Self Medication Quotes

“it does seem
the more we drink
the better the words
go.”
― Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

“I understood drinking to be the gasoline of all adventure.”
― Sarah Hepola, Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget

“Maybe my addictive tendencies weren't limited to my zest for things I could drink. Like maybe (I learned while working with my therapist) I had broader issues with control and addiction and using substances to dial down my anxiety. And maybe self-medication is a real dangerous way of trying to quiet the noise of a mental health disorder. And maybe alcoholism also runs in the family.”
― Anne T. Donahue, Nobody Cares

“I drank whiskey because I was depressed, and whiskey made sure I stayed depressed.”
― Donald Hall, A Carnival Of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety

“The hoarder self-medicated with things the way other trauma survivors self medicate with drugs or alcohol--”
― Randy O. Frost, Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things

“What you see is what you get. The island is imaginative enough. Creativity don’t need to be wasted on naming things.”
― Doug Cooper

“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, Dead Toad Scrolls

“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, Dead Toad Scrolls

“Using pain medication protects us from feeling select infirmities. There is an extensive list of medications available to reduce or eliminate unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential physical damage as well as moderate depression and anxiety associated with chronic pain. A recognized danger of taking various pain diminishing medicines is that some pharmaceutical drugs prevent people from feeling ordinary symptoms of pain that would otherwise alert them to the existence of a medical condition that might be life threatening if not immediately treated. Sometimes we must not act to mask or dull pain but listen to the important message that pain sends us. Experiencing fundamental variations in our exterior world or undergoing a series of personal transformations can prove painful and life altering.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“We take drug abuse very seriously, Lydia.”
Abuse? Use, surely. She was using it exactly as intended.”
― Eddie Robson, Drunk on All Your Strange New Words

“A common argument is that the real danger of people self-diagnosing with ADHD is that it could lead to people self-medicating for ADHD too.
But, I'm sorry... What?!
Do you believe there are actually people out there convincing themselves they have ADHD, purposefully deciding not to go to a doctor about it, and instead planning to buy a regular supply of Dexies from their sketchy cousin for literally 100x the prescription price?”
― Matilda Boseley, The Year I Met My Brain: A travel companion for adults who have just found out they have ADHD