Gilly Pearse

“Perhaps I would have given in each time. And we know where that story leads. It’s led to the same place for millions of people. It leads to a sense of total loss of control, and to stigma, suffering, and eventually to helplessness and desperation. It leads to addiction.”
― Travis Rieder, In Pain: A Bioethicist's Personal Struggle with Opioids

“Bookstores attract the right kind of folk. Good people like A.J. and Amelia. And I like talking about books with people who like talking about books. I like paper. I like how it feels, and I like the feel of a book in my back pocket. I like how a new book smells,”
― Gabrielle Zevin, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“And since the higher-order values are the ones that more represent who the person is, an addiction is a genuine challenge to one’s identity in that it leads them to act contrary to what they care about.”
― Travis Rieder, In Pain: A Bioethicist's Personal Struggle with Opioids

“As philosopher Brendan de Kenessey puts the point: when addiction leads someone to abandon his family or lose his job, it’s not that he’s changed his values; it’s that he—the part of his mind more representative of who he is—has lost the battle to his supercharged cravings.”
― Travis Rieder, In Pain: A Bioethicist's Personal Struggle with Opioids