#addict

The psyche cannot tolerate a vacuum of love. In the severely abused or deprived child, pain, dis-ease, and violance rush in to fill the void. In the average person in our culture, who has been only "normally" deprived of touch, anxiety and an insatiable hunger for posessions replace the missing eros. The child lacking a sense of welcome, joyous belonging, gratuitous security, will learn to hoard the limited supply of affection. According to the law of psychic compensation, not being held leads to holding on, grasping, addiction, posessiveness. Gradually, things replace people as a source of pleasure and security. When the gift of belonging with is denied, the child learns that love means belongin to. To the degree we are arrested at this stage of development, the needy child will dominate our motivations. Other people and things (and there is fundamentally no difference) will be seen as existing solely for the purpose of "my" survival and satisfaction. "Mine" will become the most important word. ↗

— Sam Keen

#codependency #narcissism #life

Have you ever gotten to a point where you looked at your own life, thought "Fu** this," and reached for the economy-sized Valium? Ah, suicide. So dark and seductive. ↗

— Rebecca O'Donnell

#addiction #hope #memoir #suicide #life

Sitting on the train I watch the scenery speeding by, notice a cobweb in the top corner of the window, undulating with a gentle breeze I can’t feel. I lean back in my seat and take my book out of the carrier bag. Turning it over in my hand, it feels warm. It feels how I want to feel; full of knowledge, full of the future. The time I’ve spent staying in bed smoking dope I’ve been hibernating, recuperating and gaining strength. I’m weak socially, but being away from other drug users has made me resilient. It’s allowed my mind and body to heal and mend. As if the winter is over, I’ve come out stronger now. I’m on my own. I have the choice of what to do with my life. I’m going to stay clean. I’m going to be the woman I can be. ↗

— Christine Lewry

#drugs #heroin #parenting-teens #true-stories-drugs #true-story

Having a moment of clarity was one thing; I'd had moments like that before. It had to be followed with a dedicated push of daily exercise. It's a trite axiom, but practice DOES make perfect. If you want to be a strong swimmer or an accomplished musician, you have to practice. It's the same with sobriety, though the stakes are higher. If you don't practice your program every day, you're putting yourself in a position where you could fly out of the orbit one more time. ↗

— Anthony Kiedis

#musician

It is not I who become addicted, it is my body. ↗

— Jean Cocteau

#become #body #i #who

I had always turned it down-to me, smoking pot was absolutely the worst thing in the world. I thought of it as an addiction, and all my friends who smoked it, I felt they really needed help. ↗

— Tommy Rettig

#addiction #always #felt #friends #had

If you're an addict, it controls your life and your life becomes uncontrollable. It's boring and painful, filling your system with something that makes you stare at your shoes for six hours. ↗

— James Taylor

#becomes #boring #controls #filling #hours

We might say that the state is like an addictive drug: the more of it we have, the more we 'need' it and the more we come to 'depend' on it. ↗

— Michael Taylor

#come #depend #like #might #more

I'm addicted to creating and writing. ↗

— Bret Michaels

#creating #i #writing

The Moth don't care when he sees The Flame. He might get burned, but he's in the game. And once he's in, he can't go back, he'll Beat his wings 'til he burns them black... No, The Moth don't care when he sees The Flame. . . The Moth don't care if The Flame is real, 'Cause Flame and Moth got a sweetheart deal. And nothing fuels a good flirtation, Like Need and Anger and Desperation... No, The Moth don't care if The Flame is real. . . ↗

— Aimee Mann

#fire #flame #moths #anger