Quotes & Sayings About Self Medication

Jesus, the list of side effects from suggested medication is longer than the symptoms! I think I saw everything from blurred vision to run out of gas in your car to give off a scent attractive to werewolves to ingrown nose hairs on there. — S.E. Hall

The two greatest enemies of the individual in the modern world are communism and psychiatry. Each wages a relentless war against that which makes a person an individual: communism against the ownership of property, psychiatry against the ownership of the self (mind and body). Communists criminalize the autonomous use of capital and labor, and harshly punish those who "traffic" in the black market, especially in foreign currencies. Psychiatrists criminalize the autonomous use of the self, and harshly punish those who "traffic" in self-abuse, especially in self-medication and self-destruction. — Thomas Szasz

Babe, I hate to break it to you, but you're one messed up mess."
"I know!" I exclaimed before breaking off into a fit of laughter. "I ought to be admitted or put on some serious medication or something. — K.R. Grace

I was under medication when I made the decision to burn the tapes. — Richard M. Nixon

...his condition in Roanoke is a strong testament that lassitude, indifference and the peculiarities of his thought were primarily the consequences of his illness and not of the early attempts to treat it.

The popular view that anti-psychotics were chemical straight jackets that suppressed clear thinking and voluntary activity seems not to be borne out in Nash's case.

If anything, the only periods when he was relatively free of hallucinations, delusions and the erosion of will were the periods following either insulin treatment or the use of anti psychotics.

In other words, rather than reducing Nash to a zombie, medication seemed to reduce zombie like behavior. — Sylvia Nasar

One of the unfortunate side effects of my medication is it hinders my ability to act crazy. — Kyra Davis

Your moment of clarity comes when you face your fears. Sobriety gave me back me - my life. Self-medication kills you slowly. You can never get a handle on that. It's a highly destructive force that has to be dealt with on a spiritual level as much as a physical one. — Chaka Khan

With endless pharmacological supplies at our fingertips, we do not need to penetrate the motives behind our actions, feelings, transgressions, dreams, and phobias. High on chemical substances we can remain stagnated in an infantile mental state. Without introspection, we foreclose ourselves from gaining the insight that allows us to navigate adulthood's ceaseless demands. — Kilroy J. Oldster

He is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He's moving all around and shaking and it's purely an act ... This is really shameless of Michael J. Fox. Either he didn't take his medication or he's acting. — Rush Limbaugh

But the main thing is that medication, too, is not all the help. — Tanya Tucker

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

Why do we do it? What's in our brains that makes us suddenly want bad food when we're stressed?'
I've read that people use this sort of food to dull their senses. It basically pollutes your body so it isn't as sensitive and receptive to outside influences. So maybe that's it. It's a form of self-medication. Or self-dopification. — Joanne Schoenwald

Girl, are you on medication?" Nurse Debra asked.
"No, of course not," Madison answered impatiently.
"Maybe you should be," Debra muttered. — Kerrelyn Sparks

We all build internal sea walls to keep at bay the sadnesses of life and the often overwhelming forces within our minds. In whatever way we do this
through love, work, family, faith, friends, denial, alcohol, drugs, or medication, we build these walls, stone by stone, over a lifetime. — Kay Redfield Jamison

The World Health Organisation has a lot of its medical experts sitting in Geneva while hospitals in Africa have no drugs and desperate patients are forced to seek medication on the black market. — Pauline Hanson

You are constantly told in depression that your judgment is compromised, but a part of depression is that it touches cognition. That you are having a breakdown does not mean that your life isn't a mess. If there are issues you have successfully skirted or avoided for years, they come cropping back up and stare you full in the face, and one aspect of depression is a deep knowledge that the comforting doctors who assure you that your judgment is bad are wrong. You are in touch with the real terribleness of your life. You can accept rationally that later, after the medication sets in, you will be better able to deal with the terribleness, but you will not be free of it. When you are depressed, the past and future are absorbed entirely by the present moment, as in the world of a three-year-old. You cannot remember a time when you felt better, at least not clearly; and you certainly cannot imagine a future time when you will feel better. — Andrew Solomon

Isn't it obvious in in today's world from people's preoccupation with self-medication, drug and alcohol use, rationalization and avoidance distraction that the truth doesn't just hurt, it's extremely painful. — James Turner

Product Warning
If this book were a medication with a label, it would read something like this:
Side Effects Include but Are Not Limited to
renewed sense of self-esteem
increased motivation in all areas of life
You may also lose weight, fall in love, leave a bad marriage, create a better one, have closer relationships with your family, or find the job of your dreams.
Some Users Have experienced
a kick in their step
a swing in their hips
a twinkle in their eye
Hair-tossing (commercial-style) is common, but seek medical attention if you pinch a nerve or can't stop doing it. — Stacy London

When we started, I was delivering meals to people in Atlanta. We were a direct-care organization. And it was - people needed meals, they needed transport, they needed medication, they needed buddy systems. They had a death sentence. There was AZT, and that was just prolonging the agony, basically. Now people, of course, if they are on antiretrovirals, they face a lifetime of health, basically. I mean, it doesn't - it's I would say in the 99 percent certainty bracket that if you are on that medication, you will have a healthy life. — Elton John

It's not unusual for me to wake up in the middle of the night and not know where I am. I take sleep medication to deal with all the flights. But I find it helps to eat at the same time every day. — Nobu Matsuhisa

I can live a totally normal life and do everything I want to do just as long as I take my medication. My body will give me signals if it gets weak or fatigued, so I know when I need to take a break. — Toni Braxton

You should go home and get some sleep," Harper said drowsily, letting the pain medication help take her under.
Trent stood up, lowered the head of the gurney, and lifted Harper's head to fluff the pillow before gently lowering her back down.
"I'll see you in the morning," Harper said, refusing to acknowledge the fear she suddenly felt at being left alone. The light went off in the room and Harper's heart started to race. She needed the light on.
The mattress sagged as Trent sat down on the side of the bed. She felt him lean forward and heard him kick off his shoes. He pulled his legs up onto the single gurney and lay down on his side, carefully putting his arm around her. The warmth of his breath behind her ear, the sweetness of his lips against her skin eased the pressure she'd felt building inside.
"Yeah, you will, darlin'. I'll be right here. — Scarlett Cole

Exercise is a powerful weapon and scientifically proven to be as effective at battling depression as medication is---with fewer side effects. — Jay Danek

But God also helped those who helped themselves, and presumably expected the chosen to bring warm clothing, water purification tablets, basic medication, a weapon such as the bronze knives that were selling these days, possibly a tent - in short, to bring some common sense to the party. — Terry Pratchett

Our vices are attempts to combine self-medication and enjoyment. — Mason Cooley

Sometimes, the medication that lifts depression also kills our drive and mutes our orgasms. So sex suffers either way: be happier on meds and feel dead "down there," or be miserable because you can't get out of bed much less want to get back in. — Laurie Watson

I was coming down off the last painkiller left in my dresser drawer after Autumn tossed my stash. In that moment I was so groggy and happy I would have accepted a date with Oscar the Grouch - and planned to do some serious feeling up on the green furry beast too. Yeah, stooping to pharmaceutical-inspired sex fantasies about garbage can Sesame Street characters - that had to be the best Just Say No drug lecture a girl in a leg cast could ever receive to make her go cold turkey off the meds. — Rachel Cohn

When you're dealing with a very sick person and you're doing something to them, an intervention, be it a procedure or a medication, safety is critical. — Anthony Fauci

NOTE TO SELF: Refusing pain medication when someone is forcibly snapping your bone back into place is a bad fucking idea. Especially when it takes multiple tries. If the flash of white light I saw was any indication, the bastards tried to kill me. — Anna Paige

Does not people's preoccupation these days with drugs, alcohol, medication and self deception prove that the truth not only hurts, but it is torture to bear? — James Turner

I have been addicted to it, and it's ultimately related to anxiety coping, and it's a form of self-medication, and I was smoking up to 15 to 20 marijuana cigarettes a day with no tobacco. — Lady Gaga

I understood drinking to be the gasoline of all adventure. — Sarah Hepola

For years, I tried medication, blade, work, escape, all attempts to drown out that incessant, reverberating drum of self-rejection. — Ann Voskamp

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

The journey toward authenticity, toward becoming whole is made palpable in Maureen Seaton's Sex Talks to Girls: A Memoir. It shines its considerable light on the passage from religion toward faith, from self-medication to sobriety, from daughterhood to motherhood, from being the disembodied 'good girl' to embracing her own bad lesbian self. In crisp chapters, Seaton leads us, step-by-step, over this harrowing and blissful road, so distinct from yet so much like our own. — Terry Wolverton

It is not depression or anxiety that truly hurts us. It is our active resistance against these states of mind and body. If you wake up with low energy, hopeless thoughts, and a lack of motivation - that is a signal from you to you. That is a sure sign that something in your mind or in your life is making you sick, and you must attend to that signal. But what do most people do? They hate their depressed feelings. They think "Why me?" They push them down. They take a pill. And so, the feelings return again and again, knocking at your door with a message while you turn up all the noise in your cave, refusing to hear the knocks. Madness. Open the door. Invite in depression. Invite anxiety. Invite self-hatred. Invite shame. Hear their message. Give them a hug. Accept their tirades as exaggerated mistruths typical of any upset person. Love your darkness and you shall know your light. — Vironika Tugaleva

Melting our attachment to self is the most powerful medication for bringing mental and emotional imbalances in check. — Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

What you see is what you get. The island is imaginative enough. Creativity don't need to be wasted on naming things. — Doug Cooper

I think it's a really sad situation when I have to lie to my doctor about what I need a medication for. — Liz Miller

There are people who are just suicidal, regardless. They are built to self-destruct. It seems, in my family, like a virus that's resistant to any kind of help or care or medication. — Miriam Toews

With access to a medicine cabinet full of palliatives, we can avoid introspection. We can delay coming to terms with our inevitable disintegration and avoid investigating the root causes of the spiritual dysfunction that causes our resultant discomfiture. We can medicate ourselves out of thinking beyond placating our immediate needs; we can remain fixated upon expeditiously enhancing our personal pleasure ride. Instead of thinking, all we need is a new prescription drug. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Day after day, more and more medications are prescribed for depression and addiction, assuming that these things run in our blood, when really they run in our patterns of awareness. — Vironika Tugaleva

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

Self-manipulation is our medication. Mythology is our drug. The only cure is honesty. — Stefan Molyneux

Your ability to survive anything that gets thrown at you sometimes leaves the rest of us swallowing ulcer medication for days afterward. I don't like the taste of Maalox. — Patricia Briggs

I primarily use poetry as a purge, a self-medication device when I'm in the depths of loneliness, anxiety or in the throes of depression. When I'm lost in the darkness of mental illness, I spill forth a deluge of words and prose that are oftentimes grim, dark and depressive. And when my poems are spilled forth into one of my poetry journals, I feel a weight has been indeed been lifted from me, and my mind can rest just a bit easier. — Nicholas Trandahl

I think the smartest thing for people to do to manage very distressing emotions is to take a medication if it helps, but don't do only that. You also need to train your mind. — Daniel Goleman

I have an irregular heartbeat, so that means a fair amount of medication - and I have blood pressure pills, too, but no vitamins or supplements. — Maeve Binchy

Medication alone is not to be relied on. In one half the cases medicine is not needed, or is worse than useless. Obedience to spiritual and physical laws
hygeine [sic] of the body, and hygeine of the spirit
is the surest warrant for health and happiness. — Harriot Kezia Hunt

Empathetic listening is an awesome medication for the hurting heart. — Gary Chapman

Unfortunately, I think depression and anxiety are really hard to live with. And what people don't need is to feel bad about themselves because they decide to go on medication. — Rene Russo

I won't say that writing tamed the Black Beast. It soothed him, though, enough so he agreed simply to occupy a corner of my mind ... Gradually, I redirected my focus and skills towards causes much closer to my own heart: writing and mental health advocacy.
[ ... ]
I felt so good at times that I even wondered, was I still bipolar? In my community work, I saw so many people who were much worse off than I was - deep in their disease in a way I no longer seemed to be. I knew that this often happens to manic-depressives: the brain forgets the ravages of the illness they way a woman forgets the pains of childbirth. You have to, to survive. But it's always a dangerous place to be, because you inevitably start to question the need for medication, therapy, and all the other rigorous stopgaps of sanity so carefully put into place to prevent another episode. — Terri Cheney

Don't bother

Me with promises. Vows
are cheaply manufactured,
come with no guarantees.
Don't bother to say you

love

me. The word is indefinable.
Joy to some, heartbreak
to others, depending on
circumstance. There

is

evidence that the emotion
can make a person live longer,
evidence it can kill you early.
I think it's akin to

a deadly

disease. Or at least some
exotic fever. Catch it, and
you'd better, quick, swallow
some medication to use as a

weapon

against the fire ravaging
body and soul. — Ellen Hopkins

Do you have some sort of anti-derangement medication? If so, you might wish to take it. — Katie MacAlister

Before I got on full-time medication, I believed that my mental disorder was the reason I could create so much and create well, because it made me crazy. I could go to these dark places and then come out of it and just be human again. — Mary Lambert

There seems little reason to prescribe anti-depressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients. — Irving Kirsch

The other thing is that if you rely solely on medication to manage depression or anxiety, for example, you have done nothing to train the mind, so that when you come off the medication, you are just as vulnerable to a relapse as though you had never taken the medication. — Daniel Goleman

It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it. — Thomas Sowell

Human bodies are designed for regular physical activity. The sedentary nature of much of modern life probably plays a significant role in the epidemic incidence of depression today. Many studies show that depressed patients who stick to a regimen of aerobic exercise improve as much as those treated with medication. — Andrew Weil

You'll be surprised how infinitely merciful they [these tablets] are. The prescription number is 96814. I think of it as the telephone number of God! — Tennessee Williams

Medical research has revealed that in about one-tenth of the population, the liver processes alcohol differently, releasing a chemical messenger that creates the craving for another drink; once that second drink is taken, the desire is doubled. But the real problem of the alcoholic is actually centered in the mind, because we can't remember why it was such a bad idea to pick up that first drink. Once we start, we can't stop; and when we stop, we can't remember why we shouldn't start again. It is a form of mental illness, like a manic-depressive who, after being stabilized on medication for a while, suddenly decides she is fine and no longer needs her pills. — Kaylie Jones

Writing isn't a career choice. It's self-medication that over time precipitates the madness it was meant to ward off. — Alain De Botton

Add to that cauldron an ever increasing measure of cheap vodka--a form of self-medication that quelled the inner scream but amplified the outer crazy--and you get a picture of the mother I left behind. — Allen Eskens

When adults tell you they are concerned about you,what they usually mean is that they think you are up to no good and are about to have you tested,or increase your medication.Or transfer you to military school. — John David Anderson

Dr. Sankhala is skilled in victimisation novel metastatic tumor medication for patients with advanced malignancies. — Cancercenter

And so far, their most recent results had been perfect. Their meetings in Germany and Switzerland had gone brilliantly. The testing done in their laboratories there was even more rigorous than what had been done in the States. They were sure now. It was safe. They could move ahead to Phase One Human Trials, as soon as the FDA approved it, which meant giving low doses of the medication to a select number of willing, well-informed subjects, and seeing how they fared. — Danielle Steel

People like you are the reason People like me need medication. — Cheyenne McCray

Friendship is a wildly underrated medication. — Anna Deavere Smith

I ask myself: Would I have been any worse off if I had stayed home or lived on a farm instead of shock treatments and medication? — Gene Tierney

I don't have a thyroid anymore. I had radioactive iodine treatment, which destroyed my thyroid. I take medication every day. — Gail Devers

If you have a relative who's lost interest in everything and doesn't get out of bed, who doesn't care for things they used to, can't imagine anything that would give them any pleasure, don't fool around with it; get therapy, get help, get medication if that's right for you, or talk therapy, or something. — Dick Cavett

The human being is so complicated in some ways, and yet so simple in others. Sometimes, we need complex medication regimens. Yet, sometimes, we just need a good cry. — Vironika Tugaleva

I was in the drug store the other day trying to get a cold medication ... Not easy. There's an entire wall of products you need. You stand there going,"Well, this one is quick acting but this is long lasting ... Which is more important, the present or the future?" — Jerry Seinfeld

I am addicted to prescription pain medication. — Rush Limbaugh

I was getting a lot of pressure from people in show business about my being overweight because of medication, I was on 200 mg of amitriptiline. When I said this to my doctor, for some reason she took me completely off medication and she didn't really supervise properly. — Sinead O'Connor

The fields of clinical psychology and psychiatry exist specifically to help the emotionally unstable become more stable and lead happier, healthier lives. Unlike in the eras of Vincent Van Gogh and Abraham Lincoln, there is now professional help available for those who suffer from emotional illness. Treatment may require therapy or even medication, but hope is now available every single day in practically every city in the civilized world. — David J. Lieberman

I take medication every day for mental illness and depression and don't feel bad about it. — Lady Gaga

Medication should never be considered the only tool for helping a person. — Temple Grandin

I didn't know I was depressed until years later. Actually, I went to the Minirth-Meier Clinic for ADD. I got tested for ADD. So, that's nice. It's nice to know you got ADD. So, that puts you on medication. Did that for years. Then got tested for clinical depression. So, finally when they tell you this, you go, 'ahhh, this is great.' So, now this explains events in your life and how you handle them. But our society frowns on it and they don't want their heroes to have these issues, but unfortunately I do. — Terry Bradshaw

I'm serious, Mar, I don't know how to act around him now. I can't be nice, because he'll hate that. But I can't be mean just to be nice."
"You really need medication."
"I'm in a quandary. A Catch-22. I'm screwed. — Kristin Walker

When pressed to tell people how I got myself into my current nepotism-gone-bad situation, I like to describe it as a mini-breakdown. The prefix makes all the difference. It makes it sound more like a vacation than a condition best treated with medication and art therapy. — Jill A. Davis

Psychotherapy is a practice that many different professional disciplines engage. Psychiatrists are also medical doctors and increasingly offer medication and do less and less actual therapy. — Jed Diamond