174 Quotes About Addiction-and-recovery

There is a psychological fact that, I believe, provides a powerful incentive for people to cling to genetic theories. We human beings don’t like feeling responsible: as individuals for our own actions; as parents for our children’s hurts; or as a society for our many failings. Genetics—that neutral, impassive, impersonal handmaiden of Nature —would absolve us of responsibility and of its ominous shadow, guilt. If genetics ruled our fate, we would not need to blame ourselves or anyone else.

In the final analysis, it’s not the activity or object itself that defines an addiction but our relationship to whatever is the external focus of our attention or behaviour.

The ego can never get enough—it doesn’t even know the concept.

Psychological maturation is the development of a sense of self as separate from inner experience.

[P]reaching at people about behaviours, even self-destructive ones, did little good when I didn’t or couldn’t help them with the emotional dynamics driving those behaviours.

The obesity epidemic demonstrates a psychological and spiritual emptiness at the core of consumer society. We feel powerless and isolated, so we become passive. We lead harried lives, so we long for escape. In Buddhist practice people are taught to chew slowly, being aware of every morsel, every taste. Eating becomes an exercise in awareness. In our culture it’s just the opposite. Food is the universal soother, and many are driven to eat themselves into psychological oblivion.

Self-regulation does not refer to “good behaviour” but to the capacity of an individual to maintain a reasonably even internal emotional environment. A person with good self-regulation will not experience rapidly shifting extremes of emotional highs and lows in the face of life’s challenges, difficulties, disappointments and satisfactions.

Drugs do not make the addict into a criminal; the law does. When alcohol was prohibited, drinkers were breaking the law.

In the internal world of the psyche, [...] freedom means [...] the ability to opt for our long-term physical and spiritual well-being as opposed to our immediate urges. Absent that ability, any talk of “free will” or “choice” becomes nearly meaningless.