There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away.

The worst thing you can do for your loved one caught in alcoholism or addiction is to help the person continue in the deception that he or she is OK. Your best course of action is to speak the truth in love (see Eph. 4:15) and don’t allow him or her to escape the consequences of wrong behavior.

Addiction is just a way of trying to get at something else. Something bigger. Call it transcendence if you want, but it’s a fucked-up way, like a rat in a maze. We all want the same thing. We all have this hole. The thing you want offers relief, but it’s a trap.

All the suffering, stress and addiction comes from not realizing you already are what you are looking for. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

You can come out of the furnace of trouble two ways: if you let it consume you, you come out a cinder; but there is a kind of metal which refuses to be consumed, and comes out a star. — Jean Church

The initial journey towards sobriety is a delicate balance between insight into one’s desire for escape and abstinence from one’s addiction. — Debra L. Kaplan

The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house. — Jean Cocteau

Habit is habit, and not to be flung out of the window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step at a time. — Mark Twain

The first thing in the human personality that dissolves in alcohol is dignity.

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you. — Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald