increasing their pain. "If I had to design a system that was intended to keep people addicted, I'd design exactly the system that we have right now, — Johann Hari

I wanted a drink. There were a hundred reasons why a man will want a drink, but I wanted one now for the most elementary reason of all. I didn't want to feel what I was feeling, and a voice within was telling me that I needed a drink, that I couldn't bear it without it.
But that voice is a liar. You can always bear the pain. It'll hurt, it'll burn like acid in an open wound, but you can stand it. And, as long as you can make yourself go on choosing the pain over the relief, you can keep going. — Lawrence Block

When we're living as amateurs, we're running away from our calling - meaning our work, our destiny, the obligation to become our truest and highest selves. Addiction becomes a surrogate for our calling. We enact the addiction instead of embracing the calling. Why? Because to follow a calling requires work. It's hard. It hurts. It demands entering the pain-zone of effort, risk, and exposure. — Steven Pressfield

I'm not crying out for help, but I am sharing my experience in the hopes that readers will get something out of it. I'm not the one who gets to decide what that is, if anything. I'm just starting the "journey" if you will, so I can't possibly know yet what the "message" of my life really is. I only know what has happened so far, and how I've felt up until this moment. I agree that reading about the pain of others is concerning when they are still hurting and in the same situation as when they wrote about it. But what can you do? You can reach out, ask how you can help and be there to listen. You can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved. You can't love someone who doesn't love themselves enough to take care of themselves and stay out of bad situations. Believe me, I know this. — Ashly Lorenzana

My main concern was my teeth because they were in constant pain. Meth depletes the body of calcium, the vitamin essential to maintaining healthy teeth. It also includes acidic ingredients that can damage teeth. The ingredients include but are not limited to battery acid: Drano, over-the-counter cold medications like Sudafed, antifreeze, engine starter fluid, and brake fluid. Basically, pop the hood of your car and you can find the ingredients you need to cook meth. I'm no dentist, but I came to the conclusion that was the root of my tooth pain. — S.C. Sterling

There's a saying that goes something like: 'We are all one drink or pill away from addiction,' and I know this is meant to destigmatize what addicts go through, but I feel like I've been seeing variations on this 'common knowledge' more and more lately being used (on social media) as a cudgel to remind patients to not overdo it," Anna says, speaking to the dual-edged sword of awareness. A motto designed to humanize the experience of addiction has been turned into a weapon that targets people who rely on opioids for pain management, and that translates to real-world stigma. — S. E. Smith

Addiction is a "shitty" disease — David W. Earle

By empowering people to initiate a conversation prior to surgery regarding their pain control options, we hope to reduce the incidence of narcotic addiction and all of the unfortunate consequences that surround it. — Kristi Funk

The process of recovering from addictiveness happens at a deeper level of consciousness and through feeling our pain without using old addictive fixes. There is no escaping that getting in touch with our original pain is the touchstone to mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing. — Christopher Dines

Each generation becomes more addicted to the sedatives of life, to dull the pain of living. — Billy Graham

Mindfulness helps us see the addictive aspect of self-criticism - a repetitive cycle of flaying ourselves again and again, feeling the pain anew. — Sharon Salzberg

Krissa, tough Lady Krissa, who had stood by impassively while Areau vomited out ten years of bitter addiction, wiped her eyes and offered Areau Mrs. Wrinkle's pie in comfort, and it suddenly occurred to Areau in the strangest, most dreamlike of ways, that his pain was not the only pain on the planet. — Amy Lane

First things first: studies show policing is hard. At a minimum, they prove many LEO's struggle to cope with what they are exposed to. For example, research indicates that while 8.2% of the general population suffers from an active alcohol or substance abuse addiction, up to 23% of public safety personnel, including law enforcement officers, are engaged in the same struggle. Furthermore, due to the constant exposure to violence, conflict, death, pain and suffering, coupled with the extremely stressful and draining nature of their work, police run a significant risk of experiencing Post-Traumatic Stress Injuries (PTSI)/Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Lastly, research by Dr. John Violanti in 2004 indicates a combination of alcohol use and PTSD produces a tenfold increase in the risk of suicide. This small snapshot of research paints a grim picture on how policing can negatively impact those that take up its calling. — Karen Rodwill Solomon

We wouldn't have much need of a war if people stopped using drugs. It's like taking up a fight against the use of headache remedies; it will never work until the condition causing people's headache pain is healed. — Chris Prentiss

But when I look at myself squarely, it's not just that I have a few difficulties or unresolved issues. Unlike those lucky people for whom therapy or medication delivers them back to themselves, I've been suffering from something that was unnamable for most of my life. Yes, I've had periods of relative stability, but the whole concept of "recovery" brings up some painful questions. What do I recover? With drug addiction, you hear that you can recover and reclaim your former self, the person you were before you started using. With other psychiatric illnesses, getting rid of symptoms means you're more or less back to "yourself." But what if you simply don't have a solid self to return to - if the way you are is seen as basically broken? And what if you can't conceive of "normal" or "healthy" because pain and loneliness are all you remember? "You were such a happy child," my mother says. But I don't remember that. So what do I recover? — Kiera Van Gelder

I advocate giving full attention to the pain that arises with the breakdown of an addiction and the story that embeds it. (The "addiction" can be something subtle, a self-image, for example, or thoughts about how ethical or successful one is.) Just as it feels good to meet a need, an unmet need hurts. Pain is its call for attention. When all the substitutes for meeting that need are exhausted, when all the palliatives stop working, finally the pain that had been diffuse and latent leads us to the need. — Charles Eisenstein

In the short term, corporal punishment may produce obedience. But it is a fact documented by research that in the long term the results are inability to learn, violence and rage, bullying, cruelty, inability to feel another's pain, especially that of one's own children, even drug addiction and suicide, unless there are enlightened or at least helping witnesses on hand to prevent that development. — Alice Miller

There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away. (107) — Sherman Alexie

No more junk talk, no more lies. No more mornings in the hospital getting bad blood drained out of me. No more doctors trying to analyse what makes me a drug addict. No more futile attempts at trying to control my heroin use. No more defending myself when I know I am practically indefensible. No more police using me as practice. No more ODs, no more losses. No more trying to take an intellectual position on my heroin addiction when it takes more than it gives. No more dope-sick mornings, no more slow suicide, no more pain without end.
No more AA. No more NA. No more mind control. No more being a victim, no more looking for reasons in childhood, in God in anything but what exists in HERE. No more admitting I am powerless.
Down the dusty Los Angeles sidewalks, down the urine stained London back alleys ... there goes the connection fading into the crowd like a 1960's Polaroid.
"Business ... ?"
"Whachoo need ... ?"
"Chiva ... ? — Tony O'Neill

If we must tempt to Pleasure, how do we tempt to the least amount of Pleasure? Or better yet, tempt them to its opposite? But how to tempt them to pain. — Geoffrey Wood

When we seek to escape from inner conflict and pain, we are running away from unresolved childhood trauma or original pain. Most people with serious addictive natures who are in the process of recovery have found that trauma played a huge role in escalating their addictions. It certainly did for me. — Christopher Dines

I spent the rest of that day and most of the night thinking about all the hundreds of people I had met in rehabs and sober living houses and on the streets. We were all medicating our fears and our pain! — Pax Prentiss

There comes a time. The pain of existence transcends the fear of change. There comes a time. — Moshe Kasher

And so, wish becomes pang; the crave, an ache; pleasure, pain. Losing all its pleasure, anticipation cuts the opposite direction and becomes merely a constant, painful reminder of what they've lost, forever. — Geoffrey Wood

I must give due praise to the man who first extracted morphine from poppyheads. He was a true benefactor of mankind. The pain stopped seven minutes after the injection. Interesting: the pain passed over me in ceaseless waves, so that I had to gasp for breath, as though a red-hot crowbar were being thrust into my stomach and rotated. Four minutes after the injection I was able to distinguish the wave-like nature of the pain. — Mikhail Bulgakov

There are a lot of victims when it comes to addiction. I know there's an overdose epidemic. We see those faces. But then I see these other faces - the ones who commit suicide because they can't handle the pain. Those faces mean just as much to me. — Donna Marsh

Something they seem to omit to mention in Boston AA when you're new and out of your skull with desperation and ready to eliminate your map and they tell you how it'll all get better and better as you abstain and recover: they somehow omit to mention that the way it gets better and you get better is through pain. Not around pain, or in spite of it. — David Foster Wallace

I will be living with chronic pain for the rest of my life. I don't have the mobility, energy or life options I used to have. I work hard to manage the pain, and I want the medical system to be a respectful and effective partner, not a jailer. The opioid crisis is not my doing. — Sonya Huber

Being cut off from our own natural self-compassion is one of the greatest impairments we can suffer. Along with our ability to feel our own pain go our best hopes for healing, dignity and love. What seems nonadapative and self-harming in the present was, at some point in our lives, an adaptation to help us endure what we then had to go through. If people are addicted to self-soothing behaviours, it's only because in their formative years they did not receive the soothing they needed. Such understanding helps delete toxic self-judgment on the past and supports responsibility for the now. Hence the need for compassionate self-inquiry. — Gabor Mate

Hitting bottom is an inside job - it's something that happens within our consciousness. — Christopher Dines

Once it's established that we are a team, I can demand of you and expect you to demand of me. Life without pain is an addiction and the fantasy of perpetual happiness is like the "delusion of fusion." — Carl Whitaker

Intensity-seeking is an enslavement of our own perpetuation. When we step out of the delirium of always seeking someone new, and meet the same old sad and lonely child within, our healing journey begins. Exhausting ourselves with novelty is a defense against our deepest pain, one that we cannot outrun. But once we stop and feel our losses, we can begin our healing journey and be the authentic, joyous person we were born to be. — Alexandra Katehakis

What better way to start filling the vessel than exercise," Provet suggests. "I strongly believe that exercise can serve as an antidote and as a type of inoculation against addiction," he says. "As an antidote, you're giving the individual an avenue of life experience that most have not had - the goals of exercise, the feeling of exercise, the challenge of exercise, the pleasure and the pain, the accomplishment, the physical well-being, the self-esteem. All that exercise gives us, you're now presenting to the addict as a very compelling option. — John J. Ratey

The disease of addiction, for all the pain and damage it causes, is an invitation to see this prodigal God in action. The question is, will we? Will we as the church step out of our comfort zones into uncharted territory that will at times be unpredictable and even scary for us? Or will we, like the older son, gloat, sulk and stomp off in resentment? Would we rather be party poopers or partygoers, estranged children or reconciled ones? — Jonathan Benz

Now I can lean into joy, even when it makes me feel tender and vulnerable. In fact, I expect tender and vulnerable. Joy is as thorny and sharp as any of the dark emotions. To love someone fiercely, to believe in something with your whole heart, to celebrate a fleeting moment in time, to fully engage in a life that doesn't come with guarantees - these are risks that involve vulnerability and often pain. When we lose our tolerance for discomfort, we lose joy. In fact, addiction research shows us that an intensely positive experience is as likely to cause relapse as an intensely painful experience. — Brene Brown

Advertising doesn't cause addictions. But it does create a climate of denial and it contributes mightily to a belief in the quick fix, instant gratification, the dreamworld, and escape from all pain and boredom. All of this is part of what addicts believe and what we hope for when we reach for our particular substance ... Addiction begins with the hope that something "out there" can instantly fill up the emptiness inside. Advertising is all about this false hope. — Jean Kilbourne

No easy way out. No escape. From yourself. You had to LEARN to DEAL with the cards you were dealt. Had to learn the hard way that the world doesn't OWE you a fucking thing. Not a reason, nor excuse. No apologies. Had to learn that some forms of insanity run in the family, pure genetics, polluted lifelines, full of disease. Profanity. Addiction. Co-addiction. Inability to deal with reality, what the fuck ever that's suppose to mean when you're born into an emotional ghetto of endless abuse. Where the only way out is in...deep, deep inside, so you poke holes in your skin, thinking that if you could just concentrate the pain it wouldn't remain an all-consuming surround which suffocates you from the first breath of day to your last dying day. Day in. Day out. Day in. Day out. I knew all about it. — Lydia Lunch

Just like using drugs and alcohol to numb the pain can -- and does -- lead to addiction, using social media to fill the void of relationships, or other needs, often leads to addiction, as well. — Mandy J. Hoffman

I have learned that the kindness of a teacher, a coach, a policeman, a neighbor, the parent of a friend, is never wasted. These moments are likely to pass with neither the child nor the adult fully knowing the significance of the contribution. No ceremony attaches to the moment that a child sees his own worth reflected in the eyes of an encouraging adult. Though nothing apparent marks the occasion, inside that child a new view of self might take hold. He is not just a person deserving of neglect or violence, not just a person who is a burden to the sad adults in his life, not just a child who fails to solve his family's problems, who fails to rescue them from pain or madness or addiction or poverty or unhappiness. No, this child might be someone else, someone whose appearance before this one adult revealed specialness or lovability, or value. — Gavin De Becker

Addiction might be redefined not as a character flaw but as a "biochemical deficit management." Our emotional habits will become an accepted factor of good health, along with slogans like "Heartache can be harmful to your unborn children." — Marni Jackson

When we practise self-compassion, we look after ourselves just as though we are nurturing a small child. In fact, a major part of grieving our original pain work (so that we can heal and be emotionally liberated) is to re-parent ourselves and reconnect with our inner child.

This is what the author, John Bradshaw, meant by 'reclaiming our inner child'. In recovery, we can begin to nurture our inner child and connect deeply with our heart and spirit. — Christopher Dines

the media, at least in the U.S., tends to focus on pain pill use, abuse, and addiction by people who do not have chronic pain.
Even if these stories offhandedly mention that these pills are used to treat pain in people whose physical pain does not go away, however, the stories of those who use pain medicine responsibly -- or, worse, accused of drug-seeking behavior because they need certain types of pills for chronic pain -- are usually overshadowed by the "How can we prevent pain pill addiction?" concern, instead of asking, "How can we treat chronic pain more effectively? — Anna Hamilton

This is the kind of thing that makes sense to them; this is a language they know. They know what to do with'disease'. They know how to attach a doctor's medical descriptions to hope. — Amy Reed

In a very real way, attention is a drug. Like dope, attention makes people feel good by delivering a 'hit' of certain neurotransmitters (chemicals that transmit, or block the transmission of electrochemical currents) in the brain. Like anything that does this (viz., sex, risk-taking, power), in excessive amounts it's addictive. And, simply because it works, nothing is as addictive as a pain killer. Hence Narcissus is well-named from the Greek word for narcosis.

Attention is his pain killer. — Kathy Krajco

It hurts so bad that I cannot save him, protect him, keep him out of harm's way, shield him from pain. What good are fathers if not for these things? — Thomas Lynch

Sometimes people go through a lifetime of pain by holding a secret that could have changed everything. It is an intoxicating addiction, an act of dominance to know that you hold something in your grip that could have changed the life of a person you detest. — Amit Sharma

I looked into the face of addiction and it terrified me! — David W. Earle

Innocence is a strange thing. For those who held it within them, the experienced people in the world flew to them like moths to a flame. Yet, instead of bursting into cinders, they smothered the flame and showed the candle just how dark the world could be. Once that innocence was lost, there was no turning back. No way back to the light of the normal world. It became an addiction. Pain, domination, submission, and degradation would be constant yearnings for the newly initiated." ~Lexie Syrah — Lexie Syrah

Fear is the memory of pain. Addiction is the memory of pleasure. Freedom is beyond both. — Deepak Chopra

Like Sylvia Plath, Natalie Jeanne Champagne invites you so close to the pain and agony of her life of mental illness and addiction, which leaves you gasping from shock and laughing moments later: this is both the beauty and unique nature of her storytelling. With brilliance and courage, the author's brave and candid chronicle travels where no other memoir about mental illness and addiction has gone before. The Third Sunrise is an incredible triumph and Natalie Jeanne Champagne is without a doubt the most important new voice in this genre. — Andy Behrman

You can experiment with directing metta toward a difficult aspect of yourself. There may be physical or emotional aspects of yourself you have struggled with, denied, avoided, been at war with. Sit quietly, sending yourself metta. After some time, turn your attention to the loneliness, anger, disability, addiction, or whatever aspect of your mind or body you feel most estranged from. Healing begins with the open, compassionate acknowledgment of these unpleasant aspects of our lives. Surround the painful element of your experience with the warmth and acceptance of metta. You can use phrases such as, ' May I accept this,' 'May I be filled with loving kindness toward this,' 'May I use the pain of this experience for the welfare of all. — Sharon Salzberg

I don't think you can get really out of anorexia (or any addiction, for that matter) until you simply have no other choice, until the sense that your back's against the wall grows too strong and too irrefutable, until you are simply in too much pain - too desperate and deeply bored and unhappy - to go on. — Caroline Knapp

Turning an experience about to observe it, results in a lessening of the experience directly proportional to the amount of observation. To think about it is, to some degree, to stop the pleasure, to stop the experience, to step outside it. — Geoffrey Wood

In the debate over opioid addiction, there's one group we aren't hearing from: chronic pain patients, many of whom need to use the drugs on a long-term basis. — S. E. Smith

The opposite of addiction is human connection. And I think that has massive implications for the war on drugs. The treatment of drug addicts almost everywhere in the world is much closer to Tent City than it is to anything in Portugal. Our laws are built around the belief that drug addicts need to be punished to stop them. But if pain and trauma and isolation cause addiction, then inflicting more pain and trauma and isolation is not going to solve that addiction. It's actually going to deepen it. — Johann Hari

At times it may seem worse - harder, at least - to live through the despair of this loss without the temporary comfort of our addictive behaviour. We cannot drown our sorrows. We must face the fact that we don't know, really, where we are, how we got here, how long the pain will last, or how to move past it. That uncertainty may be the most painful part of not knowing a God: no one is there to reassure us that a God will take the pain and confusion away. We simply don't know. And we have no way to numb ourselves or to forget the condition we're in. — Marya Hornbacher

If I am an American who has developed an Oxycontin addiction, as soon as my doctor realizes I'm an addict, she has to cut me off. She is allowed to prescribe to treat only my physical pain - not my addiction. Indeed, if she prescribes just to meet my addiction, she will face being stripped of her license and up to twenty-five years in jail84 as a common drug dealer - just — Johann Hari

Addiction, that is, negative addiction, is the third, and in terms of pain, essentially successful choice in the series of choices made by people who are unable to find sufficient love and worth. Each choice - from the initial decision to give up trying to find love or worth, the second choice to take on one or more symptoms, and the final choice of becoming addicted - is a pain-reducing step. The reason addiction is powerful and difficult to break is that it alone of all the choices consistently both completely relieves the pain of failure, and provides an intensely pleasurable experience. — William Glasser

An addiction is something that controls people - something they feel they cannot do without or something they do to alleviate pain or pressure. It is what people run to when they are hurting or feel lonely. It comes in many varieties, such as drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, shopping, eating, work - and yes, even approval. Like any addict, insecure people look for a "fix" when they get shaky. They need someone to reaffirm them and assure them everything is all right and they are acceptable. When a person has an addiction the things they are addicted to are on their mind most of the time. Therefore, if a person is an approval addict, he or she will have an abnormal concern and an abundance of thoughts about what people think of them. The — Joyce Meyer

Deepening awareness and nonjudgmental acceptance of one's thoughts fosters a new relationship with them, creating the space to purposefully shift mental focus away from the ruminative thought patterns that pave the road to suffering. — Dan Mager

Your mind is an instrument, a tool. It is there to be used for a specific task, and when the task is completed, you lay it down. As it is, I would say about 80 to 90 percent of most people's thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is also harmful. Observe your mind and you will find this to be true. It causes a serious leakage of vital energy. This kind of compulsive thinking is actually an addiction. What characterizes an addiction? Quite simply this: you no longer feel that you have the choice to stop. It seems stronger than you. It also gives you a false sense of pleasure, pleasure that invariably turns into pain. — Eckhart Tolle

Several medical professional organizations acknowledge the utility of opioid therapy and many case series and large surveys report satisfactory reductions in pain, improvement in function and minimal risk of addiction. — Andrew Rosenblum

Isms' are described as transference of addictive patterns of dysfunctional behaviour, passed down from generation to generation. For instance, if a mother was an alcoholic who never made it into recovery, her behaviour would leave a mark on her children, husband, etc. Unless her adult children join some sort of recovery programme and adopt the mindfulness practice, they will have very similar behaviour traits to their mother but minus the alcohol abuse. There is a strong possibility that they will become codependent and form relationships with other codependents or alcoholics. — Christopher Dines

Since the discovery of the fermented grape, humans have experienced the pain and the frustration of addiction. — David W. Earle

I remember a scared, young girl hiding in the guise of arrogance and rebellion. I remember feeling lost in a world where everyone else seemed to have it all figured out. I remember the tears of pain, the rants of anger and the hell that seemed to have swallowed me whole. Although I remember these things, it is now, over a decade later, more like a story that I find hard to believe. Did it all really happen? Even as I write this, my eyes begin to swell. It really did happen. I was that girl. And I'm sorry she had to suffer so. But, that is over now... — Karen Michelle Miller

The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of day with some purchased relief. — Russell Brand

Chronic pain patients like me are not the cause of the opioid crisis; only 22% of those who misuse opioids are prescribed them by a doctor, and only 13% of ER visits for opiate overdoses were chronic pain patients. Most chronic pain patients are rule-followers who just want to function. — Sonya Huber

For almost every addict who s mired in this terrible disease, other -- a mother or father, a child or spouse, an aunt or uncles or grandparents, a brother or sister -- are suffering too. Families are the hidden victims of addiction, enduring enormous levels of stress and pain. They suffer sleepless nights, deep anxiety, and physical exhaustion brought on by worry and desperation. They lie awake for hours on end as fear for their loved one's safety crowds out any possibility of sleep. They liveeach day with a weight inside that drags them down. Unable to laugh or smile, they are sometimes filled with bottled-up anger or a constant sadness that keeps them on the verge of tears. — Beverly Conyers

Page 142: "When a spouse says to the alcoholic, "you need to go to AA," that is obviously not true. The addict feels no need to do that at all, and isn't. But when she says, "I am moving out and will be open to getting back together when you are getting treatment for your addiction," then all of a sudden the addict feels "I need to get some help or I am going to lose my marriage." The need has been transferred. It is the same with any kind of problematic behavior of a person who is not taking feedback and ownership. The need and drive to do something about it must be transferred to that person, and that is done through having consequences that finally make him feel the pain instead of others. When he feels the pain, he will feel the need to change ... A plan that has hope is one that limits your exposure to the foolish person's issues and forces him to feel the consequences of his performance so that he might have hope of waking up and changing. — Henry Cloud

I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom. — Edgar Allan Poe

An imagined pleasure is never really the pleasure, but an imagined pain, in a very real sense, is the pain, because so much of pain is the consciousness of it. It makes itself objective. Whereas to think about pleasure is to step outside of it; to think about a presently felt pain is to step inside it. And in a very real sense, we've already got them in Hell. — Geoffrey Wood