Sign in with Facebook
Addictions, even as they resemble normal human yearnings, are more about desire than attainment. In the addicted mode, the emotional charge is in the pursuit and the acquisition of the desired object, not in the possession and enjoyment of
...more
“Just as when all legal routes to alcohol were cut off, beer disappeared and whisky won, when all legal routes to opiates are cut off, Oxy disappears, and heroin prevails. This isn’t a law of nature, and it isn’t caused by the drug—it is caused by the drug policy we have chosen. After the end of alcohol prohibition, White Lightning vanished—who’s even heard of it now?—and beer went back to being America’s favorite alcoholic drink. There are heroin addicts all across the United States today who would have stayed happily on Oxy if there had been a legal route to it.”
― Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
― Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
“they would have worried for my soul. Pronin calls this phenomenon the “illusion of asymmetric insight.” She writes: The conviction that we know others better than they know us—and that we may have insights about them they lack (but not vice versa)—leads us to talk when we would do well to listen and to be less patient than we ought to be when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly.”
― Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know
― Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know
“The opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety. It’s connection.”
― Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
― Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
“All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end.”
― American Gods
― American Gods
“If your problem is being chronically starved of social bonds, then part of the solution is to bond with the heroin itself and the relief it gives you. But a bigger part is to bond with the subculture that comes with taking heroin—the tribe of fellow users all embarked on the same mission and facing the same threats and risking death every day with you. It gives you an identity. It gives you a life of highs and lows, instead of relentless monotony. The world stops being indifferent to you, and starts being hostile—which is at least proof that you exist, that you aren’t dead already. The heroin helps users deal with the pain of being unable to form normal bonds with other humans. The heroin subculture gives them bonds with other human beings.”
― Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
― Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs
Alexander’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Alexander’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
1,469 books
|
67 friends
1,213 books
|
12 friends
250 books
|
10 friends
1,241 books
|
184 friends
777 books
|
49 friends
126 books
|
91 friends
390 books
|
24 friends
176 books
|
3 friends
More friends…
Favorite Genres
Polls voted on by Alexander
Lists liked by Alexander