Are you struggling with an addiction? If you or someone you love is fighting against substance abuse, the following addiction quotes will help on the journey towards recovery. For even more support, have a look at these uplifting addiction recovery quotes.
When you are fighting with an addiction, every bit of support is more than welcome. When the battle gets tough, it can be quite helpful to read or listen to inspirational individuals who successfully overcame their addiction.
Sadly, the world is filled with highly addictive substances. What makes things even more difficult is that there are also many behaviors one can get addicted to.
“The mentality and behavior of drug addicts and alcoholics is wholly irrational until you understand that they are completely powerless over their addiction and unless they have structured help, they have no hope.”
Russel Brand
The fight against addiction is so difficult because the behavior is deeply rooted in the brain. Even worse, most addictions develop their tight grasp slowly over time. For this reason, many addicts do not even recognize that they have become addicted.
These addiction quotes will support you on your journey
However, the first step towards recovery is the acknowledgment that one is addicted. The second and perhaps even more important step is to seek help. Without such help, the battle against an addiction becomes even more difficult.
105 Inspirational Addiction Quotes for Your Recovery
Worldwide, millions of individuals have struggled with addiction. The following authors were either themselves confronted with substance abuse or have helped someone who was addicted. That’s what wakes the following drug addiction quotes so powerful.
There’s a great deal to learn from these people’s experiences. Many of them had to fight an addiction themselves. As such, they have developed unique insights on the best strategies to overcome an addiction.
Here’s our list of uplifting addiction quotes:
1.
“I got sober. I stopped killing myself with alcohol. I began to think: ‘Wait a minute – if I can stop doing this, what are the possibilities?’ And slowly it dawned on me that it was maybe worth the risk.“
Craig Ferguson
2.
“Recovery from addiction requires hard work, a proper attitude, and learning skills to stay sober, not drinking alcohol or using other drugs. Successful drug recovery or alcohol recovery involves changing attitudes, acquiring knowledge, and developing skills to meet the many challenges of sobriety.“
Dr. Dennis Daley
3.
“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.“
C.S. Lewis
4.
“If you can quit for a day, you can quit for a lifetime.“
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
5.
“We honor ourselves when we speak out for recovery. We show the world that recovery matters because it brings hope and peace into the lives of individuals and their loved ones.“
Beth Wilson
6.
“Addiction begins with the hope that something “out there” can instantly fill up the emptiness inside.“
Jean Kilbourne
7.
“There’s a peculiar thing that happens every time you get clean. You go through this sensation of rebirth. There’s something intoxicating about the process of the comeback, and that becomes an element in the whole cycle of addiction.“
Anthony Keidis
8.
“I think that little by little I’ll be able to solve my problems and survive.“
Frida Kahlo
9.
“You are not an alcoholic or an addict. You are not incurably diseased. You have merely become dependent on substances or addictive behavior to cope with underlying conditions that you are now going to heal, at which time your dependency will cease completely and forever.“
Chris Prentiss
10.
“I guess the worst day I have had was when I had to stand up in rehab in front of my wife and daughter and say, ‘Hi, my name is Sam, and I am an addict.“
Samuel J. Jackson
11.
“One of the hardest things was learning that I was worth recovery.“
Demi Lovato
12.
“I used to think a drug addict was someone who lived on the far edges of society. Wild-eyed, shaven-headed and living in a filthy squat. That was until I became one…“
Cathryn Kemp
13.
“Drugs are a waste of time. They destroy your memory and your self-respect and everything that goes along with your self-esteem.“
Kurt Cobain
14.
“Not all addictions are rooted in abuse or trauma, but I do believe they can all be traced to painful experience. A hurt is at the center of all addictive behaviors.“
Gabor Mate
15.
“Using excuses for the predicament you’re in and minimizing your situation, whether it is drug or alcohol use, is a sure sign of an addict.“
Alexandra Sobetsky
16.
“It takes a strong person to stand up to his or her fate and overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of freedom and success, but I believe in you.“
Pax Prentiss
17.
“For all the alcoholics and addicts out there, you are loved, stop being so stubborn and come in from the cold. Wherever you are, there is a brighter light in your sight. Move towards it every day, and keep moving towards it. Even the worst and strongest addiction is a choice – a choice not to fight, to give up, to indulge the impulse, or instead to accept the hands offered you to help.“
Dave Pryor
18.
“Imagine trying to live without air. Now imagine something worse.“
Amy Reed
19.
“I used drugs to feel better. I quit drugs to be better.“
Unknown
20.
“Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions, or death.“
Russell Brand
21.
“Recovery is not for people who need it. It’s for people who want it.“
Unknown
22.
“Addiction, at its worst, is akin to having Stockholm Syndrome. You’re like a hostage who has developed an irrational affection for your captor. They can abuse you, torture you, even threaten to kill you, and you’ll remain inexplicably and disturbingly loyal.“
Anne Clendening
23.
“It’s like an addiction, one I battle every day. It appeared at first drink. I was becoming the very thing I feared – my father’s son. I wanted to be as far away from that Threshold as possible. I swore I’d never take another sip, no matter how crazy it made me. No matter how much it called to me. Resisting became easier with time.“
Sara Ella
24.
“Once you’ve beaten yourself down with cocaine and heroin, and you manage to stop and walk out of the muck you begin to get your mind and body strong and reconnect with your spirit. The oppressive feeling of being a slave to the drugs is still in your mind, so by comparison, you feel phenomenal. You’re happy to be alive, smelling the air and seeing the beauty around you… You have a choice of what to do.“
Anthony Keidis
25.
“We recognize that you’ve used substances to try to regain your lost balance, to try to feel the way you did before the need arose to use addictive drugs or alcohol. We know that you use substances to alter your mood, to cover up your sadness, to ease your heartbreak, to lighten your stress load, to blur your painful memories, to escape your hurtful reality, or to make your unbearable days or nights bearable.“
Chris Prentiss
26.
“Never underestimate a recovering addict. We fight for our lives every day in ways most people will never understand.“
Unknown
27.
“Addiction – when you can give up something any time, as long as it’s next Tuesday.”
Nikki Sixx
28.
“Addiction: the disease that makes you too selfish to see the havoc that you created or care about the people whose lives you shattered.“
Unknown
29.
“Recovery from addiction requires hard work, a proper attitude and learning skills to stay sober, not drinking alcohol or using other drugs. Successful drug recovery or alcohol recovery involves changing attitudes, acquiring knowledge, and developing skills to meet the many challenges of sobriety“
Dennis Daley
30.
“What fascinates me about addiction and obsessive behavior is that people would choose an altered state of consciousness that’s toxic and ostensibly destroys most aspects of your normal life, because for a brief moment you feel okay.”
Moby
31.
“Substance abuse is a very real trap. Drugs and alcohol are very much like an abusive lover who treats you well at first and then beats you up, apologizes, gives you nice treatment for a while, and then beats you up again. The trap is in trying to hang in there for the good while trying to overlook the bad. Wrong. This can never work.“
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
32.
“Unless an addict wants to quit, they’ll find a way to get drugs, and as soon as they leave the rehab facility they’ll pick up where they left off.“
Mitch Winehouse
33.
“All the suffering, stress, and addiction comes from not realizing you already are what you are looking for.“
Jon Kabat-Zinn
34.
“It is impossible to understand addiction without asking what relief the addict finds, or hopes to find, in the drug or the addictive behavior.“
Gabor Mate
35.
“It’s not the drugs that make a drug addict. It’s the need to escape reality.“
Unknown
36.
“Recovery is a process. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes everything you’ve got.“
Unknown
37.
“The priority of any addict is to anesthetize the pain of living to ease the passage of day with some purchased relief.“
Russell Brand
38.
“We don’t choose to be addicted; what we choose to do is deny our pain.“
Unknown
39.
“Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error of judgment.“
Philip Dick
40.
“Days will pass, and you’ll abandon things you were addicted to, and leave someone, and cancel a dream, and finally, accept a reality.“
Nizar Qabbani
41.
“The questions, of course, could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in the other direction. Junk wins by default.“
William S. Burrough
42.
“I didn’t even know I was addicted until I tried to stop.“
Unknown
43.
“Think about the stigma that is attached to the idea that alcoholism is a disease, an incurable illness, and you have it. That’s a terrible thing to inflict on someone. Labeling alcoholism as a disease, a cause unto itself, simply no longer fits with what we know today about its causes.“
Chris Prentiss
44.
“We use all kinds of ways to escape – all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can’t stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.“
Pema Chödrön
45.
“As often is the case with addictions, the fanciful notion of a gradual discontinuance only provided a comforting pretext for more sustained indulgence.“
Ron Chernow
46.
“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
47.
“Human beings have a deep need to bond and form connections. If we can’t connect with each other, we will connect with whatever we can find … It is disconnection that drives addiction.“
Christopher Kennedy Lawford
48.
“Most addicts I have talked to report a similar experience. They did not start using drugs for any reason they can remember. They just drifted along until they got hooked. If you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea what it means to need junk with the addict’s special need. You don’t decide to be an addict. One morning you wake up sick and you’re an addict.“
William S. Burroughs
49.
“At first, addiction is maintained by pleasure, but the intensity of this pleasure gradually diminishes and the addiction is then maintained by the avoidance of pain“
Frank Tallis
50.
“Addiction is pretty simple. It’s what happens when people don’t get what they need, and end up soothing themselves.“
Gabor Maté
51.
“When your spirit becomes dark and your lifestyle becomes dark, your existence is susceptible to infiltration by dark spirits. I’ve seen it so many times with addicts. You can see that they’re controlled by dark energy, the way they look, their appearance, their voice, their behavior, it’s not them.“
Anthony Kiedis
52.
“People use drugs, legal and illegal, because their lives are intolerably painful or dull. They hate their work and find no rest in their leisure. They are estranged from their families and their neighbors. It should tell us something that in healthy societies drug use is celebrative, convivial, and occasional, whereas among us it is lonely, shameful, and addictive. We need drugs, apparently, because we have lost each other.“
Wendell Berry
53.
“Someone once told me, ‘I heard you finally got rid of your addiction.’ I smiled and said, ‘No, addiction doesn’t work like that. Once you have it, you will always have it. I just choose not to feed it.“
Unknown
54.
“At every stage, addiction is driven by one of the most powerful, mysterious, and vital forces of human existence. What drives addiction is longing — a longing not just of brain, belly or loin, but finally of the heart.“
Cornelius Platinga
55.
“There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away.“
Sherman Alexie
56.
“Drugs take you to hell, disguised as heaven.“
Donald Lyn Frost
57.
“While susceptibility varies, addiction can happen to any of us, through a subtle process where the bonds of degradation are too light to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.“
Charlie Munger
58.
“I wanted to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you. When your whole life breaks down. That’s the moment when you have to somehow choose what your life is going to be about.“
Chuck Palahniuk
59.
“Most people are no match for their addictions. They will be driven to do things they would normally never have considered all in the name of getting high. Sad, but true. So if you’re thinking of trying drugs, keep in mind that all the people you will be dealing with are likely to steal from you and lie to you at your own expense.“
Ashly Lorenzana
60.
“If you know someone who tries to drown their sorrows, you might tell them that sorrows know how to swim.“
Ann Landers
61.
“You cannot quite understand the power of addiction until you have seen it firsthand. Until you have seen it eat like acid through everything you are. It is astounding to watch. Its slow and total corrosion of your entire life is mesmerizing. As you watch it, you keep thinking, “At some point, the corrosion will stop. There is no way it will be able to eat through this next thing. This next thing is too important to me.” But then it does. It eats through everything. And you realize you are dealing with a vast and inhuman power.“
Mother Horse Eyes
62.
“Addiction is like a curse and until it is broken, its victim will perpetually remain in the shackles of bondage.“
Oche Otorkpa
63.
“Addiction brings apathy. Break the apathy, and you break the addiction.“
Mango Wodzak
64.
“Alcohol is the reduced form of spirit. Therefore, many people, lacking spirit, take to drink. They fill themselves with alcohol.“
Carl Jung
65.
“Addiction is the only prison where the locks are on the inside.“
Unknown
66.
“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine or idealism.“
Carl Gustav Jung
67.
“No one consciously chooses addiction to a substance or behavior over his partner. There are always reasons – powerful ones – why a person retreats into addiction.“
Christopher Kennedy Lawford
68.
“If I had to offer up a one-sentence definition of addiction, I’d call it a form of mourning for the irrecoverable glories of the first time.“
Ann Marlowe
69.
“If you can stop using substance or stop your addictive behavior for extended periods of time without craving, you are not dependent. You are dependent only if you can’t stop without physical or psychological distress (you have unpleasant physical and/or psychological withdrawal symptoms) or if you stop and then relapse.“
Chris Prentiss
70.
“An addict newly separated from their thing, whether it’s drinking, drugs, throwing up ten times a day or anything else is like a person with no head. Your entire identity goes M.I.A. once you’re no longer doing it.“
Anne Clendening
71.
“There is always a decision. Take responsibility for it. Addict or human. It’s a decision. Each and every time.“
James Frey
72.
“Whether you sniff it, smoke it or eat it, result is the same: addiction.“
William S. Burroughs
73.
“It is time to embrace mental health and substance use/abuse as illnesses. Addiction is a disease.“
Steven Kassels
74.
“Drugs are a bet with your mind.“
Jim Morrison
75.
“I think if you were Satan and you were setting around trying to think up something that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics.“
Cormac McCarthy
76.
“What is addiction, really? It is a sign, a signal, a symptom of distress. It is a language that tells us about a plight that must be understood“
Alice Miller
77.
“Your decision to kill your addiction will become a reality only if you believe and reinforce the fact that you have the capacity to do it.“
Oche Otorkpa
78.
“Addiction is not shameful. It is a disease.“
Raju Mangrola
79.
“Alcohol and drugs are not the problems; they are what people are using to help themselves cope with the problems. Those problems always have both physical and psychological components- anything from anemia, hypoglycemia, or a sluggish thyroid to attention deficient disorder, brain-wave pattern imbalances, or deep emotional pain.“
Chris Prentiss
80.
“Addictions… started out like magical pets, pocket monsters. They did extraordinary tricks, showed you things you hadn’t seen, were fun. But came, through some gradual dire alchemy, to make decisions for you. Eventually, they were making your most crucial life-decisions. And they were… less intelligent than goldfish“
William Gibson
81.
“We, as a society, have arbitrarily differentiated between acceptable and unacceptable drug addictions.“
Steven Kassels
82.
“It’s so exhausting, so mentally and emotionally draining when you care about a drug addict and they never miss an opportunity to disappoint, manipulate or hurt you.“
Oliver Markus Malloy
83.
“In these days of increasing addictions, we have wandered far away from our Father’s home. The addicted life can aptly be designated a life lived in “a distant country.” It is from there that our cry for deliverance rises up.“
Henri J.M. Nouwen
84.
“Addiction is only a hopeless attempt to deal with the pain of living cut off from who we really are.“
Dragos Bratasanu
85.
“The condition in extreme is identifiable but the less obvious version of addiction is still painful and arguably worse because we simply adapt to living in pain.“
Russell Brand
86.
“One thing you must realize is that: you either kill your addiction or your addiction will eventually kill you.“
Oche Otorkpa
87.
“Sometimes we say, “I didn’t want to do it, but it’s stronger than me, it pushed me. So that is a seed, a habit energy, that may have come from many generations in the past. We can smile at our shortcomings, at our habit energy. With awareness, we have a choice; we can act another way. We can end the cycle of suffering right now.“
Thich Nhat Hanh
88.
“Treatment for dependency at substance abuse treatment centers must change if alcoholism and addiction are to be overcome in our society.“
Chris Prentiss
89.
“It is difficult to feel sympathy for these people. It is difficult to regard some bawdy drunk and see them as sick and powerless. It is difficult to suffer the selfishness of a drug addict who will lie to you and steal from you and forgive them and offer them help. Can there be any other disease that renders its victims so unappealing?“
Russell Brand
90.
“It was as if the pearly gates had just opened and God had walked out and said, “Pax, my son, I’m going to free you from your addiction. I’m going to let you see why you’ve been using heroin and all the other drugs for the past ten years.“
Pax Prentiss
91.
“Smoking is an outward signal of inner turmoil or conflict and most smoking has less to do with nicotine addiction and more to do with the need for reassurance.“
Allan Pease
92.
“Addiction makes love impossible.“
Bell Hooks
93.
“I couldn’t stop so I quit.“
Brian Spellman
94.
“The initial journey towards sobriety is a delicate balance between insight into one’s desire for escape and abstinence from one’s addiction“
Debra L. Kaplan
95.
“Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that’s all that’s happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction.“
Pema Chödrön
96.
“We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.“
Santosh Kalwar
97.
“I, the unfortunate Doctor Polyakov, who became addicted to morphine in February of this year, warn anyone who may suffer the same fate not to attempt to replace morphine with cocaine. Cocaine is a most foul and insidious poison. Yesterday Anna barely managed to revive me with camphor injections and today I am half dead.“
Mikhail Bulgakov
98.
“Understanding the difference between healthy striving and perfectionism is critical to laying down the shield and picking up your life. Research shows that perfectionism hampers success. In fact, it’s often the path to depression, anxiety, addiction, and life paralysis.“
Brené Brown
99.
“The high is what you crave, what you would kill for… and believe me, you will lie to yourself until it’s too late to stop.“
H. Alazhar
100.
“I used to condemn junkies, like they could get off the stuff if they really wanted to, and that is just as stupid as saying, “You could grow eyes in the back of your head if you really wanted to.“
Philip K. Dick
101.
“Imperfect parenting does not cause addiction. If that were so, everyone would be one.“
Sandy Swenson
102.
“We’re all addicted to something that takes away the pain“
Belle Aurora
103.
“One thing I’ve learned is it’s better to be addicted to things than people. You get hooked on a thing and if someone takes it from you, you can find another source. Only people can really hurt you. Only people can push you out into the cold permanently.“
A.M. Riley
104.
“Addiction itself is the process with which an individual becomes personally consumed with an object, a subject, a substance, or a particular activity.“
Asa Don Brown
105.
“Addiction is the primary way people escape the modern world. Unfortunately, it is destroying the modern world.“
Christyl Rivers
I hope you enjoyed this collection of addiction quotes. Feel free to share your most favorite quotes with someone that is struggling with addiction.
Stay victorious!
Don’t hesitate to ask for help if you need it. The very first step towards recovery is to seek help. The number of the Drug or Alcohol Addiction Recovery Helpline is 1-888-319-2606. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) can be reached via the phone number 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
