Stanton Peele Quotes

For this reason, temperance was an important component in the Progressive movement’s effort to improve the lives of the working class.

For one thing, that Kitty was addicted to amphetamines for twenty-six years without her husband’s knowledge suggests a certain lack of communication or awareness in the marriage. Was

—Maia Szalavitz, author of Unbroken Brain: Why Addiction is a Learning Disorder and What to Do About It; neuroscience

In the words of Durk Pearson and Sandra Shaw, the authors of Life Extension,

I always think in this connection of the Rumanian saying my in-laws use when they see an extremely obese person: “So, you ate what you wanted.

From this perspective, love at first sight becomes understandable in the sense that addiction to heroin on the first injection is understandable.

There were two books that really had a significant impact on me on the issue of drugs: One was Andrew Weil’s book, The Natural Mind. The

to the world, and there is no more powerful expression of that relatedness than love, or true responsiveness to another person. The issue of love versus addiction is one that is very close to our lives, and thus one that we can do something about as individuals. The environment that is most important to us is the human one. This is why, when we get addicted, we tend to get addicted to people. Similarly, our best hope of breaking out of addiction is by learning better ways of dealing with people. This is true not only for romantic involvements but also for family ties and friendships. Our families have

Toward some few others who habitually became drunk or who couldn’t control their drinking, most people adopted an attitude between knowing condescension and outright scorn: why were these people so weak or immoral as not to know when enough was enough?

In addition, experiences that facilitate addiction offer people a sense of power or control, of security or calm, of intimacy or of being valued by others; on the other hand, such experiences succeed in blocking out sensations of pain, discomfort, or other negative sensations.

We must also consider the enormous social-class differences in addiction rates. That is, the farther down the social and economic scale a person is, the more likely the person is to become addicted to alcohol, drugs, or cigarettes, to be obese, or to be a victim or perpetrator of family or sexual abuse. How

prominent spokespeople lecture us that cocaine is a drug with “neuropsychological properties” that “lock people into perpetual usage” so that the only way people can stop is when “supplies become unavailable,” after which “the user is then driven to obtain additional cocaine without particular regard for social constraints.

parents are the most important influences on children, and that the best way to curb misbehavior is to insist on standards of decency. If we cannot persuade our children that they have the capacity to manage their lives and that the world is worth living in—and then work to create a world in which this is true—medical treatments will expand endlessly but will not be able to help us.

Let’s Convince Him He’s Addicted for Life Parents consent to their children’s treatment for diseases other than taking drugs. One of the most common groups of childhood diseases is “learning disabilities,” including especially hyperactivity. Are such learning disabilities permanent? One piece of research showed that, “Contrary to the expectations of many experts, . . . boys who are hyperactive do not always have

Achievement and competence. People fall prey to addiction more readily when they lack positive motivation to achieve or work. Children need to learn that accomplishment is important and within their reach, not solely for material rewards, but because people should make positive contributions to the world and other people and because it is satisfying to make such contributions and to mobilize one’s skills effectively. Participating with children in constructive activity, like reading, building, or gardening—and encouraging independent activity whenever feasible—are strong precursors to achievement and competence. Consciousness and self-awareness. Addiction is the result of accumulated self-destructive behavior that people ignore, just as unconscious acceptance of any negative syndrome ingrains that habit in people’s lives.

I couldn’t go on saying, “Let’s get a couple of grams of blow (cocaine) and write a song. Let’s get stoned before the gig. Let’s get stoned after the gig. I’m in town, where are the girls?” I was living the classic wild style, and that was no longer working for me. I’m not AA or anything. My ethic is that I work hard, do what I do under my own power, and at the end of the day, like everybody else in the world, I do what I can get away with. —Iggy Pop, rock singer

ask a group of your friends about their smoking histories some time over dinner—keeping in mind that smoking is at the top of the list of hardest addictions to quit.)

Americans that alcoholism is a disease and the alcoholic a sick person who needs help and treatment. The NCA

Instead of encouraging those concerned to see the drinking in the context of the person’s way of life, and thus to discern what role or roles it may play for that person in coping

disease.’” —Lance Dodes, MD, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School (retired); author of Breaking Addiction and The Heart of Addiction “Stanton Peele has helped us understand the most tortuous aspects of addiction and recovery, without ever joining the parade of conventional experts…who happen to be marching the wrong way.” —Marc Lewis, author of The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is Not a Disease; professor

Physicians conduct an initial examination and detoxify the alcoholic in the hospital, then turn the patient over to paraprofessional counselors who are themselves recovering alcoholics. As

Benjamin Rush, the eighteenth-century founder of the disease concept of alcoholism, also thought that lying, murder, and political dissent were diseases.

coping with life, the logic of the disease concept does the contrary. It leads all concerned, including the drinker, to deny, to ignore, to discount what meaning that way of life may have. Seen as an involuntary symptom of a disease, the drinking is isolated from the rest of life, and viewed as the meaningless but destructive effect of a noxious condition, a “disease.

In his nicotine addiction articles, he mentions one example—that Orthodox Jews who are addicted to cigarettes quit smoking “without a qualm” on the Sabbath.

Addictive relationships are marked by their endurance. We are prepared to lie, cheat, and steal from other people. We begin to lie, cheat, and steal from each other. In the face of decreasing pleasure and even intense painfulness.

About 14 or 15 years ago, I was 60 years old, just a kid with a crazy dream. Since then I’ve taken a lot of Prozac, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Effexor, Ritalin, Focalin. I’ve also studied deeply in the philosophies and the religions, but cheerfulness kept breaking through. But I want to tell you something that I think will not easily be contradicted—there ain’t no cure for love. —Leonard Cohen, Introduction to “Ain’t No Cure for Love,” Live in London

(Several people have now sued to reverse state regulations requiring them to attend AA on the grounds that these violate their religious freedom.)

To this day, the percentage of abstainers in the United States—about one-third of the adult population—is, along with Ireland’s, the highest among Western nations.

The core beliefs that the alcoholism movement has successfully promulgated are: Alcoholics don’t drink too much because they intend to, but only because they can’t control their drinking. Alcoholics inherit their alcoholism and thus are born as alcoholics. Alcoholism always grows worse without treatment, so that alcoholics can never cut back or quit drinking on their own.

Alcoholism as a disease can strike any individual—it is an “equal-opportunity destroyer”—and respects no social, religious, ethnic or sexual bounds. Treatment based on AA principles is the only effective treatment for alcoholism—in the words of one proponent, a modern medical “miracle”—without which no one can hope to arrest a drinking problem. Those who reject the AA approach for their drinking problems, or observers who contradict any of the contentions about alcoholism listed here, are practicing a special denial that means death for alcoholics.

Addicts want release from pain; they are not thinking about love. In Stanton Peele's useful book Love and Addiction, he makes the insightful point that " addiction is not about relatedness." Addiction makes love impossible. [...] Hence, addiction is both a consequence of widespread lovelessness and a cause. [...] Greed characterizes the nature of this pursuit because it is unending; the desire is ongoing and can never be fully satisfied.

Stanton Peele and Archie Brodsky published the groundbreaking Love and Addiction