Denial Drug Addiction Quotes

My throat tightened, but I held back the tears and reminded myself that withdrawing from a woman is no different than kicking a drug; you feel shaky and you want it, but eventually the need passes, and you feel restored.

People don't care about being duped as long as they're happy, which is the shortest form of happiness; hence 'self-duprication' becomes a habit.

And my car back then, a Studebaker as I recall, was powered, as are most of all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused, addictive, and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels. When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won't be any left. Cold turkey. Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn't the TV news is it? Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we're hooked on.

Her dark thoughts spilled like a large coffee overflowing in an espresso cup. The coffee was bitter and strong, full of caffeine. It was a drug she didn't like, an addiction of darkness that was embedded inside her. It was a coffee being served without a smile, and one that she didn't want to drink.

Being real takes tremendous courage. We like approval, and we like respect, and to say otherwise is another form of denial. To wish for the admiration of others is normal. The problem is that this admiration can become a drug. Many of you are addicted to this drug, and the destruction to your wealth and financial well-being caused by your addiction is huge. Radical change in the quest for approval, which has involved purchasing stuff with money we don’t have, is required for a money breakthrough. Sara’s breakthrough came with family. Her family was upper-middle-crust and had always given Christmas gifts to every member. With twenty nieces and nephews and six sets of adults to buy for, just on her side, the budget was ridiculous. Sara’s announcement at Thanksgiving that this year Christmas giving was going to be done with the drawing of names, because she and Bob couldn’t afford it, was earth-shattering. Some of you are grinning as if this is no big deal. It was a huge deal in Sara’s family! Gift giving was a tradition! Her mother and two of her sisters-in-law were furious. Very little thanks were given that Thanksgiving, but Sara stood her ground and said, “No more.” Sara

What, then, is addiction? In the words of a consensus statement by addiction experts in 2001, addiction is a “chronic neurobiological disease… characterized by behaviors that include one or more of the following: impaired control over drug use, compulsive use, continued use despite harm, and craving.” The key features of substance addiction are the use of drugs or alcohol despite negative consequences, and relapse. I’ve heard some people shrug off their addictive tendencies by saying, for example, “I can’t be an alcoholic. I don’t drink that much…” or “I only drink at certain times.” The issue is not the quantity or even the frequency, but the impact. “An addict continues to use a drug when evidence strongly demonstrates the drug is doing significant harm…. If users show the pattern of preoccupation and compulsive use repeatedly over time with relapse, addiction can be identified.” Helpful as such definitions are, we have to take a broader view to understand addiction fully. There is a fundamental addiction process that can express itself in many ways, through many different habits. The use of substances like heroin, cocaine, nicotine and alcohol are only the most obvious examples, the most laden with the risk of physiological and medical consequences. Many behavioural, nonsubstance addictions can also be highly destructive to physical health, psychological balance, and personal and social relationships. Addiction is any repeated behaviour, substance-related or not, in which a person feels compelled to persist, regardless of its negative impact on his life and the lives of others. Addiction involves: 1. compulsive engagement with the behaviour, a preoccupation with it; 2. impaired control over the behaviour; 3. persistence or relapse, despite evidence of harm; and 4. dissatisfaction, irritability or intense craving when the object — be it a drug, activity or other goal — is not immediately available. Compulsion, impaired control, persistence, irritability, relapse and craving — these are the hallmarks of addiction — any addiction. Not all harmful compulsions are addictions, though: an obsessive-compulsive, for example, also has impaired control and persists in a ritualized and psychologically debilitating behaviour such as, say, repeated hand washing. The difference is that he has no craving for it and, unlike the addict, he gets no kick out of his compulsion. How does the addict know she has impaired control? Because she doesn’t stop the behaviour in spite of its ill effects. She makes promises to herself or others to quit, but despite pain, peril and promises, she keeps relapsing. There are exceptions, of course. Some addicts never recognize the harm their behaviours cause and never form resolutions to end them. They stay in denial and rationalization. Others openly accept the risk, resolving to live and die “my way.

Dr. Susan Forward has written extensively in this area and lists the types of toxic personalities.   The verbal abusers demoralize and diminish another person’s self-esteem. Controllers use fear, obligation, guilt, or financial control to manipulate other’s behavior. “If you really love me, you’ll ...” Active punishers come right out and threaten, “If you don’t do [blank], then you will suffer.” Passive punishers freeze others out with the silent treatment. Inadequate humans are needy types who focus on their own problems and demand attention and constant care. Physical abusers are incapable of controlling their deep seated rage and lash out. Sexual abusers destroy any safety in a relationship. Addicts of all types: drugs, gambling, alcoholics; come complete with huge denial, mood swings, chaos, and financial peril.   Listen

But belief in the Victorian, Enlightenment-based ideal of an omnipotent, autonomous willpower, overseeing and in control of a mind transparent to itself, has generally faded. It reappears from time in slogans, political (as in Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No”) and commercial (as in Nike’s “Just do it!”). But the “just” in these slogans is a form of magical denial that the powerful physiological and psychological grip of drug addiction and deficits in athletic constitution and training can all be overcome by simple exertion of the will. The other end of the continuum, the opposite of the traditional belief in the omnipotent will, is the doctrine of passive victimization, in evidence in television spectacles in which perpetrators of heinous crimes exonerate themselves by revealing their own past victimization. Not only are we not in control, they seem to be saying, we are pawns of what was done to us in our distant personal pasts. Psychotherapy is often misused in the service of this sort of self-exoneration.

Bunch of Quotes … Legend: #/ = page number 12/ Money as Archetype. The key point is that money must have power over us inwardly in order to have power in the world. We must believe in its value before we will change our conduct based on whether or not we will receive it. In the broadest sense, money becomes a vehicle of relationship. It enables us to make choices and cooperate with one another, it singlas what we will do with our energy. 16/ The Latin word moneta derives from the Indo-European root men-, which means to use one’s mind or think. The goddess Moneta is modeled on the Greek goddess of memory, Mnemosyne. Contained in the power to remember is the ability to warn, so Moneta is also considered to be a goddess who can give warnings. To suggest money can affect us in different ways we might remember that the Greek words menos (which means spirit, courage, purpose) and mania (which means madness) come from the same root as memory and Moneta. Measurement, from the Indo-European root me-, also relates to mental abilities and is a crucial aspect of money. 95/ [Crawford relates the experience of a friend], a mother, whose only son suffered from drug addiction. … At last she overcame her motherly instincts and refused him a place to stay and food and money. [She gave him a resources list for dealing with addiction.] 98/ Even an addition, according to psychologist C.G. Jung, a form of spiritual craving. Jung expressed this viewpoint in correspondence with Bill Wilson (Bill W), the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. 107/ The inner search is not a denial of our outer needs, but rather in part a way of learning the right attitudes and actions with which to deal with the outer world—including money and ownership. 114/ Maimonodes, Golden Ladder of Charity. [this list is from charitywatch.org] Maimonides, a 12th century Jewish scholar, invented the following ladder of giving. Each rung up represents a higher degree of virtue: 1. The lowest: Giving begrudgingly and making the recipient feel disgraced or embarrassed. 2. Giving cheerfully but giving too little. 3. Giving cheerfully and adequately but only after being asked. 4. Giving before being asked. 5. Giving when you do not know who is the individual benefiting, but the recipient knows your identity. 6. Giving when you know who is the individual benefiting, but the recipient does not know your identity. 7. Giving when neither the donor nor the recipient is aware of the other's identity. 8. The Highest: Giving money, a loan, your time or whatever else it takes to enable an individual to be self-reliant. 129/ Remember as this myth unfolds [Persephone] that we are speaking of inheritance in the larger sense. What we inherit is not merely money and only received at death, but it is everything, both good and bad, that we receive from our parents throughout our lifetime. When we examine such an inheritance, some of what we receive will be truly ours and worthwhile to keep. The rest we must learn to surrender if we are to get on with our own lives. 133/ As so happens, the child must deal with what the parent refuses to confront. 146/ Whether the parent is alive or dead, the child may believe some flaw in the parent has crippled and limited the child’s life. To become attached to this point of view is damaging, because the child fails to take responsibility for his or her own destiny.

Since I didn’t like the law or the consequences for breaking it, I lived in denial of it. But pretending as if it weren’t there did not make it disappear. So, I retaliated against those who represented it. If I couldn't divert the consequences, I diverted the blame. I blamed the police for my consequences. I blamed them for “ruining my life.” I blamed them for my arrests. I refused to accept that it was my fault for breaking the law in the first place. Blaming others allowed me to keep believing whatever I wanted and acting however I wanted.

In a nationwide survey The Center for Behavioral Health found that 95.4% of those classified as needing treatment for their substance use problems did not think they needed treatment. Despite being classified as having a substance use disorder that needed treatment, they thought they were fine. They denied the problem, or like me they were impervious to the idea that it even existed. Denial, they say, is the first sign of addiction, but denial, by nature, hates to be found out. It manifests in anger, blame, and avoidance. It manifests in excuses, lying, and rationalization. Our world crumbles around us and it is always everyone else’s fault but our own.

Denial reigns truer than our obvious dependency, but we don’t seem to notice either; maybe it’s because when we are subject to the drugs, they reign over our lives, they are in control, not us. Others can see it in us, but we cannot see it in ourselves.

The truth is, we all contribute to the prevalence of these drugs in our communities by swallowing whole the illusion that suffering is avoidable by some outside "fix". Together with our doctors, we've been in collective denial about the fact that these drugs are unable to provide a sustainable solution to the pains of living.

Those brief daunting moments were the few ephemeral instances when I clearly felt the agony of my addiction. At every other point in time, I was running too fast, too hard to notice whether anything was wrong. It may have been denial, or I may have just been too blazed to rationally explain things, but for the most part, the cost of my addiction went unnoticed, and I focused instead on its rewards. Externally, I had it all together. My friends would imitate me, copying my colloquialisms and my mannerisms in order to attract girls themselves.

Violence done to a child is stored in the body and later directed by the adult at other people or even whole nations. Alternatively, the abused child will turn that violence on itself, leading invariably to depression, drug addiction, severe illnesses, suicide, or early death. The first part of this book illustrates how the denial of the truth, the denial of cruelty undergone in childhood, can crucially interfere with the body’s biological task of preserving life, and how such denial can block its vital functions.

Bi women are nearly twice as likely as straight women to experience sexual and physical assault. Bi women also have much higher rates of drug addiction and abuse. Not to mention that lesbians are really mean to bi women. At least gay men still hang out with bi men. Yes, they’ll talk shit behind our backs, about how we’re in denial, but they’re not as blatantly antagonistic as lesbians who make bi women feel like gender traitors for breaking up with a woman and dating a man.