Alcohol Abuse Quotes

“Millions of deaths would not have happened if it weren’t for the consumption of alcohol. The same can be said about millions of births.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Someone who is trying to be sober is often trying to work out deeper emotional issues and is attempting to undo years of habitual behavior. When you reduce recovery to just abstinence, it simplifies what is really a much more complex issue.”
― Sasha Bronner

“I was a degenerate, with an insatiable capacity for perversion. Incapable of change. I could do anything except not drink.”
― Dan Fante

“Alcohol is one of the quickest vehicles with which we escape shyness, our problems, and self-consciousness, for a few hours.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“I have always found that the Trough periods of the human undulation provide excellent opportunity for all sensual temptations, particularly those of sex. This may surprise you, because, of course, there is more physical energy, and therefore more potential appetite, at the Peak periods; but you must remember that the powers of resistance are then also at their highest. The health and spirits which you... use in producing lust can also... be very easily used for work or play or thought or innocuous merriment. The attack has a much better chance of success when the man's whole inner world is drab and cold and empty. And it is also to be noted that the Trough sexuality is subtly different in quality from that of the Peak - much less likely to lead to... "being in love," much more easily drawn into perversions, much less... generous and imaginative and even spiritual... It is the same with other desires of the flesh. You are much more likely to make [a] man a sound drunkard by pressing drink on him as an anodyne when he is dull and weary... than... when he is happy...”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

“He seemed to be lying on the bed. He could not see very well. Her youthful, rapacious face, with blackened eyebrows, leaned over him as he sprawled there.

“‘How about my present?’ she demanded, half wheedling, half menacing.

“Never mind that now. To work! Come here. Not a bad mouth. Come here. Come closer. Ah!

“No. No use. Impossible. The will but not the way. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Try again. No. The booze, it must be. See Macbeth. One last try. No, no use. Not this evening, I’m afraid.

“All right, Dora, don’t you worry. You’ll get your two quid all right. We aren’t paying by results.

“He made a clumsy gesture. ‘Here, give us that bottle. That bottle off the dressing-table.’

“Dora brought it. Ah, that’s better. That at least doesn’t fail.”
― George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra Flying

“My alcoholism is in no way any sort of excuse for any of my past behaviors. Just because I quit drinking, my life was not suddenly transformed into a tabula rasa-if I have wronged someone, drunk or not, then the responsibility for this lies squarely with me. And I must do my best to set things square with that person. ...
....And just because I am sober now does not mean anyone else should care. I do not deserve a cookie for finally trying to act like a decent human being.”
― D. Randall Blythe, Dark Days: A Memoir

“My father gave me everything he had. Everything I had I gave to alcohol.”
― Dmitry Dyatlov

“You can never replace it. The good news is you do learn to live without it. You miss it. You want it. You hang out with a bunch of other crazy people who feel the same way and you live with it. And eventually, you start to sound like a cloying self-help book, like me.”
― Augusten Burroughs, Dry

“You don’t have be lying in a hospital bed to be alcoholic. Many alcoholics function at a high level and appear fine. But, bit by bit, as the dependence gets more control, their life starts to unravel – their body, their relationships, their work, their ability to be productive, their mood, their self-respect, their will to live. They have to give it the flick. There isn’t any other way. Give it the flick or it’s gotcha.”
― Donna Goddard, Purnima

“Sam groaned. A warmth on her face alerted her to the new morning. She opened one eye and peered at the fuzzy daylight streaming in through the window. Her head throbbed like a bitch. Her mouth felt like a carpet. She pushed herself off the couch and stood up shakily, kicking bottles as she stumbled to her small kitchen. Every movement was painful and slow. She was a sloth tight-roping through time. She held onto the basin for a moment to steady herself. She grabbed a plastic cup and opened the tap, letting it flow as she filled and refilled it, gulping down as much water as she could. She splashed her face, neck and chest with water, then refilled the cup and dumped the contents over her head. She stood there, unaware of the moments passing by, as the water dripped down her body. Willing herself to wake up and feel better. Willing the nausea into oblivion.”
― Adelheid Manefeldt, Consequence

“Every morning, my hangover feels like being born again. My head throbs, like being squeezed and pushed out, fists trembling, throat grunting and wailing in protest of the light, screaming for the comfort of warm, dark silence.”
― Rasmenia Massoud, You Don't See Any of This

“In an excuse to drink lies reason not to drink.”
― Criss Jami

“Alcohol is often the last refuge of a beaten people. In that fiery liquid, any honour in defeat vanishes, and, in the eyes of the enemy, they become the pathetic, caricatured wretches they sought to make them from the beginning.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Alcoholics drown in a sea of wine.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“Nación en que abundan los hijos de alcohólicos, ésta condenada a vivir en el desconcierto, en la vacilación, en la festinación y en la inconstancia.”
― Alberto Masferrer, El Dinero Maldito

“The drinking, the skipping school – all of it – was about regaining some sort of control. That night I felt there just might be enough magic in the world to help me through constant upheaval and loss. What I didn’t realize was that the more I drank, the less in control I was.”
― Sasha Martin, Life from Scratch: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Forgiveness

“I don't need alcohol to see the world in its depths, I carry the sun in me. - On Being Inebriated.”
― Lamine Pearlheart

“Well, you were a difficult child - that’s all there is to it,” Mom said.
I remembered all the times my mother ignored me when I needed to talk. “And you were a difficult mother.” With that, I hung up the phone. Again, it was weeks before we spoke.”
― Jacelyn Cane, Mom and Dad's Martinis: A Memoir

“Following dinner, we tidied up and Mom and Dad went straight to bed at about eight o’clock. The house was dark and spooky on Sunday nights. Dad said he had to go to bed early on Sundays because he had “the yips.” Eventually I took that to mean he was hungover and had to get his sleep to be ready for another week of work.”
― Jacelyn Cane, Mom and Dad's Martinis: A Memoir

“Labels = Stigma = Low Self-Esteem = Self-Pity =
Drug/Alcohol Abuse Excuses”
― D.C. Hyden, The Sober Addict

“Alas, I drinketh and my brain doth shrinketh.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman

“Alcoholics drowns in a sea of wine.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“The journey of alcoholism begins with a drinking toast.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“You start drinking alcohol, then alcohol starts drinking you.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“I abused alcohol and it abused me back.”
― D.C. Hyden, The Sober Addict

“The devil wants me dead but he will settle for drunk.”
― Patrick Harrington, Recreating Patrick: An Inside Job

“Alcohol is popular, but alcoholics are not.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“An alcoholic is dependent on alcohol. Alcohol is dependent on the bottle.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov

“There’s a unique clarity that the fog of alcohol conveys; a spiritual plane that can only be reached through substance, as the body, which it numbs, creates interference to the more, unable to process what’s here and now.”
― Scott Thompson, Lost in ‘96