Audrey

“Addiction can show us what is deeply suspect about nostalgia. That drive to return to the past isn’t an innocent one. It’s about stopping your passage to the future, it’s a symptom of fear of death, and the love of predictable experience. And the love of predictable experience, not the drug itself, is the major damage done to heroin users. Not getting on with your life is much more likely than going to the emergency room, and much harder to discern from the inside.”
― Ann Marlowe, How to Stop Time: Heroin from A to Z

“The purpose of spiritual life is not to create some special state of mind. A state of mind is always temporary. The purpose is to work directly with the most primary elements of our body and our mind, to see the ways we get trapped by our fears, desires and anger, and to learn directly our capacity for freedom.”
― Jack Kornfield, A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

“Drinking alone is what you do when you can’t stand the feeling of living in your own skin. Boswell describes this in his Life of Johnson: “I drink alone,” Johnson explains, “to get rid of myself, to send myself away. Wine makes a man better pleased with himself.”
― Caroline Knapp, Drinking: A Love Story

“I learned early on how to act normal even when crazy things were happening.”
― Karen Franklin, Addicted Like Me: A Mother-Daughter Story of Substance Abuse and Recovery